James wrote:
Thanks, there should be more of this stuff on youtube or even the f1 site, I cant see a reason for taking it down but not making it available elsewhere.
It would be a very brave brawn mechanic that did the same to Vettel
The reasons to take it down are obvious. Copyright madness ;p
Thanks CHT for that clip. It appears I was correct that Heikki did "park" it way too close to the Brawn pit-stop area. But also there doesn't seem to be room after the Brawn area to park it. I think I see the white line of the end the pit area just ahead so he had little choice.
Let me analyse it bit by bit:
At first I notice a blanket from a tyre is lying to the left of Heikki's car, on the road, but a mechanic pulls it back before it makes a problem for Rai. A rear wheel mechanic does that (I will explain how this is slightly important).
Then I notice the front tyres are already changed before the fuel pump is inserted! The left rear tyre appears to be the last one fitted, a mechanic is seen spinning the tyre "shield" into place. Then the car's rear part is lowered down and the lollipop guy immediately raises it without looking at the fuel guys. He might be looking at Rai. He doesn't look too alarmed by the flying hose and he instead looks the other way and instead he pulls the mechanic next to him closer to the pits (and out of Rai's way, though he was just standing in the red area).
What we need to remember is that Hamilton pitted right before Heikki (a brilliant strategy change that won him 3rd place). Note how there are 2 stacks of 2 tyres on the right side of the car (did they use a different fuel rig for Hamilton I wonder?). This accounts for a delay with the fuel rig (and maybe the rear tyres as well and the hastily thrown blanket). It might seem like the lollipop guy was only looking to ruin Rai's race, but that's just impossible to pull off and idiotic to consider. What we clearly see is that Heikki is released immediately after Rai so it wasn't an unsafe release... if not for the attached fuel hose of course. He was safely ahead of Rai (not like Massa nearly collided with another car in a totally unsafe release a year ago). We also clearly see Rai has no rear light blinking. I ask again. What's up with that? Is there a penalty/rule for that?
Finally I want to analyse what happened at the end of the pit stops. It seems the Brawn mechanics are almost expecting Heikki. They are pulling the top-hanging cables before he's there, unlike the other teams who aren't reacting much. But the first person to approach Heikki is a fire extinguisher guy in black. A guy in white (mostly) then runs from (maybe) inside the Brawn pits and it is him who removes the fuel hose. I noticed that Heikki stopped and then moved a bit more as if to allow that person to align with the hose and remove it. Or to get the fire extinguisher guy in better position, or to go more ahead of Brawn pits and not block them, but changed his mind immediately.
Would be nice to get Heikki's radio from the incident. Overall it's a weird incident. Maybe they planned it, but to what gain? And it had to be planned in less than a minute because how could they know what would happen in the first lap before the race? The most reasonable assessment is that someone from McLaren pits called Brawn and asked for help (unlikely) or that a team manager (or something) at Brawn decided on the spur of the moment to help and gave word to his mechanics (hence why they pull their hanging cables and in this way signal Heikki to stop near them). I think this last theory is the most likely.
