The Belgium Grand Prix was full of drama, excitement and controversy, but thing didn’t really kick off until after the chequered flag had fallen when Lewis Hamilton told the F1 media that in the post-race team debrief Nico Rosberg had admitted that he deliberately left his car’s nose where it was in a fight with Hamilton – in order to prove a point, thus admitting that he had caused the accident that ruined Hamilton’s race. This also resulted in Rosberg being unable to beat Dan Ricciardo’s Red Bull for the win at Spa. So victory went to the Australian. The relationship between the two Mercedes drivers has been heating up for some time. Now, it would seem, the gloves are off…
– We look at Bernie Ecclestone’s Great Escape from Germany
– The story of Max Verstappen
– JS commiserates with Alexander Rossi
– Tony Fernandes explains why he left F1
– We remember the March 701
– The Hack looks back in anger
– DT finds himself agreeing with Max Mosley
– Peter Nygaard and his team braved the elements to bring you their great photography
GP+ is the fastest F1 magazine in the world. It’s so fast, it’s almost real-time… But it is a magazine that tells you the full story, like racing magazines used to do. Yet it is published in electronic form in PDF format, so you can read it on a laptop or a tablet.
Our reporters are some of the most respected in the business and we take you behind the scenes in the F1 paddock and explain what is really going on. We have forthright opinions and we don’t care if we knock noses out of joint. There are plenty of fascinating stories from Grand Prix history as well, plus great photography and old style reporting, giving you a blow-by-blow account of what happened, both in qualifying and in the race, so you have a proper record which can stay in your computer for years to come.
You get 22 issues for £29.99, covering the entire 2014 Formula 1 season.
It’s the bargain available in Formula 1
For more information, go to http://www.grandprixplus.com.
joeblogsf1 
Sweet, like the sponsorship on the Caterham…
Excellent edition as always yet not all the photos are downloading correctly, is the problem my Sony tablet?
It is working fine for me, so the problem is probably the quality of your line. Try a different line and it will work fine.
The excrements have finally hit the proverbial fan…
I do wish to see ample opinion from you and your colleagues in GP+, and have often expressed a desire to see more of it than what is typically provided. At the same time, I think it inappropriate for the race reporter to present himself as being more angry at a driver than his own team management does.
I suppose we all have our own view of what reporting should be. FWIW (which probably isn’t much), my view is that it’s good to do responsible editorializing and it’s good to do proper reporting… but the two should be clearly delineated. What’s not responsible is to present heavy-handed editorializing as if it’s reporting.
Thank you for that lesson in journalism. We have no idea how to do things. After 30-odd years each we are still learning.
The non-British press portrayed the incident very differently.
Parochialism hurts ad sales, unless you are full on parochial, assuming there’s the economy to support, which there usually isn’t because parochialism is not the economic powerhouse that drives professional advertising. This is a reason, no, the reason, there is not a healthy publishing market for F1.
Yup. Another 400 races and you’ll probably get it right…
A modest opinion (“FWIW”) by RShack gets a typical flippant reply. That’s one of the reasons I don’t subscribe to GP+. (Not that you mind, of course ;-))
I mind a great deal. Your comment highlights the essential dichotomy of this blog. I want to share my passion for F1 and lead more people to become fans, but I need to make a living in order to do this. Mean-spirited individuals who are too cheap to put their hands in their pockets for a quality product make it hard for me to convince myself that there is much to be gained from giving them something for nothing. You don’t deserve it.
So I am a cheap, mean-spirited individual who doesn’t deserve to read this blog?
Well, to be fair about it… it’s true that Joe is vulnerable to sometimes being defensive and flying off the handle… (not unlike a certain Monaco-based driver who in-the-moment had had enough and just reacted instead of responding)… but on the other hand, he is willing to publish pretty much any opinion anyone offers, provided that the anonymous opiner isn’t being too much of a jerk, and provided that the anonymous starement doesn’t put Joe at risk of being sued. Along the way, he puts up with a lot more crap than I would.
Say what you will, if you’re looking to find others of meritorious repute who are willing to spend their personal energy doing what Joe does here, well, you can count them on the remaining fingers and toes of any quadruple amputee.
With Joe, what you see is what you get… and he’s willing to spend untold time on a (free) blog, showing us that much of himself. You can either take it or leave it. I certainly can understand that some folks might prefer to leave it. Personally, I am grateful for the opportunity to take what Joe puts on offer. If nothing else, you know he takes what he does seriously and won’t willingly bullshit you…
Plus, I learn stuff I otherwise wouldn’t know…
As we all do…
Thank you
Hear, hear!
I mind, also, because you’re missing the fact that this blog is a personal project, but distinct from the magazine. This is Joe’s blog, but GP+ is not called “Joe’s Grand Prix Magazine”. Coincidentally, I had been thinking, the other day, how Joe might better seek to differentiate the fact, because there’s always a risk, as this has just illustrated, of a misunderstanding that might hurt sales. No need to explain what’s obvious. Both parties are losing out. One, missing out for not comprehending that the magazine is not a organ for personal comment, because that is what this blog fulfills, the other for not taking the opportunity to say, well, they lost a sale anyhow, and emailing a pass for a sub, to see if they can make a convert. That’s what I’d do, anyhow. Maybe I’m just too radical, man…
>> After 30-odd years each we are still learning.
>> After 30-odd years each we are still learning.
I hope so. From the way you reveal your pretense-free self in your blog, I know you are. I don’t know DT enough to have any clue about his side of things. (This is not a poke at him, just a statement of fact.)
Look, anyone can have a bad day. I trust that was the case with your colleague whose report was dominated by unsupported assertions, mischaracterizations, and the always-unfortunate technique of insinuendo.
Apart from that, I was most surprised to see the vitriol so evident in his piece leak over onto the issue’s cover. While the future might well prove me wrong (as often happens), I trust that you will regret agreeing to put “Oops, I did it on purpose…” on something that has your name on it as well as his.
p.s. Of course Nico did something blatantly ill-advised. No doubt. At the same time, Lewis didn’t exactly act wisely either. Close dicing is a rare treat to observe. It takes two to do it well. In the case at hand, neither driver acted in the best interests of the team. Perhaps the more apt cover phrase might have been “Two self-centered brats bickering at speed…”
Or, you can see the front page as a reflection, of historical note, of the atmosphere in the paddock. I hold by my immediate reaction, when watching intently the move on television: “stupid”. But I wasn’t thinking one or the other was stupid, just a “oh, groan” reaction. I honestly did not expect it to explode as it did. As a result, very widely, I think it’s possible to gain a lot of insight from the reactions, both immediate and more considered. I am not sure we’ve had a better view of what is going on, save for the fact there’s so much going on, it is pretty confusing. That’s a bold front, more reminiscent of some Economist magazine covers, and may actually get to the heart of it. I am not sure Nico knew what he was doing, and I’ll tell you why: he’s been locked in method acting the homebody / golden boy show so much that he forgot his original intent: to play it until he had his contract in hand, then swing for absolute status. Only the act is brief, and the change more difficult to effect. And the whole result, yet more volatile than if you just looked at the incident on its own. The upset and blame has been moved, from blaming Nico, to moaning the stewards did nothing, to invoking Mosley’s FIA.
Well, J(oJ), you’ve done a good job of making me think… which is always a favor (thank you).
But, alas, my additional thinking hasn’t accomplished much.
Here’s the main thing I don’t get: This is not the sort of thing that either party can plan. Rather, it was a moment, suddenly appearing, didn’t last more than a fraction of a second, in which both parties’ reflexes decided to show their master’s arse. Had it been Clark and Gurney, or Jackie and Emmo, or (pick any 2 who have a clue), the first would have left room and the second would not have turned in regardless. Anybody who’s not predisposed to see Driver-X as hero and Driver-Y as villain knows that.
So, how did this become viewed as a premeditated crime? How does it “raise questions” about a possible willful act in Monaco Q’ing? How does it somehow reveal the character of one driver while it paints the other as an innocent victim? I shared your reaction at the time. I shared it again on each of several DVR rewinds and slo-mo replays. The reaction was about the incident, not about personal character. So how-and-why does it get inflated from an incident to a plot? That’s the part that I’ve missed.
So far, I’ve seen Nico painted as an actor who played the jovial boy-next door… yet he’s never struck me as either jovial or the boy next door (maybe he would if I lived in Monaco, but I don’t). Rather, he seems a well-mannered rich kid who knows how to say the appropriate thing, in contrast to Lewis who clearly isn’t and doesn’t. I’ve also seen Lewis painted as a beguiling Peter Pan for his performance which struck me as someone eagerly inhabiting the role of wide-eyed “Who? Me?” victim… but who hammed it up a bit too much to be believed as sincere.
So, we have an incident and we have reactions… and the tenor of the latter is to paint the former as an ever-widening circle of crime and injustice. This seems odd, especially when the incident itself was one that freakily cut one guy’s tyre when all it should have done is ruin the wing of the guy now being pilloried. How does this become a case of the German have put ten-penny nails on the side of his wing so that he could premeditatively Ben Hur the other’s chariot? Isn’t this the sort of much-ado one expects more of teenagers-with-heroes than of adults who’ve seen this precisely kind of thing a thousand times before? How does it spin up to become more than it ever was?
Thanks, RShack,
But the thing is, I was not arguing for reevaluation of the incident, by my observation of the front page of the magazine.
I think the front page is good, because it presents the conundrum of the fact we cannot know the motivations of the driver.
“Oops, I did it on purpose.” is to me less a accusation, than a question. Did Nico know what he was doing? At some level, yes. At another, he appears to have “confessed”, according to one report, at least. (I’m not sure how many spots are so remote form a microphone, afoot the celebratory steps, which intrigues me..) And at another, we plain do not know.
It may not have been as obvious as I thought it was, from my comments, but I felt I had described the possibility that Rosberg had, by dint of circumstances, and possibly awareness of the rules and most importantly the views taken as to enforcing rules, been presented with a moment in which playing hard ball was not only tempting, but thoroughly logical. For, if you assume the move, or lack of move, was premeditated, it has considerable logic to it. It is a very effective action, cleanly executed within the rules, though not as I said, elsewhere, does any of it make for gentlemanly racing, nor the conduct of a idol of mine and many Sir Stirling, nor anything but a very risky political gamble also, provoking dangerous team politics. For those reasons, it is a very bad move indeed. For forcing Nico to take a stern hand to his future racing: he may now discount any wish washy artifice of there being equality in the team’s management and may have to play for real for keeps, as to preference and performance by those he needs to support him, for putting Nico into the role of a aggressor and a absolute arbiter of determination in his drives, which logically from these presumptions must follow as a matter of course, to be ruthless.. for these reasons, he has lit a fire he may not quell.
However, I think that some.. no, a lot of people, are considering the inadvisability of Nicole driving, and taking that to mean he was a bad driver, a unfair driver, a possible cheat.
No. I think he was in this instance a mean driver, like his mentor could be.
The only reason I can offer for why his “move” has been attributed the specter of cheating, is because of his own reactions. For his reactions were demonstratively ambiguous. If he is no mean mean driver, he may have cheated himself. For the rest of the balance that has swayed opinion that he cheated, we have the anger and upset not only of the “Hamilfosi”, who forget Ham’s hapoenstances of hamfistedness time to time too frequently, and of whom I am sure there are many “lifestyle” fans without interest or knowledge of the sport, and a certain amount of incredulity and failure to comprehend, which has led to a gap being filled by the accusation of cheating.
I need to dash to prepare for a call, but I’ve left a little unsaid. Not much, but maybe some finer points. I do not believe this incident warrants investigation. If on track incidents are let, because advantage unfairly gained is lost, then off the track, it might be seen that Nico is going to pay a price regardless, and that at least seems consistent with the hands off approach of the FIA of Jean Todt. Whether there shall be Karmic reprise, is a wholly other matter, but maybe that which is most practically interesting, that Feng Shui was not observed at turn five, is I think, however, a much easier calculation to let be rest.
Anyone else always forget this year’s login? I miss Ludwig.
An absolutely diabolical incident, made worse by the total lack of remorse. And what point was he trying to prove? That he won’t back off? Silly and childish.
Should face some kind of sanction from the team at the very least.
For the second year in a row, a driver is booed on the podium. For this, and it wouldn’t surprise me for the remaining races in the season
Rosberg admits he hit Hamilton on purpose…surely the FiA should take away all points from him for Spa?
> Rosberg admits he hit Hamilton on purpose
No, Rosberg did not admit that.
“Hitting on purpose” is Hamilton’s interpretation of what Nico allegedly said.
Rosberg admitted to not pulling out and keeping his line.
This is very different to what Hamilton claims (and the media jumped on).
As much as I understand why Mercedes bosses are angry with Nico, I can’t imagine that they are happy with Hamilton revealing team internal discussions to the press AND putting his own “interpretation” (also called spin) on top of it to fuel the fire.
he admitted he allowed the collision to happen to teach hamilton a lesson and toto agreed that is what rosberg said. you are the one spinning a dangerous act. holding a line you are not entitled to? are you mental? rosberg acted appallingly and the apologists for his behaviour should be ashamed.
“he admitted he allowed the collision to happen to teach hamilton a lesson…”(sic – posted by Chesterson Robert)
I haven’t seen that. I’ve read that “he didn’t back off/out”. Looking at slow motion video, Rosberg does turn out and then turns back in a split second too early.
Do F1 drivers honestly have the reactions to do that intentionally?
Joe-do you or anyone that you’d believe think that it was 100% intentional to hit Hamilton, or did Rosberg just cut it a little too close? I feel it’s the latter.
I believe that my original post covered this. He was pushing his luck and decided not to get out of a position he had put himself into. In my opinion he did not set out to cause the accident, but when he was there he knew exactly what he was doing.
