The F1 thread

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Sun Mar 21, 2021 12:51 pm

I used to dislike Christian when Red Bull were always winning, as he was on camera so frequently saying the same stuff that it was boring. Now however I appreciate the fact that he's relatively open and honest. I have no doubt that other team principles are just as ruthless and willing to do their talking in boardrooms and stewards offices than on the track, they're just not as up-front about it.

My opinion of Vettel improved massively once he left Red Bull. He's just so laid back and friendly these days, and it never quite felt like Ferrari, a team that I've always seen as too serious and arrogant, would be a good fit for him. I'm really looking forward to seeing him at Aston Martin.

There's a lot of promise in this upcoming season, which begins this week. Mercedes didn't have a great showing in pre-season testing, and although you can't read too much into that, it's their worst pre-season test in years. The Red Bull looked much more planted and consistent than it did in 2020 testing, and obviously they now have Perez in the second car so I'm expecting a bit more of a challenge to Max. Honda brought their 2022 design forward to leave Red Bull in a better position when Honda leave the sport at the end of the year - they're saying that they think their new 2021 design is stronger than Mercedes' 2020 offering. I guess we'll see on that one. Aston Martin are a bit of an unknown, coming off the back of a remarkable 2020 now with far better financial backing, the question will be whether they've managed to develop their copied design, or whether they'll slip back towards the rest of the midfield. Will Ferrari have solved their terrible power unit performance? Will McLaren be successful after their power unit change? They couldn't have done it at a worse time, with the least pre-season testing I think ever, and an extremely limited number of development tokens available.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:51 pm

So The Race published a video today suggesting reasons that the new aero rules for 2021 may be hurting Mercedes. Frankly I think the problems Mercedes seemingly had in testing are a false hope and that they'll be dominating by the end of the season as ever, but it does give a good visualisation and explains the reasoning behind all of those silly little fiddly aero parts on the lower half of the car, something I've never quite managed to get my head around until now.


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Re: The F1 thread

Post by DjchunKfunK » Mon Mar 29, 2021 9:02 am

Hamilton proved once again how great a driver he is. That was a fun race with a grandstand finish, hopefully we get more races like that this season.

One note on the Sky coverage, this season they have introduced a picture-in-picture mode where they can show action from further down the field. I get how this can be useful as you can show two things at once but during this GP it felt like this meant less focus on the fights further down the field and a lot more looking at the cars at the front just going round and round the track.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Mon Mar 29, 2021 11:43 am

Yup, it was a good first GP. It's so refreshing to have an actual race right at the front, and not have an overtake just be a matter of time. With an extra couple of laps I reckon Max would have gotten him. Here's hoping both teams manage to develop their cars; Mercedes have already said that they think they understand why their car is weaker and may being an update to the next race.

And what a great drive by Perez. Obviously he had the fastest car on the circuit, but he still had a hell of a lot of ground to make up given he started from the pit lane and then made an extra pitstop early just to add insult to injury.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Mar 29, 2021 12:20 pm

I'm weirdly hopeful that Mazepin is a new Maldonado based on him buying his way into F1 and having nowhere near the requisite skill. As much as F1 is about the best drivers in the world, having one or two drivers clearly out of their depth provides great entertainment.

Maybe it's unfair to judge him after one race where he crashed without good reason on lap 1, but honestly, going by the nasty reputation he built for himself before the season started, I'm just going to point and laugh for now. :lol:

Overall it looks like there's some good action across the entire field. I really hope Red Bull manage to keep up their advantage because Hamilton has already shown how near-impossible it is to pass him.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by DjchunKfunK » Mon Mar 29, 2021 1:26 pm

Wrathbone wrote:
Mon Mar 29, 2021 12:20 pm
I'm weirdly hopeful that Mazepin is a new Maldonado based on him buying his way into F1 and having nowhere near the requisite skill. As much as F1 is about the best drivers in the world, having one or two drivers clearly out of their depth provides great entertainment.

Maybe it's unfair to judge him after one race where he crashed without good reason on lap 1, but honestly, going by the nasty reputation he built for himself before the season started, I'm just going to point and laugh for now. :lol:

Overall it looks like there's some good action across the entire field. I really hope Red Bull manage to keep up their advantage because Hamilton has already shown how near-impossible it is to pass him.
He looked terrible and didn't only spin in the race, he also spun in qualifying and multiple times in free practice, the guy looks well out of his depth.
With an extra couple of laps I reckon Max would have gotten him.
Maybe but after the race Verstappan said his tyres had gone off which was why he couldn't catch Hamliton after he gave the place back so I don't think it was a certainty.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Mon Mar 29, 2021 3:50 pm

Yeah, definitely not a certainty, but Lewis' tyres were 11 laps older so his performance ought to have been degrading too. I just think that the insanely powerful DRS yesterday (I think there was a headwind down the main straight) meant that the person behind had a massive advantage in a faster car, which the Red Bull seemed to be this week.

