Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

F1 2020

Mika Salo and Finnish TV
It appears that the Finnish steward Mika Salo has passed on information about Lewis Hamilton's penalty to the Finnish TV channel C More. The channel reported that the penalty would come for Hamilton well before it was officially announced. Mika Salo is said to have passed on information to C More, well before the penalty was announced by F1. Ten minutes before it was announced by the stewards that Hamilton would be punished twice five seconds, the commentators already reported that the punishment would come. What is even more striking is that the investigation had not been completed at that time. The Finnish channel also reported that Hamilton would receive two penalty points twice on his super-licence. These had initially only become two and it was announced earlier this evening that they would be waived altogether.

Incidentally, this is not the first time that important information has been forwarded at an early stage. Salo himself has worked as a commentator, and during his duties as a steward it is more common for Finnish television to have this kind of information earlier. If the rumour is true, the FIA may intervene.
 
Was out for the race yesterday so avoided updates and watched this morning. Frustrating for Hamilton but rules is rules I guess? Shame it could not have been added to his time :hmm:
 
Hammy has been getting some bum steers from his team recently. The unnoticed pit-lane-closed alert didn't show up on the engineers' panels - 10 seconds drive-through. The team gave Hammy a precise location for two practice starts - 2 x 5 second penalties.

I know Toto is big on the no-blame culture, but someone - and it might as well be Hammy - needs to tell the team that mistakes like these make the whole team look incompetent, and that means all 1,000 employees of Mercedes F1, and that is a betrayal.

More to the point, they are carelessly throwing away world championship points, and if Hammy wants to get dramatic, they are jeopardising the chances of a driver becoming the most successful driver of all time. Does Mercedes want to go down in history as the team that failed him at the final hurdle? He ought to lay it on the line: he doesn't fuck up on track; the team doesn't fuck up its race engineering.

That said, I think Hammy has too many personal irons in the fire at the moment, and he's losing focus. He could spend less time doing sketches for Tommy Hilfiger and more time boning up on the rules of F1. He'll have all the time in the world for distractions after he's retired.
 
I know Toto is big on the no-blame culture, but someone - and it might as well be Hammy - needs to tell the team that mistakes like these make the whole team look incompetent, and that means all 1,000 employees of Mercedes F1, and that is a betrayal.
It won't help matters that the Netflix team, shooting the next Drive To Survive series, were filming with Mercedes at Sochi, in hope of capturing Lewis equalling Michael's record.

Wasn't it last year they screwed up in Germany when the film crew were around too?
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom