#F1Chat Preview – The Belgian GP Review

Spa-Francorchamps is renowned for it’s weather – wet one minute, hot the next, and I can confirm in the space of 3 days at Spa I was soaked to the bone and sunburnt. But I’m back from the Belgian Grand Prix, and this week on #F1Chat, we’ve got so much to discuss. So here’s what’s coming up…

Let’s start with the first lap – well not even the first lap – the first half of the start-finish straight. Grosjean made contact with Hamilton, which saw the beginning of a huge pile up going down to turn one, also involving Alonso and Perez. All 4 retired from the race and the stewards laid the blame at Grosjean’s door, handing him a one-race ban for Monza this weekend. Grosjean had been attempting to cover off Hamilton as he tried to move past the McLaren, but cut him up, sending him into the wall and pushing the Lotus over the top of Alonso, collecting Perez in the process. The official report said: “The stewards regard this incident as an extremely serious breach of the regulations which had the potential to cause injury to others. It eliminated leading championship contenders from the race.” Do you think this was the right penalty? What did you make of what happened – did Grosjean poorly judge the move or did you think it was more than that? I’m yet to watch this back, but from what I saw on my Fanvision unit at Rivage, Alonso, Hamilton and Perez all looked very lucky to have walked away unharmed.

Grosjean’s reaction to the ban was as follows: “When your life is all about racing, not being allowed to attend an event is probably one of the worst experiences you can go through. That said, I do respect the verdict of the Stewards. I got a good start – despite being disturbed by Pastor’s early launch, which I think was the case for everybody at the front – and was heading into the first corner when the rear of my car made contact with the front of Lewis [Hamilton]’s. I honestly thought I was ahead of him and there was enough room for both cars ; I didn’t deliberately try to squeeze him or anything like that. This first corner situation obviously isn’t what anyone would want to happen and thankfully no-one was hurt in the incident. I wish to apologise to the drivers who were involved and to their fans. I can only say that today is part of a process that will make me a better driver.”

The Lotus team said: “It’s been a tough day for the team but we fully respect the Stewards’ decision. Romain won’t be driving at Monza but he still has our full support. We’ll announce the name of his replacement a bit later in the week. As far as the race is concerned, unfortunately we didn’t have the pace for Kimi to challenge Jenson [Button] or Sebastian [Vettel]. We had to look closely at the strategy during the race to see if we should switch to one stop, but in the end a podium finish still brings us some good points. Of course, everyone talks about ‘the win’, and this is something we all want. We were not fast enough for it today, so we all need to keep working hard for this goal.”

Based on these quotes, do you think the ban was fair?

Let’s discuss Maldonado’s jump start, which Grosjean refers to – it’s another mistake from the Williams and another penalty as he’ll receive a 5-place grid-drop in Monza. On top of that penalty, the stewards issued another 5-place grid-drop for Monza for causing a collision with Glock after rejoining the track following the contact between Grosjean, Hamilton, Alonso and Perez. What did you make of it, and considering he retired from the race, were the penalties fair? He also received a 3-place grid-drop at Spa for impeding Hulkenberg in Q1.

So who was your driver of the day? Jenson Button secured his first pole for McLaren and converted it into a win – does McLaren’s rear wing update look good for the second half of the season? What do you make of Lotus’ comments about not having the pace to challenge Button or Vettel?

Let’s quickly discuss Lewis Hamilton’s tweets over the weekend, that received criticism from the media and were deleted by the McLaren driver. What do you think about Hamilton using Twitter to vent his frustration? Should he have deleted the tweet and the one of his telemetry vs. Button’s the following day?

Finally, let’s look ahead to Monza – who will be on pole? Who will win? What can we expect from the weekend?

Join us later today at 4pm Eastern US, 9pm UK when we’ll be looking back on yesterday’s action, and don’t forget to use the #F1Chat hashtag to answer the questions.

As you noticed, there was no post-race #F1Chat yesterday – as I will be in Italy for this weekend’s race, there will be no post-race #F1Chat this Sunday either, but we’ll be back again on Monday.