And yeah, I admit to laughing out loud when Mazepin spun without involvement from anyone else, but then Schumacher went and made an identical spin within a few laps. Schumacher has been both F3 and F2 champion, so I don't think he's just riding his father's coattails, there's clearly some talent there. I can only imagine how blue Guenther Steiner's radio transmissions were after both of his brand new drivers ended up facing backwards. :lol:

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Rossell » Mon Mar 29, 2021 7:52 pm


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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Mon Mar 29, 2021 8:28 pm

Someone on Reddit linked to this clip from an F2 race from (I think) last year. If anyone's wondering why Mazepin has such a poor reputation (well, over and above the sexual assault), watch how he handles himself on track:



There was an incident between Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher in Hungary in 2010 where Schumacher defended so hard that he almost put Barrichello in the wall. Imagine if he had driven all the way across a wide track to do it, and then did it another three times in the same race.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Drarok » Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:31 am

Surprised to find no comments in this thread after yesterday's race!

Some great racing on show from a lot of people, the RBs both got off to a great start, and you can really see VER has matured as a driver and spent time making his elbows as big as possible. Perfectly within the rules, he schooled HAM in the opening few turns.

Great to see McLaren on the podium again, especially when it's NOR. It was pretty funny the juxtaposition of HAM saying "ah well, onto the next race, we'll do better" vs Lando's "woooo yeaaaahhhh!!!".

I'm excited for this close racing to continue, it's great to watch!

Edit: and I was kept waiting a long time for a Mazespin, but we still got one!
Raid wrote:
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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:46 am

Yeah, it's great to see Verstappen finally getting a car capable of challenging Hamilton, and he really did prove his racing chops at the start. I don't know whether it was just the effect of DRS, but my word was Lewis a monstrously fast opponent yesterday, picking off the Mclarens and Ferraris like they were back markers with blue flags. Obviously the conditions were really tricky yesterday - I don't think many drivers drove a perfect race, but it's nice to see that Lewis isn't the flawless robot he sometimes appears to be behind the wheel.

But what the hell happened to Bottas yesterday? The Channel 4 team barely mentioned him, and he seemed to be languishing in the midfield unable to pass much slower cars. I don't even mean the incident with Russell (for which I squarely lay the blame at Russell's feet by the way); he just seemed to be nowhere. I can't remember exactly the state of the race at the time, but was he really being overtaken by a Williams?

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Rossell » Mon Apr 19, 2021 12:17 pm


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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Apr 19, 2021 12:53 pm

Raid wrote:
Mon Apr 19, 2021 9:46 am
But what the hell happened to Bottas yesterday? The Channel 4 team barely mentioned him, and he seemed to be languishing in the midfield unable to pass much slower cars. I don't even mean the incident with Russell (for which I squarely lay the blame at Russell's feet by the way); he just seemed to be nowhere. I can't remember exactly the state of the race at the time, but was he really being overtaken by a Williams?
Bottas is a deflated balloon at the moment. I think he's finally accepted that he's never going to beat Hamilton across a season and he's coasting out his contract. The last time I remember seeing any fight in him was at the start of last season, but Hamilton quickly kerb-stomped that out of him. It does make it tricky to assess the comparative performance of the Mercedes this year, because Bottas is under-performing while Hamilton seems to be squeezing every last bean of performance. His recovery was staggering. I reckon most other drivers would have retired after a few revs in the gravel to see if it would move.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Raid » Sun Jun 06, 2021 7:16 pm

Barely a comment in two months despite this probably being the most exciting start to a season in years. There are genuinely two teams at the front for the first time in ages, and Red Bull's second driver has already come good while Bottas seems to be dying a death. I can't remember whether Mercedes have ever been overtaken in the constructors championship since these V6 engines were introduced, but here we are with Red Bull leading.
Spoiler
Wow. There was quite a lot of swearing when Verstappen crashed out. There was quite a bit more when I realised they were going to do a standing start for a two lap restart, and I fully expected Lewis to jump Perez. But then Lewis pressed the wrong button on his steering wheel, effectively turning off his brakes (I'm not exactly sure what it did, I suspect it took away the regenerative braking by the ERS that does a lot of the braking work), and ended up matching his championship rival's points haul for the race as he dropped to last place. I'm absolutely delighted, not just because one of my favourite drivers won only his second race, but because Sebastian Vettel managed to get back onto the podium after a pretty dreadful start to the season.

And as is becoming something of a trend; what the hell happened to Bottas? Beaten by both Alpha Tauris, both Alfa Romeos and an Alpine? This is getting embarrassing now. I think there's going to have to be discussions of replacing him mid-season to give Russell a head start on 2022.

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Re: The F1 thread

Post by Wrathbone » Mon Jun 07, 2021 7:12 am

I wonder if there will be serious consideration over reprimanding or even ditching Pirelli now. It doesn't seem like anyone's been happy with them for years, and if teams can't trust them on safety / reliability then they have some major issues to address.

Still, adding a few explosives to random tyres does result in an exciting end to a race...

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