F1 specific (chit chat thread)

[Mystery]

... hopefully the legacy will be that something like it isn't given the chance to happen again.

I wouldn't get your hopes up. This one happened in the US's top sportscar series. In May this year.

[bluenosey]

Seems like Carlos Sainz Jnr had a very lucky escape in practice.

Just seen the pictures and the nose of the car appear to have gone under the new style tetra barrier That being the case, then he can thank his lucky stars that we're not tuning in for more bad news. There's no footage from the second head on moment of impact - yet - so we can't really tell.

What with a diesel lorry shedding it load over a couple of turns and the rain, this could give rise to an interesting race. I've splashed a few bets about, on both of Force India drivers (podium finish) and both Mclarens (top six finish). All 33-1/40-1 shots but you never know judging by practice times and lack of track running.

[TheTon]

What a rollercoaster of emotions you must've been on watching that last lap, bluenosey!!!

Pleased for Perez, even if he does have kamakazi Kimi to thank..

[bluenosey]

What a rollercoaster of emotions you must've been on watching that last lap, bluenosey!!!

Pleased for Perez, even if he does have kamakazi Kimi to thank..

I was off my seat when Kimi and Bottas collided, or rather Kimi went for a move which was never on ! Happy days. Only sprinkled the four £2 bets on but can't grumble with a £68 return Typically, wish I would have bet more now but could so easily have gone the other way....

[forestfan]

Great to see Jolyon Palmer get a race seat at Lotus, as it was becoming difficult to see where the next British driver to get a shot with a vaguely competitive team was going to come from, with all the pay drivers and teenagers recruited straight from go-karting tracks taking up any spare seats... hope he can make the most of his chance. With Maldonado as team-mate he has a chance to shine (as long as Crashtor doesn't take him out at the first corner too often!)

[murf]

Good luck to Jolyon but I need to start liking him by starting to disassociating him from his father who is a bit of a knob (but was a decent, solid driver) and gave his son a stupid name.

Bit weird signing him just before the team ownership gets sorted....

Are we going to have a GP this weekend or will it be the first Pirelli-free blow out for some time????

[bluenosey]

Good luck to Jolyon but I need to start liking him by starting to disassociating him from his father who is a bit of a knob (but was a decent, solid driver) and gave his son a stupid name.

Bit weird signing him just before the team ownership gets sorted....

Are we going to have a GP this weekend or will it be the first Pirelli-free blow out for some time????

That's great news I, too, found his old man irritating as a commentator, not as a driver, where he put in a few good drives in a normally aspirated Tyrrell - qualified 4th somewhere up against the turbos about 88 - Dallas or Detroit ?

He must have brought some significant funds and I wonder if Renault will take over after all. Surely if they did then Jean Eric Vergne would have been number 1 choice ? Perhaps Roman knew something after all when he signed for Haas (There number two could be Gutierrez, who will no doubt bring a wad a Mexican loot)

Also will be hard to judge how good he is against Crashtor. Still, it's a good start in F1, unlike Chilton and Stevens who have merely been mobile chicanes in the Manor Marussias.

Could be a good betting race this weekend, with showers forecast everywhere in Austin thanks to Hurricane Patricia. Yet again I've done my Mclarens to finish top 6 at 33-1 each and had a sneaky punt on Ricciardo at 50-1 (Each way) Ferraris may be worth a bet as well with their grid penalties. We get a wet race and anything can happen - let's hope it does

[Mystery]

Palmer to Lotus is a funny one. I almost wonder if his contract is contingent on the Renault deal NOT going through. Not that I don't think he's a half decent driver (although was soundly beaten in F2 by a chap called Dean Stoneman whose own career stalled through illness - for a time at least) but I just struggle to imagine Renault wanting a line up of Crashtor and Palmer.

I wonder if Renault could buy another team at a better price at the moment. Red Bull for example....

[Mystery]

Being reported overnight that BBC are continuing their not-so-subtle exit from non-Olympic sports and giving up the F1 contract. You'll be getting James Allen and ads on ITV presumably.

[Judio]

But even when the ads are on we still know which car will win the Race !!!!

[Mystery]

Well the Beeb have indeed chosen to focus their budget on popular drivel (public service broadcasting? Ha!) however I was wrong about their replacement. Channel 4 indeed! Really surprising but of course they are trying to boost their PSB mandate so I shouldn't have been surprised.

