but I’ve heard as extreme as running Monaco spec aero to get sub Monza levels of downforce.
That's more or less what Kimi said in an interview with Motorsport. He said the car basically feels like it has Monza levels of downforce despite being setup to have as much downforce as possible.
I was gutted for Ricciardo Are they giving him the lesser of every part they receive or something now that he's leaving? He's had 8 DNFs in 18 races so far, and almost every race since the break he's been compromised by something in his car breaking in either qualifying or the race. He straight up said that at this point he doesn't even want to do the last two races of this year and that Gasly can have his broken car.
It wasn't even his engine that went this time either. It was his clutch.
Oh that’s unexpected. Given how radiators don’t work as well at higher altitude, I was thinking about making a post along the lines of “we’re going to be so disappointed when Ricciardo’s car breaks down” after he got pole, I don’t know nearly enough about F1 clutches to know if the decreased cooling could have anything to do with it, but it is kind of odd for it to go mid race considering F1 cars don’t use their clutch while underway. All I can think of would be shifts placing an unusual load on it, which synquential gearboxes are kinda rough on them but they’re built with that in mind. Maybe it was essentially baked? They could have had with more cooling without giving much up in such thin air.
He did mention that something felt off from the lap to the grid up until the start, and that his car started weird when doing the formation lap and for the race start. Christian Horner mentioned that the data showed issues started to develop a few laps in.
Apparently it was the same issue Verstappen had in practice.
Verstappen turned into Ocon. He just can't keep his nose clean.
This was the thing I couldn't wrap my head around with when it came to the Sky commentary. They immediately blamed Ocon for it even though it was clear Verstappen turned in and left him no room. I did enjoy seeing Hamilton calling him out on his bullshit after the race in the nicest way possible. And now Verstappen has to do 2 days of "community service" for the FIA as punishment for shoving Ocon after the race.
It's funny watching Verstappen fans bending over backwards defending him and attacking Ocon when Verstappen has done similarly optimistic moves and ruined the races of other drivers many times this season.
I would bet that Ocon not having a ride for next season factored in to this somehow. Either he was trying to prove something by getting unlapped or he just doesn't care at this point. Either way, neither he nor Verstappen looked good coming out of this.
Still no one seems sure what to call the team formerly known as Force India, so I'm just going to start calling them "Jordan" again.
I don't understand what you're saying, what part of "SportPesa Racing Point Force India Formula One Team brought to you by the Stroll family" is confusing?
Well so much for that talk of Ferrari maybe having the fastest car lol. Looks like not much has changed from last year. Also oof Gasly, that decision to not go back out like everyone else could cost them some valuable points.
Keep in mind last year had the exact same gap, and Vettel went on to win the race, and the race was much closer than qualifying suggested it was. This track is a bit of an odd duck. It's not super high speed and is quite technical, so it isn't the best benchmark for car pace. Hamilton is also a god at qualifying in Australia (this is his 6th pole here in a row). Bahrain will give us a much better picture.
But yeah, that Mercedes pace did seem somewhat ominous. Their lack of stability may hurt them a lot more than Ferrari in the actual race though.
Honestly, now that Ricciardo and Kimi are in the midfield, I'm probably gonna be paying much closer attention to that part of the race than Ferrari vs. Mercedes. Of the top 6 drivers, the only one I actually give a shit about anymore is Charles Leclerc. I'm feeling kinda bad for Gasly. I have a feeling he's gonna be the next Kvyat.
Also, Lando Norris is impressive! Top 10 in his first F1 qualifying! I'm sure George Russell is too but his car is 2 seconds slower than everyone else's so it's hard to make a judgment.
I haven't watched F1 since probably the 2013 or 2014 season, really excited to get back into it this year. So much has changed since I last watched. I've signed up for F1TV and it seems pretty impressive so far.
Certainly surprising to see Bottas drive away from everyone, even Hamilton. Hamilton seemed a bit annoyed about that, considering the tone of some of his radio messages. Not the most convincing start from Ferrari, but it always seemed like they'd be stuck wherever they started after Lap 1. Interesting to see what Verstappen does going knowing that he's all alone, but on the plus side at least he won't crash into his teammates anymore lol.