‘Rosberg admitted to not pulling out and keeping his line’
I suppose Nico wasn’t aware doing that would cause a collision ? He knew exactly what he was doing, he’s not an idiot.
Joe, DT really carried some weight this issue! His interview with Tony Fernandes is terrific, his Verstappen introduction was comprehensive (I always read GP+’s driver intros and meaningful obits). The ‘Last Lap’ always makes me smile, too.
Thanks, DM.
Yep, I was cruising this weekend. I just put the magazine together as usual
Nutcase Rosberg certainly seems to have lost much of his goodwill at Mercedes. I wonder what sanction the team could consider? Would they contemplate suspending him from the next race as punishment? Are there any precedents for this? Can’t think o one myself.
Perhaps Mercedes-Benz should suspend Nico Rosberg at the final double points race of the season? I doubt whether the regulators were thinking about such a scenario (assuming that they were actually thinking) but it is a fun possibility. Unfair and unethical too.
Has a team ever suspended a driver mid-season? Yes, but not for a long time.
Hah! Love the Britney reference…
If anyone is on the fence about paying for a sub, then jump right in. In my opinion the Tony Fernandes interview was top notch, really getting into F1 from a perspective you rarely see, without any ‘PR’ speak you normally see from team owners (if they ever do do interviews…)
Well, this is quite true. Apart from what’s being discussed, the rest of the issue was excellent… but, then again, I often find the q-and-race reports to be the least fascinating parts… largely because I’ve already watched those events on the teevee machine.
I started out subscribing mainly to support Joe’s blog, but have come to view the subscription as worthwhile mainly due to the other pieces Joe writes for the mag…
Hi Joe….considering that rosberg has done it on purpose…can we expect any kind of action from Mercedes management against rosberg?
Thanks for another great magazine. I noticed the Grand Prix+ sponsorship on the CaterhamF1 car, and then saw this tweet from Caroline Reid (@FormulaMoney): “We’re hearing that someone in the paddock hasn’t been paid so is receiving space on one of the cars instead.”
Are these 2 related? Would love to hear more about it.
This is pure fiction, but one would expect that from such a source that has no access to the paddock.
I had my doubts about the quality of the source, thank you for the confirmation!
I assume your vitriol is aimed at Ms Reid rather than Mr Goudriaan?
Given that the logo on the lower sides of the rear wing of the Caterham at Spa was either a GP+ logo or you need to call a lawyer, is there anything you can tell us about how the sticker got there? Purely from a matter of interest in the workings of the sport I’d be keen to know how such a deal works.
I have never heard of Mr Goudriaan. I have heard of Ms Reid but one never sees these kind of people at motor race events because they are never there. They are experts who know everything from their living rooms
If the Hamilton/Rosberg incident had been any other two drivers, it would have been written off as an attempted overtake that failed. Lewis surely has slight culpability in that he knew it was his team-mate on his left and probably knew that by on insisting on ‘all’ of the racing line he may well touch Nico who had already given up the pass but left himself nowhere to go. Nico probably didn’t dream that Lewis would cut to the apex having already succeeded in fending off the move?
I endorse the post above…
Tremendous, tremendous magazine as always. I know we get these comments often, but honestly it needs to be said. If you read this blog, people, it’s obvious you have an interest in Formula 1. Bite the bullet and pick up a sub – it’s honestly so far ahead of the coverage anywhere else that you’ll wonder, as I do, how you got by without it for seasons past.
Joe – any chance of an Audience With in Singapore?
I hope to have one.
Rosberg in the doghouse. He shouldn’t be too worried…
Come on, Senna (who, lived and died a revered hero) did far worse to Prost. Fans and the F1 community have double-standards when it suits.
The excitment just started and is great 🙂
I mean let the two 20 years old sort it out on the track. They almost collided twice this year already so I see it as a racing incident.
I cant fully blame all On Rosberg I mean he should have just collided with Lewis in Hungary when he was running on the grass as he was side by side at that point and that would be call Racing incident.
Mercedes management should never have allowed the “admission” from Rosberg to become public info.
a great race with a great winner. however, will the carry-on from Hamilton ever stop? For someone who claims he wants to win another championship, he seemed more like a quitter than a fighter. each time I hear him sooking, The Eagles song “Get over it” comes to mind.
“will the carry-on from Hamilton ever stop? ” Perhaps, but only if he can be less vain, precious, and me me me. Shame really ‘cos he’s an undeniably good driver.
They should let Eddie Jordan MC all the post-race interviews. I admired how he beat the crowd back down after the initial booing.
Om the contrary, it didn’t appear to have much effect at all. It was rather like the ineffective teacher failing to admonish the unruly kid at the back of the class – Mercedes management to you and me.
I thought it was a good edition Joe. I really liked the March 701 and Tony Fernandes stories.