[bluenosey]

Being confirmed that Renault have bought out Lotus, cleared their debts and paid off the taxman.

Maybe a splash of yellow on the grid next year

I don't blame the Beeb for getting rid to be honest. It's been either a Vettel or Hamilton procession in recent years. You have to go back to Seb's first year (2010) for a decent fight.

Moto GP really has smashed F1 to pieces this year.

We need Lewis v Seb next year in evenish cars and maybe another to spice it up.

[forestfan]

It might be less than exciting a lot of the time these days, but still yet another of the sporting crown jewels the BBC has handed over without a fight recently. Precisely the events that should be top of its priority list, as events of national interest.

If the Government wants to destroy the BBC over the events of 30 or 40 years ago then why don't they just shut it down or privatise it now, rather than the slow decline they're forcing it into?

[Mystery]

Perhaps this is veering towards another thread but I genuinely maybe only watch one programme a week on the BBC these days - and as a Sky subscriber it wasn't the F1. I still long for the wonderful Saturday afternoons watching Grandstand - don't get me wrong, I love Soccer Saturday but I'd swap it for a proper Grandstand in a heartbeat.

[murf]

Grandstand was great apart from huge chunks of it!

For starters they showed a horse race every 15 minutes (or was it 30?). Barely sport to my eyes. I'd switch back to Jeff and the screeching chimps as soon as that came on.

[bluenosey]

Grandstand was great apart from huge chunks of it!

For starters they showed a horse race every 15 minutes (or was it 30?). Barely sport to my eyes. I'd switch back to Jeff and the screeching chimps as soon as that came on.

but you could always switch over to World of Sport for the wrestling

[forestfan]

Scrapping the Grandstand brand was one of their worst moves ever... they haven't even found a use for the iconic music.

The horse racing (Grand National day aside, another one they shouldn't have been allowed to relinquish) was annoying, especially when interrupting cricket, but they'd be able to put it on the red button now... oh crap, they're scrapping that soon as well. And we got lots of other sports as well, that have lost their profile since, like the always entertaining touring cars that is now largely forgotten about on ITV4... rallying, in (and before) the era of our two British world champions sadly no longer with us, before they brought in the rule that only Frenchmen called Sebastien could win, and when it was correctly called the RAC Rally not the grammatically dodgy Wales Rally GB... then the main event, Six Nations, snooker from the Crucible or whatever, with football scores flashed on screen so you didn't even need the temperamental Ceefax ticker. And maybe even back to Des in the studio between frames for a big match update... I know these days we can have the BBC text commentary or even Jeff and co on the iPad on the side, but still, they should be putting up the football scores on screen during a rugby match. It's TV law.

The biggest thing about it was the commitment to cover sport all afternoon from Football Focus to Final Score (both of which are correctly the bookends of a single programme, not shows in their own right...) Drop the reality crap etc. and bring it back!

[Mystery]

Pedantry corner....

not the grammatically dodgy Wales Rally GB

"Wales" is used as the name of the sponsor of the "Rally GB" in this instance so its grammatically perfect

[murf]

I remember the good old days of traipsing round Britain following the rally.

Not been at all since it became 20 laps of a car park in some corner of Wales.

[forestfan]

Pedantry corner....

not the grammatically dodgy Wales Rally GB

"Wales" is used as the name of the sponsor of the "Rally GB" in this instance so its grammatically perfect

Yeah, I know it's the Welsh tourist board or something like that... still sounds silly though.

[forestfan]

So, the new qualifying was a disaster with nobody out on track in the last 5 minutes... who would have predicted it?

If they have to make a radical change I quite liked the one-lap shootout format they had for a while in the early '00s I think. Grid reversal type ideas which were seemingly also being proposed are too artificial and would lead to teams deliberately tanking qualifying. The question is will they swallow their pride and go straight back to last year's system, or come up with another unsatisfactory fudge?

[Tacalabala]

So, the new qualifying was a disaster with nobody out on track in the last 5 minutes... who would have predicted it?

If they have to make a radical change I quite liked the one-lap shootout format they had for a while in the early '00s I think. Grid reversal type ideas which were seemingly also being proposed are too artificial and would lead to teams deliberately tanking qualifying. The question is will they swallow their pride and go straight back to last year's system, or come up with another unsatisfactory fudge?

