The Official Shift+F1 V6 Thread of Speed

As it turns out, Daniel Ricciardo is still a good F1 driver.

He beat both Gasly and Bottas in qualifying today. 4th place in a Renault is pretty good!

@ben_h: What do you recon to a Ricciardo dive down the inside on turn one? I mean, he is not in the title fight as it stands so he really does not have much to loose going for it at turn one.

So, can we officially write off Lance Stroll at this point? I know the Racing Points or whatever the fuck we are calling them had a poor setup for this track, but I think Stroll has gone out in Q1 something like 11 straight races. You would think that they would do everything in their power to make sure Stroll has a good car, but Sainz is still well ahead of him every race. I guess there always has to be a few pay drivers out there, but seeing Stroll with a seat and Ocon without is rough.

That call by the stewards is gonna be hotly debated I imagine. They said that Vettel has no way of appealing it once the race ends. Vettel’s options were basically slam on the brakes, likely hitting Hamilton, not brake, hit the wall, and probably collect Hamilton, or do what he did. He was mid-slide when he got back on track.

Formula 1 continues to get more and more unwatchable every race week, and this is just the fucking cherry on the top. Finally a good race for the first time in forever and they manage to fuck it up, I'll probably stop watching the race halfway through the season just like last year, and then check in on the subreddit once in a while.

Ferrari apparently has the ability and is going to appeal the penalty.

In other interesting news, it sounds like there is going to be a push by multiple teams to move back to last year's tire specification (0.4mm thicker treads than they are currently). This year, they made the tread on the tires thinner in hopes of preventing blistering. They had tested it last year at a few races to mixed results (Mercedes dominated most of the races where they used those tires). This is because, the current tires, due to being much thinner, don't hold onto heat nearly as well so many teams are having major issues keeping the tires at temperature, most notably Haas, Ferrari, McLaren, and Alfa Romeo. Christian Horner also said Red Bull is having issues with it too. Mercedes has classically been the team that has had issues with overheating their tires, so this new spec of tire helps them prevent their tires from overheating while teams that design their cars to be kinder to the tires like Ferrari suddenly cannot keep their tires consistently at temperature and is struggling for pace despite having a car that most agree is much more stable and previously looked significantly faster than the Mercedes. Haas appears to be most severely affected by the issue. They have frequently qualified pretty far up, only to plunge down positions in the race because their car can't keep the tires at temperature in dirty air.

Apparently the change requires 7 out of 10 teams to sign on before the change can be put through, and it sounds a lot of teams would be open to it. Christian Horner said he figured that only Mercedes would be against the change.

I'm 100% on board with this tire change. Anything to stop Mercedes from having a 0.5-1 second advantage at every race that isn't either in the desert or takes place in abnormally hot weather. This has been the worst season I've followed since I started watching F1 in 2015. Today was only close because the track was so hot that there weren't as many temperature issues. Once we get to the European races and temperatures drop a bit, it's probably gonna return to being Mercedes 1-2s.

What other penalty could the stewards have given? Vettel was in front before and after the incident so they couldn't have him give a place up. When it comes to time penalties, it's always 5 seconds. Vettel's best action would've been to hot lap like a motherfucker like he used to do in a Red Bull. He had the beating of that Merc. The walls made that move dangerous and, despite what Vettel says, he had space on the inside whereas Lewis had nothing but a wall for company.

They shouldn't have given him a penalty at all! This is the very definition of a "racing incident", worthy of no further action. Hamilton was chasing Vettel hard, and Vettel was defending hard. In so doing, Hamilton forced an error on Vettels part, but Vettel was able to recover and Hamilton failed to capitalize on his opportunity (but might very well have a few laps later due to the beating Vettel's tyres took).

This is what racing is supposed to look like! This is what the sport should be! World class drivers putting pressure driving right up to the edge. The penalty is absolutely bananas, they might as well start penalizing people for trying to overtake at this point.

I found Karun Chandhok's analysis of the incident really good: https://streamable.com/m9yis

"Drivers must resume the track having not been given a lasting advantage."

Letter of the law. He squeezed him and stayed in front after resuming the track and oversteering. The advantage is positional, not time but he can't give back a position he hasn't lost. So time is applied.

