Restoration-Mini

At the Austin race they had the mock up of the 2022 car.  Be interesting if this is what they look like once the boffins are finished with squeezing every lost drop of competitive advantage out of them.

F1 is getting closer and closer to being a spec race series.....

What a race, the 1st lap kefluffle really killed it for Bought Ass, coupled with a slow stop later in the race just ruined his day, but Max literally blew past Hammy into the first turn so it was a fair and good start for him. He said before the race that if he couldn't be starting first he'd rather start third, and he made that strategy work cleanly. After that it was just a matter of driving off into the sunset...and the victory.

Checho was SO close to finishing ahead of the Hamster but just could not make it happen.....

Ferrari had a decent race finishing 5th and 6th, but I'm really impressed with Pierre Gasly who finished 4th for Toro Rosso.....erm Alpha Tauri

Ferrari has passed McLaren for third in the championship.

Three former champions finished 7, 8 and 9....Vettel, Kim and Alonso, and Lando got 10th

Mercedes put new tires on Bottas so he could deny Red bull the fastest lap (he set a new track record too) so Merc still leads the constructor's by 1 point.

Bottas is in negotiation to test the Alfa Romeo at the end of season test, in mid December.

Williams have announced they will not build a "mule" car for the end of season test to test the new wheels and pirelli tires. 

He well should get some time with the team and in the new cars.....I still think the $30 million dollar man will be his teammate.....even tho Giovanazzi has been showing real improvement this year.

Hammy's thowin shade at Bottas, saying he let Max thru - not that it would have made any difference since his pace was so good.

But what do they expect? Dropping the guy mid season after 5-6 years of one year contracts? If they'd been smart they would have move lonesome George up the day they announced Bought Ass was leaving. I guess they thought Bottas would continue to support the Hamster's efforts to win his 8th......HA! Screw THAT!

Quote from: MiniDave on November 08, 2021, 12:53:41 PM
If they'd been smart they would have move lonesome George up the day they announced Bought Ass was leaving. I guess they thought Bottas would continue to support the Hamster's efforts to win his 8th......HA! Screw THAT!

Probably would have cost them millions to buy him out of his contract, as he is probably meeting all of his performance requirements.  He is also gets a pretty decent bonus if Merc win the constructors championship. 

Looking at this website he Bottas does pretty well for himself (I assume that is before bonuses).  The surprise for me is how much Leclerc gets vs Sainz.  Also Norris signed an extension in the middle of the year, so I imagine he has is in the 10s of millions now, as he is keeping Riccardo honest and he is a fan favorite.

https://salarysport.com/motorsport/formula-1/team-salaries/ (https://salarysport.com/motorsport/formula-1/team-salaries/)

Final seat has been confirmed for 2022.  Giovinazzi is being dropped by Alfa Romeo - no surprise from me there he has not really shown the speed to qualify for promotion to Ferrari (he is or at least was a Ferrari Academy driver). 

Guanyu Zhou has been confirmed as the first chinese F1 driver.  Which got leaked at the weekend as a Alfa Romeo dealer in Shanghai put up posters confirming it!  Absolutely nothing to do with the $30 million in sponsorship he brings  22.gif

Quote from: Brit_in_TX on November 16, 2021, 08:50:40 AM

Guanyu Zhou has been confirmed as the first chinese F1 driver.  Which got leaked at the weekend as a Alfa Romeo dealer in Shanghai put up posters confirming it!  Absolutely nothing to do with the $30 million in sponsorship he brings  22.gif

And that has nothing at all to do with grabbing eyeballs for marketing purposes from the massive Chinese market. 

Not unlike when Hollywood adds a random Chinese character into a movie cast to help it sell better to Chinese audiences. 

Quote from: Brit_in_TX on November 16, 2021, 08:50:40 AM
Final seat has been confirmed for 2022.  Giovinazzi is being dropped by Alfa Romeo - no surprise from me there he has not really shown the speed to qualify for promotion to Ferrari (he is or at least was a Ferrari Academy driver). 

Guanyu Zhou has been confirmed as the first chinese F1 driver.  Which got leaked at the weekend as a Alfa Romeo dealer in Shanghai put up posters confirming it!  Absolutely nothing to do with the $30 million in sponsorship he brings  22.gif

Ha! Called it.......

Well, another somewhat predictable race, and one that tightens up both championships as Bought Ass once again gets a terrible start, winds up mired in the back of the field, fights his way forward only to have bad luck - a blown tire and later he has to retire from the race.

Nice finish for one guy tho.....and a real surprise! He got a great start but used a good strategy to finish on the podium.

I was surprised Checho didn't catch him by the end, but still good points for Reds Bull.

Holy crap!  Did you see the prices for F1 tickets in 2022 - in Miami or Austin?  TV for me.

Yeah, we tried to go to Austin last year (or the year before maybe) tix for turn 6 were going to run us $1200 each.

Pass. Maybe if they go back to 20,000 rpm V10's or V12's......

And $10 for water. $20 for a turkey leg. Etc.... And that was 5 or so years ago.

Quote from: MiniDave on December 02, 2021, 12:30:14 PM
Yeah, we tried to go to Austin last year (or the year before maybe) tix for turn 6 were going to run us $1200 each.

WOW! I don't think shared hospitality is much more than that! And that includes free beer!

So the 2022 season started today with a test of mule cars using the 18 inch wheels and some young drivers in 2021 spec cars.

Shows that F1 never pauses, Max Verstappen was back in the car today 2 days after securing the world championship!

First real test in Barcelona in Feb?

Gonna be a long wait..... :(

Even with it being the latest season finish in years if not ever!

Starting the F1 season off with a bang! The FIA elect a "non-European" to replace Todt....

https://www.grandprix247.com/2021/12/17/ben-sulayem-has-no-forgiveness-if-hamilton-broke-fia-awards-rules/?fbclid=IwAR20heMAF6isTC3PVsUNzJjCez6bWNrXPtHWwrNpYR1le3bt0j8c8Q95MME (https://www.grandprix247.com/2021/12/17/ben-sulayem-has-no-forgiveness-if-hamilton-broke-fia-awards-rules/?fbclid=IwAR20heMAF6isTC3PVsUNzJjCez6bWNrXPtHWwrNpYR1le3bt0j8c8Q95MME)

And he seems to be a strict "follow the damn rules" kind of guy? Wonder how that will impact the on-track rules, like staying on the racing surface?

He's not impressed that the Hamster did not show up at the awards gala.....I can understand Hammy not being happy about going, but them rules is the rules! Says he may have to punish the Hamminator for not coming to the party.....as it's "mandatory" for the top three in the Championship.

Next year might turn out to be more like WWE (WWF? Whatever they call themselves these days) than racing, we'll see......

Quote from: MiniDave on December 14, 2021, 10:00:05 AM
First real test in Barcelona in Feb?

Gonna be a long wait..... :(

Maybe not a race but still could be a great time - europe with f1!

Audi entering F1 as an engine supplier?

Looks like it may happen.....

https://www.racefans.net/2021/12/20/audi-tells-fia-it-intends-to-confirm-f1-entry-early-next-year/?fbclid=IwAR1fmnVpSHh7NSNvva9N_mHKqTpCNJehTeJxBv_JppblKe804h5gDuyT3Zs (https://www.racefans.net/2021/12/20/audi-tells-fia-it-intends-to-confirm-f1-entry-early-next-year/?fbclid=IwAR1fmnVpSHh7NSNvva9N_mHKqTpCNJehTeJxBv_JppblKe804h5gDuyT3Zs)

The article hints that for 2026 the MGUK is going away....

So... looking down the road a bit, here's a question:  How long do you think it will be until there are no longer internal combustion engines in F1 and the series goes full electric?  In other words F1 effectively becomes Formula E?  I'm thinking within the next  8-10 years, if not sooner.   Technology will continue to improve of course, and F1 is supposed to be at the forefront of automotive technology - it can't stay in the backwater of still using internal combustion engines indefinitely.

I think part of the timeline will be dictated by how quickly regular road cars go full electric.  And of course that is accelerating rapidly. Mercedes-Benz has announced by 2030 they will only sell electric vehicles.  Jaguar will go all-electric even sooner, by 2025. Audi will by 2026, and Ford by 2030 (in Europe).  GM will only sell electric cars by 2035 worldwide, and so on. With that in mind I can't see 2021 F1 Constructors Champions Mercedes Benz, for example, happily running a F1 team in 2030 that still uses gasoline engines in its racecars.  Yes, of course it won't be individual teams making their own engine decisions, it will require a massive change in the the nature of the F1 sport itself.    So I think the push for that change will come from either the teams, or by the FIA looking out for the future relevance of the sport. Or maybe both.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-10/which-cars-going-all-electric-and-when/100529330

Good point, Audi will be all electric by 2026, the year they will enter F1 with a gasoline or at least ICE?

Quote from: MiniDave on December 20, 2021, 03:13:28 PM
Good point, Audi will be all electric by 2026, the year they will enter F1 with a gasoline or at least ICE?

Doesn't make any sense, does it?  Of course there a certain prestige associated with being a sponsor/team in F1, but separate from that there's always been an underlying current that the cool technology in F1 will somehow filter down to improvements in the automotive sponsor's road cars. (Think Renault and turbocharging back in the '80s for example).  How does that fit if Audi dealerships offer only electric vehicles yet the Audi F1 racecar is still an old-fashioned piston-powered relic?  A bit of a disconnect I think.

Thread stealer, but I just don't buy the whole electrification of cars.
First off, they better make them a lot more affordable and how about reliability and what do you do with all those glorious chemical batteries when they fail.  All heard stories of how insanely expensive it is to recycle them. 
Next is infrastructure, who's footing the bill for electric power stations all over the world, the oil companies.  And like they are just going to rollover and stop making uncountable amounts of money?   
Then when we all have our cars plugged in to the sad electric infrastructure that can't even handle AC in the summers and heat in the winters for the current population how many brown out black out whatever is that going to cause. 
I just don't buy it.  Sounds like a great idea, but so did nuclear power from the sales guy.  Maybe a monorail is the answer.  Homer out.

Back to your regular scheduled race talk.

Mark, I hear you.  You bring up some really good points about infrastructure lacking, environmental concerns, and EV affordability, not to mention the idea that the average person would be willing to make a switch from a "regular car".   Yet the "experts" believe there will be an exponential growth to EVs with fully 50% of all new cars sold in the US being electric ones by 2030.  And even higher percentages for EVs are predicted for Europe and China by 2030. 

I remember some people I worked with (of course not all) dismissing the brand new iPhone when it was launched back in 2007.  Remember, these were people in the telecommunications industry and the Company I work for was the sole network provider of the iPhone - there was no other competition other cell phone companies and there were no other smartphones from other makers at that time. These people just didn't see the need for a fancy cell phone that connected to the Internet, and one that hosted various third-party apps.  Why would anyone need them they asked. They were convinced that the smartphone was a silly toy and there was no way that the telecommunications infrastructure could handle the data needs of lots of people on iPhones connecting to the Internet all at the same time.  These were people who joined the company when it was a landlines only enterprise and charging people a lot of money to make long-distance calls was a big profit center.  That was the world they knew which framed their limited outlook.  Yet in just 5 years or so nearly all cellphones sold were smartphones and many people felt they could not live without them for all the features like maps and videos and games and Google and texting and emails and as a total replacement for a standalone camera. Nobody really saw that coming and yet the change happened very quickly.

Of course, even if 50% of new car sales are electric by 2030 that still means there will still be millions and millions of gasoline powered cars on the road. So they won't be some drastic overnight change to electric, especially considering the average age of a car on US roads is 12 years old right now.

You make a good point.  Lots of people try to hide in the past.  I'm all for the electric car, just I see all the pit falls of it.  If there was a cleaner longer lasting battery technology then I can see it taking off.  Agree also that the smaller or city central countries will be the first to transition. 

The thing with the phone analogy is up until the last 6 or so years all service providers were offering free phones with 2 year contract so maybe if someone wants to build a network of electric charging stations across the country people can sign up on a 2 year plan to use them and get a free electric car 😁

Quote from: BruceK on December 21, 2021, 09:27:23 PM
Of course, even if 50% of new car sales are electric by 2030 that still means there will still be millions and millions of gasoline powered cars on the road. So they won't be some drastic overnight change to electric, especially considering the average age of a car on US roads is 12 years old right now.

That is a huge factor, to get to 50% of cars being fully EV is probably going to be sometime in 2035-2040. 

There was an interview from some senior executive at Ford  that certain groups of customers are not ready for electric vehicles in the near future - mainly rural customers and professional drivers who do mega mileage. So for some brands they will retain some form of internal combustion engine, it really depends on what their respective market will accept.  I imagine that Audi and Jaguar customers are more urban and that will work for those brands.  Ford, GM and Ram - less likely to go all electric in the short to medium term.  Also there are brands in the world that sell a lot of cars in countries where they simply do not have a reliable electrical network (looking at you Toyota) - they will not be getting rid of the internal combustion engine any time soon.

Back to F1, I see them using the regulations to improve efficiency.  For example, reducing the amount of fuel that is available during the race.  Also targeting engine efficiency in the regulations - F1 engines are some of the most efficient in the world in terms of capturing heat and kinetic energy that would normally by lost. 

The biggest limitation in F1 going all electric and EVs in general is battery technology, which has not advanced much in the last 20 years or so.  Lithium-ion technology was discovered in the 70s and become commercially available in the 90s but has not changed greatly in that time.  There is a lot of research going into Graphene, which has a million and one potential uses - including in batteries, which would give an enormous increase in battery capacity (when compared to the same physical size) and therefore range.

It would be strange though to attend a motor race where you can't hear the motors.  Maybe electric motors of those power levels will make some cool banshee type wails.

That's just one of the issues - crash safety with batteries is another....of course they've already been running Formula E with no real incidents so far, so maybe that's no biggie.....but after Grosjean's fireball crash I don't know how safe they are.

Maybe they could make cool artificial sounds like the pod racers?   77.gif

A little peek into F1 (and Grand Prix) history.  Amazing it still exists.  And great that the locals have begun to refurbish it.

His French seems remarkable good.....

What an interesting time capsule!   77.gif

Quote from: MiniDave on January 08, 2022, 12:22:47 PM
His French seems remarkable good.....

Yes, he speaks fluid French, and had lots of interesting videos on YouTube. 

A long time ago I found a movie (not a video - although it was on YouTube) of Sidney Allard getting ready to run LeMans. They set up shop - (a couple of tarps on the ground and a tent IIRC) - on the grass along the Mulsanne well ahead of the race weekend and what was fascinating to me was to see people in all walks of life driving, walking and cycling along the Mulsanne - and every so often a race car or three would go roaring by. Including the Cunningham "Le Monstre" Cadillace with its weird body work.

So I was watching the cars going by on the road in this Gouex video and wondering where the course was exactly as it looked a LONG ways before there would be a turn of any sort.

In the video, there's a brief shot of a map which outlines the old race course. Most of it still exists as roads but there is a small gap where it just looks like farmland.

Regardless........we already have Formula E for those electric car fans.

Another thought:  What's this all about HAM quitting all his social media sites and rumoring he may hang up his helmet?

WTF? Rosberg did it, but he wasn't on top, just had the money.  HAM sure does, but just cause he felt scooped by the FIA on that final lap.......... come on........he has more guts than that wimpy move.  I don't get it I suppose.

Haven't seen anything about this for a while?   Anyone know what's happening?

Rumors are rife.....but I think he'll be back.

I wonder who Merc would replace him with if he did quit cold like Rosbug did? They need an experienced driver to pair with George - maybe Nico would come back?   ;D

So there has been a few changes around team leadership in the last week or so.

Otmar Szafnauer has left Aston Martin, this was rumored during the season, and has now happened.  The money is on him going to Alpine, which leads me on to Marcin Budkowski has left Alpine, with no obviously place to go.  Also Alpine have not renewed the advisor contract they had with Alain Prost.

Aston Martin have announced that Mike Krack is going to be Team Principal, who came from BMW and ran their motorsport operations.

In addition to Otmar going to Alpine, looks like the BWF company (the ones behind the pink cars) is jumping from Aston Martin to Alpine.  There were rumors earlier in the season they were unhappy with the lack of pink branding on the Aston Martin, which was apparently to the letter of the agreement but not the spirit of it. 

Other sponsorships not being renewed, Bose have not renewed with Mercedes.  Wonder if that was to do with Toto smashing his highly branded headset during the Saudi GP?

Quote from: MiniDave on January 10, 2022, 11:14:34 AM
Rumors are rife.....but I think he'll be back.

