10 Places? For that?!?!?! F1 Related

Anyone else who saw Schumacher's ridiculous attempt to run Rubens off the road at 200mph think that he deserves to be suspended for a race or two? It was ridiculously dangerous! And all he gets is the same penalty as someone who commits some minor infringement. Had it ended badly it would have been one of the worst incidents in modern F1 ever, to push someone off the road a that speed right by the pit lane exit was downright sinister... Especially given Schumacher's history of doing this, how could they let him off with such a light penalty?

If a McLaren driver had done it I'm sure the peanlty would've been much worse... I do hope this makes Schumacher realise that he's out of his depth now and that F1 has changed too much for his style to be competitive, he really needs to give it up for good before he tarnishs his legacy. He might dream of one more fairytale comeback championship but when he was successful it was built around pit strategies and puting in fast laps when needed, he rarely overtook anyone in the top few positions as he probably deemed it an unnecessary risk when he could pass in the pits and was so consistent race to race he was never in a position where he had to pass people for the sake of his championship. That's no longer an option as no having refueling means tacticians can't sit there and work out when a car will need to pit, and base their strategy around that.

Well.. a 10 place grid-drop in the next race is a much bigger penalty than a drive-through which minor infringements get.

I agree it was a very harsh move, and all the drivers I've seen comment on it seem to agree. I think it would be a fitting end to his career if he eventually caused a crash through something like this and forever went down in history as the guy who tried to kill someone. He really is one of the worst sportspeople in the history of (any) sport.

I'd love to see the drivers gang up on him and say something. It really was literally 10cm from being a 300km/h crash.

In any case, there is still strategy in pit stops. Mark Webber showed that in the race - if you can get clear air you can make your option tires last longer and go further into the race before needing to pit. The fuel-saving aspect of races now also throws an interesting element into it. In clear air you can run at top pace without using as much fuel (or your tires).. it's quite interesting how previously 3-stop races have now become 1-stop (all of them basically) races... You'd think someone would attempt to 2-stop it with a short stint on the non-ideal tire at a track where the difference in speed between them was much more apparent.

Well pit stops come into it, but you can't calculate how much fuel someone took on and know exactly which lap he'll have to come in on anymore. Ferrari were the masters of fuelling their cars to stay out a lap or two more than the car in front and allowing Schumacher to put in one or two quick laps and of curse a lightning quick stop to get him out in front.

I guess we'll start to seee more varied strategies as time goes on, this season seems to be about testing the limits of the tires. With a seasons data I'm sure we'll start to see variations next year.

They're changing to Pirelli next year so it'll be the cleanest slate in terms of tire data since Michelin entered the sport in 2001.

There will be some tears/gripes for sure.

Also, Ferrari were good at fuelling their cars longer only because they qualified with more fuel. It wasn't always like that either. The big changes we're probably going to next year will be to do with the doing-away of double-deck/stacked diffusers. I think the teams have agreed on this change now but could be wrong.