Great mid-field battle that Bottas unfortunately had to interrupt and drive through. Excited to see how that evolves over the course of the season. And what an extremely unlucky start for Ricciardo, though I’m not sure I understand why he felt the need to drive into the grass. Slow start from whoever was in front of him?
Edit: Rewatched the start of the race and yeah, Ricciardo got squeezed out onto the grass. Bummer!
That was a race and a half today. So good. Pretty choked about Leclerc. He deserved the win. He drove perfectly. I'm glad to see Hamilton giving Leclerc the credit he deserved.
The midfield was a lot of fun to watch. I was paying attention to Kimi's race so I noticed the midfield a lot more than previous seasons. All the racing around 6-15th place was exceptionally good. Lando Norris is quite impressive and the McLaren seems decent this year when it isn't broken. Sad for the Renault drivers. They both did as well as they could were in good places, especially Hulkenberg. Ricciardo seemed to have made the best of a bad strategy. It was so bizarre to see both cars die within seconds of each other on the same corner.
I don't even know what to say about Vettel anymore. He doesn't seem like he's 100% on it this season. His pace wasn't there and he made another unforced error. It's like the trend from last year is continuing. He was comprehensively beaten by Leclerc this entire weekend and would have been behind Leclerc last race had there not been team orders. Kimi outperformed him the second half of last season and now Leclerc is on a different level than him.
1 am race start and did plenty of gym leading up to it, thought I was going to fall asleep at somepoint before it started. But no, ended up on the edge of my seat the whole time. Exciting race and so much strange shit happened, probably going to rewatch it before China
That was a dull race. Not much happened in it. Mercedes appear to be back in dominant form and Ferrari continue to have horrid strategy. Ferrari appeared to have no answer to Mercedes' form this time around. Both Mercedes drivers were up something like 4 seconds by the 10 lap mark and Hamilton was a few seconds off having a free pitstop by the time he pitted.
The only interesting things I noticed were Albon and Kimi making their way up the pack, and Ricciardo being the best of the rest now that his car didn't get retired for once. Albon went from 20th in the pit lane to getting points, which is quite impressive. Franz Tost, the Toro Rosso boss, had been saying that Albon was doing amazingly well and was likely to have a great F1 career if he kept his form up. Pretty good for a guy who wasn't previously really being considered for F1 and had already signed a Formula E contract.
The insane gap between the top 3 teams and everyone else is definitely still there. Everyone was lapped from 7th down.
I’ve taken to watching F1 as sort of a background activity and enjoy it for that. I’ve found Formula E much more exciting, especially this year.
Still, there are fun things happening in the midfield and that was a great race from Albon. Kimi also seems to be having a lot more fun than the last few years with Ferrari, so he’s been fun to watch.
That was not the best race. It appears we indeed have a 2014-2016 Mercedes domination scenario going on. They were ahead by several seconds within a few laps and at the end it was clear that Vettel never actually had a chance of catching them since anytime he'd get remotely close their pace would suddenly increase by a big margin. Leclerc looked to be in a completely different league than Vettel yet again. Shame Leclerc crashed in qualifying. He's about the only person who can take on Mercedes right now.
Even with Grosjean and Kvyat we somehow didn't get a safety car while that bizarrely long virtual safety car basically destroyed Leclerc's race.
I also wish they would have shown more of the midfield. It appeared stuff was actually going on there but you'd never know it from the race feed. They apparently thought we needed to see the top 4 drivers lapping several seconds apart for an hour straight instead of seeing the McLarens and Kimi make their way through the field.
Alonso has failed to qualify for the Indy 500. There goes his dream of the Triple Crown for this year. Last time he tried Indy he had an amazing team backing him up, and he doesn't this time so things didn't go nearly as well.
I think it's telling at how dull Monaco has become that I'm looking forward to the Indy 500 far more than Monaco next weekend. Ferrari doesn't have the advantage in slow corners and on slower tracks this year so unless Red Bull can stop Mercedes, it's likely to be another Mercedes 1-2 unless they crash or something.
I've been thinking about switching back to watching WRC instead of F1. It's seemed much more interesting the last year or two from what I've seen.
Is Ougier still dominating? The weird thing about Monaco is how wide the place looked for the FormulaE guys. Every other track they go to feels like single file.
@gkhan: His [spare] car was a complete shitbox. Alonso junked his primary car, and McLaren, being as smart as a sack of rocks, got a spare from Carlin whose 2/3 main cars also DNQed.
I'm glad McLaren (not Fred) DNQed. Their sheer arrogance and appallingly condescending attitude is not welcome at the Brickyard.
In fact, I want them to leave motorsport to just make fancy sports cars. This organization is an absolute joke.
Is Ougier still dominating? The weird thing about Monaco is how wide the place looked for the FormulaE guys. Every other track they go to feels like single file.
Ogier's still doing quite well, but he's not dominating like he did back in the VW days. Right now there's 5-6 people who all have a realistic chance of winning any given rally. Thierry Neuville from Hyundai has been up there with Ogier this year so far, and has been trading leading the championship with Ogier. There's also Ott Tanak, who was a young gun last time I watched WRC. He's quite good and is currently second place ahead of Neuville and behind Ogier and also has been in the lead of the championship at points. Sebastien Loeb has also returned and has been doing pretty well. Elfyn Evans was on track to win a rally but had a late puncture that handed the race to Neuville. It's quite close so far, which makes it exciting. Much better than 5 Mercedes 1-2s in a row.
Wow. Didn't expect that many faces to be in the running. Or Loeb returning. MotoGP's still good, despite Marquez looking miles ahead. TT season's creeping up on me, too. Caught some of the North West 200 which was great to watch.
Saw the news Niki Lauda passed away yesterday. It's pretty sad to hear. He was always so much fun to see around on race weekends. He always had something interesting or funny to say. It's sad he died but also a testament to his strength that he lived as long as he did with all of the damage done to his lungs in the crash. It sounded last year like he was starting to have health problems (he had a lung transplant), but everyone was optimistic he'd be back at some point. I imagine Monaco is going to be pretty somber this week. First Charlie, and now Niki.
Ferrari: "Let's save a set of tires and risk our guy going out in Q1 at the race with the least opportunities for overtaking. What could possibly go wrong?"
*minutes later*
Ferrari: "Aww fuck"
I'm kinda glad Kimi isn't at Ferrari anymore. Now I don't feel obligated to cheer for them like I used to. The bizarre ways they are screwing up is getting borderline embarrassing for them. They went from having arguably the fastest car on the grid and at least some semblance of strategy, even if they still screwed up a lot, to having a car that is increasingly looking like the third fastest and non-stop strategy blunders. Leclerc will be lucky to get into the points tomorrow, and it's mostly through no fault of his own (his lap wasn't great but the track also got significantly grippier and he would likely have made it through easily).
edit: holy moly this is savage. Chainbear didn't pull any punches:
I rewatched Q1 with what happened in mind, and it's hilarious to me that minutes before things started going down, Martin Brundle made an offhand comment that both Vettel and LeClerc needed to go again. It's not a question of "hindsight is 20/20", it was obvious that he needed to go out when he still had the time to do so.
Bring back Arrivabene! Or something! Something needs to change!
The fun question now is starting to become: is Mercedes going to be able to pull off a "perfect season", with 1-2 in every race? Probably not gonna happen, but right now there's not much stopping them.
@ajamafalous: Oh, come now! Verstappen was the only thing making this race interesting!
Yeah, he's aggressive and he takes risks, but he's fun! And also: he's really, fucking good. He comes by his guts honestly. I have no particular desire to hang out with him, but I enjoy him racing.
@gkhan: He's incredibly good and aggressive but I don't know that you can really call it a taking a risk when your move literally has no way of succeeding besides praying you come out on the right side of a collision.
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