I wonder who Merc would replace him with if he did quit cold like Rosbug did? They need an experienced driver to pair with George - maybe Nico would come back?   ;D

Saw today that Mercedes have been quietly talking to some drivers about replacing Hamilton. High on the list is Gasly.  Not sure how it would happen contractually, but he seems to be a star of the future with his performances in the junior Red Bull. 

I've been wondering which way they would jump if Hamster took his ball and went home....and I've been wondering if what happened in Abu Dabi has less to do with Hammy's leaving the big show than the possibility that the Merc's will not have their Penske unfair advantage any more and he does NOT like being anywhere but out front?

Gasly is an interesting consideration - but why wouldn't they get Bought-Ass right back again? Maybe the multi-year contract he has with Alfa might keep him there?

I would like to see pink cars back on the track - they're easy to spot amongst all the others - but I don't know how well pink trim will go with yellow and blue on the Alpine?

Just when you thought everything was all set in F1, the musical chairs dance starts up again!

If Hamilton goes we will have missed out on Russell versus Hamilton which I think would be very interesting.

We will find out pretty soon, as Merc have announced their car launch date (Feb 18).  And there will be a shake down of the car after that and traditionally the race drivers have done the shakedown. 

I still think the Hamster will be back.....

So......Honda has changed its mind and will build red Bull's engines till 2025, when Porsche will jump in.....

I still think Audi will be buying McLaren - deal to be announced soon.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/honda-set-to-extend-direct-red-bull-supply-to-2025/7677145/?fbclid=IwAR3qEdZvpEhLIz1wHAH0Q49HH76WkLUxl8WzxDco0xusNAZCcVtaW8woHoU (https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/honda-set-to-extend-direct-red-bull-supply-to-2025/7677145/?fbclid=IwAR3qEdZvpEhLIz1wHAH0Q49HH76WkLUxl8WzxDco0xusNAZCcVtaW8woHoU)

I'm gonna buy an older corvette or mustang, mod it up and run it on avgas, louden up the exhaust and just run it in the driveway and around town a bit just to annoy my stiff neighbors, then have a cigar and bourbon while it cools down.

ha ha ha HA !

I think we should do a poll, or something as to whether or not HAM will race this year. 71.gif

And when will he announce one way or the other.

Well, as expected, the Haminator will be in the Merc again this year......and claims he's ready to fight for the title.  ::)

But even more newsworthy - HAAS has dropped their Russian sponsor and removed their name from their livery. For now they are keeping Mazespin (and his money I'll bet) but I'm thinking they told daddy that if he wants his son in F1, cash and no names.  :-\

It matters not one whit what happens in these early days of testing but so far both Ferrari and McLaren look quick.

OH, and the Russian GP has been removed from the schedule......

Mazespin has been careful in what he says about the events in Ukraine, but I wonder if come the start of the season he will still be driving for HAAS......or anyone? Maybe as a chauffeur for his dad?

The Guardian, meanwhile, points out that Mazepin's seat is also in question because of possible visa bans on Russians, meaning he may not be able to enter, much less compete in, most countries with Formula 1 races.

HAAS send lil Nikki back home to poppa.....

The Haas Formula 1 Team say they have terminated Nikita Mazepin's contract and their title partnership with Uralkali with immediate effect.

"Haas F1 Team has elected to terminate, with immediate effect, the title partnership of Uralkali, and the driver contract of Nikita Mazepin," said a statement from the team.

"As with the rest of the Formula 1 community, the team is shocked and saddened by the invasion of Ukraine and wishes for a swift and peaceful end to the conflict."

So, who will HAAS tap for the empty seat? At first glance you would think they would go after someone who can bring money to the table like Alfa did with their new Chinese rookie......but I don't know who that would be.

Possibles:

Giovanzzi - def a solid choice, but I don't think he brings anything new to the team.

Peitro Fittipaldi - certainly has the right name, and probably some backing thru his Grandpa Emmo, currently their backup driver so already integrated into the team - but a complete rookie too.

How about KMag? Seems like he would be a good choice if he can get out of his current sports car contracts?

Oscar Piastri - has won three titles in the last three years - F Renault, F3 and F2.....seems logical to have him jump in BUT he's already contracted to Alpine......could get sticky placing your driver with a rival team, but it's been done before.

The Hulk - seems like the perfect choice to me, he has skillz, he has plenty of experience but I don't know if he can bring the needed $$$ to the table.

Who's your pick?

Whoever they tap, they need to get it done right now.....

My guess is the Hulkster.  Just a wild guess.

I'm thinking Giovanazzi or Fitti.......both are in the program already, and both have a firm history with Ferrari.

Even tho I think the Hulk would be a good choice.

And we have the answer!

https://www.haasf1team.com/news/kevin-magnussen-returns-haas-f1-team?fbclid=IwAR2BjAgcMaoY8J7cML6LLQljLrZlGPNns_7gmm25bz5sKgUTAAPRNTZZcMg (https://www.haasf1team.com/news/kevin-magnussen-returns-haas-f1-team?fbclid=IwAR2BjAgcMaoY8J7cML6LLQljLrZlGPNns_7gmm25bz5sKgUTAAPRNTZZcMg)

2022 is shaping up to be an interesting year in F1.

Lots of changes to deal with including chassis changes, going from 13 to 18" wheels, driver changes and for once Mercedes is NOT having a good time of it, and I don't think they're just sandbagging it.

So, Red Bull is off and running with one of the best runup to the races in memory, but the boys in red jammies seem to have the measure of them too....less than a tenth behind so far.

Some of the teams have reported real issues with the cars bouncing or porposing - in fact all of the teams seem to have had issues with it at first, but some like Red Bull, Ferrari and Alpine seem to have fixed it while Mercedes, Aston and Williams have not. Haas, Alfa and Alpha seem to have it down to "not really an issue" status too....McLaren is a complete unknown at this point but they seem to be in the latter camp too.

All in all it looks to be  a fun race weekend in the making with lots of new faces on the grid - and some old ones too with KMag getting the nod from HAAS and settling in really well,, running as high as 10th, which considering last year is a MAJOR step up for them.

In the best moment of all, Bottas in the Alfa was faster than BOTH Mercedes drivers in FP2......got to be some good natured smirks over that on his face!

So, qually tomorrow to set the stage. I expect Max to be on pole with the Red cars right behind him and Pez, Alonslo, Lando and the others right behind them.

With the increased ability to run close to the cars ahead, there could be some interesting passes and even a few crazy banzai moves tried this weekend too.

Great Qually!  It's still amazing to me that teams can build entirely new cars following entirely new regulations and still come within 1/10 of a second in the first real competition of qualifying.   And it's great to see some of the other teams like Alfa Romeo and Haas and Alpha Tauri up in the top 10.  I'm sure Bottas is thrilled to be ahead of one of the Mercedes! 

Really looking forward to the race tomorrow! 

Yes, I think it's going to be an interesting race....and I don't count the Benzer boys out as they seemed to go faster as the long runs developed.

So, still the same old boys in the front of the grid, Reds Bull, Ferrari and Merc, but the midfield has changed quite a bit. The main change for me seems to be the improvement in the Ferrari engines - Hass and Alfa are also both doing much better this season and I think a lot of it has to be down to the Ferrari power unit.

It's nice to see that Red Bull hasn't lost anything by taking over the Honda power units too, but I think the real performance enhancement is still the Newey chassis.

So, Ferrari to lead 1 and 3, Sainz was right there with him, Max in 2nd. KMag in 7th in the HAAS(!!!!) and Bottas in 6th ahead of Russel - that has to be sweet for him.....so it will be one hell of an interesting start tot he race tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to the race tomorrow too!

wow, what a race.....

Actual passing, actual race driving, some retirements, lots of different pit stop strategies and an unbelievable podium.....

And nice to hear another new national anthem on the podium too!

This promises to be an interesting year in F1!

In just seven days - another race.   77.gif

I second that!  Great race!  Loved the dicing between Max and Charles.  And the cars sure seem to be able to race a lot closer this year.  Instead of Lewis being the whiner, Max won top points for complaining and more complaining.  Not something to be proud of.

I love the joyful sound of the Italian national anthem.  I remember Vettel just used to hum along.

I think if there hadn't been a safety car the podium might have looked different - at least for third place.

One thing stood out - some teams did two stops, some three and some four! Only Honda engined cars didn't finish the race, and Ferrari powered cars were almost all in the top 10 finishers (6 of the top 11). Positions 12-17 were all Mercedes powered.

All in all an interesting race.

Mercedes is nowhere close to where they finished, so kudos to them for their reliability and strategy to get them where they are at the end, if we don't see Red Bull failures next weekend I expect them (Mercedes) to be further down the order at the finish.

And how about Kmag? First race back and he was in the top 10 all the way!

Disappointed in both the BigMacs and Astons, running back there with the Williams pair....

Nowhere to go but up for them.....

Kudo's to "Joe" for getting a 10th place points paying finish in his first race - and with an Alfa no less!

Bottas got another of his patented terrible starts but came back from it to finish well.....which shows there is strength in both the Alfa package and him.

I think the real takeaway is that Ferrari's engine package is at least the match for anything on the grid now.

It was a great race.  I am glad that there are two teams fighting at the front, I just hope that it is maintained regardless of the circuit.

With Mercedes being 3rd best, and the rest of the Mercedes engine runners being at the back, my question is whether the Mercedes engine is that bad and the Mercedes car is actually really good to make up the difference.  Honda (or whatever it is officially called), with 3 of the 4 runners not finishing - they have to be worried about the reliability.  Not something they can easily fix for the second race this weekend. 

The biggest disappointment for me is McLaren - looks like they really have missed the mark with the car. 

And my final observation - all of the drivers that returned to F1 this weekend beat their team mates - some with little or no testing.  Albon beat Latifi, Hulkenberg beat Stroll and Magnesson beat Schumacher.  Really shows that money does not necessarily buy talent!

Interesting discussion today about the race in Saudi - there was an oil refinery less than 10 miles away that was blown up by a missile strike from Yemen.......the drivers held a meeting about whether or not they were going to race given what had just happened. The meeting lasted 4 hours and apparently was ended by the Saudis who told organizers the race would proceed or they would not be allowed to leave SA.

Qually is to take place today as planned.......

Not leave the country?  Sounds like Saudi.  Um, without getting political I spent 3 weeks working in The Kingdom about 20 years ago and while the local people I met there were nice, there was very much a black and white approach to things. Something either "is" or it "isn't", no room for shades of grey.  No wiggle room.  Before entering the country I had to sign a document acknowledging that I understood the penalty for breaking the law for things such as possession of drugs would be death.  No appeals in the western sense.  Just a Saturday afternoon appointment in "chop chop square" for my public beheading.  That kind of reality is a bit sobering.  And it sure makes you watch every step you take. 

So from the Saudi perspective there will be a race or there won't. And there will be a race as planned and promised.  Otherwise they would lose so much international "face". 

I hope the race takes place without incident. 

Well, a couple of interesting trends have shown up again this weekend on track - the bottom half of the order are all Mercedes powered cars - including Mercedes itself in 11th and 14th.

LeClerc looks strong again but they say Max has about 3/10'ths in his pocket still. I think the Red Bull is well suited to this track and will get in first and stay there with the Ferraris right behind them and Perez in there too.

The rest of the top 10 field is a toss up between the Alfa, Alpha and maybe even the Alpine, with Kmag thrown in the middle there somewhere.

It has been interesting to see the guys who were out of the car come back so strong as someone pointed out in the last race - and they're doing it in this one too.

Qually later tonight should be fun to watch.

Mercedes has to be scratching their collective heads about why they're this far off the pace.....but it's not just them.....McLaren and Aston are right there too along with Williams.

OTOH, all the Ferrari powered cars are running at the top or near the top of the order - quite a change from 2 seasons ago, isn't it?

HECK of a qualifying today!

After the horrifying crash of Mick Schumacher in Q2 (he's OK but won't run tomorrow) Q3 promised to be a real fight, and in an absolute surprise after the Ferraris had been setting the pace all weekend, Checo came good at the end by only hundreths to take his first poll in 225 tries!

I'm glad to see Perez getting better and better with the Red Bull.....

so the order for tomorrow's race

P1 - Perez in his Red Bull
2 - LeClerc for Ferrari
3 - Sainz also Ferrari
4 - Verstappen Red Bull
5 - Ocon Alpine
6 - Russell Mercedes - and having less issues with it than the Hamster
7 - Alonso - Alpine
8 - Bottas Alfa
9 - Gasly - Alpha Tauri
10 - KMag - HAAS

notables - Hamster in P16 - he's looked miserable all weekend so far, the 2 Big Macs in 11th and 12th

I'll bet Aston can't wait for Vettel to come out of quarantine!

Was so glad when Red Bull picked up checo.  He did amazing stuff in the pink car the years he was in it.  Now he's got real equipment and doing good.  I still believe if he hadn't fought the hamster sooo hard at the last race then no way on earth would max have won it.  Even with fresh tires and one lap cause instead of fighting checo, hamster would've been out front cruising. 

Well I enjoyed that race!  The new regulations this year really have allowed much closer racing, and it's great to see it.   It was great that Alpine allowed it's drivers to really dice with each other.   Really tough luck for a lot of drivers including Perez who was doing so well then just got caught under the safety car.  Last year I thought Hamilton did a lot of whining and complaining but this year it's definitely Verstappen who's taking over in that regard.

Whew! That was fun!

I see what you mean about Max taking over the Hamster role of complaining about everything!

Too bad for Pez, he had a good race anyway.... Russell is showing the Hamster how to make the Merc run, isn't he?

Hell of a good race all the way down the order. Ferrari jumps out to a Mercedes style lead in both the driver's and constructor's races.

The drivers are saying that they think this type of racing (being able to overtake and yet be overtaken again) will continue all season.

I'm a little surprised at the reliability issues given this is what, the eighth year they've run these basic power units?

This got a little bit long!

Race
Really enjoyed the race, the ability for the cars to run closer seems to have been a success, really enjoyed the battles up and down the running order.  The do need to do something about the DRS detection point on the entry to the last corner, as it was comical watching both Max and Charles trying their hardest not to be first to that line. 

Really felt sorry for Perez as the Safety Car really screwed him, but then again the Safety Car has screwed others before.  Also Lewis gambled on there being a late Safety Car or VSC and had terrible luck that when it came the pit lane was closed, if he had been able to pit under the VSC he would probably have finished 6th - with the speed they currently have in the Merc, that would be the best he could have hoped for.

The Race Director making the teams responsible for giving places back seems to be working as well. 

TV Coverage
For me the race was let down a bit by the TV Coverage.  When they a covering a brilliant battle, why did they cut away to a pit stop, a replay or shots of the crowd? Need to make more use of screen in screen technology where they can show two different parts of coverage at once.

Track Safety
Schumacher's crash on Saturday was horrible.  Although he did not walk away (understand no injuries, but he was lifted from the car), the safety of the cars is stunning as it was not long ago where an accident like that would have resulted in serious injury.

There are a few things I really do not understand in terms of track safety.
1 - Most modern circuits require acres and acres of run off in the high speed sections.  However, all of this gets thrown out of the window if an organization wants to host a street race.  Looking at Jeddah, Baku and Singapore. 
2 - Still having solid concrete or steel barriers with no form of protection around the circuit and using the excuse that "we didn't expect someone to go off there".  This has happened a number of times in the last couple of years - Grosjean in Bahrain, Bottas/Russell at Imola, Verstappen in Baku and now Mick in Saudi.  I understand the argument that tire barriers are not effective in certain areas as they grab the car and make the accident more violent.  However, there are other options out there, for example NASCAR and Indycar oval circuits all have the SAFER Barrier installed.  The track in Saudi could learn a lot from looking at the technology they use on ovals as they seem to have zero options for adding in run off.
3 - The desire to have the average speed of temporary circuits higher than most permanent circuits that are on the calendar.  Seems stupid to go faster on circuits that are less safe. 

Reliability
I quite like the reliability issues we are seeing. To me it shows that the teams are pushing the envelope of performance. 

Quote from: MiniDave on March 26, 2022, 08:35:36 AM
ended by the Saudis who told organizers the race would proceed or they would not be allowed to leave SA.

Little reminder to the drivers that they are guests in the countries they race in!

Some people are suggesting that the change in the fuel this year is what's causing some of the reliability issues, and also the extra power the Ferrari engines seem to have over the Mercs.....clearly there is something Ferrari has found as they have not been this close to the front since the FIA made them change their engines a few years ago, so the fuel could be the simple answer.

I think this could be a banner year for racing in F1, and if it is, you will definitely see Audi and Porsche involved in 2025/26 when the engine rules change again.

I wonder if the FIA will mandate 4 cyl engines - cause that is right in Audi/VW's wheelhouse - in a quest for even better fuel economy and as a potential way to slow the cars down (Ha! Remember the 1500 hp 4 cyl BMWs?)

