The Official Shift+F1 V6 Thread of Speed

Can you blame them? Kimi doesn't have much of a chance in the Driver's, and Mercedes seems like they'll probably win the Constructor's; Ferrari's wants to at least try their best to see that Vettel wins the Driver's

What exactly did Kimi do to deserve to win the race? He didn't get pole and he wasn't first after the first corner. Those are the two things you need to do to win the Hungarian Grand Prix and he didn't. There was no preferential treatment for Vettel from Ferrari. The only way Kimi wins the race if if they order a switch. You wanted them to just gift the race to Kimi because Vettel had a problem? The constructor championship is a bigger deal for the team and a 1,2 finish is important to cut into Mercedes lead. Even with Vettel's problems, there was a miniscule chance that Kimi would have been able to get by him if they were both racing and pretty much a zero percent chance that Hamilton would be able to overtake Kimi. As a team, it's better to have the more vulnerable driver at the front to guarantee the 1,2 finish. I'm 99% sure they would have done the exact same thing if it was Kimi who was leading with the steering problem.

That being said, they need to stop racing Formula 1 cars on the Hungaroring. That race just highlights everything that's wrong with the sport.

Nope. Hungaroring has been home to some momentous races. Change the cars, not the venues.

Kimi basically said exactly that himself after the race. He said he should have qualified better if he wanted to be in front of Vettel. He said it is a track that is difficult to pass on and he wasn't going to risk anything with his teammate even if he would have maybe had a chance at the first corner. Kimi wants to win but he's never been one to argue about playing the team game. He's always been much more fair than a Hamilton type driver (What Hamilton did this weekend was a shock to everyone for a reason). It was weird, usually he's pretty down at podiums if he doesn't win (see Monaco this year or basically anywhere else he gets a podium) but this time around he seemed content with what happened.

I imagine the news that he is probably getting a new Ferrari contract is probably influencing how he has been behaving of course hahaha.

@hunkulese: Kimi had more pace than Vettel, partly due to the steering problem Sebastian was dealing with. During the pitstops, Kimi could have stayed out and most likely passed Vettel. He complained about this in the radio. But, once again, Ferrari pulled him in early and used him as a shield against the Mercedes drivers.

we're back \o/

Is this thread dead?

Anyway I just hate Verstappen. Of course this is "a racing incident" but Verstappen is involved in these ridiculously often. Kimi was past him, he drove a bit to the left, probably because he didn't even see him and bam that's that.

That's the championship decided right there. Great stuff.

Vettel shouldn't have cut in that far either, still, this sucks.

Seemed like a racing incident. But Max seemed mostly at fault.

Either way, that's it. Championship's over, unless Hamilton has a dnf in the future, it's over

Yup, even if Ricciardo gets past him here for the win there's little chance that Vettel will be able to make up that many points.

I was thinking yesterday how Verstappen taking Vettel out had an air of inevitability.

Anyone else feel like there is a real chance this race wont get done in the 2 hour time limit?

Edit: The play by play just basically said there not likely to make it.

@sessh: To me it seems Vettel is at blame here and from the interview he seems to be well aware of his guilt. Vettel just squeezed Verstappen very agressivly and didnt know Kimi was there, i mean Vettel even rammed into Kimi after ramming into Verstappen thats how agressive he was. If Kimi didnt have that awesome start Verstappen could have avoided Vettel but there was no room for him to go anywhere.

You can call it a racing incident because there is no way for Vettel to know Kimi was there but you have to reach veeeeeery deep to put any blame whatsoever on Verstappen.

@twistedmerc94: Care to explain how this was his fault? https://gfycat.com/SaltyOddAcaciarat

In my opinion, the steward's decision to take no further action was right. There was no one predominantly at fault, it's the sort if accident that can happen easily at the start with so many cars so close together.

Blaming Verstappen for that is a hell of a reach, and more indicative of personal prejudices than fact. Vettel arguably made an aggressive, risky move he didn't need to make with Hamilton starting in fifth, but not a dangerous or unlawful one.

If anyone, Alonso had the most right to be annoyed, after such a good start.

After the incident, I was really hoping for a Ricciardo win or at least a decent battle with Hamilton. Apparently he had gearbox issues which denied us that.

Oh wow, F1 just put the full Malaysia 2001 race on their official Youtube channel. Liberty media finally convinced them the internet is a thing.

Wowzers. Once upon a time, someone put Monaco '96 up there in full. Dorna should follow suit to try and coax folks onto their season pass for MotoGP stuff.

Pretty sure Hamilton hired a wizard or something this second half of the season.

Well that's it. Championship's officially over.

The amount of badluck Ferrari has is insane.

Edit: Yup, well done there Bottas. At this rate, you'll never be a world champion.

I wouldn't call a knackered engine bad luck. It's engineering.

Massa/Alonso cost us two good battles right at the end. Stopped Max getting close to Lewis and also stopped the battle between the two of them.

