The Gamers Arms

I'm not sure if it's because I was watching in a post-wedding stupor, but the whole race had an air of oddity about it. The lacklustre on-track action, the thing with the recovery vehicle on track that Gasly had to avoid and the confusion at the end were all a bit weird. Even the C4 Verstappen interview before the race was bizarre, as he was suggesting he might retire from F1 sooner rather than later because he's not keen on all the travelling about*.

*EDIT - Actually I think he said he'd probably leave at the end of his Red Bull contract, which is 6 years away, but he'd still only be 31. Funny when you consider that most of Hamilton's title wins came in his 30s, but I guess drivers keep driving for different reasons (money, lots of money, big sacks of money, etc ).

See, I thought it was because I just didn't really care any more, and because I didn't bother watching any of the build up (I turned it on when I knew C4 would be showing the formation lap), but everything about the race felt subdued and I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe it was the fact that the pundits had been sitting around for two hours during the red flag period and had talked themselves out, maybe it was jet lag or the fact that it was 6am UK time, maybe all of the presenters were as tired of the feigned hope that Ferrari somehow still had a chance too when everyone already knew Max had the championship in the bag three months ago. Hell, I even noticed it on F1's own Youtube highlights of the practice sessions; the presenter had a distinctly softer tone than usual for P1 and P3 - I put it down to her being based in the UK but needing to record voiceover for something that would be uploaded quite early, but it seemed to pervade the entire weekend. I might be reading too much of my own lack of feeling into it.

No, that's exactly what I took from it. Maybe there's some bad air in the paddock that can't be reported on yet for whatever reason.

No doubt Red Bull will appeal, but assuming they’re rebuffed then I hope the FIA make an example of them. Even ignoring the dubious way in which Verstappen ‘won’ the 2021 championship, a marginal amount of extra points throughout the season would have given Hamilton the title, which means Red Bull going over the cap almost certainly made the difference. If there was any justice they’d strip Verstappen of that title, but I’d be amazed if they did anything that dramatic.

Oh, and it should go without saying that Horner should be punted unceremoniously out of F1 for good.

Teams have been disqualified from races for extremely minor technical infringements like a wing being a couple of millimetres outside of one particular dimension. A minor 5% budget cap breach, to the tune of $7.5million sounds like a pretty big breach to me, but at the same time the FIA will probably be lenient because that championship is already something of a bad memory and they probably don't want to overturn the result twice through meddling, regardless of how correct it is.

And the funny thing is that Mercedes were absolutely dominant at the end of the year; remember Hamilton going from 20th in the Sprint race through to winning in the Grand Prix in Brazil? The damning thing is that Red Bull couldn't (or shouldn't have) beat them even while cheating.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/63421741

Sounds like the FIA aren’t going to do anything to change the 2021 result, which isn’t surprising. But the cited limitation in development could theoretically hamper them for a future season, though I imagine it’s too late to have much impact on the start of 2023. If it scuppers their in-season development capability then I guess it could be severe enough to deny them the championship.

Qualifying summed up Ferrari’s season in a nugget:

LeClerc - “Am I the only one on inters?”

Ferrari - “Yes, we think it’s the right choice.”

Narrator - It was the wrong choice.

So apparently Mattia Binotto is being replaced as Ferrari team principal by Fred Vasseur (currently running Alfa Romeo) for next year. I suppose something had to change given Ferrari have been a laughing stock for at least the second half of this season, and Alfa have been doing pretty well recently, so it's perhaps not a bad move.

Edit: Although Ferrari have since refuted the rumour, and Alfa aren't commenting.

And on Verstappen's refusal to let his teammate back through in Brazil (which was a pretty good race incidentally); he really is a petulant little arsehole, isn't he? There's a very good chance that Hamilton would have won last year's championship without Perez' incredible defending against him late in the race, as it prevented Lewis from taking a pitstop to change tyres, and old tyres were the reason that Verstappen got him on the last lap restart. Even if Perez did crash on purpose in this year's Monaco qualifying, which is what is rumoured to be behind Verstappen's outburst on sunday, Perez has let him through multiple times this year to Max's advantage. Why the hell would you piss off your fast, supportive teammate, and the rest of your team for that matter, for absolutely no gain?

Also if you’re going to go against team orders for no personal gain and a direct detriment to the team, it’s probably best not to do it on a race where you caused a collision and got a penalty that sent you a fair way down the grid. Verstappen probably thinks he’s untouchable within the team, but I’m sure something like this will have a big red circle around it when it comes to contact negotiations. Such a dumb decision from him.

So teams have started revealing their "new" "cars" over the last few days. They're seldom more than livery launches these days as the cars that turn up on day one of testing have entirely new parts on them. A few teams have actually run the new car on the same day, so it's not as bad as previous years. Anyway I'm noticing a trend:



Almost every car this year has a sizeable amount of black in the design, seemingly to hide the fact that there's also going to be a lot of bare (or minimally coated) carbon fibre, because there are multiple kilograms of paint on an F1 car and removing it is low-hanging fruit compared to spending the now limited budgets on designing lighter components.

It's certainly going to be a drearier grid in 2023.

Haas sponsored by Palm Angels? Is that some kind of masturbatory service?

Whatever they are, they aren't paying much. Haas can't even afford a full shark fin.

The Haas is actually a really odd looking car from that angle; it looks like almost every other team have the air intake from the roll hoop descend into the body of the car at roughly the same angle, but Haas' is much steeper and results in them having this odd hump at the rear.

"Odd hump at the rear" being their backup to Palm Angels.

Dreary?! They look aggressive and awesome to my eye. Mostly.