Quote from: MiniDave on March 28, 2022, 10:09:41 AM
Some people are suggesting that the change in the fuel this year is what's causing some of the reliability issues, and also the extra power the Ferrari engines seem to have over the Mercs.....clearly there is something Ferrari has found as they have not been this close to the front since the FIA made them change their engines a few years ago, so the fuel could be the simple answer.

In one of the practice sessions this year, I have no idea which one.  A commentator said that the Ferrari engine was all new this year, to the extent the could not transfer over a single bolt.  So could also have something to do with that. 

One thing I wondered, is if Mercedes aggressive packaging to achieve the "zero pod" design as compromised the engine design.  Russell said that they are missing downforce rather than it being a power issue, but with all the Merc cars being slow, there must be a power issue somewhere.   

I wonder the same since pretty much all of the Merc engined cars are at the bottom of the order and almost all of the Ferrari engined (and the Renault and Reds Bull) are at the top

The US is get a 3rd GP from next year.  A street race in Las Vegas.  It will also take place on Saturday night at 10pm (pacific).

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/when-is-the-formula-1-las-vegas-grand-prix-date-track-information-and-more/9480827/ (https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/when-is-the-formula-1-las-vegas-grand-prix-date-track-information-and-more/9480827/)

Not sure how I feel about another street race, there are some awesome circuits here that could be upgraded.

I dunno, I was following a discussion about this very thing this morning....

The Glen - needs a TON of updates (armco) to be ready for F1, plus no real hotel etc infrastructure nearby

Road America - seems like it could work as is - but also out in the middle of nowhere - not billionaire friendly

Road Atlanta - short course, would need a lot of updates, not too far from infrastructure

Indy - BTDT, doable I suppose

VIR - not ready for prime time - also out in the sticks

PIR - def not an F1 ready track - plus we already have a race in "the west"

Where else? The main takeaway I got was they want them to be in "destination locations" and none of the classic road course race tracks are.......

Barber in Alabama? Never been there but I think Indy car has had races there.

Geez, I remember learning about the disaster of the previous F1 races at Las Vegas in the early 1980's.  Held in Caesar's Palace parking lot. Yes, really.  Layout of the "track" shown below. 

In my opinion, F1 on a temporary street circuit is kind of like having a herd of motocross riders chasing each other through the maze of a Las Vegas hotel's corridors. 

Monaco makes sense only because of nearly 100 years of racing tradition there.   Singapore, Sochi, Saudi, etc. simply don't.

But I guess the real reason for three races in the US is to gain more American eyeballs to F1. So, in that regard it should increase the popularity of the sport. 

Quote from: Willie_B on March 31, 2022, 03:36:00 PM
Barber in Alabama? Never been there but I think Indy car has had races there.

According to this older article Barber is FIA approved for F1 testing, but not F1 racing. So sounds like with some upgrades it could be made ready.

https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/barber-motorsports-park-the-hidden-diamond-of-american-motorsport.121287/

Of course, nearby Birmingham, Alabama does not have the same cachet or worldwide recognition as Las Vegas or Miami.

I am not sure that the standard that Barber has is still valid. 

The current list of Grade One circuits in the US are:
Circuit of the Americas
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Miami International Autodrome (provisional)

Grade Two circuits are:
Barber Motorsports Park   
Detroit Belle Isle Street Circuit
Lime Rock Park   
Long Beach Street Circuit
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course
Nashville Street Circuit
New Jersey Motorsports Park
Portland International Raceway   
Road America   
Road Atlanta   
Sebring International Raceway
Sonoma Raceway
St. Petersburg Street Circuit   
Virginia International Raceway   
Watkins Glen International
WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca

From driving some of these in video games, I really like Sebring and Sonoma.

Would love to see F1 at Laguna.  Lol. But that is a short track.

Just a journalist making up a story? Or real possibility?   Last Monaco F1 race?

https://carbuzz.com/news/formula-1-set-to-lose-its-most-iconic-circuit

There has been a lot of comment lately about Monaco, and what a lousy race it is - but I'll bet the real biggy is that it doesn't pay anything to have the race, unlike every other venue.

Or an article "placed" to help negotiations from one side or the other. 

Monaco is also the only circuit where F1 do not control trackside advertising, which is why you so a number of different advertisers from the normal races.

Quote from: Brit_in_TX on April 04, 2022, 08:55:41 AM
Or an article "placed" to help negotiations from one side or the other. 

Monaco is also the only circuit where F1 do not control trackside advertising, which is why you so a number of different advertisers from the normal races.

Different advertisers? How about having free advertising with a corner on the circuit named for your Rascasse restaurant?    ;D

I enjoyed the Aussie GP, but the changes to the circuit did not delivery the overtaking that the claimed.

Ferrari look like they are competitive on the majority of track types. Leclerc already seems to be thinking about the championship, with his push for the fastest lap at the end.  This gave him a grand slam weekend (pole, race win and fastest lap). 

Red Bull have some reliability issues they need to deal with, all related to the fuel system.  Out of 6 entries in 3 races, they have retired 3 times.

Mercedes seem to be chipping away at their car, and they are the fastest behind the Ferrari and Red Bull teams.  Lewis again lost out with safety car, but it was good to see that Mercedes did not swap him and Russell at the end, so Russell could have his first podium for the team.

At the other end of the grid, Williams pulled off a master strategy getting Albon to finish 10th, when pitting him at the start of the final lap.  Aston Martin are having nightmare start to the season, and are the only team to not score a point.

The drivers are also complaining that the Aston Martin safety car is too slow, up to 5 seconds a lap slower than the Mercedes version.  So isn't just the green F1 cars that are slow!

The Tifosi were out in force to watch......erm..........Max set pole time. Oops.

The weather conditions were shit, first it rained, then it dried up then it rained again - all in the same session!

If you managed to get a great time in the dry when it started raining again you were golden - which is what Max, Char and Lando did.....the Mercs OTOH were not so fortunate, but I'm not sure it would have made much difference - today they were going to be 10th or worse no matter what, and it's even worse in the rain where the Ferrari, Alfas and HAAS all seem to shine - as long as they can keep them on track, which Sainz, Schumi and Bottas didn't - well, Bottas had a mechanical of some sort.

All the additional red flags didn't help either. All in all qually was a mess!

This is the first weekend of the Sprint race format, so they were racing for pole, but for the short Sat race, not Sunday's. As I understand it, the winner of the Sprint race is the pole setter for Sunday, not the winner of qually.

Kmag in 4th was pretty spectacular too!

The rainmeisters were definitely evident today......Saturday's Sprint race is probably going to be dry, but Sunday might be in the rain, so talk about confusing the setup. Since the Sprint race pays points all the way to 8th place, do you set up for that or Sunday's maybe wet race?

They said Verstappen's rear wing in the rain sets looked like a barn door!

We'll see what happens tomorrow..... 71.gif

OH....and Sir Hammy was NOT happy!  ::)

Whether you like the idea of the Sprint race or not, one thing's for sure, it makes for an edge of your seat time as it's do or die almost from the get go - no tire changes and no worries about running out of gas!

This one was no exception - Max on pole and Char right beside him and again Max did not get a good start - tho he did manage to stay in 2nd.

Kmag slid down the order as DRS became available, but it was fun watching Mick climbing up the order - I think he's learning from Kmag, and of course having a better car always helps.

Both Sainz and Pez had a good race, each moving forward - in the end Max used DRS on the penultimate lap to get past Char and LeClerc was not able to do the same before the end, just like the race in Saudi.

Finishing order Red Bull, Ferrari, Red Bull, Ferrari......the rest

The two McLarens look like they're starting to come around too, while the Mercedes mostly looked woeful.....the Haminator lost 2 places at the start and only managed to get one back in the race, Russell didn't do much better losing one and gaining one back to finish where he started, in 11th......so the Mercs will start 11th and 14th tomorrow. Funny thing is, Russell was fastest in FP2 this morning.....

Rain is forecast for the race tomorrow, so it could get real interesting - some guys really shine in the rain, and it does tend to equalize the performance across the field so we could have a real interesting race with some new faces on the podium

HAAS will be starting 8th and 10th tomorrow, maybe Mick can get his first points of his F1 career?

Well, it was a throw away race for Ferrari this weekend......Sainz taken out in the first lap and Char trying too hard to get to 2nd place spun and into the wall and was lucky to be able to finish - a stop after that for new tires and a new nose put him in 9th, he rallied back to 6th but threw away 7 points....

For Red Bull it was the perfect race weekend, dominating the Sprint race and getting maximum points in both events.

Mercedes punched above its weight class in getting George up to 4th, Hammy having a miserable race starting in 13th and finishing one place down from there and not being able to pass......well, anyone!

It's interesting to me the difference in fortunes withing the teams - George in 4th, Hammy in 14th - Lando on the podium in 3rd, Ricky racer mired in 18th - Bottas in 5th, Joe in 15th - Tsunoda well ahead of Gasly and so on.....

The worst had to be when the Hamster got lapped by Max.

I wonder how much longer Mercedes will stay with its current design, before giving up and going to what the other - successful - teams are doing?

The next race should prove interesting as none of the teams have ever raced there in Miami, plus it's a street circuit.....

Danny Ric/Carlos were unlucky at the start, with the first real corner in the wet!  McLaren confirmed after the race that Danny Ric had floor damage and that they tried the Hard tire as an experiment - which was a failure. Regardless Lando is out performing him everywhere right now.

Mercedes big issue right now, they aren't generating enough downforce as they have to run the car higher because of the porpoising issue.  I don't know how easy it is for Mercedes to fundamentally change their car design due to the limited amount of wind tunnel time they have - they have the least of their rivals.  I wonder if they will give up on this season and focus on next year soon.

Both of the FIA Race Directors have tested positive for Covid.  To get into the USA you need a negative test.  So does that mean they will bring Michael Masi back?

The article I read said one of the deputy race directors would take over.....one of whom was already here. Anyway you cut it this has a lot of potential for fuck ups.....I won't be surprised to see some cars in the barriers all weekend long, especially on the first lap rundown to turn 1.

Practice 1 in Miami, and so far only Bottas is into the barriers and banged his car up pretty good.

Lots of close calls in practice between cars coming out of the pits and doing slow/fast laps, so lots of opportunities for contacts, but so far everyone seems to be behaving.

Mercedes seems to be working OK at this track and def looks to be in the hunt this race...none of the cars seem to be porpoising like at other tracks and that may be what's helping the Mercs.

Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull are all going well, but the Big Macs haven't shown anything yet...Kmag in 9th vs Schumi in 18th is a cause for raised eyebrows at HAAS, Kmag has def been the star of the team this year since coming back to HAAS.

All in all a decent start to the Miami GP.

There are 40% chances of rain each day all weekend, so that could throw a wrench into the proceedings too.

Qually for Miami

Interesting team dynamics again - the Ferraris make it 1-2 for Charle and Sainz, Max makes a mistake on his last lap of Q3, so he'll start third. Checo 4th and Bottas 5th in his Alfa/Ferrari.

Hammy got up to 6th, but Russel had a terrible qually after running really well in FP3 and could only manage 12th

Lando in 8th but Ricky Ricciardo clear down in 12th, Mick beats Kmag by just a smidge to take 15th

and I guess the rest don't matter, but both Alpha Tauris made it into the top 10 again, so good for them.

Fake water notwithstanding, i'm pretty amazed at the track facilities there for a temporary circuit.

Plus, the place is absolutely packed with people spending cubic yards of money!  :-\

Race winner chauffeured in a Mini Moke with police escort!?!?

I didn't see that one coming.

Well, I thought it was a pretty good race, Charles gave it his all in the last 10 laps but just couldn't get it done, Sainz held off Checo to his best finish of the year, all in all still a good race for Ferrari....but an even better one for Red Bull.

Seems we definitely have three teams in the mix now as the Mercs finished 5th and 6th, tho without the safety car I don't know if they would have been there.....maybe. Hamster still whining about not getting the right tires at the right time. But, they let him drive with his "jewelry" in, didn't they?

Russel's constant top 5 finishes have him ahead of Sainz in the driver's standings, and Max is now only 19 points behind Leclerc when he was 40 behind only two races ago.

The constructor's race is far closer, with only 6 points between the top two, and Mercedes not that far behind - 62 points - but with a LOT of races yet to go. I would not be surprised to see the standings tighten up even more before it's over with. All the other teams are just also rans at this point.

Shame about Mick, he was poised to get his first F1 point today and drove a great race till he got taken out. I don't know what was up with Kmag, he and Mick were running a strong 10 and 11 but they both finished terribly......

Quote from: BruceK on May 08, 2022, 03:04:16 PM
Race winner chauffeured in a Mini Moke with police escort!?!?

I didn't see that one coming.

It will be on BaT any day now  :D

I was surprised we did not see more carnage, given the way Sainz and Ocon lost it into the chicane.

Felt sorry for Lando after getting clipped by Gasly, could he have given Gasly more room - Yes.  But it looked to me that Gasly was drifting across the track and not following the curve.

The top 3 in the cooldown room looked like they had really worked during that race, not often you see F1 drives that flushed and overheated.

Quote from: BruceK on May 08, 2022, 09:59:49 AM
Fake water notwithstanding, i'm pretty amazed at the track facilities there for a temporary circuit.

One of the commentators for a practice session (might have been Jenson Button) said that we have never seen a more complete circuit for the first race.

I do wonder how it is financially sustainable to build that each year.  As the need to return it to a parking lot for the start of the football season!

I wonder if next year they'll have the "safer" type barriers instead of what they did this year, at least in the critical areas?

Quote from: MiniDave on May 09, 2022, 07:54:45 AM
I wonder if next year they'll have the "safer" type barriers instead of what they did this year, at least in the critical areas?

You would think they would learn to but them everywhere!

I don't care - I'm not taking my nose ring off

Wow! That was a heck of a race in Spain......

Stunning ending, unfortunately....

It's clear Mercedes is back in it again, even tho they're about 1/2 second slower than Red Bull and Ferrari in ultimate pace, they seem to be able to race with them. Without DRS no matter what Max did he couldn't get past George - some of that has to be down to George's ability to fend him off, but when they let Perez go at George he breezed on by with DRS. He's going to have a discussion with Red Bull about the fact they made him let Max by....on the one hand Max is now the championship leader, OTOH I think Checo could have easily won that race. It's clear what Max thinks he should do of course..... ::)

So it's clearly a fight amongst the big three for the titles with Max now having the advantage.

Poor Sainz, if it wasn't for bad luck.....still, he fought back hard to finish where he did.

The Hamster was ready to give up after his puncture on the first lap, yet fought back from dead last to almost finish on the podium till he started overheating.

Hammy is going to have a decision to make now - with the car showing clear improvement - he's been given one more race to make a decision on the nose stud. If he won't remove it, they'll bench him. With the car he had the first four races I would have bet on him to say fuck it and sit down, but now with a decent car?? However, George has finished ahead of him in every race this year.....

I like the fact that management has decided to enforce the rules - all of them - now. They're being fairly stringent about track limits too - there is no grey area either. If you go off, you go off. Obviously if you spin or get forced off that's a different matter.....

It was a great race. 

The race pace that the Mercedes showed, particularly Hamilton was a huge step forwards.  At the end of lap 2 he was around 1 minute behind the leader, if you take out the final laps where he had to slow for the cooling issue - he should have finished between 30-40 seconds behind Max.  Which is a pretty good recovery.

Yep, I don't think they're pole contenders yet, but they certainly seem to be able to run with the other big dogs now in the race.....

Seems to be those three, then everyone else is just relegated to fill out the grid for now. for a while McLaren was getting podiums, and occasionally Alfa Tauri or Alpine looked like they could too but they all seem to be a ways off the pace anymore compared to the big three.

Alfa - at least in Bottas' hands - is a solid 6th almost every race, I don't see him going any further up the grid unless there's a big turn one smash up or something but he's there every race if something does happen to the front 6.

Everyone wondered how George would do against the Haminator - now we know - he does just fine! I wonder how they managed to fit him in the car tho - he's SO tall compared to the other little muchkins.

Agreed that Merc race pace is getting there.  Just need to unlock the one lap pace in qualifying.

Disappointments this year have to be Alonso and Riccardo, both been out scored by their team mates.

Also one of the commentators said that Latifi could be out of the Williams part way through the year, unless his performances improve.  That is interesting as he is a pay driver, so Williams financial position must have improved enough that they don't need the money from Daddy Latifi any more.

I think Latifi drove better when Geroge was with the team, either as an inspiration, or from his technical help. Either way, with George gone his performance has definitely suffered. Albon is doing the most with the least, but if Williams is going to get out of last place something has to change.

