The Official Shift+F1 V6 Thread of Speed

So, is ESPN not showing quali this weekend? I can only find one practice session and the race in my listings...

5 seconds in and it all goes to hell, what a start

WELL DONE BAKU!

Oh this race is going to come down to the wire, it is going to be wide open now

How many races in a row now for Verstappen ruining his race being an idiot? And ruined Daniel’s race.

He was clearly slower than Daniel the whole race but kept doing super dangerous moves to stay ahead, and then he finishes being an idiot by weaving, moving too many times and making Ricciardo crash into him.

Swap Verstappen and Gasly until Verstappen can learn to race.

Edit: 100% he’s gonna blame a Ricciardo too

Grosjean just went into the wall by himself....like what the hell happened there. He has had a rough season so far

Time for a very exciting 3 lap race

Verstappen's defense this race kinda reminded me of weaving in front of AI drivers.

This race has me thinking that there might be a market for fast street sweepers. Given how many pieces F1 cars can potentially shed, it's too much area for guys with brooms.

Grosjean looks to me like he hadn't appreciated how much tire temperature he had lost, but it does look like a sketchy spot to wiggle at the best of times.

Red Bull needs to implement some sort of team orders ASAP. Losing tons of points, and the possibility of stealing a podium spot because Verstappen was holding up Ricciardo is crazy.

I'm so sick of Verstappen ruining everybody else's races and then half of the pundits making up excuses for him every week

Holding up Ricciardo?

Verstappen overtook Dan two times, one on the track and one in the pits even though Dan got first pick with his pitstop. I agree they where both hold up by constantly battleing each other but If any team orders was to be handed out it was that Ricciardo should stop attacking Max. They where however in no mans land so they didnt directly race anyone else and its fairplay of RB to actually sticking to their "let our drivers race" which usually is just meaningless words in other teams.

Both drivers have taken responsibility for the crash, ricciardo overcommiting on a gap that didnt exist and Verstappen wiggling on the border of dangerous.

Verstappen's penchant for dangerous moves makes for exciting racing when he's not fucking over his own teammate and being the second coming of Pastor Maldonado. If Red Bull doesn't do something to reign him in, I don't really see Ricciardo sticking with Red Bull. Like, there's being competitive and then there's repeatedly ruining your team's chances at points by being an idiot.

What an absolute bummer for Bottas, I was so gutted for him. He would have deserved a win, with the way he maintained the tyres until the SC (which was honestly a foregone conclusion seeing as how the Red Bulls were racing each other).

Speaking of Dan and Max:

Edit: for some reason I can't embed the youtube video, however here's the link, it's worth a watch if only for a laugh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-HaFLuvtGc

A fantastic race to watch. I felt like it was a pretty clear double move by Verstappen, but Ricciardo needs to be ready for that and only pass when he has a clear shot. But the bigger story: what about Charles LeClerc? Competitive Saubers are an exciting thought, even though I'm sure that won't become a regular thing.

@redwing42: It is already regular, they are no more 1sec behind everybody but genuine midfield contenders.

Ricciardo was within a second or so of Verstappen for the extreme majority of the race while a gap was forming between Verstappen and those in front, which hints that Ricciardo was likely faster. All three of their pre-crash incidents Christian Horner referred to were related to Verstappen doing sketchy things to stop Ricciardo from passing him at turns 1 and 2. When they touched wheels, it was clear at that point Ricciardo was much faster, but Verstappen cut him off and turned into him, forcing Ricciardo partly off track and hit him. They even highlighted it on Sky to show Verstappen wasn't dealing with understeer when they hit, he was purposefully turning toward Ricciardo. A couple more inches to the right and he would have driven his teammate into a wall. I seem to remember at least one of their other close calls being similar. It's nothing we haven't seen before from him. Verstappen running people faster than him off track when they try and pass has happened multiple times before.

And yeah, as someone else said, he clearly did two moves when they crashed. It's the same thing he did when Kimi nearly rear ended him going 300+ km/h with DRS at Spa a couple years back. Kimi faked trying passing one direction so Verstappen moved to block, and then Kimi went the other way and Verstappen weaved in front of him and forced Kimi to brake to avoid a serious crash. Verstappen never got penalized for it despite a fair number of drivers calling for it. The only difference between this crash and that near miss was that Kimi was back enough that he could avoid it, Ricciardo wasn't so lucky.

People were hailing Verstappen the next Schumacher when he first moved to Red Bull but now he's looking more and more like the next Maldonado. Schumacher was consistently fast but occasionally dangerous. Verstappen is occasionally fast and consistently dangerous.

@rethla: Verstappen overtook him in the first lap scrum, and then due to low tire temperatures overtook him due to the strategy not working out how red bull expected it to. If you think Ricciardo should have not been attacking Max then Max would have needed to go faster.

@phos: I really dont think its fair to ask Max to move aside when he overtook Dan for that position with no help from the team.

Max tried to overtake Dan in turn one of lap one but Dan ran him off track just inches from the wall. After the safetycar restart Max made another attempt at the same spot in turn one but backed off tricking Dan into taking a bad defensive line and Max could overtake him very cleanly in the next turn. Dan clearly wasnt pulling away from Max in any way when he was in front.

Some familiar music in this collection.

That's actually a new personal record for Romain Grojean in terms of number of competitors eliminated in a single accident. Frankly, that's the sort of maneuver I'd expect out of some unlicensed driver in a street car at a track day.

Thinking about it, I'm not actually sure why F1 cars have front wing endplates considering endplates are typically there to reduce vortices but they want big vortices there to reduce tire wake. Probably makes more efficient downforce but that's no longer the front wing's real job.

Pirelli's tires were a farce again this race.

Pirelli's tires were pretty bad, yes. Barely any noticeable degradation on them. Bottas used the mediums 7 laps past their supposed maximum lifespan and still was setting personal best laps at the end. Having newer tires appeared to make literally no difference versus warmed up old tires. The changes they made to them for this weekend (and for other races on new tarmac like this one. They made the part that actually contacts the road much thinner to prevent blisters) should not be used on the other races they said they would use them on.

But then again, it's the Spanish GP. It almost always sucks. There's talk of moving it to a street circuit in Madrid. I'd actually be all for that. Circuit de Catalunya is easily one of the dullest tracks outside of Sochi and Abu Dhabi. Of the races I've seen on it, I only remember 2016 because Hamilton and Rosberg crashed into each other. I couldn't tell you what happened in any of the other races I've seen.

I think the endplates are one of the things they are changing regulation on next year. Or more, how they use front wings right now won't be how they use the wings next year. I think I'm with Vettel though, the new regulations for next year seem really dumb. We finally had a good season and so far another good season (barring this race. It was pretty dull), and now they're going to change the regulations again, which usually leads to one team dominating at first. At first I supported the new regulations, but now I think they are ill-advised. None of the drivers seem too keen for them so far either.

@ben_h: Seems like the drivers were struggling with tire temps in a really weird way.

Next year's regulations sound tantamount to a whole new formula similar to the change for 2017, and also seems to barely address the issue. Can't remember if I said it before, but IMO they should reduce the limitations on aero for more efficient downforce, and reduce engine power.

OK this is hilarious to me: It's sounding like a major reason why the Williams has been slow is their diffuser is stalling under yaw conditions. That means it's generating downforce and this drag on the straights but doing nothing in the corners.

Haven't Williams been doing this for a while? Shouldn't they have at least somewhat of a handle on how race cars work?

@redwing42: Wind tunnel time and CFD are limited, they're only allowed to work on it so much.

I cannot blame max for that crash in FP3, that close call could put anyone off.

Top is 2018, bottom is 2016. Max has bad luck.

That actually make me tend to blame him a bit more considering that kinda demonstrates that he can crash like that all on his own.

Not bad luck, just pushing the limits a touch too far. He certainly showed his stuff with his race day performance, but he made a mistake in practice and had to pay for it.

Isler of Man TT is under way. Superbike Race 1 a minute away from starting. Live timing and Manx radio at their website.

This hasn't had a reply in a month? Can't be right. Anyway, British GP is today with Hamilton on pole. Please don't mess this up, Mercedes. And some sad news, William Dunlop died yesterday in a road race. He reached the podium 5 times in his TT career and his wife was expecting their second child. He is the third member of the Dunlop dynasty to die on the track.

Ummm... I hate to break it to you, especially if you're a Bottas fan.

But really, that was such an insanely good race. It was exciting from start to finish. With 10 laps left, I had literally no idea who was going to win, and that's really cool. That almost never happens anymore. Actual racing occurred for once, and not just for the first 5 laps.

I thought it was quite immature of Toto Wolff to say that a Ferrari hitting a Mercedes two races in a row was either them being "incompetent or deliberate". There've been so many cases of that kind of thing happening between many teams, especially on the first lap, and using incendiary remarks like that just makes Mercedes look like sore losers.

Also, Kimi seems to have about had it with the F1 media. He dug at them on both the post-race interview and at the press conference. I think he has a point. They constantly give him crap for one reason or another every race, and when he does well, they ignore it (or put out even dumber articles, like that idiotic one on RaceFans about Leclerc and Kimi swapping seats for Spa. Just on premise that's stupid as hell, but there's no way in hell Ferrari would do that. The new writer at RaceFans has made me go to that site much less. He's very sensationalist). They crapped on his run of bad Q3s non-stop for weeks, then two races in a row he does well in Q3 and they say nothing. I understand he was looking quite passive the last couple years but for most of this season he's been a completely different driver. He's been pulling off passes you'd never expect him to do. He's matching Vettel in pace quite often now, he qualified within a tenth of Vettel and Hamilton this weekend. He was on fire last weekend. He's currently third in points and not actually that far off Vettel and Hamilton, which is quite good factoring in that he's had 2 DNFs that were both out of his control.

In general, I've really started to dislike the whole media circus around F1. It feels like tabloid/TMZ garbage and is starting to tarnish the image of the sport to me. Every race they all get fixated on some stupid rumour and then drive all the drivers insane with it. Like when they all bugged Verstappen non-stop about changing his style.

Or poor Charles Leclerc. Yes, he's clearly insanely talented and should be in a top car in a couple years, but give him time to develop and get used to F1. The F1 media is seemingly trying to pressure Ferrari into giving him Kimi's seat next year, and I think that would be a bad thing to do. Ferrari is the highest pressure team, and the second Leclerc makes a single mistake the same media that is championing him will start giving him shit and writing dumb articles like "Should Ferrari have Fired Raikkonen for Leclerc?". They already did that to Verstappen for part of last season and half this season so far after calling him the next Schumacher in 2016. Now they claim he's immature as a driver. But they seem to do this with every driver.

The British GP started out interesting, had a big gap where not much happened, then it got very interesting towards the end.

F1 has not always been a clean sport, but there are too many factors involved to call this a deliberate crash. How could Ferrari plan that Hamilton would get a terrible start for one thing? or make a split-second decision to crash into him? and do they really think Kimi of all people (!) would deliberately risk his race for someone else? And how do you fake a lock-up?

It was fascinating to see how superior the top three teams are compared to everyone else. Hamilton didn't actually race anyone until the latter part of the GP, he was casually coasting by the other teams until he reached Kimi, and Kimi had a similar experience. They both had it incredibly easy reaching the top group again, it wasn't even racing in my opinion.

Sad for Sauber, they were doing really well, but this time they lost both cars. I wish Ericsson would push as much as Leclerc.

I'm starting to lose all my respect for Toto and Mercedes (Hamilton I won't even bother talking about).

That accident was on Kimi, yes, but it was a normal racing incident that happend dozens of times before this and was even punished in less severe ways (5 second penalties mostly or no action at all).

I guess being a good sportsman is not important anymore, just as long as you win every race for 5 years in a row. This feels like the really bad Schumacher at Ferrari times again. Ridiculous.

This race illustrates why the degrading tires aren't as good an idea as so many people make them out to be: That scrap when 2 seconds covered the top 4? That ended when Botas's tires gave up. The WTF1 podcast was making much ado about how "exciting" Austria was because of tire blistering, ignoring that tires blistering like that was just yet another advantage of being in the lead and it meant the rest of the field was basically a dice roll.

Well, that's it. I'm going to take long break from F1 until next year, hopefully there will be more competition at the front. I've just had this time. Bottas could have easily taken the win, but 'no', give the place to Hamilton. There's no respect for competition in F1 anymore. Not that Ferrari are any better, but I've just hit a breaking point. I'm generalizing, there is some comptition in the current season - in the mind-field - but they just don't show enough coverage of it on TV, we only see a small part of it.

Nope. I don't accept this, I don't want to pay a significant amount of money to see so little racing. I will stick to Indycar and Formula E, as far as open-wheel racing goes, where there's plenty of competition.

@bonbonetti: If anything, F1 teams have just been getting better at letting teammates race each other.

Well not much surprise left in this season. Might as well hand Hamilton the trophy and start racing for second. Mercedes clearly have the best car, and it's not even close.

Not even close. Hamilton lost a 10+ point lead already and Vettel lost an 8 point lead. The lead has changed hands multiple times this season already and Vettel would have won this race had he not crashed. Ferrari and Mercedes are basically equal at this point and it comes down to which circuit suits which car. The thing to watch is the Constructors championship if you want to see which team is dominant, and right now Mercedes is only up 8 points. Other seasons by break they were up 100+ points. Factor in Vettel crashing out and Ferrari would still be leading. Ferrari beat Mercedes at Silverstone, their most dominant track the last few years.

It did bug me how easily Hamilton got back up to the top 5. He was on a tire two steps harder and was easily passing everybody. They did say that one of the DRS areas was increased perhaps too much and was making passes too easy but still. Nobody, not even Haas, had half a chance of holding him off. The performance difference is too big now. It's basically like watching WEC with LMP1 and LMP2 cars at this point.

Also, did anyone see Brundle's grid walk? What the hell was with dunking so rudely on Rob Smedley and Williams? They finally had a part work and made progress a bit and he just basically was a jerk about it. Williams have been super humble about how bad their season is going and clearly are trying. If he's gonna dunk on anyone, it should be McLaren, who, despite having a bad car, are just as cocky as always (not to mention everything Alonso said about how Vandoorne's car has major aerodynamic issues. The media spent the last 3 races talking about how bad Vandoorne was doing but it turns out his car is missing massive amounts of downforce compared to Alonso's).

I think it's actually Ferrari's to lose at this point. They pretty obviously have a horsepower advantage.

Whether Mercedes can overcome that in any given race mostly comes down to luck or simply having a better strategy.

So Daniel Ricciardo is leaving Red Bull at the end of the season to join Renault. Actually think that's a smart move for Daniel, I can't see him being favoured or given equal treatment over Max and Renault certainly have the potential to be one of the top three real soon with the amount of investment they've made again into F1. Could be a real positive move for both parties.

Renault has been a pretty disappointing team for a long time, but the way Ricciardo's been wasted at Red Bull has me thinking this is a good move. Hopefully Renault's investment in a car that isn't absolute shite pays off.

Risky move... risky move... If he goes to Renault and its a failure, then, I'm not sure he gets another drive at a big team. At least if Dan goes to ferrari, I think there's more of a path.

He's my guy, but... hmm, not sure about this.

I dunno, you guys. This seems like a real downgrade for Ricciardo. Maybe Renault can get it together, but still...

Hey, you know what would be funny? Red Bull replaces Ricciardo with Alonso, giving Alonso his first real shot at winning a race in years... in a Honda-engine car.

Very risky move, but maybe he really didn't want to drive a Honda. The Renault factory team has had better luck with their engines then Red Bull have this season, so I guess that is a plus? I still think he will be racing for 5th most weekends... Vettel, Hamilton and Bottas will still be at the top, and I'm excited to potentially see LeClerc in that other Ferrari.

The Ricciardo news is huge. Given that Renault supposedly has a fairly big budget and has been improving a lot the last year, it might be a good long term move for him, especially if Honda keeps making questionable engines. Honda seems to be getting a bit more power now but is still insanely unreliable. It seems like Hartley has a new engine every other weekend at this point.

In other news I now no longer can wear my Redbull Racing shirt. I absolutely abhor Verstappen. He's the anti-Leclerc. He's cocky, hot-headed and doesn't own up for his mistakes. Leclerc apologizes for things that aren't even his fault and seems genuinely thankful and appreciative of everyone. There was a recent interview with him in the Washington Post that made be like him even more than I already did. He basically spent the whole thing talking about how thankful he was for the help of other people throughout his career, especially his late father, Jules Bianchi, and Jules' dad.

The F1 Facebook page had a video showing confirmed drivers and so far it looks like only basically 6 are confirmed, the Mercedes drivers, the Renault drivers, Vettel, and Verstappen. Everyone else is still up in the air.