Rain_1

Qualifying was great. Rain always makes everything interesting. Ricciardo and Hamilton battle at the end was great and it has been a while since I got so excited on qualifying.

Other than the fact that I'm Brazilian, I'm excited for checking out Williams' (and Massa's) performance on dry track. I hope they can repeat the Practice sections better performance.

Seems like this year will be a more interesting one, and god knows we need one of those. Here's hoping!

I was bored, so I made this after the stream:

Patrick really should play La Mulana. It's much less covered than the other games on the list (Brad even played a lot of Rogue Legacy on a bunch of shows) and much harder than anything else.

I don't live in the US, I'm Hispanic descendant, but I don't speak Spanish in my household - I live in Brazil, where we speak Portuguese, so I declined to answer simply because there wasn't a correct answer. Maybe look into that? :D

OH NO why did I refresh the page.

Jesus fuck, now it's down.

And I was SITTING DOWN!

Holy hell goddamn, Drew will have a big ass reading to do... :D

I didn't watch the Hungarian GP nor the Qualifying, so I might not be 100% in the know of the specificities of that round, but I'll do my best to answer your questions regarding the rules. Those will be big answers, because that's how I explain things to people, so I'm sorry.. :D

1. I don't really know how is Lewis Hamilton skills and/or car performance this year, but it must be something to do with Car Performance when compared to the Red Bull cars.
2. There's 3 rounds of qualifying. I don't know how many cars are actually competing this year, but let's say there's 30 cars. At first, all 30 cars have to post a time, and the last 10 will have their position locked (from 30 to 21) on lap speed. The remaining 20 will then, again, go back to the track and run laps again. THe last 10 will have their position locked (from 20 to 11) and the top 10 will, again, all go take laps and figure out their positions, from 10 to 1. In the particular case you reported, Webber probably didn't go out for a lap on the last third of the Qualifying, so he ended up on the last place of that last round (10). This system was adopted back in 2006 because the Qualifying has a 1 hour duration, and it's televised, but nobody would come out for the first 30 minutes, because the hard hitting laps would just happen at the end of the event. Also, if you post a time with less than 3 minutes left, nobody can complete another lap and beat you.
3. Not much different. There are restrictions on budgets and on technology you can put into a car, including the amount of test laps you're allowed to have and who'll be driving the car in those laps. This is a rule that was introduced a while back, because companies like Ferrari and Williams would pour immense amounts of money in research, while the other smaller companies wouldn't be able to. A great example of that was the Williams' exclusive "Active Suspension" back in 1992, because no other F1 team had enough money and/or R&D to replicate the technology.
4. You can only protect your position by changing from the optimal track "tracing" (sorry, I'm Brazilian, so I don't know how to translate "traçado") once. In other words, you can only block a guy once.
5. It's sensors. AFAIK, you can press the button, but nothing will happen, unless you're in a position which you can use the DRS.
6. Soft and Medium tires are very dependent on the track itself. Softer tires are usually faster, but also degrade rapidly. Medium tires are not as fast, but you can use them for longer. There's a rule that you're required to use both types of tires in a single race. There's also a finite amount of tires at the team's disposal, for the entirety of the event (including qualifying). That's part of the strategy to win a race: Do you use soft tires at the qualifying, and then use the same tires at the start of the race, to get a better position and be faster at the start of the race, or do you qualify with the medium tires, qualify at a lower place and be slower during the beginning of the race, so you can use soft tires at the end? (PS: you can't change tires between qualifying and the start of the race, or at least you couldn't. It's been a while since I actually paid attention to F1).
7. Good question. They always suck anyway. :D
8. If you went off course and gained a position, you're supposed to give that position back. If you stayed in your position, the officials will discuss and, if required, give you a penalty (which is usually either go through the pit lane or wait for 10 seconds).
9. Good question. Either way, there are numerous rules to avoid the Team telling one pilot to let the other one pass (You can thank Michael Schumacher and Ferrari for the existence of that rule), so they have a myriad of code words and phrases that means god knows what.
10. Points have changed a bunch over the years, and I couldn't tell how they are right now. They're always trying to balance the sport overall, and the pointing system is one of those things they can't find the sweet spot.

Most of F1 ruleset had a complete overhaul the past 10 years (actually, after the Schumacher years) because it was becoming a boring sport: The same 2-4 people would compete for the title and the first 3 places, because of either more money invested, special things that only their cars had, actual driving skills and inside-team collusion - for instance, telling Webber to let Vettel overtake him on the last lap, so Vettel would take the 10 points and Webber only 8).

I'm confident somebody else will come and fill in the blanks, but that's the overall jist of the things you asked. Hope it helps! :D

I wrote this on twitter, but I might as well write it here, because that's what the comments section is actually for:

Your final paragraph on "who's crazy?" is perfect. Nice compilation of your thoughs from bombcasts and live shows. Great read