Aston Martin has to be the biggest disappointment of the season for me so far...somehow you always knew Mercedes would figure out their problems and get on top of them, I haven't seen much of that at AM.

BTW, when did Aramco become Aston's title sponsor?

Quote from: MiniDave on May 24, 2022, 06:43:26 AM
BTW, when did Aramco become Aston's title sponsor?

Beginning of the year, when BWT went to Alpine.

Quote from: MiniDave on May 24, 2022, 06:43:26 AM
Aston Martin has to be the biggest disappointment of the season for me so far...somehow you always knew Mercedes would figure out their problems and get on top of them, I haven't seen much of that at AM.

They have lost a lot of good people from the senior level of the team.  Otmar said in a candid interview, that he left because a lot of his authority was taken away "when the new owner came in". 

Ricky Bobby has been a disappointment ever since he left Red Bull.  I get it, he didn't want to be over shadowed by the kid Max so go somewhere else where you are top dog.  Well.....  hasn't happened.  Everywhere he's gone he's become second.  I really wish he'd stayed at Red Bull and used Max as inspiration to drive the wheels off it.  Sucks bad cause he is by far my favorite.  Happy personality and a Dale Earnhardt fan, hence the number 3.   Was seriously considering painting my mini the yellow Red Bull used.  Glad I didn't follow through on that. 

From what I have read as well, he is getting paid top dollar by McLaren.  Probably part of the reason Norris signed a re-negotiated deal in the middle of last year, as the rumor was Riccardo was on $17m a year and Norris was on $1.5m a year - now Norris is getting anything between $10 and $20m, depend on what you read. 

This year F1 has given us some great racing, and Monaco was no exception....a little rain can really shake things up tho in this case I think the final result was down to Ferrari's race strategy - again.

So this race had a little of everything, rain keeping the race from even starting, then a red flag on the formation lap, a rolling start behind the pace car, lots of strategy changes due to the weather - an interesting battle between Alonslow and the Hamster that almost changed the entire race at the end, a shortened race that ran to time rather than laps, and at one point we had drivers on full rains, intermediates and slicks on the same laps.

A big crash that Mick walked away from, another red flag, more different tire strategies with the threat of rain in the last few laps (that didn't happen) and then the final where the last few laps the first 4 cars were absolutely nose to tail.

Lots going on and I think Charles has to be wondering what the hell happened to his season, it started off so well, he's been driving brilliantly at every race and yet Max is even further ahead now.

Yeah, another good, interesting race at Monaco with all sorts of things going on......Hope this all keeps up, with the championships going back and forth all along!

And here I was thinking that if the Monaco Grand Prix never happens again I've decided that I'd be OK with that.  I know there are so many arguments about keeping it for the sake of tradition, but it's really a crappy race track. Especially if you want to see racing actually happen.   I think that fact was pretty well illustrated by Alonzo being intent on keeping seventh place (and I don't blame him for that) but nobody could do anything about it - he was holding up a train of 10 cars behind him.   Not exactly exciting to watch.  I think if I want to get all nostalgic about Monaco I should watch the old video of Senna's on-board lap, or the movie Grand Prix.  Because watching modern racing there is not satisfying at all.

The rain made it interesting, but the Race Director decision to delay the start makes the F1 drivers look like wimps.  Also the need to do something about the track, if someone can back the entire pack up 3-4 seconds a lap and not get past it is a bit of a joke.  For me, Monaco is the one race of the year of the year that I will miss and just watch the highlights.

Monaco still does not have a contract for next year and there is apparently 5 sticking points:
- A local broadcaster still produces and directs the coverage, for every other race there is an F1 TV Director.
- The race fee is substantially lower than other races.  Even historic races like Monza and Silverstone.
- F1 do not control the track side advertising.  This has caused some problems, for example Rolex is an official F1 sponsor and Tag Heuer had prominent advertising track side.
- Refusal to make circuit layout changes to help increase overtaking options, with the cars being so much bigger it makes the passing all put impossible in the dry.
- Logistics of the paddock etc.

Monaco GP organizers have previously thought they were in the position of strength when it comes to negotiations, but the F1 organizers think they can do without Monaco as global TV is more important.  And the new audience probably do not care about the history of the circuit, but want to see a good race. 

Lots of discussion about that, and today the talk is whether Danny Ricky Bobby will even finish out the season with Big Mac. Even tho he has a contract thru the end of 2023, apparently there are performance clauses that could let the team or him end it early.

So then the question becomes, who do they bring in? The first answer seems to be Oscar P, who is under contract to Alpine - which raises the idea that either they "lend" him to MacLaren - or an even wilder scenario has him taking Alonso's seat, and Fred going to Big Mac land.

If that happens it takes a lot of pressure off Latifi I guess....

Schumacher is another guy with a target painted on his back after yet another expensive crash. Gunther is NOT happy with Mick these days.....

For McLaren, they have been talking up an F1 drive for Pato O'Ward who is in their Indycar program.  Maybe he could drive after the Indycar season finishes in September.  There is also a the rumor about Colton Herta, who kept Lando Norris honest in the junior formulae.  I don't think that McLaren have a junior driver program any more.

Schumacher is effectively a pay driver, as drive to survive showed that the 1&1 sponsorship is contingent on a german driver.  And a german driver with the name Schumacher has a lot of marketing value.  Can't see Haas being able to afford another major sponsor loss this season. 

There are plenty of drivers out there that deserve a shot at F1, I would like to see the grid shaken up a bit mid season.

What a disappointing race, and not just for Ferrari.....

I think unless Max has a similar spate of issues he's pretty much sewn up his second driver's championship, and with the Reds Bull now 80 pts ahead I think they may have pretty much gotten the constructor's as well.

Once again the Mercs use their reliability to score points and keep in the game, Russell in particular. With Hammy talking about sitting out the next round in Canada, I think the handwriting is on the wall for his career now.

I can't imagine Latifi lasting the rest of this season, rumor has it that after Silverstone, he's done in favor of Oscar Piastri.

Big Mac celebrating 8th and 9th hardly seems appropriate, but I suppose you take what you can get, and Danny Ricky Bobby hasn't gotten much lately.

Gasly had a standout race to come 5th, and the old warhorses Vettel and Alonso did pretty well too in 6th and 7th.

Bottas and Schumi were the only Ferrari engined cars to finish the race......

Hamilton never talked about sitting out Canada, it was Toto Wolff that brought it up.  Probably to be dramatic and draw attention to the issue. 

Ferrari have a fast but unreliable car, and making a fast car reliable can be difficult.

Agree that Red Bull are sailing towards the championship, if they can keep the wheels on.  Be nice to see if Checo can challenge Max a little more, but not sure he will be able to.

Latifi is definitely going to be done before the end of the season, I wonder if they will let him race in Canada and then he will be replaced.  With Williams scoring some points, they probably not has tight on budget as previous years.  Question is who will replace him, Merc would like to put one of their drivers in and Alpine want to put Oscar Piastri in a seat in preparation to replace Alonso. 

Still think that Schumacher and Stroll are at risk this season unless they pick up their performances.  Stroll will probably hang as Daddy owns the team (but there are other sponsors to consider now) and Schumacher might hang on with his surname and also 1&1 wanting a German driver.

Which makes me wonder about Vettel....as he's really improved the last couple of races. Is he planning to go out on a high note? Or will he carry on one more year? Cause if he retires that also will open up a decent ride.

So, Oscar has a contract with Williams for 2 years, '23 and '24, AND Williams will switch to Renault motors during the contract period......so maybe Latifi got a reprieve to the end of this season - and maybe daddy bigbucks kicked in some more coin to keep him there for now?

No question Toto was campaigning for a rules change, also no question that he won't get it. As Horner said, if they want the car not to hurt their drivers, they need to fix the damn car. Or just raise it up a bit or put on a thicker floor or something - all of which would make them less competitive - so, that's not gonna happen either!

Rumors are getting even stronger that Piastri will be in the Williams at Silverstone. Apparently there are still a lot of dominos that have to fall into place, one of which is Alonso. If Alpine decide to sign him back to the team for 23-24, then putting Piastri at Williams with a Renault engine is a good move, for everyone. But, if they don't take Alonso on for another contract, apparently Piastri could become a "free agent" so to speak, as his contract with Alpine includes a clause that he be in F1 full time drive by next year, so either Alpine has to put him with Ocon, or risk losing him permanently to another team. Mercedes also figures into this somehow - I'm not quite sure how at this point, but Piastri has had a seat fitting with Alpine, Williams, McLaren and Mercedes already......

We'll know more after this weekend's race. If by some magical alignment of the stars Latifi manages to have a great weekend and score some points, maybe pressure can be brought to bear that he stays on thru the rest of this season. Another rumor says that his mother's family is a big player in Dorilton (who own Williams now) which could be a big pressure point too.

Way to many circles involved in this to call it for sure right now, but I'm thinking if he has a poor showing or yet another crash - he's out and Oscar's in.

From a purely F1 perspective, Williams could make more money if they start scoring points with someone else in the car.  A long time a go I read an article on the economies of pay drivers, and it is not as simply as they pay to be in the car.  Performance clauses in other sponsor contracts need to be factored in and F1 prize money.  So Williams know they have a car that is capable of scoring points this year in the right hands, what the bean counters will be looking at is if score more points without a pay driver we could be in a better financial position. 

Also some F1 sponsorship deals snowball year on year, so if they do well in year 1, year 2 they see an increase in funding, same in 3 etc etc.  So maximizing the Duracell deal could also be part of the equation.

Alpine has also been testing Piastri in an old F1 car at Silverstone and other circuits, and testing F1 cars at circuits is not cheap.

Well, that was an interesting qually - once again, nothing like a little rain to mix things up with both HAAS cars in the top 10!

Fernando drove an incredible lap to finish 2nd, Sainz over did it slightly in the last corner to come third, and the Haminator is 4th, his best qually this year I think.

Alonso has been quick all weekend, and his car seems to get 10 ft wide when he wants to keep someone behind him, but this track has a couple of good passing places, with DRS he may not be able to hold off Sainz.

Leclerc will have a fun race, starting from the back, it will be interesting to see just how far forward he can come by the end.

Lots of attrition and mistakes, but the real surprise was Vettel, after killing it all weekend he and Stroll both absolutely sucked in qually.....Stroll is supposed to be really good in the rain and we know Seb is quick when it's wet but they either muffed the setup completely and in which case may be good again tomorrow, or something is seriously wrong with their cars. I'm betting on setup..

Tomorrow is supposed to be dry and cool, so the cars that can fire their tires up and get them good and sticky the quickest should have a good race.

I really enjoyed watching the Qually.   I feel bad for Perez but really thrilled to see Alonso in P2!

There seems to be a significant difference in pace between wet and dry conditions for some of these teams.

I think the race was a foregone conclusion, but Sainz def gave it all he had, and Ferrari engined cars came back strong this weekend to put 4 cars in the top 10.

Other than that, it was a pretty fun race to watch. No idea why the Mercs were so much better here than expected, or than they looked on Friday when they were struggling to get better than 12th and 18th. Russell continuing his streak of finishing every race in the top 5 this year. Merc sure has their reliability down cold.

Both Alpines came home well also, but McLaren is still not able to put a good race together it seems.

Albon is making the best of his situation at Williams, clearly showing why Latifi needs to make way for Piastri or pretty much anyone else!

I had high hopes for the HAAS boys, but again it was not to be for them.

Silverstone

All three practice sessions were dry, 10 min before Q1 it poured......it stopped mid session and the track kept improving....

Q2 started fairly dry then it started raining again, so the fastest times were set early in the session, towards the end times just kept getting slower and slower. The usual suspects were in the top 10 by the end of the session, with one surprise - Latifi put the Williams into Q3 - in 10th - but he did it.

The Astons were nowhere, as were both the HAAS cars, but Verstappen was going strong and so was LeClerc. The real surprise were the Mercs,,.running as high as 2nd and 3rd at one point. Alonso also had good pace running as high as 5th.

By the time it was all done we had a new and first time pole sitter - Sainz! Maiden pole, only took him about 150 races to do it.....

So, the order:
Sainz
Max
Charles
Checo
Hamster
Lando
Fred
George
Joe
Lafifi

Everybody else.....

Danny Ricky Bobby struggled to make it out of Q1 and only managed 14th, Lando is sure making him look bad this season. Vettel also could not make his car work and will start clear down in 18th, with Stroll dead last.

Nicky Latifi may have gotten a stay of execution for the rest of this season, especially if he doesn't wreck out

No idea if it's going to rain tomorrow or not - could be really interesting if it does. But if it's clear, I expect Max will get another notch on his gun. That said, if it's dry the Mercs might also have something to say about it.....

WOW!!

What a race! That's what we've been waiting for......

After that very scary first lap crash... That was a jump up and yell at the TV kinda race - especially the final 10 laps!!!    Great to see Carlos triumph in the end.   And fantastic racing between Lewis and Charles!  And Checo too!

Checo had one hell of a race to wind up 2nd, after that really early pit stop sent him clear to the back.

Also congrats to the Shu for his first F1 points, he looked solid all race.

Tough luck to George for being a good Samaritan he gets tossed out of a race - he could have finished as high as 6th he thought.

The Mercs are definitely back to the front if they can find a tiny bit of one lap qually speed.

Also bad luck to Max, he apparently ran over something that broke his magical mystery floor and it sorta stopped working so good.

I was definitely standing for the last few laps......Ferrari did muff the strategy again, if they had called Charles in for softs like they did for Sainz it could have been a red car 1-2, but it would have been Char on the top step.

Still a fantastic race, I thought Fred was going to get Charles at the end there, he did amazing to hold off the Hamster as long as he did and to finish 4th. You could see he was not happy with the Ferrari bench.....

That first corner crash was scary to see the car go over the tire barrier and into the catch fencing. There were some comments about the gap between the catch fencing and the back of the tire barrier and how it should be removed.  The issue is that catch fencing is there to stop a car leaving the circuit and marshals etc need a way to access the circuit, otherwise you will end up with double fencing.  In my opinion, the area they need to look at is the use of hard run off vs gravel runoff as it was the gravel that tripped up the car.  Hard run off works will when the car is spinning and tires are on it, but once it has lost the tires is better to have gravel. 

It was also shows the effectiveness of the halo, the worrying thing is the failure of the roll over protection.

After all of that - the race was great.  The late safety car set up a really fight for the lead, and Charles helped Carlos by fighting hard so he could get away. Lewis's fastest lap on the final lap was nothing short of stunning, 0.7 quicker than anyone else on that lap. 

Austria -

Known to be Max's happy hunting ground, he showed his gearbox to the field in the Sprint race, but the actual race today was another matter completely as Charles and Carlos both hunted him down and passed him. The Ferrari absolutely had the measure of the Red Bull and looked set to have a 1-2 at the end till Sainz's engine grenaded - and boy howdy did it! parts came thru the engine shroud and the fire was scary too as they had trouble keeping the car - on fire - from rolling back onto the track!

I think Carlos tried to get the car far enough off the track so there wouldn't be a safety car but just couldn't quite get it there, then Charles started having trouble with a sticking throttle pedal......Max was closing up the gap slowly because of Charle's issues, but just ran out of laps.

Tons of actual racing and passing all up and down the field - these cars clearly can follow closely lap after lap without losing the front tires or overheating - definitely a step in the right direction.

Mercedes seems to have fixed their bouncing or porpoising issues, but at the end they were still almost a lap down, but one thing's certain, their reliability is so good that unless they wreck they will be there at the end of the race. 3rd and 4th today was a good result for them for sure.

Also notable, both Alpines, both McLarens and both HAAS were all in the top 10......a good day for all of them. After starting the season off well, the Alpha Tauris seem to have lost their way, and Gasly seems to be completely off his game. Latifi was doing so poorly they parked his car, they cannot get Oscar into a Williams uniform soon enough - I think they should do it now so he can start getting experience with the car before next season gets going.

Mick seems to have really upped his game the last few races and is finally showing his potential, and good on him. All in all this was a good race weekend!

Merc are solidly the 3rd fastest team.  George was 19th after his first stop and penalty and drove through to 4th.  The issue is there is a big gap to Red Bull and Ferrari.  But, there is a decent gap to the rest of the pack.

Alpine, McLaren, Haas, Alfa Romeo and Alpha Tauri all seem to be close to one another, it really comes down to whether the circuit is working for them. 

Biggest disappoint still has to be Aston Martin.

Hard to believe that race marked the halfway point of the season!

I agree.....Aston really has been off their game, despite Vettel having the occasional good result.

I'm impressed with HAAS, especially the last few races where they've both been top 10 again, just like in the first few races (at least for Kmag).....that both drivers are finishing and finishing close to each other shows Mick's real improvement. For having the lowest budget on the track they are doing really well....

