Rubbish from Andrew Benson on BBC

This article

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20197874

The 3rd paragraph makes out Vettel benefitted from a safety car period; in reality the first safety car period cost him his nose cone and an extra stop, without which he might well have won the race, the second brought him up behind Button and probably won him one place.

Somehow Benson thinks the first one helped him.

The safety car did help him a lot. Without the safety car he wouldn't have been able to get a 'free' pitstop to change his nose which was damaged prior to the secondary damage and was harming his pace. So the secondary damage forced Red Bull's hand and forced them into what was the correct decision - pit under safety car and get a new nose and tyres and lose far less time than if you are in race conditions. Still a great drive from Vettel though.

The damage occurred because of the messing about behind the safety car. I can't see how the safety car saved him when without it he didn't need saving.

He already had damage to the front wing before that incident. All the pundits felt he should pit under the safety car as the damaged nose was losing him four tenths a lap but he stayed out then damaged the nose further and was called in so got rather lucky that the second incident forced them to take what was the right decision all along under the safety car.

He was passing everyone with the slight nose damage, no need to stop at all.

He was easily good to stay out until lap 25 (another 11/12 laps only) going through the midfield then pitting. As it was, when the safety car went in he was back to 21st.

The bottom line is that all those moaning that he only wins from the front need to find a new tune. Now it's "he gets lucky" line

Well he was losing four tenths of a second with the damaged nose so it was lucky he got the secondary damage as the team decided to initially keep him out.

CaledonianCraig wrote:Well he was losing four tenths of a second with the damaged nose so it was lucky he got the secondary damage as the team decided to initially keep him out.

How do you know what he was losing? He was passing midfield cars; hardly likely that he had clear lap times!

The pundits (all experts) with no bias were timing it and said he was losing four tenths a lap on the leaders not on the cars he was passing who were the slower cars anyway.

Irrelevant; in the midfield he could never have used all his speed. How many times do we see Hamilton, Alonso, etc stuck behind midfield runners? It would have been insane not to lose time to the leaders when he's passing midfielders.

He was getting times he could have, and passing people at available points.

No it really isn't irrelevant. The midfield runners at that time had a jumbled look to it due to accidents and other stronger challengers pitting. Now normally the midfield runners who would give problems are Saubers and Williams but at that time it was Kovaleinen in a Caterham and do believe it was one of the Torro Rosso's so their optimum pace is a good one and a half to three seconds a lap slower than even a slightly-damaged nosed Red Bull that is how slow those cars are. Not knocking Vettel - it was a great drive but just trying to put it into perspective here.

0.4 secs a lap then. He was no more that 16 laps from a change anyway, so that's 6.4 seconds saved.

You don't think he lost more than that by being shunted back to 21st?

No because the safety car was out and so all the cars are in formation. He wasn't going to pit and if he hadn't hit the sign and damaged his nose further he would have found the faster cars in top ten much tougher to pass with the damaged nose undoubtedly. So in hitting that sign the team changed their mind as nose was damaged further and he therefore benefitted from his accident by getting a new nose, faster car by four tenths a lap and a new set of tyres whilst losing minimum time as the safety car was still out.

I've explained this on the other thread. Lets not run a parallel conversation..