The F1 thread

Cols

Gasly’s been confirmed as Ricciardo’s replacement.  Doubt he’ll give Verstappen any sleepless nights, but I’ll be happy to be proved wrong.

Boromedic

Not as much buzz around him as Le Clerc from the other drivers, he was decent in GP2 though and has shown well some weekends. I agree with you though he probably won't give Max much hassle except on the odd weekend perhaps.

Cols

Lando Norris will be replacing one of the McLaren drivers at Spa (well, for FP1 anyway).  And it’s not who you might think...

https://www.planetf1.com/news/norris-to-make-practice-debut-at-spa/

Boromedic

Lando is a potential great I think, lets see how he shows on Friday. Hope he gets a proper chance soon too, maybe next season perhaps.

rolls1392

Driver shuffling is more exciting than the racing!

Fretwired

rolls1392 said:

Driver shuffling is more exciting than the racing!

Could do it every race .. have a lottery in advance .. Vettel and Hamilton in a crap Williams with Hartley in a Mercedes. I bet Hamilton would still beat Hartley ... :-)

Heartfeltdawn

Cols said:

Lando Norris will be replacing one of the McLaren drivers at Spa (well, for FP1 anyway).  And it’s not who you might think...

https://www.planetf1.com/news/norris-to-make-practice-debut-at-spa/

One hopes they'll give Stoff and Lando cars with matching setup. 

Cols

Heartfeltdawn said:

Cols said:

Lando Norris will be replacing one of the McLaren drivers at Spa (well, for FP1 anyway).  And it’s not who you might think...

https://www.planetf1.com/news/norris-to-make-practice-debut-at-spa/

One hopes they'll give Stoff and Lando cars with matching setup. 

I’m sure they’ll at least put them on the same programme- the car setup is really down to the individual driver and their race engineer.  The team already knows than Vandoorne isn’t quite as fast as Alonso, they’ll want to know if Norris is any better.

Fretwired

I have a mate sitting in the stand by Eau Rouge at Spa. Dark clouds rolling in .. rain forecast for quali ... this should be interesting .. tune in to C4 at 14:00 hrs.

Garthy

What excuse do the Mclaren fans have today?

Fretwired

Exciting Q3 .. Ham is good in the wet ...

Horner off to Renault? He denied it but his body language gave it away .... could be why Ricciardo changed his mind at the 11th hour and jumped ship to Renault.

Cols

Horner to Renault?  Where'd that one come from?

Given that he's spent the past 10 years roundly slagging off Renault at every available opportunity I'd say it's unlikely.  

Then again, I never thought Alonso would drive for McLaren again after landing them with a $100 million fine.

Fretwired

Cols said:

Horner to Renault?  Where'd that one come from?

The C4 presenters were interviewing Horner yesterday before Q1 and one asked 'We hear you're off to Renault' .. Horner said 'First I've heard of it ...' but he wasn't very convincing and looked uncomfortable. Odd given Horner's criticism of the firm ...

sweepy

Unless he's taking Adrian Newey  with him, I'd stay at Red Bull

Fretwired

sweepy said:

Unless he's taking Adrian Newey  with him, I'd stay at Red Bull

The situation is odd. Ricciardo says he was going to sign with Red Bull and then out of nowhere he signs for Renault. Why? What does he know? Perhaps Newey and Horner are about to jump ship. It would be great for F1 to have a competitive Renault team. Maybe Horner and Newey don't have much confidence in Honda or a closer relationship with Aston Martin. Maybe Red Bull's owners are thinking of selling the team to another car manufacturer. Who knows. The C4 presenter was being serious when he asked the question.

stickyfiddle

So lots of talk of mid-season driver shuffles....

Stroll to RPFI
Kubica in for Williams
Ocon to McLaren (poor bastard!)
Stoff to Sauber
Ericson back to Sweden or Formula E or whatever

As much as I'm very glad the FI team is still in business (and will be very glad to see Kubica on the grid for real), this seems like a pretty major amount of fucking about so the Strolls can do their weekend motor racing hobby. 

I sincerely hope Stroll Snr doesn't sell the team again as soon as Stroll Jr starts getting whooped by Perez.

Teetonetal

Stroll snr has arguably saved a lot of jobs... IF that's so that stroll jnr can race, I'm sure the employees wont care too much in the short term.

stickyfiddle

Teetonetal said:

Stroll snr has arguably saved a lot of jobs... IF that's so that stroll jnr can race, I'm sure the employees wont care too much in the short term.

Oh absolutely. I'm very happy that those jobs are safe and that a great team has apparently got some decent investment now. That's unquestionably a good thing. 

I'm just slightly concerned that with this, and Dmitry Mazepin whinging that he didn't get to buy FI, and Latifi buying a chunky part of McLaren it feels like they're all trying to play at "billionaires go racing", potentially at the expense of decent drivers like Ocon. Obviously F1 has already been a rich boys' club and pay drivers will never completely go away. I just have a sense of unease about it.  

Anyway, looking forward to the race today. Sadly only 20% chance of rain, but a mixed up grid, so should be good.

Garthy

To be fair it’s how most Motorsport is funded, including F1 in the 50s-70s. 

WEC have an entire class dedicated to such owner drivers.

Cols

Wouldn’t Ocon be more likely to wash up at Williams, with the Merc connection?