I wonder what happened to the bouncing issues? They all seem to have gone away now?

Wow, I've been reading a lot of accounts of terrible fan behavior, and it seems most of it came from drunk Dutch Verstappen fans......abuse heaped upon women, gays, pretty much anyone not white and male. people vomiting and urinating in public, guys walking from the showers nude in the campsites.....women being threatened......just really horrible behavior.

Vettel calls for them to be banned from F1 races for life......

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-must-act-hard-on-abuse-no-fan-should-ever-attend-a-gp-and-not-want-to-go-back/10336737/?fbclid=IwAR0hCV3nM3CdS7GAJsdrCafv7U4ycvIi7ITepoUmmuXDgiZEgtsz9LGyIOY

Twitter is full of threads of people complaining of how they were treated at the Red Bull ring......I wonder just how F1 is going to deal with this - or if it is at all?

https://www.gpfans.com/en/f1-news/86980/f1-fia-under-fire-austrian-grand-prix-gpfans-recap/?fbclid=IwAR0lemU1lGg6BRyJL3i7IZlTSVSb42dPumsXsm7Sbvl6WkfYSVk5BAY3tms

https://jalopnik.com/harassment-at-the-formula-1-austrian-grand-prix-isnt-ne-1849162403

In Europe they did a lot of work to stamp out drunkenness, violence and racism at soccer (football) games for as long as I can remember.  This includes placing restrictions on fans ability to travel internationally and purchase tickets for games. Teams were then punished if their fans continued their bad behavior by playing games behind closed doors and without TV coverage (which is how teams make their money).  This enabled the teams to appeal to the majority of fans to report badly behaved fans so they could be banned.

However, the challenge for F1 is going to be how they manage that.  How do you restrict fans for one driver or team if they are the ones where this behavior is coming from?  The other issue is that F1 (on the whole) only has 1 race per country so how do you restrict fan access to an event when the fans are needed to allow an event to break even?  Do you threaten to cancel a contract to run a race if issues continue, but will that just move the issue to a replacement circuit, travelling around Europe is pretty easy?

It is implied in most of the reports that they were Max Verstappen fans, if that is the case, pressure needs to be put on Max to address these topics head on and strongly.  His responses to Nelson Piquet's comments about Hamilton and these events have been light PR bullshit compare to the other drivers and team principal comments (Toto's being the most direct).  Max might not want to do it, but by being World Champion he is a figurehead of the sport and he needs to address it.

I agree it's going to be difficult to stop, but I agree with Toto - they need to get on top of it.

I'm guessing if worse comes to worse they can use facial recognition and not sell tix to offending guys but that seems pretty extreme....

I'm sure a large part of the problem is alcohol but they're not going to forgo the revenue from that either.

I saw plenty of this abusive behavior at Oktoberfest, and it was not restricted to any one group, but the worst ones I came into contact with came over from England.

Quote from: MiniDave on July 12, 2022, 03:37:32 PM
I saw plenty of this abusive behavior at Oktoberfest, and it was not restricted to any one group, but the worst ones I came into contact with came over from England.

Sad but true - "Brits Abroad" in Europe is a thing. Basically leave any sense of decency at home and drink until you can't see straight.

They used to talk about the "ugly American" and I didn't understand - I thought it was all just Hollywood made up or something till I went to visit friends in Germany. We were doing the tourist things and had gone to Neuswanstien castle - there were two lines, one for English speaking tourists and one for German.

In our line there was a short fat man and his big broad of a wife - he was dressed in shorts, a really loud shirt, black socks and shoes and a cigar - I swear he was straight out of Hollywood casting he fit the image so perfectly. He and the wife were loud, obnoxious and I was totally embarrassed.

At one point in the tour as they pointed out a very old and I'm sure valuable painting he reached in his pocket and pulled out some cash and said he'd buy it for $5! I wanted to just melt into the floor.......

I asked my German friends if we could go in the other line and they could just translate for us but he said it was even worse in that line!

Point being boorish behavior doesn't seem to be restricted to just English speaking folks......we just don't know about it because we don't speak the language.....but it does seem like folks completely forget how to be adults.

Interesting comment on the changes in F1 in the last few years....

F1, in my humble opinion, is clearly growing too fast for what the business and circuits can handle. A few years ago, before Drive to Survive, it used to be quite the achievement to have a sellout crowd. Nowadays, circuits are trying to cram more and more people in because tickets are selling like hot cakes. With this, there needs to be a ramp-up in security, both for things like flares and also to manage the horrible situation that some fans faced in Austria, where they were being harassed and abused.

There needs to be a step up from Formula 1 to manage all of this; otherwise, it's going to get out of control.

It was in this article about the use of smoke flares at the last race

https://wtf1.com/post/why-flares-at-f1-races-need-to-be-banned/?fbclid=IwAR3EZvW2IHfisKzFWRJx3gyoMRAedCm5SJqO9Fkpk5PJEXmsgm8-hLanA_E (https://wtf1.com/post/why-flares-at-f1-races-need-to-be-banned/?fbclid=IwAR3EZvW2IHfisKzFWRJx3gyoMRAedCm5SJqO9Fkpk5PJEXmsgm8-hLanA_E)

French GP at Paul Ricard:

What a disappointment if you're a Ferrari and Charles LeClerc fan, he did a masterful job of holding off a clearly faster Verstappen in the early laps till Max's tires started to go off, LeClerc had the race well in hand and then he lost the backend and spun off track into the barrier. Done deal.

Later in the interview he said he's driving at top level of his life, but it was his mistake not a problem with the car. Good that he owned up to it, but still......

Then Sainz. Starting 19th cutting thru the field, all the way up to a clear third place but with a 5 sec penalty for an unsafe release on his pit stop he still had the time in hand and might even have taken 2nd place, but they called him in for tires. He fought like hell to pass 5 cars and wind up 5th but that was as high as he could go before he ran out of laps.

The team justified the call by saying his tires would not have lasted to the end of the race as one of the fronts was showing blisters, but Sainz thought he could make it ok.

So from a possible 1-3 they wind up with only a 5th and fastest lap.

Mercedes on the other hand had a brilliant race. The Hamster jumped Checo on the start and late in the race after a virtual safety car Russell did the same so the Mercs finished a solid 2-3. With their reliability and the mistakes of the others they are slowly closing in on Ferrari for 2nd in the championship. I think Max pretty much has it sewn up at this point now as he is 63 pts ahead of Charles With Perez now only 7 behind Charles - Red Bull could come 1-2 in the Driver's too.  I the Ferrari has a fight on their hands for 2nd now with Mercedes and Russel is now only one point behind Sainz. If Sainz hadn't gotten fastest lap they'd be tied....

Alpine put both cars in the top 10 as did McLaren so that battle remains really close too. Stroll managed to beat Vettel to 10th place, HAAS had a terrible race with KMag retiring and Schumi.....well it doesn't really matter where he finished it was well down the order.

Red Bull is now 82 pts ahead of Ferrari, and Ferrari is only 44 pts ahead of the Mercs. Alpine leads McLaren now by 4 pts and the others are so far behind it doesn't really matter.

If Ferrari continues with poor reliability and questionable tactics they could wind up throwing this season away, which is too bad because this year they clearly are more than competitive on performance.

I said after the race that the championship is Max and Red Bull's to lose now. With a 63 point lead he can have 2 DNFs and still be leading. Also he has already had 2 DNFs at the beginning of the season.

I just saw a video saying Vettel will retire at the end of this season.  I wonder how that will affect risks he will take from here to the end. 

I'm surprised/not surprised......there's been a lot of talk about this, both because of his and the cars performance not coming up to the standards they both expected and his stance on climate and ecology, and how that conflicts with driving an F1 car, or being involved in the F1 circus at all.

But that sure does open up some interesting speculation about what's happening with the team - maybe this is Audi's entrance, Stroll never bought the team as anything as other than an investment and an opportunity to put his son in an F1 race seat. If he can sell it to a deep pockets outfit like Audi I'm sure he'll make a nice chunk of change, and that gets Audi into F1 without having to pay the $200-400 million new entrant's fee like Andretti would, and they don't have to start from dead scratch. Aston/Force has all the facilities and engineers in place, Audi would only have to make the changes to accommodate the new rules and bring in their drivers - I doubt they would keep Stroll Jr., maybe quick Nick finally gets his shot?

Fun to think about......

His full statement:

I hereby announce my retirement from F1 by the end of the 2022 season. Probably I should start with a long list of people to thank now, but I feel it is more important to explain the reasons behind my decision.

I love this sport. It has been central to my life since I can remember, but as much as there is life on track, there is my life off track too. Being a racing driver has never been my sole identity. I very much believe in identity: by who we are and how we treat others, rather than what we do.

Who am I? I am Sebastian. Father of three children and husband to a wonderful woman. I am curious and easily fascinated by passionate or skilled people. I am obsessed with perfection, I am tolerant and feel we all have the same rights to live, no matter what we look like, where we come from and who we love.

I love being outside. I love nature and its wonders, I am stubborn and impatient. I can be really annoying. I like to make people laugh, I like chocolate and the smell of fresh bread. My favourite colour is blue. I believe in change, and progress and that every little bit makes a difference. I am an optimist and I believe people are good.

Next to racing I have grown a family and I love being around them. I have grown other interests outside of F1. My passion for racing and F1 comes with lots of time spent away from them, and takes a lot of energy.

Committing to my passion the way I did and the way I thought was right, does no longer go side by side with my wish to be a great father and husband. The energy it takes to become one with the car and the team to chase perfection, takes focus and commitment.

My goals have shifted from winning races and fighting for championships to seeing my children grow, passing on my values, helping them up when they fall, listening to them when they need me, not having to say goodbye and most importantly being able to learn from them and let them inspire me.

Children are our future. Further I feel there is so much to explore and learn about life, and about myself. Speaking of the future, I feel we live in very decisive times and how we all shape these next years will determines our lives.

My passion comes with certain aspects that I've learned to dislike, they might be solved in the future but the will to apply that change has to grow much, much stronger, and has to be leading into action today. Talk is not enough and we cannot afford to wait. There is no alternative. The race is under way.

My best race? Still to come. I believe in moving forwards and moving on. Time is a one way street, and I want to go with the times. Looking back is only going to slow you down.

I look forward to race down unknown tracks and I will be finding new challenges. The marks I left on track will stay until time and rain will wash them away. New ones will be put down. Tomorrow belongs to those shaping today. The next corner is in good hands as the new generation has already turned in.

I believe there is still a race to win. Farewell, and thanks for letting me share the track with you. I loved every bit of it.

Hungary - qually

Wow, another first for a driver - George Russell gets his first pole for Mercedes - which is also the first pole for a Mercedes this season! The Hamster's car had a problem with his DRS and aborted his last flying lap.

Red Bull had a terrible qually, finishing 10th and 11th, Verstappen complaining of no power on his last couple of laps.

Ferrari thought they had a front row lockout with Sainz ahead of Leclerc by a couple hundreths of a second till Russel popped up.

However..............how does this work? Russell was not fastest in any section, but somehow he was fastest overall?

So, the grid shapes up like this:

Russell
Sainz
LeClerc
Lando
Ocon
Fred
Hamster
Bottas
Ricky Bobby
Max
Checo

the rest......

So, both Mercedes, both Ferraris, both McLarens, both the Alpines are in the top 10. Interesting grid for tomorrow's race.

Oh, and it didn't rain a drop thru all of Qually!

Glad to see Ricky back in the top 10, but 5 spots back of teammate is not good.  There has got to be breakdown in communication.  Either he can't explain what he needs or they can't figure out how to get the car to do it.   My guess is based on how he drove in the Red Bull is he needs a very precise handling car.  If it's loose or tight at all he's just not going to get the performance out of the car.  I would think a McLaren would be about as close to a Red Bull out of all the chassis builders in matters of precision and with Lando it also appears to have good power. 

Wow - if you're a Ferrari fan  - well, all I can offer are condolences.

But this season is more and more looking like an episode of wrestling. You have the plucky contenders who were looking really good at the start but seem to shoot themselves in the foot nearly every race now.

We have the formerly dominant team starting from nowhere with seemingly like unsurmountable problems but now gaining momentum at every race.

And last year's wining driver seems to be indomitable.....

The retiring champion coming back to finish in the points - well one point anyway.

Another former champion scrapping for mid points while yet another falls down the order.....

It's just been a crazy season already and it looks like it's going to get worse for some.

If anyone else were winning races it might make for an interesting season.....I'll give you this, the top three teams are now really close together - everyone else seems to be in a different series as they're nowhere close by the end of the race. 7th place in this race was 78 seconds behind the leader - almost a lap.

Nothing more telling than seeing Mattia leave the pit wall and walk to the back of the garage with 15 laps to go......

You know the Tifosi and Italian press are going to be calling for heads to roll after yet another strategy cock up.

Quote from: MiniDave on July 31, 2022, 06:47:36 PM
Nothing more telling than seeing Mattia leave the pit wall and walk to the back of the garage with 15 laps to go......

You know the Tifosi and Italian press are going to be calling for heads to roll after yet another strategy cock up.

Yeah it did look bad.  But he was back on the pit wall within 3 minutes of leaving it. So maybe he needed a personal pitstop? Or he just went back to the motorhome and screamed a bit until he felt better?

Sure didn't take long for the dominoes to start to fall.....Alonso signs with Aston on a multi year deal.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.breaking-fernando-alonso-signs-to-aston-martin-for-2023-on-multi-year.1i8QwJht5v7dBCWFCcrqml.html?fbclid=IwAR1OVjIQvEamDoTL7NBUePWxett_CRmQ8vIvh2GWpz2zIKIL-Zj6etZ9Ur0

I'm a little surprised that he would go down the grid like this, with Alpine doing the best of the midfield runners now - holding 4th in the championship and beating McLaren......

Really opens up the silly season, as there will be many more musical chairs before it's done. Piastri was supposed to go to Williams on a lend/lease deal, now I wonder if Alpine will go ahead and pair him up with Ocon?

If they do Williams will have that seat open again - keep Latifi or move to someone else?

I don't know if I buy this.....it was clear all the cars struggled on the hard tires.....

https://www.planetf1.com/news/mattia-binotto-ferrari-slow-hungarian-gp/?fbclid=IwAR27s1my8LCXPsBuFWfp18zk3vjhZ01skxbYi5sL_C8VPhyULQl0npsfwdA (https://www.planetf1.com/news/mattia-binotto-ferrari-slow-hungarian-gp/?fbclid=IwAR27s1my8LCXPsBuFWfp18zk3vjhZ01skxbYi5sL_C8VPhyULQl0npsfwdA)

Another piece of the grid has fallen into place, this one was pretty much a foregone conclusion when Alonso jumped to Aston, Piastri has been hired at Renault/Alpine to replace Alonso. He's been in their development program for years now and after winning the F2 championship they needed to find him a ride in order to keep him in their program. There was talk of lending him to Williams for a year and with Williams slated to get Renault engines next year it looked like a good fit....now that won't happen obviously, so I wonder if the Renault engine deal is still on the table?

So, that leaves Latifi still up in the air and more and more it looks like Schumi Jr. could lose his seat at HAAS.

There was also talk at one point of Albon going to the Renault seat, but he quashed that saying he preferred to be at Williams.

Weird rumor of the day - LeClerc is sick of losing at Ferrari and wants to replace the Hamster at Mercedes?!!??

Edit: More fun stuff, Alpine learned that Alonso was going to Aston when Aston announced it! Classy, Fred, classy.....

Stop the presses!!!!

Oscar just put out a tweet that the Alpine announcement was wrong, and that he has NOT signed with them for 2023. speculation is that he's going to McLaren to replace Danny Ricky Bobby....

OH, and this just in - Hammy is now a part owner of the Denver Broncos!
https://www.denverpost.com/2022/08/02/lewis-hamilton-rob-walton-broncos-ownership-group/amp/ (https://www.denverpost.com/2022/08/02/lewis-hamilton-rob-walton-broncos-ownership-group/amp/)

And Albon has signed a multi year deal with Williams. I imagine that is Williams locking in a seat after they had Piastri lined up and he is going who-knows-where!

On Piastri, a number of journos have speculated on twitter that his Alpine contract stated that he had to have a race seat in F1 2023 confirmed by the end of July or Alpine's option on him lapsed. With the surprise announcement that Alonso is leaving for Aston Martin on August 1st, wonder if they have been caught out and their contractual option on Piastri has lapsed. So now it will be lawyers sorting it out.  Regardless of the outcome, I imagine a deal will be done and we won't see Piastri in Alpine blue next season. Rumor is he has a deal signed with McLaren and Ricardio will be paid to to sit around and do nothing.

