As much as it pains me to hear Lewis Hamilton fans cry foul and deliberateness, it is equally souring to see Nico fans scream conspiracy but what do I know? Maybe it is all a huge scheme and Nico parked it at Monaco and he handed Lewis the win in Italy.
The conspiracy theorists are having a field day with the Italian Grand Prix win of Lewis Hamilton suggesting that Nico deliberately missed the chicane to hand the win to Hamilton as a reparation for his actions at Spa as instructed by the team. The team deny that but according to an AUTOSPORT article, they are now having a go at team boss Toto Wolff as proof it was either deliberate or much appreciated when Nico made the error.
It seems the world feed showed an image of Wolff smiling in or around the time of the error and some have claimed this is proof that Wolff is conspiring against Nico. Wolff said:
“What is really crazy is that whoever picks that up [the smiling reaction] and tries to interpret in such a picture must be out of his mind,” said Wolff. “It was not live.
“Whenever the camera is pointing on you, the signal comes later. It wasn’t synchronised with the picture.
“It is like Big Brother is watching you. So I will hide in the engineer’s office next time.
“There was a smile when the two [Hamilton and Rosberg] were close to each other. It was a ‘here we go again, this is a close battle.'”
Now, I have no idea of if there is a delay from live TV but when I was at SPEED joining the crew for the Singapore Grand Prix, everything was pretty much in real time from all the camera angles I could see. The pit-to-car radio was delayed however.
Again, what do I know? Wolff would have a better idea of world feed TV delay than I would but I can say that I didn’t see any of that when I attended a race broadcast. Replays do occur and perhaps what they showed was a replay but they usually have a graphic that says it is a replay. Who knows?
Either way, be careful with your accusation or Toto may just take his marbles and chalk and go back to the motorhome instead. The other side of this is the silly notion that we’re actually talking about this to begin with. Let’s just go racing shall we?
