I don't whether he did set a fast sector time or not. If he did then it is understandable. He had gone through a yellow flag incident and had no indication that the satiety car was out. Any driver under those circumstances would have done the same thing. No driver goes through a yellow flag sector and then thinks "I will slow down just in case there is a SC".

So, once the safety car was put out, the full course yellows with SC boards / lights won't have given him any indication... ?

Couldn't the team have told Rosberg what his Delta time was. And whether he needed to slow down.

I remember Ross Brawn telling Rubens to "Slow Down Rubens", at the Australian GP. So I suspect that the team gets a message too.

Has anyone here ever been travelling on the motorway and then taken the slip road onto a small urban road at less than half the speed?

I think if you consider how subjective speed is, and how close the timings are, I'm not surprised he was speeding.

Having a hard time working out whether he ought to have been penalised though because the team can see what speed he's doing and ought to have told him. Even is Rosberg wasn't able to see, why were the team not able to keep him informed?

Yes, but only once it did go to full course yellows. There would have been part of the sector that was not covered by yellow flags at that time.

Seems odd to me too. And noticeably the stewards did not review radio evidence in their list of things they did review.

There is a pitlane speed limiter, so why not have other settings for safety? There could be three or four set speeds and drivers and pits are informed to engage setting SC2 for instance. This would limit all cars to the same speed and keep the race gaps intact. It would prevent the field from bunching. This is Melbourne Parks' proposal as I understand it.

I did a quick calculation for the top ten drivers. Subtracting each drivers time for L44 from that of L45. It gives an idea of how much pace each driver had taken off his speed. The figures show a pretty linear falling away of time as you go down the field. Plotting the results on a scatter diagram shows that there is a pretty linear decline in speed as you go down the field. the biggest variation is for cars 6, 5 and 7 who all slowed down more than rest.

It cannot determine whether Nico did speed. It does show though that he did not do a blindingly fast lap of the sort that JB had claimed.

It seems that Nico had a huge slice of luck by being on the right part of the track at exactly the right time in his strategy. It has been suggested that he made up some time because he was travelling faster in the pit-lane than the cars were travelling behind the SC. A SC speed setting would prevent this from happening if the new speed limit applied to the whole circuit including the pit-lane.

For anyone who is interested here is the data, it is very simple to plot on a scatter diagram in a spreadsheet. It is not intended to prove anything, it is indicative data. I had half expected to see a big blip on the graph showing that Nico had speeded, this data does not indicate that. Except for the three cars mentioned the rest of the field fits into a straight line using best fit.

Car (n) reduced speed by xyz seconds :

(15) 3.356, (9) 6.949, (1) 6.422, (16) 5.767, (4) 13.133, (6) 15.975, (23) 11.332, (22) 11.743, (5) 13.468, (7) 15.635

Ted Kravitz is now on the either-Rosberg-or-Sam-Michael-is-lying-to-us bandwagon.

From Twitter:

Compare Rosberg's intvw post race and Sam Michael's intvw post stewards hearing.

Nice one Ted, and only two full days after the same doubts were raised on this forum....

lol.

Perhaps he has not got mobile wifi and only caught up yesterday. lol.

Better late than never I suppose.

If there's any justice in this world a new investigation will be opened up.

That would only be fair after poor Lewis had his reputation trashed back in March.

Don't get your hopes up. I don't see Rosberg or Williams being in the FIA's line of sight.

Exactly.

Interesting that someone has "stolen" Nico's helmet though.

Perhaps it knew!

Anyway, he wants that helmet back bad...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGPaPyGxwzI

Big Hamilton and McLaren fan here, but 'poor' Lewis and McLaren combined did the trashing on their own in that instance.

I posted earlier that I would acknowledge the excuse of FIA supplied software malfunctioning as grounds for letting Rosberg of, this time. But if there is more to the case and it is shown that they have lied to the stewards (I don't care about lying or withholding information to the BBC), they should be severely punished, for both the transgression as well as the lying.