Sucks that we were robbed of a good end to the race.

@shindig: It's bad luck. Out of the three top teams, Lewis has been the only one not hit by bad luck and reliability. Vettel and Kimi have had back luck and reliability, Max and Danniel have had back luck and reliability. Even Bottas has had to retire at one point due to bad reliability.

Also, I get the feeling that a large portion of Alonso's income comes from Lewis and Mercedes. He's almost as good at defending Lewis' lead as Bottas is.

Firstly, you can't say Lewis has been without bad luck in a year when he's been punted by a rival behind the safety car (Azerbaijan), qualified 14th in Monaco because Vandorne held him up. And the Alonso comment is amazing, given their history.

Apart from the headrest costing him a win at Baku, and Mercedes being unable to consistently set up a car race-to-race early in the season, Hamilton has been blessed in terms of reliability so far this year.

It's a massive turnaround from the number of problems last year that basically left Nico to run away with the championship.

Although I'm not a big fan of the team, I like their drivers, so it's good to see Red Bull mixing it with Mercedes and Ferrari more and more as the season progresses.

Now that the championship win seems to be pretty well decided, I think I'll shift my focus to willing Bottas on to overtake Vettel in points. He's currently only 13 points behind.

Has anyone seen the Formula E 2016-2017 season?

I'm preparing for a long international flight (flying from Ecuador to Austin, Texas.. though sadly for work and not to attend the Grand Prix), and I was thinking of catching up on Formula E.

Any stand-out races I should definitely download onto my tablet, any particularly boring races I should skip?

Anybody else have tickets to the USGP in Austin this weekend?

That Michael Buffer red carpet thing was as awkward and ridiculous as I hoped!

@syce300: It was really bad.

I shut off the TV as soon as the race was over, then got a text from my friend saying THEY GAVE VERSTAPPEN A FIVE SECOND PENALTY and I could not stop laughing.

Same. I never heard something so ridiculous in F1 and I'm watching it since '94.

At first I thought the penalty was fine; he DID exceed the track limits. But then again, literally everyone was going wide at corners all weekend and there was no repercussions until that moment. It was stupid.

It does seem either like a statistical anomaly, or FIA steward Garry Connelly sure has a vendetta out for Max. Some business about Abu Dhabi 2015: when he was over-ruled by other stewards about Max and then stormed the Merc garage, demanding they protest his peers' decision. Toto and Lewis had flown off by then, after agreeing Max's move was ok. So Merc did protest, then withdrew it when Toto found out what had gone on with Connelly.

Liberty Media should make sure the FIA is consistent and transparent if they want the sport to be less of a joke. And why not bring back kerbs and have real track limits to remove all this shenanigans?

Kvyat is dropped by Toro Rosso. Helmut Marko made the statement himself today. That leaves at least one new seat that will be up for contention this coming year. I've only been watching F1 for 3 seasons and have watched a few season reviews, but I can't think of the last time a team replaced both drivers in the same season. That's stunning to me. I feel bad for the guy, he has was good, but everyone in F1 is good and there are only 20 seats right now, in a healthier field, he would find a seat no problem.

At this point I wonder whether or not F1 will return to Russia for 2018? The Russian GP was started in part because the top team at the time (Red Bull) had a Russian driver in the seat and Putin used that as leverage to get civilian support for the race. Generally speaking, the Russian GP is by far the worst race on the calendar in many fans eyes (The F1 Fanatic Rate the Race results but it down at the very bottom nearly every year they've run it). Now there's even less reason to have it if the fans don't have a driver to get behind.

If anyone hasn't heard. Alonso and Lando Norris will drive in the 24 Hours of Daytona for United Auto. That could be a fun thing to run in another tab while you're doing other stuff. I really hope other drivers finally catch on and get a shot at driving in other series as one off drivers. It would help mix the field up for F1 races and give young drivers (or old reserve drivers, looking at you Jenson Button) a shot to prove their worth. It would also do a lot to raise the profile of other racing series, which is always good for motorsport when you get fans who follow multiple disciplines.

I'm not sure if Fernando and Lando have driven in an endurance race, it would be fun to see if they can hold up to the strains it puts on your mentally and physically.

Mexico delivered a hell of a good race. Hamilton seemed to struggle a lot to make any kind of headway in the pack, but hey, dude's the world champion again so I doubt he gives much of a fuck about having one bad race. Max made one incredibly good move at the beginning of the race and never seemed particularly in danger after that (it helps when your competition has to pit and gets knocked all the way to the back of the pack, of course, but Bottas and Raikonnen never seemed to even sniff at his heels).

Got back into MotoGP this year. I'm only up to Australia but I'm anticipating and hoping the title's going down to the wire on Sunday. Dovi's stepped up massively and, whilst Marquez is the man to beat, the scraps at the top have been fascinating. Lorenzo and Petrucci hitting the front in races certainly give Ducatti some backup but those last-lap fights in Motegi and Austria? were brilliant.