You're right, Piastri's option expired - they thought they had the deal sewn up with him going to Williams and Williams is not happy that they're not getting him. He'll be in orange jammies next season.

But here's the fun part, I hear Danny Ricky Bobby will be back at Renault next season....I would have thought he'd pretty much burned that bridge but Szafnauer says he would be happy to have him back. And I can guess why! I'm betting Big Mac is paying a bunch of money to get out of his contract and Renault will get him "cheap" - at least for one season, who knows after that?

So, Latifi and Schumi Jr are both on the bubble for next season, I really don't think Williams will keep Latifi despite the $$$$ he brings to the team, but I don't think Schumi is the answer for them either.

That part of the silly season has yet to be determined.....and American driver Sargeant will drive an FP1 when the season restarts.....

I would like to see Andretti buy either Sauber or Williams and jump into the fray!

I read Audi has interest in Schumi for their team once it all happens.....by then he'll have 5 years in F1.

Quote from: MiniDave on August 03, 2022, 12:23:10 PM
But here's the fun part, I hear Danny Ricky Bobby will be back at Renault next season....I would have thought he'd pretty much burned that bridge but Szafnauer says he would be happy to have him back. And I can guess why! I'm betting Big Mac is paying a bunch of money to get out of his contract and Renault will get him "cheap" - at least for one season, who knows after that?

The management has changed, so that is why Szafnauer is probably open to having him there.

Quote from: MiniDave on August 03, 2022, 12:23:10 PM
So, Latifi and Schumi Jr are both on the bubble for next season, I really don't think Williams will keep Latifi despite the $$$$ he brings to the team, but I don't think Schumi is the answer for them either.

Latifi will be out, Williams no longer need the $$$$ he brings.  I think Schumi Jr has done enough to stay in F1, when the Haas works he has been keeping up with KMag honest. 

Quote from: MiniDave on August 03, 2022, 12:23:10 PM
I would like to see Andretti buy either Sauber or Williams and jump into the fray!

Hasn't Andretti still got an application in to start a team?

Quote from: MiniDave on August 03, 2022, 12:23:10 PM
I read Audi has interest in Schumi for their team once it all happens.....by then he'll have 5 years in F1.

Isn't that going to be with Red Bull, I don't think he has the talent to be there.

Porsche is buying 1/2 of Red bull F1 Racing, Audi is buying a team, either Sauber or Williams are the two top choices.

Andretti is trying to enter his own team, but the easier way for them would be to buy another team.....

Interesting that Porsche and Audi are coming into F1 as they are both owned by the VW Group.

Yes, Porsche did it in the 80's with McLaren as just an engine supplier, so there's precedent for them - and they're only going to be the powertrain supplier again with Red Bull.

Audi OTOH is going full on, they'll start with their own engine and chassis and grow it from there....tho if they buy Sauber they'll be getting a good leg up.....

I think Porsche's efforts will be more effective at first because they already have experience with both this engine construction and the fuel that's they'll be using.

Audi does as well tho not as recent, but the chassis and aero will be new to them - it might take a while both from a power and performance standpoint and team development.

But - I like to see fresh ideas, I hope they allow some innovation as I think the sport has stagnated some in the last decade or so....

Quote from: Brit_in_TX on August 04, 2022, 07:52:02 AM
Interesting that Porsche and Audi are coming into F1 as they are both owned by the VW Group.

I think it's a little weird since they're both hyper-focused on electric road cars and that's not F1.  Seems like Formula E would make more sense.

I think it's the fuel......

Also, I hear Mercedes wants Nick DeVries in the Williams, and since they are the engine supplier they can throw some weight around, much like Ferrari does with HAAS and Alfa....I think Latifi's days are numbered. Truth is I wasn't sure he would finish this season. Still not sure he'll be back after the break.....

I thought I read that Williams could be moving to Renault engines next year.

That's the rumor, that's why "loaning" Piastri to them in place of Latifi made sense - keeping him in the family so to speak - the Renault engine deal was part of that. But now that he's jumped ship (if he and the lawyers get that done) and he goes to Big Mac, I don't know if they'll still do it.

So, the other shoe has finally dropped - after signing Piastri as a "reserve" driver for 2023, Danny Ricky Bobby has been informed that he will not be driving for Big Mac next year. Once the terms of his release are finalized, Oscar's contract will be updated to full driver status.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclaren-end-ricciardo-deal-piastri-2023/10349014/?fbclid=IwAR0B9Zg-Yc0JCqjx1EFv8z3aO3ayaNzr2O5I7P9OvAJuxC3HrF28Kl1q76Q (https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclaren-end-ricciardo-deal-piastri-2023/10349014/?fbclid=IwAR0B9Zg-Yc0JCqjx1EFv8z3aO3ayaNzr2O5I7P9OvAJuxC3HrF28Kl1q76Q)

Now the only question is will Ricciardo go back to Renault or simply take his many, many, many millions and go home?

And now it's official - Danny Ric's contract was bought out by Big Mac for $15 really large. That clears the way for wondekin Oscar to slide into his seat next season.

Still no word on where Danny will ride next season - or if he will. But he wants to stay in the sport and Renault has said they'd be happy to have him back, so we'll see.

Silly season - on in earnest!

Rumors about that Schumi junior is being courted by several teams - which is a suprise to me but good on him.

Giovanassi is driving for HAAS in the next couple of FP1 sessions - maybe they're bringing him back?

Audi rumors are strong that they have purchased Sauber/ Alfa.....

No surprise, there for Danny Ric.  The writing has been on the wall for a while, wonder if he will do a Kimi and step away for a while and then try and come back.  I do not think he would be a good choice for Renault/Alpine, as he was struggling there before he went to McLaren.  Wonder if we will see him in Indycar next year, he has openly said he loves the US and I believe owns home(s) here. 

Schumi Jr is still a Ferrari Academy driver, so I don't think he will be going anywhere quickly.  Probably some rumors pushed by his management team to allow them to play a little bit of hard ball with Haas.

All teams have to give up one FP1 one practice per car this season, so I don't think Giovanassi driving for them is anything more than Ferrari wanting him to get some 2022 car experience.  I don't see him coming back to F1.

Of the open seats at the moment, I am most interested to see who Alpha Tauri pick for the second seat.  I don't think Yuki has done enough to retain it and if Porsche are doing a deal with Red Bull, could they influence that seat?

But the whole drivers market could be turned on its head if the Contracts Recognition Board determines that Alpine has the contract on Oscar Piastri and they either make him drive or force him to sit out a year. Then both Alpine and McLaren have open seats!

I thought the contracts board already ruled it was OK, and now they're going to civil court over damages?

I'd put money on Oscar being on the F1 grid in an orange car in 2023.

The CRB still have to rule on it, according to this article.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclaren-confident-ricciardo-replacement-piastri-dispute/10357237/ (https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mclaren-confident-ricciardo-replacement-piastri-dispute/10357237/)

Audi's big announcement came today - sort of. They announced they were in it to win it, but they didn't say who with. Worst kept secret in F1 right now, but even tho they weren't saying which team, Sauber announced Alfa would be leaving as a sponsor at the end of 2023.

Right now they are setting up their power train division in Germany

The power unit will be built at Audi Sport's state-of-the-art Competence Center Motorsport in Neuburg an der Donau, not far from AUDI AG's company headquarters in Ingolstadt. "For the development and manufacture of the Formula 1 power train, we will build on the valuable expertise of our motorsport employees, continue to invest in our motorsports center, and also recruit highly specialized professionals," says Audi Sport Managing Director Julius Seebach, who organized the entry into Formula 1 as part of Audi's realignment of motorsport.

In Neuburg there are already test benches for F1 engine testing as well as for electric motor and battery testing. Additional necessary preparations are currently being made in terms of personnel, buildings, and technical infrastructure, with everything essential to be in place by the end of the year. A separate company was recently founded for the power unit project as a wholly owned subsidiary of Audi Sport. Adam Baker will take over the management of the company and thus the Formula 1 project as CEO. The trained engineer has held various senior positions for manufacturers and teams in motorsport. Before joining Audi in 2021, he worked for the FIA for three years.

They also announced they will withdraw from the LMDh program in favor of F1

What....  What the hell is this thing?

Reminds me of Professor Fate's balloon from The Great Race.

What do you do if you have to take a leak? What if you want a coke or something?

That's a new one on me!

So, after all the engine penalties, Sainz got pole with Checo 2nd

Max was .5 seconds faster than everyone else, so tomorrow's race should prove interesting - especially if it rains! (It's not supposed to, but you never know at Spa)

7 drivers had engine penalties, so it's almost a reverse grid start!

I wonder how they would manage the grid if ALL the drivers had engine penalties?   ::) ;D

Nice number roundels on the Mercedes cars this race.  Very retro and cool.

Love to see it on all cars, all races going forward.

Red bull is looking more like the Mercedes of the last 8 years every race.....

Mercedes has a terrible qually, but managed to finish well - at least one did. George continues his run of top 5 finishes, and unbelievably, now is only 1 point behind Sainz in the driver's championship.

Sainz got the gift of pole due to engine penalties and held the lead against Perez, even thru the safety car on lap 3 but it was inevitable that Max - who was so much faster - would come thru. The real surprise was seeing LeClerc get hunted down and passed by Russell - in a car that was 1.8/lap sec off in qually. He was really close to getting Sainz too for third but used up his tires trying to get there and had to settle for 4th.

Zandvoort next weekend - Max's home track - but Carlos seems to think they'll have the edge there. I'm not so sure.

Zandvoort is a high down force track, so the advantage may be with the red cars, however the home track for Max may overcome that....if he can see through all the orange smoke out there!

What was Schumi's record? won 13 of 16?

Max might break that this year......

He won at Zandvoort last year, so I wouldn't bet against him in this one.

Quote from: MiniDave on August 27, 2022, 08:02:01 AM
What do you do if you have to take a leak? What if you want a coke or something?

That's a new one on me!

It is a bar - those guys in the middle are bartenders.  How you go to the bathroom, I have no idea, i would not stand beneath it!

Quote from: Brit_in_TX on August 29, 2022, 11:12:13 AM

Quote from: MiniDave on August 27, 2022, 08:02:01 AM
What do you do if you have to take a leak? What if you want a coke or something?

That's a new one on me!

It is a bar - those guys in the middle are bartenders.  How you go to the bathroom, I have no idea, i would not stand beneath it!

Okay, that's the "what".  Still don't understand the "why"...

What's the keep a tipsy person from unhooking a seatbelt – I'm assuming there's a seatbelt involved - and just go on for a midair walk?

Schumi Jr's association with Ferrari is going to come to a "natural end" at the end of 2023.  If he is no longer a Ferrari driver likely he will not stay at Haas, not sure he has many options for remaining on the grid.  Of the teams with a free seat:
Alfa Romeo - Likely they will retain Zhou
Alpha Tauri - Yuki is likely to be out, latest rumor is Colton Herta from Indycar. Juri Vips was probably lined up for this, but he said a bad word on a live stream and lost his F1 team reserve driver and FP1 opportunities, but is still part of the Red Bull Junior Team. Schumi Jr has never been associated with Red Bull, so likelihood of an opportunity here is low.
Alpine - not sure Schumi Jr has the talent to meet their requirements.
Williams - could be a good place, and be associated with Merc.

Well, the shoe has dropped -

Piastri will be driving for Big Mac, Gasly will go from Alfa Tauri to Alpine and the rest is still in the air.....

Max is getting a new gearbox for the race, so he'll be running thru the front runners again.

The race organizers tried to keep the orange flares out but I'm sure some have made it in anyway......we'll see if the Dutch Max fans are any better behaved here than they were in the Red Bull ring......

Yeah besides all the other unacceptable crap they pulled at the Red Bull Ring, the orange flares were so excessive I don't know how they were able to watch the race through all the smoke.

A few people can ruin it for the rest, huh? The stands are absolutely jammed with fans, and some bellend has to lob a lit flare onto the track in the middle of qually today.....twice! <sighs>

Even Max came out and called the fans with the flares idiots. Good news of a sort, the offender was removed from the track and sent home. Banned for life, I read?

Qually was a mixed bag - Max wins in the end but both Ferraris are right on his gearbox.

Some fun surprises - Lando again right in the heat of the mix while Ricky Racer is nowhere - and a really nice surprise - Schumi junior in 8th!

Both Merc's in the top 6 so if anyone has a problem tomorrow they will again score some good points - and if some of the front runners get into a squabble, they will be there ready to pounce. It would not surprise me to see one or even both Mercs on the podium tomorrow - their reliability and pace has been getting better each race.

I'm convinced a Merc will win a race this season, something I did not think would happen based on the early part of the season.

All the drivers said tire degradation would be a factor, and since these are such short laps, strategy will play a major role in the race win.....something it has to be said Ferrari has not shone at this season - again.

Seriously, it's like the old guys just can't figure out this car.  The teams with a seasoned driver and a young driver are the most obvious.  Like this with Vettle, Ricky and Bottas not getting out of q3 but those younger teammates making it to q1. 

I saw a post on IG, don't remember from who but said Ricky was headed to Alpine.

The rumors between him going to Alpine and Gasly are both pretty strong......I think going back to Renault might be good for Ricky Bobby, but Gasly's due to make a move forward, and the idea of an all French team has to be strong.

BTW..............anyone else tired of hearing about Piastri, McLaren and Alpine and who knew what when and why?

Ferrari - pow, pow, pow right in the foot! Especially to Sainz....

Max to Lewis - bye!

Lewis - whine, whine. bitch, bitch coulda shoulda woulda.....

George - comin thru!!!!

At least they kept the orange flares in their pockets till the race ended....

New record for pit stops in a race for this year? Some teams made 4 stops!

Driver's championship really getting tight for 2nd thru 4th

I wonder if Max can beat Vettel and Schumi's single season win record - the record is 13 and he now has 10 with 6 races to go, but clearly Mercedes is coming on stronger now, and Ferrari could get lucky and win one or two (?)

More rumors swirling around - if Porsche buys Red Bull, they want Horner out in favor of Andres Seidl. Also, rumor has it that Madeashitzload of money is in ill health and wants to sell Red Bull F1 to Porsche and Alfa Tauri to Andretti. That would make for an interesting series, but also could play right back into the hands of Mercedes - assuming they stay in F1 of course.

All this is still years away, so it's all speculation right now and all or none of it could come to pass. About the only one who's made a firm commitment is Audi at this point.

I wonder if Lewis was disappointed at all about the Mercedes race strategy?

It's so hard to tell. He never voices any complaints and he never blames anyone else.  Oh, and he always looks to support his teammates and he never puts his needs above others.   ::)

...

Yeah.....he's such a team player!

All for Lewis, and only for Lewis.....

It's like Alonso says, 'dis guy, he only  knows how to race from the front"

The more Lewis does this crap, the more I'm rooting for him NOT to win one damn race this year.

TBF all F1 drivers are self centered when they are racing.  They say F1 is a team sport, but only to a certain extent as it is an individual drivers championship.

So my take on the Dutch GP:
- Mercedes seem to have learnt nothing from Abu Dhabi last year when it comes to late safety car.  The warmup on used tires is terrible, better tires are more important than track position. If they had given Lewis new softs he would have been 2nd. 
- Merc have found some solutions to their car issues which makes them competitive on higher downforce, twisty circuits.  Not sure that is going to help them in the rest of the season, Monza will see them back to the rear of the top ten.
- Conspiracy theorists are out in force again, saying that Red Bull got Alpha Tauri to stop on the track to give them the Virtual Safety Car.
- Ferrari need to make some changes in the strategy department.  At the Belgium GP there was a lot of radio broadcast where they appeared to running their choices past LeClerc, and then the issue with tires not being read for Sainz.  I don't think Ferrari could have won the championship this year, but they have lost a lot of points with strategy screw ups.
- Mclaren have a good car in the right hands, Lando is the best of the rest at the moment (currently leading the Class B championship).  Danny Ric just does not seem to be able to get the pace out of the car, he has already lost the qualifying intra team battle. 
- Alonso is still showing he has the pace, him leaving Alpine is a big loss.  Ocon is not ready to be a team leader.
- Latifi is so far off the pace, it must be getting concerning for Williams. His qualification time this weekend was 1 second off 19th. Vettel who was 19th was 1 second off Verstappen in Q1 who was 1st.

Alonso must feel the Aston has potential, I can't believe it was just a longer term contract that got him to jump ship?

It's going to be fun watching Piastri get up to speed in the Big Mac, time to see whether the kid really has it or if he's going to flame out. Either he'll be quick and challenge Norris or.....well, we'll see.

The Alpine keeps getting more competitive, but it still seems to be a little bit back of the front three.

