Ladies and Gentleman, I am sorry to inform you that a massive miscarriage of justice has taken place in F1. We are talking OJ Simpson, Gore versus Bush and the last time Bernie E went to court in Germany sized big.
A few weeks before the season started the FOM announced that they would carry out an online poll after every race this season to determine who the fans thought was their driver of the day. A sensible plan you might say, if you had never used the internet.
The rules of the voting was very clear, it was anonymous with multiple individual voting possible. If you don’t want multiple votes from individuals, you design your poll as such, it’s very simple. Even we can do it. Go ahead and take a look for yourself.
Loading ...Voting began soon after the race finished and to no surprise to us our very own Rio Haryanto hit the front and never looked back.
Before we went to bed last night we were informed that Rio Haryanto was in the lead with by a massive 11,313 votes.
We got up this morning and typed up a blog congratulating our hero on his fine effort (20 minutes we are never going to get back) and hovered over the publish button for a few hours ready to press click. Then this happened.
WOWWW !!! Thanks everyone for your vote. Very honored to be the first driver to get the Driver of the Day prize ! https://t.co/EHSbumSynO
— Romain Grosjean (@RGrosjean) March 21, 2016
Surely some mistake right?
We have been passed on the final data from the poll. Rio Haryanto received 23,750 votes. The clear winner. Romain Grojsean only received 18,975 votes. For those interested, Boaty McBoatface was dead last with eight votes. This will be one of the very few blogs that you read these figures, you were not supposed to see them.
It now transpires that the FOM have now decided that “in the interests of fairness, votes identified as originating from the same source were not counted.” Basically, they changed the rules when they did not like the result.
How do they know it is people spam? Were the same rules applied to the rest of the field as they were to Rio? He has a huge following in Indonesia, were individual people all using the same computer discounted also?
Given that they can’t even set up an online poll properly are you telling me that they can identify multi-users? We repeat once again, there was nothing in the original poll that prevented you from voting more than once.
Given how poorly designed the poll was, I very much doubt they know who got what votes and have just made it up. It’s a fix folks!
Rio Haryanto has been cheated out of a trophy. Following the qualification fiasco in Melbourne, this is yet another example of how F1 thinks then acts without worrying about how to implement it. They could not organize a piss up in a brewery.
There is an obvious solution to all of this. Instead of trying to hide their incompetence with a made up winner, give Rio Haryanto the prize that he won fair and square under the rules they set and then they can re-design their poll. If they need a hand I’m happy to help.
We will not rest until there is justice for Rio.
I like your last word
“We will not rest until there is justice for Rio” #RioGate
I dislike Rio even more now.
His fans all know nothing about F1, Pathetic. He retired from the race. And Grosjean was without a doubt the best driver of the day.
I thought it was Palmer. It’s the systems fault, not Rio’s fans.
Um,ironically that’s true on the fans,even though you can’t make it the reason to hate Rio IMO
Before Rio came in,F1 fans here are only consisted of the maniacs who followed the days of Senna and Schumacher(including me.Started watching F1 in 2001).It was considered as ‘boring’ sport,and people prefer to watch football and MotoGP
As Rio came in,the football and MotoGP fans turned in.At one side,this is a good news
Problem is,they don’t watch F1 for F1 itself.They only watch for Rio.When Rio retired,most of them turned away.Only the maniacs that watch it until Rosberg took the checkered flag
Most of the ‘new’ fans are also quite childish,hard-headed,and has an excessive level of fanatism.Just say they’re equivalent of Galatasaray,Fenerbahce fans or any hardcore Premier League fans
And for those of MotoGP fans,most started watching at 2013,when Marc Marquez joined in,so they’re quite new to motorsport actually
TL;DR:They watched F1 with wrong approach and understanding
Ironically that’s true,even though that’s not a proper reason to hate Rio IMO.Let me tell you why our fans behave like that
Before Rio come in,F1 fans in Indonesia only consisted of those who started watching from the days of Senna,Schumacher and early days of Vettel(including myself.Started watching at 2001).F1 was considered as a ‘boring’ sport,and people prefer to watch football and MotoGP
As Rio comes in,F1 become a sudden got here.Those football and MotoGP fans joined the bandwagon in a massive number,which is actually a good thing
Problem is,they don’t watch F1 for the race itself.They only watch it for Rio.So when Rio retired,they turned away and blane Manor for the failure
Here’s a thing:Those new fans are commonly childish and has an extreme amount of loyality and fanatism.Let’s say they’re an equivalent of hardcore Premier League fans.Or even worse,Galatasaray/Fenerbahce/Besiktas fans
For the MotoGP fans,most of them started watching since 2013 when Marc Marquez jumped in.They expect Rio to achieve the same feat as Marc(world title gained in debut season) without knowing the fact that Manor is only a small team.In other words,they can’t dee the difference between F1 and MotoGP
TL;DR:They watched F1 with the wrong approach and understanding
Hope this helps
FIA is liar. Not ready for the real result. Maybe if Rio got podium, FIA would banned him also.