I don't think that's the problem, or the solution. Problem is that a pit stop takes approx 25% of a racing lap time to complete whereas it will be only (say) 15% of a SC (or 'time delta' pre SC bunch) lap.

I don't know how the system works exactly, I believe the delta each driver receives is dependant on track position. your data versus time behind the leader graphed(= a measure for track position as long as their on the same lap):



sorry I couldn't label the points on the free web graph maker
the standings where: 1Vettel, 2Trulli, 3Lewis, 4Nico, 5Kimi, 6Nick, 7Jenson, 8Rubens, 9Kubica, 10Fernando

nico lost less time, kimi and nick somehow lost a lot of time especially compared to the brawns. what happened to them? did they simply slowed down because there was no need to push or did I miss soemthing

Another Tweet from Mr-Two-Days-Late-After-Getting-Stitched-Up-By-Rosberg...

tedkravitz: Why did Nico not mention the 'Low Fuel' message?

Ow the system that makes he drivers further behind lose more time is not fair. cars in front get valuable extra seconds.

That was the result that I got. It does not show a great variation fron a straight line.

Why Kimi and Nick lost so much time I do not know. That needs further investigation. Lewis, Nico and Jenson all had a smaller slowing down than the cars in front of them.

nico is about 3 seconds to fast I reckon.

I did not see that. I put a line of best fit on it and Nico was not that far off the line, which did surprise me.

"#tedkravitzfacts are always a week late."

So what are we saying here? Rosberg is a bad boy because he lied to the stewards or he is a bad boy because he lied to the BBC. For my money, I'd say either version might be true.

Thing is, and as I posted above, the pit wall knows how fast he is going and even if his steering wheel fails to show the delta he can be kept informed. I am pretty certain I heard, in previous races, radio transmissions discussing lap times and warnings from the wall. Though these were not necessarily Williams, they show the technology is there.

There's definitely an investigation to be had here IMO.

I've done some proper analysis on this.

1:05.000 after Vettel started Lap 45 there were yellow flags (from TV).
1:30.440 after Vettel started Lap 45, the SC was deployed (from TV).

Vettel's lap time for Lap 45 was 1:36.949 - deducting the 1:30.440, therefore for 0:05.509 of Vettel's lap 45 was under SC. We know the time gaps between the drivers at the start of Lap 45, therefore, we can estimate how long each driver's Lap 45 was under SC. E.g. Rosberg was 24.559 secs behind Vettel, therefore was 30.068 sec under SC on Lap 45.

We can work out the minimum lap times for Lap 45 for each driver by using what proportion of the lap was under SC and what wasn’t. To do this we need a minimum lap time - say 1:32.000 (just below the fastest lap of the race).

For Rosberg, 33% was under SC and therefore under the controlled speed, for the rest of the lap 67% he could go as fast as possible. The controlled pace is 25% slower than 1:32.000 which is a 1:54.700 (using a higher figure rather than 25% means that other drivers would have got a penalty too).

Rosberg’s minimum lap time for Lap 45 was 1:39.517. His actual lap time was 1:39.697 – therefore 0.180 secs faster than his delta.

Based on these figures, the driver closest to their minimum lap times was Kubica – 0.3 secs slower, others – Vettel 4 secs, Raikkonen 7 secs, Heidfeld 5 secs, Barrichello and Button 1 sec.

Assumptions made – are (i) the minimum lap time 1:32.000, (ii) Safety Car laps 25% slower, (iii) the circuit is constant speed.

Rosberg was 20 secs ahead of the Brawns at the start of Lap 45, and his Lap 45 time was 5 seconds quicker. 25 seconds. Rosberg was 12 secs ahead of Heidfeld at the start of Lap 45, and his Lap 45 time was 8 seconds quicker – Heidfeld was 5 secs slower than his delta. 20 seconds. Total pit stop time loss time in Suzuka was about 22 seconds. Maybe Heidfeld was trundling down the start finish straight too and therefore lost the place.