The others just have not lived up to the early season form.....Alpha Tauri, Alfa Romeo and Aston all disappoint. Albon is def punching above his weight class, and I agree Latifi should have been replaced at the start of the season, or midpoint at worst!

Everyone is still talking about Porsche and Audi coming into the sport, but they're still 3 1/2 years out. Been interesting discussions with Honda talking about coming back in, would that scupper the Red Bull/Porsche deal if they did?

If Mateschitz wants out due to health, maybe it becomes the Honda works team again? I would like to see Andretti get in by buying Alfa Romeo, but what would they do for engines? Renault would really like to have another engine customer, I know. He has an in with Honda, so maybe they put something together?

I still think Mercs are going to win one this season, but I would prefer it's George that does it - I think he's shown great racecraft this season and he deserves to stand on the top step. I also think Merc is close to taking second in the constructors away from Ferrari - their cars have been dead reliable and their drivers don't do stupid things, nor does their strategist......mostly.

I'm not sure HAAS is making the right move replacing Schumi Jr with Giovanazzi, he was a decent journeyman, but I doubt he's faster than Kmag. I think they should give Schumi Jr another season.

A lot of people are saying if Danny Ricky Bobby can't get on with HAAS, he's done in F1. Craziest rumor I've heard? Reserve driver for Mercedes!

And then there is the rumor that Gasly will go to Alpine for an all French team.  However, that is dependent on Red Bull getting the FIA to bend the rules to get Colton Herta a super license.

That rumor comes and goes......some say he and Ocon do NOT get along and it would be a toxic pairing, other's say that was long ago and far away and they're fine now.

It would be good for Gasly no question.....but he would have to get out of his RB contact - I'm sure Alpine can afford to buy him out, but will RB let him go? Tost says "sure", but he may not have the last word.

If they don't go with Gasly, who would they then choose?

If Alpine can get him in the car enough, Jack Doohan.

What about Nick DeVries? He's been running FP1 a couple of times and won FE this year.

He is locked in to a Mercedes contract right now, definitely a candidate for the 2nd seat at Williams if they are sticking with Mercedes engines. However, he probably has a clause that means he gets released if he gets offered a race seat at another team.

https://jalopnik.com/porsche-says-f1-deal-died-when-red-bull-couldnt-agree-t-1849516256 (https://jalopnik.com/porsche-says-f1-deal-died-when-red-bull-couldnt-agree-t-1849516256)

I think I can decode that URL.  ;D

Like the British do, I dropped my "H"   ::) ;D

So, Audi says they're still in it to win it, Porsche wanted to do a deal, but didn't make it work - yet. I still think that once the IPO hits and they have an extra $85 billion lying about, they'll find a way into F1....

LeClerc on pole at Monza, but with all the penalties many of the top 10 are moving to the back of the grid, so the order will be upended somewhat.

However, it was interesting how they were two by two at the end

2 Ferraris
2 Reds bull
2 Mercedes
2 Big Macs
the rest don't matter......

But with Max, Carlos and Lewis heading backwards, it really shakes up the order and puts Russel in a good spot to run for the win.....

Well, a really good race ends with a thud......as Danny Ricky Bobby's car dies with 4 laps to go and they finish behind the safety car.

The fans were not happy because strategy wise Ferrari had called a good race and LeClerc was on new soft tires behind Max......but that didn't happen and they had to settle for P2.

Nick Devries had a great race to finish 9th and get 2 points on his debut as at the last minute he was called up to sub for Albon who had appendicitis. He made Latifi just look sad, same as Albon has been doing all season. How/why Williams have kept him on is beyond me, his dad must be spending a TON of money to keep him in the seat.....at the end DeVries said "my arms are killing me"! No power steering in F1 cars?

Max can sew up the driver's championship at the next race, but they have already done so on the constructors....so well done to red Bull. Max has won 5 in a row and now has won 11 races this season, 2 more and he ties Vettel and Schumacher, 3 more and he will set a new season record - which is entirely possible given his and Red Bulls current performance.

George Russell having a solid race to podium yet again.

As interesting as the current driver mix is, it's possible there will not be a German driver on the grid next season unless Mick finds a better seat or winds up staying at HAAS. At this point I think I would like to see him change teams and move up the grid.

No race should ever finish under the safety car. 

What was the point of doing that? So the lap counters would officially go from 48 up to 53? It's like race control totally ignores the fact that race fans want to see a race. Not a boring 4 lap parade behind the safety car.  Absolutely it should've been red flagged. What could have been an exciting 4 laps race to the finish was instead as anti-climatic as anything could be.  Is there any other sport that would just stop toward the end of play without a logical conclusion?  Can you imagine a football game stopping in the fourth quarter with five minutes still on the clock?  Or a tennis match?

Yep.....completely anti-climatic ending......like I said, ended with a thud instead of everyone standing and cheering it on. I think that's why there was so much booing at the end - not because Max was leading but because they didn't even get a shot at a real race ending.

They are the rules.

In Abu Dhabi last year the rules were bent on the fly and depending on which side you were on, it was an awesome or terrible decision. This time they followed the rules (which the Race Directors have been doing all season), and the race ended under the safety car.

There have been calls for a red flag, but the reasons for a red flag are documented.  I don't think there is an option to have a red flag to allow a green flag race finish. 

NASCAR goes into overtime, and can have multiple rounds of green-white-chequered, but they refuel the cars.  Indycar race can and have finished under yellow, including the Indy 500 a few times.
 

Nyck de Vries had an awesome debut and was seen in the uniform of 3 different teams at the weekend.  FP1 he was in the Aston uniform, FP2 he was in the Mercedes garage and then FP3 he was in the Williams.  Really showed how far off the pace Latifi is and that it is not just Albon doing mega things in a crappy car.

Also there maybe a good chance that de Vries will be back in the car for Singapore as Albon suffered complications after surgery that resulted in respiratory failure and him having to be admitted to the ICU (according to the press release this is uncommon but not unheard of as a complication). Also Singapore is one of (if not the most) physically demanding races on the calendar, so Albon not being in top form may result him missing that race.

Yep, Nick makes Latifi look like what he is, an amateur playing with the big boys.....and it also points out how rare it is to have the chops to really play in F1.

Nick said on his cool down lap that his arms were killing him! I fully expected him to be in the car in Singapore, even if Alex hadn't had complications. In fact, what I'd like to see is him replace Latifi and stay with the team once Alex is back in his car. But I expect Latifi's money is contingent on him finishing this season.

I can't argue with the fact that they didn't throw the red flag, but it sure would have been fun to see Charles going after Max. Chances are good that it still would have finished the way it did, but it would have been fun....

Nick's performance pretty much guarantees him a ride next season, but with whom? Since he's with Mercedes, I doubt they'll kick out Lance so Aston's out. Williams is a good place for him to go, but can they afford him if they lose Latifi's money? McLaren is set already, and Mercedes isn't going to fire Lewis so that leaves HAAS and Alpine, neither of which are Mercedes backed teams.

I thought Mick drove a super race, he was aggressive at times and didn't wreck. I really think he deserves another season - preferably in a better car. It's sad how HAAS has fallen off the pace after starting the season so strongly.

Agree that Mick deserves the opportunity for another season.  The issue is there is probably 5-8 other drivers that deserve F1 opportunities and only 1 or 2 seats available. 

I do not know if Latifi's money is needed by Williams any more.  They have had significant investment after they were bought out and have started bringing on some sponsors. Some of which seem to be taking more real estate on the car (Duracell).  There is also the budget cap factor, they are having their best season in years, and scoring points gives them more prize money and more sponsorship opportunities.

Alpha Tauri have confirmed Yuki Tsunoda for 2023.  Could this be a sign that they are going to release Gasly and needed to move to secure their second seat before that announcement? Normally Alpha Tauri is one of the last teams to confirm their line up as they have such a roster of drivers through Red Bull Jr.

I'm a little surprised there's so much interest in Giovinazzi, I never thought he did much at Alfa Romeo. More of a seat filler than real prospect......

I think most of this chair changing has to do with DeVries, once that's settled for sure the rest of the dominos will fall into place.

Alpha Tauri talks about it taking 3 seasons for a driver to really come to grips with F1 as one of the reasons they decided to keep Yuki - that and stability in the team - but F1 doesn't seem keen on giving Mick Schumacher the same advantage, do they?

I think Mick should get one more season - and a lot will depend on how he does the rest of this year. Still plenty of races to go. I wonder if there's some kind of friction between him and Gunther that's causing the rift?

I think putting Nick in an Alpha Tauri is going to help Yuki too.......and Gasly certainly deserves to move to a more reliable car further up the grid so he can show what he can do......so I would like to see him at Renault.

I know Aston is spending money like water, but I seriously doubt Alonso made a good move going to them....but who knows, maybe they're right on the cusp of a major move up the grid? There have been times when Vettel looked pretty quick in the car....

Even tho - once again - the front of the grid and the races there are pretty one sided, there's still a lot of action in every race - I think this has been a good season in F1, and if Ferrari can get their shit together, I think next year they and Mercedes and Red Bull will all be fighting for wins!

And this just in!  https://scuderiafans.com/f1-electric-tyre-warmers-to-be-banned-from-2024/?fbclid=IwAR2LcFU4pPB2BHrTs1EewLtbCe0KSOgu_SE_7CGtmzgaVzIyGakrWmJjqhs (https://scuderiafans.com/f1-electric-tyre-warmers-to-be-banned-from-2024/?fbclid=IwAR2LcFU4pPB2BHrTs1EewLtbCe0KSOgu_SE_7CGtmzgaVzIyGakrWmJjqhs)

The tire warmer ban has been coming for a while, but lots of other series manage it (Indycar and NASCAR).

Agree Mick has done enough to deserve another chance, just not sure who is going to give him another chance.

Also in the news is the 24 race calendar for next season with some insane back to backs.  Baku > Miami and Vegas > Abu Dhabi

Yes, what is up with the logistics?

Baku - Miami - Imola?

I understand why they want Miami early in the year - it's HOT there, but it was hot as hell in Malaysia every year too....

Spain - Canada - Austria?

Again with the back and forth?

February 23-25   Pre-season testing   Sakhir
March 5   Bahrain   Sakhir
March 19   Saudi Arabia   Jeddah
April 2   Australia   Melbourne
April 16   China   Shanghai
April 30   Azerbaijan   Baku
May 7   Miami   Miami
May 21   Emilia Romagna   Imola
May 28   Monaco   Monaco
June 4   Spain   Barcelona
June 18   Canada   Montreal
July 2   Austria   Spielberg
July 9   United Kingdom   Silverstone
July 23   Hungary   Budapest
July 30   Belgium   Spa
August 27   Netherlands   Zandvoort
September 3   Italy   Monza
September 17   Singapore   Singapore
September 24   Japan   Suzuka
October 8   Qatar   Losail
October 22   USA   Austin
October 29   Mexico   Mexico City
November 5   Brazil   Sao Paulo
November 18   Las Vegas   Las Vegas*
November 26   Abu Dhabi   Yas Marina

And to the surprise of no one that is an F1 fan, Latifi is leaving Williams at the end of the year and I imagine leaving F1. 

Well, I'll give him credit - he did 3 years with an F1 team, many drivers never even get the chance - even tho I'm sure it was vast buckets of cash from his Dad that made it possible. I would have cut him a break if both George and Albon (and Nick!) hadn't done so much better with the same car......

It will be interesting to see who they choose, the car is improving and in the right hands it's no longer destined to start every race dead last.

Zhou is confirmed at Alfa Romeo next year.

That leaves 3 open seats on the grid for next year - Alpine, Haas and Williams. 

Singapore

I think it's interesting that the race lap record here prior to this race is held by Kmag - in a HAAS.

It's a little funny to me that they're complaining of the tropical heat - which is all of 84*!

I think this is just the beginning.....  https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1013101/1/red-bull-and-aston-martin-named-f1-budget-cap-breach-claims?fbclid=IwAR37rcfpmS9FjZfMWBWD80POHHdzv7Wm89xgJd6G7Q0S3HQsb6mg0kMrPUE (https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1013101/1/red-bull-and-aston-martin-named-f1-budget-cap-breach-claims?fbclid=IwAR37rcfpmS9FjZfMWBWD80POHHdzv7Wm89xgJd6G7Q0S3HQsb6mg0kMrPUE)

Sheesh - Latifi 4 seconds off the pace at the end of FP2.....Williams could have done so much better this year with 2 Albon caliber drivers.

New rumors have Gasly announcing this weekend that he's going to Alpine and Nyck is coming to Alpha Tauri. If so then once again Williams will be looking for a driver. HAAS may be also if they drop Schumi like the rumors are saying.

Lap times are indicating that this will be a timed race rather than based on the number of laps run.

Rained a bunch before qually and the track was drying - slowly - but it wasn't till the end of Q3 that teams got brave enough to put on the slicks.

LeClerc gets yet another pole, Verstappen was in it but was pulled off on his final lap - speculation is he was too low on fuel and wouldn't have been able to provide the required liter of fuel after qually.....a rare cock-up by Red Bull.

The Hamster has looked strong all weekend but finished 3rd behind Perez.

There's a strong chance of rain for the race tomorrow, so at this point, pretty much anything goes!

Mercedes had a costly day in another way. The teams are required to "self-scrutineer" their own cars - and while this seems to open all sorts of opportunities for cheating - they have to turn in this scrutineer's form before FP1, and they are subject to inspection at any time to see if they are in compliance with what they stated on the form. In this case the item they checked yes on was that their drivers were not wearing jewelry and the Hamster had his nose stud in. Cost them $25K Euros.

Oh, and Red Bull is rumored to have broken the cost cap in 2021 by over $10mil.....no idea how this will be  punished, points taken away, $$$ fines or what exactly, but if true they need to do something pretty emphatic, or the cost cap has no teeth.

Rain delayed the start of the Singapore GP, and since that washed off all the accumulated race rubber it left the track a greasy mess. Not quite wet enough for full wets (as Hamster found out and bitched about from the get go) but also just dry enough that it was hard on the intermediate tires too.

Checo drove a brilliant race, he got the lead before turn one and never let it go......Charles gave it his all on the last set of tires but couldn't get it done, used up his tires and finished about 7 seconds behind Sergio. That 7 seconds became important because Checo was given a 5 second penalty for safety car infringements, and Charles could have won the race had he been able to close in under 5 secs.

Sainz brought his Ferrari home third, so they scored points on Red Bull, but it's only temporarily staving off the inevitable Championship wins for both drivers and constructors for Red Bull.

Max, the Hamster and several other all had terrible races, hitting the walls, losing under braking, spins, and several into the wall and out of the race.

Alpine went from 18 points ahead of McLaren to 4 points behind as both of their cars blew the engines. I think I can understand why Alonso wanted to make a change. Aston had their best race of the season - a lot of it could have been simply because of attrition, but the bottom line is that under terrible conditions they finished in the points, Lance ahead of Sebass.

Many things to respond to after a weekend of being away from the computer.

Quote from: MiniDave on September 30, 2022, 07:55:03 AM
I think this is just the beginning.....  https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1013101/1/red-bull-and-aston-martin-named-f1-budget-cap-breach-claims?fbclid=IwAR37rcfpmS9FjZfMWBWD80POHHdzv7Wm89xgJd6G7Q0S3HQsb6mg0kMrPUE (https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1013101/1/red-bull-and-aston-martin-named-f1-budget-cap-breach-claims?fbclid=IwAR37rcfpmS9FjZfMWBWD80POHHdzv7Wm89xgJd6G7Q0S3HQsb6mg0kMrPUE)

It needs to be big.  The question is whether they decide that it is a driver and team penalty.  If so could that put Max's WDC at risk?  However, it is easily argued that Max directly benefited from the overspend (if there is one). 

Quote from: MiniDave on September 30, 2022, 07:55:03 AM
Sheesh - Latifi 4 seconds off the pace at the end of FP2.....Williams could have done so much better this year with 2 Albon caliber drivers.

This is where the economics of pay driver vs talent driver get interesting.  If you have a driver scoring points etc and then have more prize money, more exposure and therefore more sponsorship can be greater than the money a pay driver brings.

Quote from: MiniDave on September 30, 2022, 07:55:03 AM
If so then once again Williams will be looking for a driver.

They look like they are lining their junior driver, Logan Sargeant, for the drive.  Assuming he gets enough super license points.

Quote from: MiniDave on September 30, 2022, 07:55:03 AM
HAAS may be also if they drop Schumi like the rumors are saying.

The ESPN coverage said that the second seat at Haas is between Schumi Jr and Hulkenberg.  I honestly cannot see Hulkenberg being a good pick, especially as he holds the record for the most races without a podium. Unless he is bring some serious money with him.