What about no-flag incidence on Sport tv? Do you know it?
F1 do not want give the reason.
They think Indonesia is unknown and Rio is nobody.
He hit other driver in the pitlane. —He got two penalty point.
Other driver was causing a lifethreatening crash. —no further action.
That thing always happen to Rio since he started his junior carrer in european single seater competition.
This is very true. I have been following Rio since GP3 / AutoGP times
Yes!!!!! OTHER DRIVERS CHEATERS. THAT ALONSO CRASH OUT THIS GUTIEREZ BECAUSE HE WANTED TO SABOTAGE RIO.
Hope this is not distract Rio’s focus. he’s been used to have like this. Thanks manorracingfanblog
As a Rio fan,I’m so sorry to say this,but they’re right to give the award to Grosjean.I mean,he had a fantastic race for his team’s debut.Mind you,Rio retired
As you’ve mentioned,Rio won the open vote thanks to a lot of fans voting for him.I suspect most of the voters didn’t know much what happened in the race,and voted based on their fanatism,not their knowledge and professionality as an F1 spectator.Further explanation can be found in my reply to Tom’s comment
But yes,I’m agree that FIA should be blamed for this.I think the voting system should be changed into closed voting where all stewards and marshalls,and selected journalists and commentators has the right to vote.Just like the Ballon D’or,if you were wondering
Please fellow Indonesians (if you happened to stumble across this article) polling system aside, before you make a comment somewhere, consider the fact that Rio did not finish his race. He really does not deserve the DotD title at that time. If anyone from Manor deserves a chance to be DotD, it is Pascal based on what people have seen so far.
I definitely hope he does well for this season. Hopefully he will prove himself at Bahrain. But let us leave the mentalism where you support someone blindly just because he has the same nationality as you.
@Tom, Rio didn’t do anything but concentrating on his race. You are blaming someone else’s action on him.
This had nothing to do with FIA, it was just run by FOM and Formula1.com. I am with you!
You are correct Rob. We will modify
I believe Rio himself will reject that dotd should it really been given to him… I would do that if I was in Rio’s position… Winning a prize just because your massive fans vote for you and not because of your achievement sounds very hollow… and sad… and a bit insulting especially for a sportsman… let us all Rio fans do Rio a favor and vote the driver who really deserves that dotd…
Saya hanya untuk menonton Rio Haryanto bukan F1 😱
it’s just a poll.
why so serious?
swimming pool ha
For sure this conspiration for Asian Driver.
If you look at the beginning F1 Australia 2016 record video, driver list before race, you will not see indonesia flag there.
Rio cheated? Thats not new thing, and who care?
Public just wanna see Rio drive F1 car as good as he can do. Thats it.
Welcome new fan of F1.
And welcome back again to F1 although all of you in here just wanna support Rio.
# Bravo, Fantastico, Gado-Gado, Bakso, Monggo.
Maybe they didn’t find Indonesia on a map of the world, so until now the FIA didn’t realize that one of the participants actually from Indonesia ..
Keep FIA restful sleep and don’t wake up quickly, because if you get up quickly to be ashamed that Indonesia turned out to exist on the world map ..
My opinion about #justiceforrio in bahasa Indonesia Rio Haryanto versus The World
or using google translate
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=id&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Falhamsyah.com%2Frio-haryanto-versus-the-world%2F
Just play by the rules. F1 do it wrong.
Something is wrong with FIA and F1…mmmm can you smell it??? Because I can smell it..it’s everywhere..so fishy
Hi, any progress on this case?
Hi, any progress on this case?