Radio Messages

2013 was the worst season in F1 but it was not Pirelli's fault as they provided rubbish tyres on request.
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Thats not what F1 should be about - i always think F1 should be the pinnacle, the best you can do. Rubbish tyres are erm.... Rubbish!

"Just shows how dull the championship has become when radio messages are talked more about than a race."

Now there's a difficult point to argue with!

There is much that could be said about them though. As a Hamilton fan here are some disconnected observations.

He was a bit silly to tell them to leave him alone and then later complain that he needed more information. That shows a complete lack of understanding of the situation he put the engineer in.
No wonder he didn't get told anything after he told them to leave him alone. Is he really surprised at that?

I think this is just the sort of thing Niki Lauda should be nipping in the bud, rather than spending a lot of time on RTL television seeming to do a "world's biggest fan" job on Vettel.

Perhaps he will refund Mercedes GP some of his salary.

I don't actually criticise Hamilton for his slight snap under pressure. we have seen Fernando Alonso develop a bit of antagonism towards Ferrari recently as frustration sets in and to be honest, I would expect no less from Vettel if he wasn't benefiting from being the latest in a long line of FIA approved charitable organisations.

Anybody seeing Vettel as some little Saint wants to remember, he has made plenty of errors when under pressure, whined on the radio when under pressure, disobeyed team orders when under pressure and has a very nasty habit of swerving into anybody who appears to be threatening his, "dominance" and he is hardly learning how to cope with pressure at the moment, is he?

For his own good Hamilton needs to develop a more positive means of expressing himself and being more at peace with the world. For me he is still the greatest single talent in a long time, but his apparent lack of confidence in those around him could be harming his potential.

He needs to see the team are not against him, they are on his side and trying to help him maximise his potential.

Now, Mr Lauda (Herr Lauda, if you prefer) go and tell him that because he needs to know it and do try to assist the team who employs you in their attempts to catch the best car/tyre combination out there, instead of doing a hero-worship job for a man given the best car on the track and the tyres best suited to it for the last two thirds of the season.

It's us, the fans who have had to suffer the tedium of watching a gifted, though not particularly intelligent German driver, "win" one of the easiest championships since the last gifted, though not particularly intelligent German driver.

Last thought, had it been Raikkonen everybody would be laughing their heads off and saying, "Oh, Dear Old Kimi, don't yoyu just LOVE him for his attitude?"

Yeah its a complete non-story for anyone without an agenda.

I do quite enjoy seeing that drivers are actually human beings. I am bored stiff of the PR people running the show. If you were to read an interview and you didn't know who the driver was, it would be almost impossible to guess who it was because everyone says the same! "Oh, we had a tough qualifying session. The car was a bit unstable. We didn't get the tyres working properly. The race is going to be tough tomorrow. In the race we got stuck behind traffic. The tyres behaved differently in the race than they did in practice and quali".

Hearing drivers getting a bit ratty or saying things that their PR people would cringe over is fun - it allows you to relate to them more than if they were just PR robots.

I compare most sportspeople today to our Olympic team - when some of them won golds their emotions were all over the place. Laura Trott is a fine example as you could tell the PR people hadn't got to her.

It goes without saying that I don't want to hear people acting like spoilt brats, absolutely not. I do however enjoy hearing frustration and emotion because I'm sure if I was in the driver's position, I'd be having a good old moan too!!

"If you were to read an interview and you didn't know who the driver was, it would be almost impossible to guess who it was because everyone says the same.."

There is a story, I don't know how true it is.

Before Mosley and Ecclestone homogenised effwun and interviews were still conducted with the winning driver still standing in his car Niki Lauda won a race, pulled into the pits and an eager interviewer thrust a microphone under his nose,
"How was the race today, Niki?"

"Fine, easy win, car fine, engine fine, gearbox fine traffic fine, no problems, easy win."

Looking for a little more interest from the winner the interviewer asked, "What were the tyres like, Niki?"

Lauda frowned, thought for a moment and replied, "Round and black."

As I say, not sure how true it is.

Tyres “round and black” was what Jenson Button radioed at the last race.

The American drivers are the worst when they have to mention the name of every single sponsor they have. For sure.

It can be quite weird as a driver to hear back your radio messages after a race. For me, it was the one part of the race I would have no memory of: I could tell you exactly what happened with overtakes, strategy and dicey moments, but wouldn't have a clue of what I'd been saying to the guy on the other end of the radio. Apparently once I completely berated the team because I had wanted to come in to the pits as it seemed to me like a good opportunity for a driver change, they refused, so I went mad at them. At the end of my stint after getting out, I was confused why they were all a bit off with me and I had no clue I had called them all a variety of colourful swearwords

Having just seen the Sky interview I was disappointed with Hamilton, he seemed to give the impression he had been "betrayed" in some way, instead of owning up to it and admitting he had failed.
It looked like he felt he should have been protected by the team rather than the team being allowed to show people the truth, not very good, really.

Grow up, Lewis.

Fair comment about, "you get messages in the braking area, when you are trying to concentrate", but any level -headed individual would have had the honesty to admit, "Yes, it looked a bit silly, I will talk over communications with the team", and he perhaps have added, "and apologise to them".

It would have been mature and fair.

Instead, we got, "You won't hear any messages next year!"

Not very mature, to be honest.

He does need to start taking responsibility for his actions a bit more, in my opinion, and could also do with learning to work with the team, at the moment he seems against them and I fear he will alienate them if he is not careful.

He needs to think, "Where will I go if I leave Mercedes?"

Petulance seems to be a required talent from this generation of school-boy drivers!

It would be nice to see some men in the cars, for a change.

"Tyres “round and black” was what Jenson Button radioed at the last race."

If Button used the same phrase as Lauda, shows how far ahead of his time Lauda was!

I would have thought that a race engineer would have got together with his driver at the beginning of the season and agreed the procedure for radio coms. When to speak to him, when not to speak to him. The race engineer has a tracking system on his screen so he knows exactly where his driver is on the track.

Comments from Brazil race

Gary Anderson, BBC F1 technical analyst

"When I was engineering cars, we always had a pre-arranged place on the track to speak to each other. It's a bit strange that engineers talk to drivers in the braking zones."

TEAM RADIO

Jenson Button to his race engineer: "Dave will you stop talking to me in braking zones. Stop talking to me in braking zones."

Whats baffling me is the referring to lewis as childish or petulant.