Quote from: MiniDave on October 01, 2022, 11:09:17 AM
The Hamster has looked strong all weekend but finished 3rd behind Perez.

The amazing thing was that the we was only half a tenth from pole!

Quote from: MiniDave on October 01, 2022, 11:09:17 AM
Mercedes had a costly day in another way. The teams are required to "self-scrutineer" their own cars - and while this seems to open all sorts of opportunities for cheating - they have to turn in this scrutineer's form before FP1, and they are subject to inspection at any time to see if they are in compliance with what they stated on the form. In this case the item they checked yes on was that their drivers were not wearing jewelry and the Hamster had his nose stud in. Cost them $25K Euros.

That was an interesting side story to the weekend.  Hamilton got called up for keeping the nose stud in, he produced a doctors note saying that he had been advised to keep it in due to an infection caused by repeated removing and reinserting a piercing that is not meant to be removed often. The FIA accepted this after consulting with the FIA Medical Delegate.  They then called up Mercedes for the paperwork being incorrect.

Quote from: MiniDave on October 02, 2022, 10:56:47 AM
Max, the Hamster and several other all had terrible races, hitting the walls, losing under braking, spins, and several into the wall and out of the race.

It was good seeing some of those mistakes from the great and the average.  I loved one bit of the race when Vettel, Hamilton and Verstappen were nose to tail.  Doubt you will every see 12 world championships racing wheel to wheel ever again. Be interesting to see if some of the bumps disappear for next year.

Word on the street is that Nyck has signed with Alpha Tauri, and it will be announced before the Suzuka race, this leaves Gasly free to go to Alpeen. After both Renault engines failed in this race, Alonso has to be relieved to be moving to Aston.

Only Williams and potentially a HAAS seat to fill for next season. I don't mind that the Canadian rolling roadblock will finally be removed, but I really hope Mick gets another season to prove himself. I've seen flashes of brilliance in the lad. Imagine how well he might have done if he had his dad in the pits to help guide him?

I think Red Bull will turn out to be within the rules on the overspending, not because they didn't spend the money, but because it was divided amongst their other companies like Red Bull powertrains, Red Bull Carbon fiber, Red Bull wheels, Red Bull brakes, Red Bull seats and so on! That way they can say those companies spent the money, not Red Bull racing.   ;D

Quote from: MiniDave on September 30, 2022, 07:55:03 AM

New rumors have Gasly announcing this weekend that he's going to Alpine and Nyck is coming to Alpha Tauri. If so then once again Williams will be looking for a driver. HAAS may be also if they drop Schumi like the rumors are saying.

And Dave is right about Alpine and Alpha Tauri.

Mercedes topped the charts in FP2 in damp conditions today and about .6 quicker than the next closest team, but Red Bull says this was a little bit of a red herring as they used 3 sets of inters to do it, and the other teams only used one, saving them for qually and/or the race.

Supposed to be dry tomorrow, and probably dry Sunday, tho it could rain but they expect it not to till after the race is over.

We'll see what happens in FP3 and qually tomorrow.

And order has been restored to the world again..... ;D

Qually went as expected, Max on first, Charles about .010 behind, then Sainz, then Checo.

The Alpines came 5th and 7th, The Mercs 6th and 8th, and Vettel a solid and unexpected 9th, with Lando in the final spot.

With Nyck signing to drive an Alpha Tauri next season it looks like Danny Ricky Bobby will not be on the grid next year.

HAAS and Williams probably won't announce their second seat drivers till sometime over the off season. Mick did qualify ahead of Kmag, so there's that.....

I wonder how Alpeen will react to Gasly's melt down over his problems with his car in qually - he had brake problems - if they'll just see it as a fierce competitor unhappy that he couldn't fight, or a prima donna who will bitch in public about the Alpine if it has an issue? Their season next year could be full of drama if the two drivers can't work together......

Well, that was a fully exciting half race.   After that huge rain delay I almost thought it was going to be canceled.  Bye it sure made up for it in exciting contests up and down the field.  Kind of an anti-climatic way to win the world championship (with the five second penalty giving it to him post race) but he sure earned it. Even though he couldn't believe it himself!

Would have loved to seen the final few laps of Alonso and Vettel.

Yes, Alonso really went after it.....great stuff!

Vettel did well to finish as high as he did too.... 77.gif

And as expected Alpha Tauri quickly moved to sign Nyck Devries today.

Austin:

This was a cracker of a race!

Max managed to win after leading most of the race only to have an 11 second pit stop and getting set back to 6th - Vettel also fell victim to a long stop later in the race - his was 16 sec, but towards the final laps he was like a man possessed, passing people right and left to come back and finish 8th.

Sainz was on pole but got t-boned by George in the first turn and he was done. LeClerc started from 12th and finished on the podium. It looked like the Hamster might have managed to get his first win, but Max went on a charge and hunted him down, Max passed him about 5 laps from the end and that was that.

There was good racing thru-out the field, but the emotions were strong at Red Bull both from the win (Max's 13th) and the passing yesterday of Deitrich Mateschitz. He really brought Red Bull into the forefront of all sorts of sports - airplane racing, boats, F1, stock cars, and all of the silly things like the "soap box racers not to mention all of the sports teams they support.

Wiliams dropped the news of their second driver for 2023...US driver Logan Sargeant.....if he can get enough super license points, which it's thought he will easily do.

So the only seat not spoken for is at HAAS. I think Mick's chances of keeping his seat are getting smaller as the weeks go on - unless he can hit a big load of points at one of the few remaining races.

Organizers estimated 440,000 people showed up over the weekend! There were concerns that with the Mexican GP the next weekend that it might draw off some of the folks that come up from down south, didn't seem to be a problem..........

In today's worst kept news in F1, Audi has announced it is taking a stake in Sauber F1 and hopes to have an engine up and running by 2025......Audi has the luxury of being solely dedicated to developing a power unit as Sauber races with Ferrari power units while the other manufacturers have to balance development with active competition.

In other news, Porsche still isn't an owner of Red Bull racing. However, with the passing of Deitrich Mateschitz and Porsche's $75 billion IPO, I wonder if that might yet change?

In other F1 news......Red Bull has agreed to the FIA's fines for their breach of the spending limits for 2021. I can't decide whether this is just bullying or financial wizardry or what exactly.....at first it was reported they had breached by almost $2 million, but after a bunch of accounting.....

In the summary, it was revealed Red Bull exceeded the 2021 Cost Cap of £118,036,000 by less than 5% (£1,864.000 or 1.6%), which is a minor breach. The FIA said they acknowledge that had Red Bull applied "the correct treatment within its Full Year Reporting Documentation of their Notional Tax Credit within its 2021 submission of a value of £1,431,438" and therefore they would have exceeded the cap by $432,652 or 0.37%.

So, they have to pay an immediate $7million fine and they lose 10% of their time in the wind tunnel and doing CFD.....

I'm all for following the rules and such, but to breach by $400K vs a $141 million budget, and get a $7 million fine and the loss of tunnel time seems pretty draconian. I'm sure this is the FIA flexing its muscles and making sure no one ever does it again, but come on......so now F1 teams need to employ droves of accountants to make sure they hide their over budget expenses better?

Mexico:

Max has the chance to become the record holder for # of races won in a season, and probably put it out of reach to ever be broken in the future as the teams become even more evenly competitive next year. Given what we've seen this year, Mercedes promises to be back in the mix for wins next year, Ferrari will feature in at least a couple and Red Bull will also be right back at the top. Who knows if Alpine, Aston and McLaren might also be in the mix? Even tho the number of races is expanded for next season to 24, giving one driver the opportunity to win more than Max has this season, I highly doubt it will happen.....

Mexico:

What a snooze fest......unless you count the two MBZ driver's unending bitching about how the pit wall made the wrong choice on tires for their second stint......

Congrats to Max for setting yet another record in this season - 14 races won in one season and 9 in a row, and I don't think he's done yet. With 2 more races to go I think it's very possible he could run the table.

Ferrari were also-rans in this one, finishing 5th and 6th.....

The only real excitement came late in the race when somebody somehow lit a fuse under Danny Ricky Bobby and he absolutely was on fire, passing about 5 or 6 people in the course of just a few laps, and putting more than 10 seconds over 8th place coming from as low as 18th.....which was handy as he had a 10 second penalty for putting Yuki out of the race.

The Hamster finished 16 sec back of Max, so while the MBZ has clearly made progress thru this season, they aren't quite there unless somehow the track suits their car to a T or the Reds Bull have an issue. But I think there could be a real fight between the top teams next year for wins and podiums, and I really doubt anyone will ever have a year again like Max did this season.

Based solely on the failure rate of the Renault engines, I think Alonso is looking forward to next season with a Merc Motor in his Aston - he blew up after running a solid 7th almost the whole race, Ocon finished 8th. But considering that Vettel and Stroll finished 14th and 15th out of the 18 cars running at the end, I'm still not sure he's made a good move......time will tell I guess.

Albon finished 12th in the Williams and was in it hard till Danny Ricky Bobby went flying by, but he finished well ahead of Vettel, Stroll, the two woeful HAAS cars and of course, Latifi - who finished dead last - again.
Logan Sargeant HAS to be considered a breath of fresh air to the Williams team, even if he is a rookie and will make mistakes, especially early on.

Danny Ric had the best strategy, and it is in the one that George wanted.

Hamilton's team assumed that Max and Checo would have to 2 stop as they started on the softs, and that is why the went with the hard.  This is one of the issues with the tires in F1 at the moment, in my opinion.  They need a bigger performance and durability differential between the different compounds.  So if you did have one driver do a 2 stop on softs, softs and mediums and then another 1 stop on mediums and hards, by the end of the race they should be pretty close.

The end of Latifi's F1 career cannot come soon enough, he was over 50 seconds behind the next car.  And I do not remember him having an issue during the race to cause an extra pit stop or anything like that.

Looks like Mick's time with HAAS will end for sure this season, and they've decided to hire the Hulk instead.... I'm just happy they saw that Giovinazzi wasn't the right choice.

They've also discussed changing powerplant suppliers, but I have no idea where they might go - Renault would like another customer team but I can't see that as a good choice given Red Bull's experience with them and Alpine's current woes - Alonso has had 5 retirements this season, that has to wear on a guy. I don't know if Honda (nee Red Bull powerplants?) would take on another team or not.

Audi's entrance into the championship will bring a breath of fresh air into it, not that I think they'll be winning right out of the box, but just to bring another option for powerplants onto the grid. I do hope they come out of the gates strong tho....

Porsche's entry into the sport is not dead, but I'm not sure who they would partner with if not Red Bull, that actually seemed like a good fit to me.

BTW......how did you all like the Mariachi version of the F1 into song? I really liked it, and now I hope they do this for other countries as well!

Haas changing power plant suppliers is one of the more complex on the grid as they actually take as many parts as possible from Ferrari.  Basically anything that is not classed as a "Listed " part they buy from Ferrari - they design the minimum themselves. 

I know that was true when they started up, but now isn't it just down to powerunit and gearbox?

Still, major work to do that, no question.

I think that's why I think Audi buying Sauber is such a good move for them to get into F1......they have established facilities including an up to date wind tunnel and good suppliers already on board. "All" Audi have to do is build a competitive engine, and they've got basically 3 years to get that done, now that the rules have been set in stone for 2026.

That's also why Andretti coming in from scratch isn't such a good move unless they want to run in the back every race - then we'd have two American teams fighting for 20th!   ::)  50.gif

In the meantime, I assume Sauber will carry on with Ferrari power units.....Alfa branded for next season, but I wonder how they'll brand the cars in 24 and 25 after the Alfa sponsorship ends? Audi powered by Ferrari? Or Sauber/Ferrari? Or do like Aston did putting their name on a Merc engine? Or the Infinity branded Renaults?

Brazil - qually:

1) Kmag - HAAS
2) Verstappen
3) Russell
4) Norris
5) Sainz (5 place grid penalty for engine change)
Everyone else.......

Well, Kevin finished 8th, pretty much where he usually does. Mick had a pretty strong race too, coming from dead last to finish 12th. Of course, today was the relatively short Sprint race.....but once again they showed that the HAAS is not a last place car this year. With the Hulk coming aboard next season, maybe they'll have two cars in the points on a regular basis? I still wish they would have given Mick another season, but se la vie.

In other big news, Geroge Russell gets his maiden F1 win......if a Merc had to win one I'm glad it was George. But, tomorrow will be interesting, since the finishing order in the Sprint race determines the start order for the main event tomorrow, by finishing 1st and 3rd (Sainz came 2nd, but has a 5 spot engine penalty) the Mercs are both on the front row.....so this is their best chance to finally win one in 2022. Both MBZ's looked strong but they were on a different tire strategy from the Red Bull and Ferraris.

Its C'est la vie

I enjoyed the GP.  Best part was maiden GP victory for George.

Verstappen revealed his true colors at the end by not letting Checo back through.  There was a bunch of articles straight afterwards about the number of times that Checo has compromised his race to help Verstappen.  A number state that the only reason Verstappen won the F1 title last year was for the help he got from Checo.  Verstappen also said that he knew that Hamilton was going to close the door and chose to crash into him.  He said a couple of other things that basically he knew he was not competitive so he lost nothing and it was good Hamilton lost a chance of victory.

LeClerc had a good recovery from being in the barrier after the restart to 4th.  Although his pleading to get Sainz to give up his podium for his 2nd place in the championship fight was a little pathetic.

Alonso's relationship with Ocon is over.  With Alonso saying he can't wait until he is with Aston Martin.  It will be interesting to see how Ocon gets on with Gasly. Ocon seems to have a history of irritating his team mates.

There was a weird situation where Tsunoda was not able to unlap himself under the safety car. The FIA explained this was due to him "unlapping" himself when coming into the pits and then he was lapped again so the system got confused.  Ultimately he did the right thing and pulling out of the way on the run to the green flag for the restart.

McLaren had a terrible race with Danny Ric knocking out KMag and Lando (on his birthday) having a failure.  This means that McLaren have all but lost the 4th place in the championship, they are 21 points behind Alpine.  So need a great Abu Dhabi and Alpine need a terrible one.

I agree on all points.....

I've been saying for a while that the Mercs were getting stronger all year and were due to win one before the end of the season.....I'm glad it was George tho!

It was an extremely emotional win for George, and I'm sure it's only the beginning....he's got the makings of a champion, but I think IF Ferrari get their act together along with Red Buls continued dominance next season will be a real bell ringer!

Sainz did great to hold onto 3rd, and LeClerc coming back from his outing was fantastic - all in all a good race for the boys in red.

Next season will be interesting with some new faces and a couple old boys changing teams.

Abu Dabi:

A real nail biter at the end, not for the win but for second place - also for Vettel as there was $12mil on the line for Aston if he passed Ricciardo for 9th, but he came up just short, as did Perez gunning for 2nd on LeClerc.

The Hamster's Merc failed 3 laps from the end, so he went all season without a win - first time since he's been in F1. However, I think the Mercs will be winning at least a couple next season. Their reliability has been amazing as Hamsters car is the first to fail this season for them.

Max set an absolutely unattainable record of 15 wins in a season, I don't think it will ever be broken as F1 is set on making the cars more and more equal and they have taken a pretty good step towards that goal this season.....Max not withstanding.

Quite an end to the season, next year they are planning for 24 races, so power unit penalties may become part of the race strategy even more than it did this season.

Oh, before the race the Hamster got all the drivers together for dinner as a farewell to Seb, Ham picked up the tab which was rumored to be $140K!!!!!

Hell of a year for George to finish 4th in the driver's championship and ahead of Hammy in 6th. Also Alonso finished well behind his teammate....

So Red Bull drivers 1st and 3rd, Ferrari 2nd and 5th, Mercedes 4th and 6th - clearly the top three teams were well above the rest this year. I fully expect it to be the same next year tho the driver's order may change up a bit.

One last thought, you really have to hand it to Honda, they've built a competitive, reliable power unit to go with Adrian Newey's superb chassis.

Good points Dave.

Now comes 3.5 months of no F1.  I guess I'm going to have watch the Netflix show. I watched a little bit of it before, but really didn't warm up to it. I'll give it a second chance.

Perhaps the final news from F1 for the year, is Ferrari's team boss Mattia Binotto has resigned and will leave the team at the end of the year. 

The interesting thing is that he effective filled two roles for Ferrari, leading both the technical and race team operations. 

Current Alfa Romeo boss, Fred Vassar, is slated to fill the team boss role.  The issue will be replacing the technical role as it can take months and months to a) identify the replacement and b) negotiate them out of their existing role.

If Fred is the answer to Ferrari's woes, why isn't Alfa further up the grid?

I liked his quip (referring to Christian Horner?) about since $2 million is "nothing", now they have 5 times "nothing"..... :grin: