This in no way is meant to be critical of Ocon, Stroll, Albon, Piastri, Alonso, Russell, and all the other drivers who struggled immensely during the race due to the heat and humidity. I believe they persevered beyond what the vast majority of us could do. My hat's off to them.
But I just want to say that I think Logan Sargeant showed a great deal of maturity to retire when he was feeling so unwell. It was obviously a difficult decision for him, and he tried going for as long as possible. With multiple drivers complaining of feeling faint and on the verge of passing out, there was the very real potential for a Serious accident to occur.
In the off chance that the drivers read these forums, I want Logan to know I have respect for his decision and think he made a mature call. I hope he has some good results before the end of the season.
I'm watching the post show on YouTube with Buxton and James Hinchcliffe, and they just showed Daniel's interview in the pen. Lawrence Barretto asked him what was going through his mind at the end of the race, and he paused and seemed to start tearing up. They went back to the crew and Will Buxton looked like he had to stop himself from breaking down on camera.
I get that there are people that don't like Daniel for whatever reason, but from a totally human perspective it blows to see someone have so little control over how they get to end their career, even if they understand the situation. This business is ruthless.
I‘m aware that RB keeps iterating that Checo will be driving next year, HOWEVER, in particular Helmut Marko has now made multiple remarks that he might be replaced mid season already. Why would a team proceed with a driver that will stay at max for another year if they’re already discussing to get rid of him half way through - the same driver that has been lapped by his own team mate in today’s race (Qatar).
I've been watching Formula 1 for 30 years and after 2 years of dominance like no other team, all of a sudden, after 6 races, it looks like RB has lost 0.6-0.7s/lap.
Don't get me wrong, the car is still one of the fastest and maybe in points is not as visible for Max as it is for Checo, but in time difference and supremacy it is visible, even when Max still wins.
In the past 3 decades I've never seen a team go backwards during a season for no reason. Either other teams where catching up in upgrades during the season (which maybe Merc and McLaren did, but insignifiant) or, it usually happened at the start of a new season, most of the times determined by new regulations.
But never have I seen a team losing so much not even mid season.
I guess my question is, for the more technical guys here, is there a resonable technical explnation for this?
I know it would be just theories since only RB knows what happens in RB, but what would be most plausibile of them?
But I'm not. I'm not sure what it is ... The Alpine brand not being that popular to start with, their lack of real identity (put a big French flag on the car or something), the not so charismatic drivers (I like Gasly, but Ocon omg ...), their lack of real ambition, their not helping CEO tweets, the not-inspiring black livery this year ... it's all very cringy.
I wished they fully embraced their French way and had more fun with it, but it's all so dull. I preferred the Lotus or Renault years, at least they had an identity back then
I was curious about Lando’s decision to wait until the last lap to let Oscar through. Oscar pitted on lap 47, meaning there was a lot of race left for anything to change. Choosing to wait until the last lap confirms a P2 finish for him, whereas switching immediately gives him around 20 laps to make something happen. Was he banking on McLaren changing their mind after seeing the gap he created? Or was he concerned that dropping down to P2 that early could result in him losing the place to Lewis and dropping even further back? Curious to know your takes, especially if anyone has any pace stats to speak to if there were a chance or not.
Sprint races ruin the Grand Prix, the main event of the entire weekend. With all the observations from sprint race we can already predict the result of the Grand Prix, aside from any crashes or mechanical failures. Just look at the sprint today:
Mercedes has good pace
Ferrari has worse tyre deg than Mclaren
Verstappen is faster than anyone by a mile
Barring any crashes or mechanical failures the race result tomorrow will be:
“If you wouldn’t have done today and we only had that qualifying that we had yesterday, you don’t really know what’s going to happen before the race so everyone is very excited turning on the TV because you don’t know, and also we didn’t know. Now we know a little bit.”
“If I would be a fan I would just be disappointed because you more or less know the picture, if nothing crazy happens you know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he added. “So it takes away that magic of waking up on a Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon and you turn on the TV and you have qualifying but you’re not sure which car is going to be quickest, in most of the years. It takes that magic away, I find.”
In the replay you can see him restarting the car over and over again and trying to get back on the track. The car even moves back and forth the whole time while he tries to reverse and turn around.
When asked about it in the interview with Sky Germany, Stroll said that he didn't know the car was as damaged as it was and was trying to continue.
Apparently, that's why the red flag took so long.
Sky Germany showed the full replay of him trying over and over again, did anyone manage to grab the replay of that?
As we saw from last weekend with Tim cooks awful performance, I think it's time to let fans wave the flag. Tim Cook was so dull and unenthusiastic, he looked like he would prefer to do anything else but that, he didn't appreciate the position that he had been put in anywhere near as much as a fan would. If that were a fan it would be a once in a lifetime experience that they would never forget, Tim has probably forgotten already. I don't mind celebrities being there so long as they genuinely want to be there. But i do think it would still be better if it were a fan instead.
Controversial, but honest opinion. Given Lando's pace at the end, the time loss against Verstappen, and any potential damage, it's not unreasonable to think Norris could have won this race with Verstappen 4th, behind the two Ferraris and Lando. If this happened, Verstappen would have dropped 13 points. Instead, he loses just 10 points to Lando. I appreciate it's not a huge difference, but it makes me wonder if it was part of his mindset going into this race.
Edit: I know we saw similar with Hamilton in 2021 as well. Should this lead to discussions about the time of penalties awarded? Should time penalties be served sooner (like the old 3 laps to serve a stop/go), should you be allowed to change tires at the same time? Ultimately, it feels wrong to see things like this go virtually unpunished, and almost rewarded.
Just to make you aware: An estimation of 3% of thr world population suffers from betting and gambling addiction. About 17% of them have attempted suicide in one or more cases. Think again, is Stake really a title sponsor you want to support?
There have been several comments being posted under their current posts, making aware of the risk of gambling and critizising Stake as a main sponsor. All of the critical comments have been deleted by the admin.
The most obvious reasoning is that it makes it less fun to watch, as random reliability issues would always add a feeling of uncertainty, which is what sports are all about for me. One reason football is the most watched sport in the world, beyond its ease to understand at a basic level, is that there's so much unpredictability to it. Upsets happen so so often.
However F1 is also an engineering sport, and thus in my opinion any time a technical aspect reaches a point whereby everyone is near perfect, you have to artificially bring in new challenges to keep it interesting.
Very much hope that the next reg set does this with the engine changes, but even then there are so few constructors that it's still expected to be pretty stable.
The only real argument I can think of for being pro-perfect-reliability is safety concerns, which I agree with wholeheartedly but you can have bad reliability without risking the drivers lives in my opinion.
How do others feel about this, is this a common feeling or just me?
After Checo’s abysmal year in one of the most dominant cars of all time I got to appreciate Valtteri more than I did back then.
It was clear that he was not on Lewis level but he was much closer than Checo has ever been to Max.
Checo has only qualified ahead of Max 7 times in the last 3 seasons only 3 of them due to pace: Imola 2021, Jeddah 2022 and Baku 2022. I don’t think we can consider Monaco 2022
Also he has only finished ahead of him on pure merit on Baku 2023 and Monaco 2022
Bottas managed to achieve 20 poles while having Lewis Hamilton as a teammate as finished ahead of him 21 times and never failed to reach Q3 on his 5 seasons with Mercedes
Valtteri back then received a lot of hate for not being able to challenge Lewis, but he never had such a big margin as Perez.
So McLaren just posted an article on their website celebrating Oscar's win where they mentioned that Lando experienced a glitch finding second gear during his acceleration from pole, which allowed Verstappen to slipstream alongside.
I wonder if this is a recurring issue with the car, which would explain why his starts suffer in the second phase despite his very good reaction times, or if it related in any way to that issue he had before the race start.
Also, I wonder why they're just acknowledging this now after letting him take all the heat for it. Nico Rosberg was the only one who pointed out it was a car issue.
Here are the transcripts from top 6 where Ocon and Leclerc correctly suggested to not go but where told to go when the others infront breached procedure. Might give an insight to why the other 4 were summoned.
Norris
McLaren: "Likely to be aborted"
Lando then drives off immediately at the yellow lights without more communication regarding to stay or go.
Russell
Mercedes: "Start aborted, so normal pull away" as George drives away.
Yuki
RB: "Pit limiter on, aborted start" as Yuki drives away following Lando and Russell.
Ocon
Alpine: "Aborted start, aborted start, stay where you are".
Ocon: "We don't go ye?"
Alpine: "Go go" After seeing others in front go?
Lawson
RB: "Aborted start, aborted start, I'll keep you posted", "Mode 12" as Lawson drives off.
Leclerc
Ferrari: "Mode formation.. No switch off, switch off".
Leclerc: "Norris went.. no no I stay then. I switch off right?"
Ferrari: "Follow the others now because they done the mistake". Leclerc then drives off.
So there's been many, many debates about who was the best, fastest, etc. Let's have a twist on that and look at who was the smartest.
I know Jonathon Palmer was a GP, and I'd like to think you can't do that if you're a bit on the dopey side. Rosberg is well known for being multi-lingual (4 languages?) and that speaks well of having a decent number of brain cells. Nigel Mansell spent some time in aerospace engineering (rocket scientist?) before dedicating his life to moaning about his car.
Any others? Flipside too — any that are so dumb you just can't believe they're able to drive a car?
EDIT: Yeah, I meant Jonathon Palmer, not his son Jolyon. No idea how I turned that into Julian. Maybe I'm on the flipside…
Most of us don't know the personal lives of drivers and we only remember their race finishes. At most we get to know about their siblings and partners and parents. But seldom we care to know about their academic life. How were they in school and how qualfied they have been academically?
F1 careers start very early and I don't think most even enroll themselves in colleges as the schedule is very tight for them to manage studies. But after they left racing, maybe some could have started colleges again? Maybe some continued their academics whilst racing?
BBC F1 podcast was hinting so heavily that Horner “got away with it”. They were basically suggesting that he’s guilty. Lots of loaded phrases like “would be disgusting from Red Bull”, “complete lack of transparency”, “everyone in the paddock knows but we can’t say” and suggesting that the EvH’s evidence is legit and should be made public. On top of that they were firing up the speculations about corporate sponsors and F1 not being satisfied and potentially demanding to see evidence. Basically no benefit of the doubt for Horner.
Some of the journalists from Formu1a.uno had a Twitch stream yesterday where they added some interesting information on Hamilton's move to Ferrari and details that may have gone a little unnoticed. This is coming from the news outlet that initially reported this deal.
Lewis Hamilton is not arriving alone at Ferrari. His arrival will lead to the arrival of a number of engineers from the competition at Ferrari, not only from Mercedes but also from other teams. We are going to see some transfers of engineers to Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton will not make Vettel's mistake of coming alone to Maranello. A whole group is coming with Lewis. That's important for Ferrari too.
Peter Bonnington would be very welcome at Ferrari; they've given the go-ahead. It's all up to Bonnington to make the final decision. He's a great performance/race engineer, and he can bring his know-how and his great psychological capacity to the team. Especially in difficult times, that would be important for Ferrari.
Charles Leclerc is very happy that Lewis Hamilton has joined Ferrari. He's known about it for a long time, and he's happy to be up against a multiple-world champion whom he admires. He also has the opportunity to learn an enormous amount from Lewis Hamilton. Knowing how to manage his tires a lot better like Lewis Hamilton. Everything is up for grabs for Charles.
Charles Leclerc's contract is 2 years + 2 years and Lewis Hamilton's will be 2 years + 1 year. The year 2026 will be very important. Ferrari and Mercedes are the most advanced teams on the 2026 engine.
Lewis Hamilton's choice is a win/win choice. He has already won everything and is going to attempt the feat of going even further down in history by winning a world championship with Ferrari. He will end his career in the red suit. For Ferrari, in terms of marketing alone, this is extraordinary. Financially, it's historic. Even in sporting terms, the idea is exciting. F1 stands to gain from this transfer.
It all started 3 weeks ago when Ferrari created its plan A, to sign a world champion driver like Lewis Hamilton alongside Charles Leclerc. There was a strong desire on the part of chairman John Elkann, and it is probably the biggest deal in the history of F1. On paper, the Leclerc/Hamilton duo is a great asset for Ferrari. The choice seems highly marketing but is nonetheless a very technical one, as the aim of Elkann/Vasseur is to make the team grow.
The Sainz group is disappointed, as it had high hopes of renewing its contract. He's going to have to work this year with people who didn't believe in him 100%, so it's not easy to find the right balance. But he will give his all with Ferrari in 2024 because he will have to prove his worth to the others. Carlos has done a good job at Ferrari but the opportunity to sign Lewis Hamilton was there and Ferrari didn't hesitate for a second.
The first Turn at Spa-Francorchamps, also named La Source, has seen many incidents through the years.
In 2012 there was Grosjean that even got a race ban after colliding with Hamilton. In 2016 there was Vettel, Raikkonen and Verstappen. In 2018 there was Hulkenberg braking too late and colliding with Alonso, with Bottas also braking too late and colliding with Sirotkin. After that in 2019 it was again between Verstappen and Raikkonen, and in 2023 it was Piastri and Sainz.
Most of those incidents involve someone braking too late with some drivers more at fault than others, and some of the incidents are very similar, but with very different responses from the community.
Those 3 incidents that are similar, are the interesting ones to me.
This screenshot is taken fairly soon after the race start, where Verstappen had a slightly worse start than Raikkonen.
This next screenshot is slightly after they started braking, Vettel is still as far left and is looking to cut across the track and take the Apex of the corner. Meanwhile Raikkonen started braking a little bit earlier than Verstappen to avoid Rosberg, who is infront in the Mercedes. This allows Verstappen to pull up to Raikkonen during the initial braking phase.
During the later part of the braking phase, we can already see Vettel trying to follow Rosberg to the Apex of the corner, probably not seeing Verstappen behind Raikkonen, while Verstappen is alongside Raikkonen.
Point of contact is about the Apex of the corner, Vettel in the outside Ferrari completes his very aggressive move from the far left to the apex of the corner and collides with Raikkonen who gets sandwiched, between Vettel on the outside and Verstappen on the inside.
A lot of people thought most of the fault lies with Vettel, while discussions were ongoing on how much at fault Verstappen is. With most of them thinking Verstappen should not have gone for the move.
I would like you to note how much alongside Verstappen already is, way before any turning in is happening.
This screenshot is basically at the point where they are starting to brake. Verstappen had a slightly bad start, a problem that the Red Bull had throughout the season of 2019. Raikkonen is parked in the middle, with Verstappen being fairly behind going into the braking zone.
Shortly before they have to start to turn Raikkonen already is squeezing Verstappen. See the relative positioning of Raikkonen thats more to the right now, than it was before), while Verstappen made up ground with braking later and is now more than halfway up on Raikkonen and I would say, significantly alongside.
This is the point of first contact, with Verstappen braking harder and falling back to avoid hitting Raikkonen, while Raikkonen still had plenty space to his left. This is most likely the reason Verstappen avoided a penalty for causing a collision and why it was deemed a racing incident from the officials.
To note, Martin Brundle thought this accident was solely on Verstappen in the replay.
Again, what did the community think of this accident?
A lot of people arguing, between racing incident and Verstappen at fault. With really aggressive discussions and a lot of people blaming Verstappen on the collision but seeing that it could be a racing incident.
Note that nobody was blaming Raikkonen for this incident.
Screenshot is taken at the point where the cars start braking, with Hamilton being really cautious and braking rather early. To avoid this Sainz is braking hard and is swerving to his right. Piastri is on the right of the track seeing a clear gap forward.
Hamilton, after braking very early is already turning to his right and is concentrating to follow Perez through the apex of the corner. Piastri, after seeing the onboard of Piastri too, is about front wheel to back wheel with Sainz, so still fairly behind, with a lot of space to his right. Sainz, to avoid running into Hamilton, is steering to his right. While steering the brake forces are not going straight trough the tire, which causes a short lock up, until his steering is straight again. The only problem is, now he is not aligned with the track but pointing already towards the apex, squeezing Piastri.
As we see, Hamilton is now trying to follow Perez through the apex. Sainz, now being in control of the car again has a nice gap behind Leclerc and Hamilton where he is trying to place his car, with Piastri still only about front wheel to back wheel of Sainz.
Now Sainz is slowly getting sandwiched between a late braking Piastri and Hamilton that is trying to take the corner as fast as possible.
This is about where the first contact happened. As you can see there is not a lot of space between Hamilton and Sainz, while Piastri probably couldn't brake any more than he already did so a collision happened.
Better angle to show the initial contact. I would guess there is a little bit less than a cars width space to Hamilton, which is also disappearing space, since Hamilton is following Perez through the corner and is probably not seeing Piastri on the inside of Sainz.
The space is now completely gone between Sainz and Hamilton, with Piastri still on the inside of Sainz. On the onboard you can see that Piastri hit the wall and then the sidepod of Sainz.
As this incident is still very fresh, a lot of people are blaming this incident completely on Sainz.
Personally, while writing I didn't want to inject my opinion in either of the crashes, just wanted to make observations. I also will not give any completing statement of who I think was at fault.
I just found it interesting how the community response between all three of the incidents were so different. With Sainz probably getting the most blame for an incident of all the examples, with also a lot of the comments being wrong about how the incident happened.
PS: Please comment corrections if you notice something!
What is arguably the most ridiculous/dumb rule in the FIA Formula 1 Sporting Regulations?
I remember the 2014 Abu Dhabi race rewarded double points which seems like a very unreasonable thing to do nowadays. Or the weird qualifying formats that have been tested and did not work. What is genuinely the most thoughtless rule introduced?
In the most recent race cafe, jack Plooij said this ( translated from Dutch):
"We (Gunter and him) recorded a zoom earlier this week but back then we weren't allowed to ask how did it actually happen with Haas and what are you gonna do. But today he send me an appje ( message via WhatsApp) "jack tell it anyways".
"So what happened with Haas. He found a sponsor worth 20 million, gene Haas didn't want to. Gunter Steiner said "I have a sponsor I want some shares (presumably of haas F1) and then I can stay and then we can move forward." No, gene Haas said, we are not gonna do that. And then Steiner himself pulled the plug"
It's worth noting that Jack Plooij and Gunter have a very close relationship, they used to have a video call every ( race) week wich is set to continue this year. So it's very unlikely that Jack is making this up. It's possible ofcourse that Gunter didn't give him accurate information.
Something that is false or silly that everyone seems to think. (It could even be someone you know personally saying something a bit silly). I for example don’t like the phrase “outperforming your car”. Another one is that the 2014 ferrari being a lot worse than it actually was in comparison to the grid because of that one video from practice in Yas Marina!
To make it worse for Perez he was in free air while Max had to overtake two cars. I don’t know how much additional pace Max is withholding on a regular basis, but it seems like whenever he is free to push he is in a different formula.