They should go back to the old system.

If they insist on change, surely a mix is possible:

Q1 and Q2 - 15 min free sessions, 8 slowest drivers eliminated each session
Q3 "Finale" - remaining 6 go to shootout, with one driver knocked out after each round, and eventual top two then take it in turns to try to beat the other until one fails or concedes defeat

[Mav3rick]

They basically want to fudge the results so it's harder for Mercedes to lock out the front row (I doubt they'd do the same if it was Ferrari dominating, but that's a different subject).

I'd have thought some sort of handicap system based on world championship standings or something like that would be the best way to do that - if you're ahead by a certain points margin then you start getting 10ths added to your qualifying time.

Any system can be gamed though so I expect they would all be terrible. If they just want a mixed up grid, I don't know maybe spray water, oil or tacks on the track at 'random' (though mostly in front of the Mercedes obviously).

It was embarrassing this morning though when all the action stopped and the drivers slowly timed out.

[Tacalabala]

Yep definitely wouldn't have all this fuss if Ferrari were dominating.

All handicapping is artificial, it would be a massive turn off, just like double points. The solution to stopping domination is obvious really, which is to stop changing the regs and force all teams to make last season's technology available, that would be fair to everyone.

[murf]

No handicapping. Fake and kill the sport for me.

No crap tyres that give up and then cars actually run and the new format would be quite good.

My personal tweak would be the top 8 or 10 carrying their Q2 times into Q3 then getting one more crack each, one at a time, to improve - starting with the slowest. Only drawback is that Lewis may not need to go for it if nobody beats him.....

[forestfan]

Yep definitely wouldn't have all this fuss if Ferrari were dominating.

All handicapping is artificial, it would be a massive turn off, just like double points. The solution to stopping domination is obvious really, which is to stop changing the regs and force all teams to make last season's technology available, that would be fair to everyone.

I still maintain that reliability is a major factor in what's making F1 so boring, that and tarmac runoff areas. Throughout history there's always been some cars better than others, but if the best cars always finish as well that's what makes it predictable. If more than half the cars finish it's not attritional enough, and these days sometimes all but one or two do. And if you make a mistake you should end up beached in gravel, not losing a place if you're unlucky and able to get back in the race.

[Mystery]

Really enjoyed Moto3 and Moto2 qualifying today. Just saying...


Ok F1 qualifying was a complete shambles but also a little unlucky too. Unlucky because Rosberg was as low as fourth after the first run in Q3 so he had to go out earlier than he'd otherwise choose to, in order to avoid the P4 elimination. Merc sent out Hammy at the same time just to artificially treat their drivers equally even though the "right" thing to do was for Lewis to sit tight and see if Nico improved.

I thought Q1 and Q2 were OK but any situation which has you watching the timing stalk on the left of the screen instead of the cars must be wrong.

The teams didn't know the rules.

Brundle and Crofty forgot how the graphics were going to show eliminated drivers possibly because the graphics didn't put an elimination timer up at the start of the knock out period.

At its heart i think any system designed to interfere with the cars performance is wrong. We don't ask Messi to play blindfolded and we shouldn't be messing with F1 qualifying. I'll take the 80s format 60-minute twin sessions every time.

[Moist von Lipwig]

no posts on this thread since march, sums up the current state of F1....

anyway, there's a surprise - 5 days after winning the F1 title Nico Rosberg announces his retirement from the sport!

[murf]

Was a bit of a shock. My first thought was "who gets the drive?"......

[forestfan]

no posts on this thread since march, sums up the current state of F1....

anyway, there's a surprise - 5 days after winning the F1 title Nico Rosberg announces his retirement from the sport!

Well, that's certainly thrown things up in the air given all the big names are contracted for next season!

Wehrlein looks like the favourite for the seat as their loaned-out development driver, but is he ready to take on Hamilton head to head? They don't seem the sort of organisation to give Lewis a subservient number two like Schumacher-era Ferrari.

Otherwise it might be a blockbuster move for a driver under contract, in which case Vettel would appear the most likely since he's German and clearly not happy at his current team. I don't see the Red Bull drivers going anywhere else in a hurry, and the Hamilton/Alonso combination is unlikely to be revisited. The likes of Bottas and Perez have been touted as well, and of course there's another recent British world champion with no immediate plans, could he be tempted?