In the other two classes, Joan Mir looks to have incredibly racecraft. It's a shame he didn't fancy it in Motegi's tricky conditions but he's been faultless everywhere else. Fenati's got an interesting riding style that works really, really well in wet conditions but he just crucifies his tires in the dry with those wide lines he loves to take. Morbidelli's been equally solid, although I've never seen Tom Luhti has a viable contender (much like how I saw Dovizioso until this season). He'll be stepping up to MotoGP next season, though. I'll be keeping an eye on Mir's Moto2 season as well.

I love that shit. I love how you can follow the talent through the ranks with MotoGP. F1's taken note with GP2 and GP3 but there's a scarcity of seats and it seems more driven by funding.

Can someone cut the audio of Dave Lang singing the General Lee horn and put it in a format that's usable in TrackMania 2? It's around the 25:38 mark in Ep. 31.

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/22435704/haas-reveals-first-shots-f1-halo-era

It seems the halo is still going to look a bit glued on this year, have Haas even put any bodywork over it? It just looks like the bare unit. I figured the teams would add a bit of taper to the profile of the side tubes to smooth it out.

On the other hand, those bargeboards look exceptional, Haas might be top of midfield this year.

The Halos look absolutely awful again, weren't they meant to look more suitable with the cars being designed around them this year? Cause right now they look like they did in testing last year, bloody awful. At least with the future Formula E cars the Halos look to be part of the design of the car. Halo aside, the rest of the Haas car looks nice, fascinated to see how they do this year, expecting better things.

The new Williams car has been unveiled. It has Ferrari side pods. I bet a lot of cars will.

https://www.racefans.net/2018/02/15/williams-reveals-significantly-different-f1-car-2018/

Given that Ferrari often looked the better car aerodynamically last year, I wouldn't be shocked if most of the cars have the side pods.

PS: F1Fanatic is now called RaceFans. They're going to cover more than just F1 by the sounds of things. It's still one of the best F1 sites, and one of the only bigger F1 sites left not owned by the company that owns Motorsport and Autosport.

Seems I was mistake, the halo on the Haas actually does have some extra streamlining on it, though I've heard its actual impact is pretty minor.

That really long arm supporting the top of the turning vane (though it's maybe too big to call it that, almost like an endplate for the side pod) looks really weird. I guess they want it really stiff and couldn't compromise the aero anywhere else. To my eye at least it does not appear to be an aerofoil, maybe its odd shape is actually parallel to the direction of airflow in that region?

I do think painting the front leg of the halo white is probably not a great idea, I would imagine you want to make the front leg as easy to defocus as possible.

Speaking of which, there are a number of videos of people trying it out in VR:

No real problem with Eau Rouge, and this is a worst case as I think his PoV is slightly higher than it would be in the genuine article.

I have 0 issue with that Halo being uglier then sin if it makes the drivers even .0001% safer. Having said that, the little bar in the middle does worry me a bit in terms of blocking view.

Yeah I’m kinda surprised more teams haven’t gone the Ferrari route and painted the underside of the halo black to avoid it catching the driver’s eye. The creators of vantablack made a new coating recently that can actually be used like a normal paint instead of a fragile coating, maybe they should cover the inside with that.

My dream has come true. I just now found out this is coming out on 6 March! - in 3 days!

The race in June is the perfect antidote to the halo-mongering and wrestling style presentation being introduced in F1.

This game looks rather great, if you are a fan of the course and there a quite a few tuning options, although it looks rather serious and difficult.

https://www.iomtt-thegame.com/en

The best race in the world is now a game too! Do you think you can memorise a 37 mile track at an average speed of 130mph?

Jester Interactive produced a TT game back on the PS2 of some repute.

@shindig: Right. I did think about trying to get my PS2 out and find a copy a few years ago, but convinced myself it looks a bit rubbish by modern standards. Although it was very well received by fans.

Have you seen Mark Higgins and his attempts to drive the course in a WRC spec Prodrive Subaru STI car? It's crazy fast, but still not near as fast as the bike record.

FantasyGP is live again for this year! Hoping to see people both old and new! If you already joined last year, you just have to log into your account and you're still in the ALT+F1 Memorial League. If you're new, use the invite code 382180 to join at www.fantasygp.com.

here is hoping there over the top streaming service is everything people want it to be for not WAY too much money.

@diz: That new Isle of Man TT game is .... not fun. I cannot stay on the bike to make anything count. On Easy. The racing line is arsed and in races you don't even get splits to see how far you are behind. Any contact and you're dead.

@shindig: It's certainly an acquired taste! If bumping the corners didn't deflect so much to make it impossible to correct. I'm on xbox if you want to try multiplayer. I agree, it is bad, but I feel compelled to try one more go because I've seen other people play it and they don't keep falling off.