Letter of the law, that was a penalty. However, Vettel didn't have control of the car and couldn't have done anything else with it. That is why the stewards are there, to interpret situations. This shouldn't have been a penalty, because Vettel didn't seem to take his line intentionally.

Vettel's tires were sliding when he rejoined the track because of the grass. It wasn't as simple as him turning left more. When he re-entered the track his rear wheels were sliding and he was fighting nearly spinning out. If you look at the video above you can see he was clearly not in control when he re-entered the track.

A whole pile of current and former racing drivers have criticized this call, even Mark Webber. All of them said it should have been a racing incident.

The bigger issue is that last year (and several times previously) the FIA said that they were going to let the drivers race and be more lenient with penalties with regards to borderline situations like light contact, however there has been no consistency about this. In some races, things that appear to be racing incidents will be penalized, but in other races they will not. Also, there is no consistency to what penalty will be given for a given infraction, and in some cases clearly worse infractions get off with lighter penalties. A recent example is Verstappen in Monaco. He got a 5 second penalty for unsafe release while he basically tried to pass Bottas in the pit lane, which in itself is dangerous for obvious reasons, but he also punctured Bottas' tire and ruined his race. In contrast, I think it was Giovinazzi who got a 10 second penalty for accidentally bumping into another car in a slow corner and causing them to spin, and even at the time the commentators figured it would be a racing incident. Nobody even sustained damage, just a spin, and Giovinazzi lost a ton of time as a result of it because he got stuck behind the other car as they unspun (it was the casino square corner I think. That super tight corner).

This is why I think they need to do away with their current stewarding system. It's straight up bad. They bring in former drivers to act as stewards, but it is different people every race so the calls are never consistent. It makes no sense that they have the same race director and other senior race officials every race, but not stewards.

Yeah, the stewarding system is odd, like a guest judge in a reality TV show. I do wonder what former drivers would follow the circus around for 21 weekends, though. Also, these decisions are considered using all available technology. So there's telemetry as well as slow motion footage. I can see the decision being reversed but the dangerous precedent was already set when Verstappen was penalised for a similar incident. If they're showing consistency, it's right there.

Maybe they clear it all up next season?

The question seems to be whether Vettel was steering right when he squeezed hamilton because of opposite lock or just to block him.

I suspect they prefer the current steward system because they are essentially volunteers.

Kinda feels like this whole penalty debate is obscuring the fact that Vettel panicked and screwed up when Hamilton was breathing down his neck. Again.

Here is your annual 'How are they doing?' Le Mans check-in.

• Kamui Kobayashi leads
• Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima are second
• Sergey Sirotkin and Stephane Sarrazin are OUT
• Stoffel van Dorne and Vitaly Petrov are 3rd
• Bruno Senna's car has recovered to 4th after miscalculating fuel on the first stint.
• Jean-Eric Vergne's running 12th
• Pastor Maldonado and Anthony Davidson are OUT.
• Paul di Resta's car is 10th
• Will Stevens is 13th
• Geido van der Garde is 15th
• Jan Magnussen is 23rd
• Gianmaria Bruni is 25th
• Sebastien Bourdais is 28th
• Giancarlo Fisichella is 44th
• Olivier Berreta is 47th
• Pedro Lamy is OUT.

Updated as of 10am BST.

Ugh, looks to be another boring race tomorrow. But hey, at least the predicatibility of it is saving me subscription fees, because in no way would I pay my money to watch this growing travesty of a motorsport. My brother has tried the F1TV service this year, which is much cheaper than our regular option, but that is not working 50% of the time. He gave up on that service after the last race. My brother and I, together with a friend, were planning to go and watch an F1 race this year ... but the way it is now, we just don't think it's worth the money. Instead we're talking about Formula E instead, where stuff actally happens in every race.

If you go with the opinion that the sport has rarely been interesting, you can't be disappointed. The 24hours of Nurburgring is pretty decent. Lots of incidents and scraps.

I think in some ways, even by F1 standards where often there are a lot of boring races, this season is somehow worse than basically any season I've watched (I've watched all F1 since 2015, but also watched the 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010 seasons during the off-season, so I have seen some of the Ferrari domination era). Other than a freak incident occurring like Bottas and Hamilton colliding, both having a bad start and Leclerc getting ahead, or there being a well-timed safety car, there is no question that a Mercedes will win tomorrow.

But it's not just the Mercedes factor. The aerodynamic rule changes and changes to the tires basically spread out a field that was getting increasingly close together last year in terms of performance, and that has made even the normally exciting midfield battles dull. Not to mention rule changes tend to favour the teams with the most money, which is clear from how far ahead of everyone else Mercedes, and to a lesser extent, Ferrari are.

This year's tire specification is also consistent, but almost too consistent. They don't blister anymore and most team have them so mapped out that they never are much a factor. Not to mention, the specification change has aided teams that are worse at tire management and heating like Mercedes, while punishing those who build cars to be kind on the tires like Ferrari and Red Bull, which is a big factor in why Mercedes are so far ahead of those two teams now. They shouldn't have changed the tires from last year. Yet again it was a change for change's sake and it has messed up the racing even more.

The FIA's (or Formula One Aministration) been trying to force things because, if you focus test this shit, you'll get a lot of people saying it's boring. There will always be a perceived problem with F1. It will and has never been as exciting as Touring Cars or MotoGP. It's a weird experiment. The Tilke tracks are designed with overtaking and racing in mind. They're wide, have heavy braking areas and big straights to take advantage of DRS. The downside is how, Bahrain onwards, they've all borrowed an identity from the track before it. Ultimately, good sport comes from good circumstance. You cannot force it.

We appear to have an actual race this weekend. Hamilton just got a penalty for blocking Kimi's qualifying lap so he's starting 5th. Ferrari changed how they set up their car and seem to have found a great deal of performance (Binotto said they were going to abandon their lower downforce/higher aero efficiency setup and try for a much higher downforce setup to make the tires more manageable, It appears to have at least partially worked). Of course it wouldn't be Ferrari without something going wrong so Vettel's starting 10th after having some type of air pressure leak in a pneumatic system in his car. Theoretically, Leclerc should have the advantage for the start since he's starting on the softs versus the mediums of those around him, and with clean air he should be able to make those tires last longer.

I do think the Red Bull Ring is secretly one of the best F1 tracks. It's not complicated. It's not a long lap. What it is though, is an incredibly fast circuit that punishes any errors and rewards good driving. It's good to see a track with gravel and grass rather than tarmac runoffs. We won't see any situations like what happened with Perez last race happening here. That's for sure. Even in practice we saw people from across the field making mistakes because the simplicity of this track forces people to drive on or past the limit in order to be faster.

@ben_h: Hell, I'm not even mad about Vettel being 10th! With both Vettel and Hamilton further back, they're going to have to hunt through the pack, with the young'uns scrapping it out in front on various different tyres. We might actually see some quality racing tomorrow.

(fast-forward to: every driver that even attempts an overtake or anything marginally fun gets a penalty, because that's how the rules work now)

I'd love to see Verstappen and Hamilton as teammates.

So racing finally resumed at Oliver's Mount. It's under new owners and the council's happy with the safety modifications. The Gold Cup's on 27th September. I am very tempted to make my way down there.

Saturday is the Bathurst 12 hour, free again to anyone outside Australia on youtube.

Awesome. I have absolutely nothing else on.

Race is about to start, 3 streams for it if you are geoblocked try another.

GTWorld

Bathurst Official

Stroll's dad just bought a chunk of Aston Martin and the name will be on the grid for 2021 as a works team.

In the absence of real racing, I've gone back into the archives and watched some review videos. I've rediscovered how fun 2009 was. The Brawn 'fairytale' is what it is but there's a lot of mad unknowns to that season.

• Barrichello's bitter turn after Monaco.
• McLaren's immediate loss of form and late rediscovery.
• Massa dragging points out of a dog Ferrari and then Kimi picking up the baton when Massa was injured.
• Luca Badoer's big weekend.
• Toyota and Force India grabbing poles.
• Sauber's head start on 2009 development backfiring massively.
• Crashgate
• Romain Grosjean's auspicious start.
• The genesis of Toro Rosso's 'mid-season driver swap'

It makes me excited for 2021's hard reset. I also forgot how KERS and double-diffusers were optional.

In case you missed it, Formula 1's youtube channel is revisiting some of the classics. It hasn't taken them long to bring out possibly the best race of all time:

Come for the awesome FIA old logo, stay for the mad race.