The F1 thread

stickyfiddle

George was never less than 0.5 faster than his teammate and yes there was track evo but he finished Q1 in front of some cars he had absolutely no right to be ahead of - and cars that did laps only a few seconds after his best one. 

Race should be good if you ignore the Mercs. Leclerc will want in front of the RPs on the first lap...

Fretwired

stickyfiddle said:

Race should be good if you ignore the Mercs. Leclerc will want in front of the RPs on the first lap...

Vettel's car will be wider than three London buses ... LeClerc won't want a repeat of last week ... I expect him to be careful at the start ..  :-)

prowla

FYI, I found a cheap way to get Sky Sports (inc. F1)...

If you've got Tesco Clubcard points you can get a month's Sky Sports on NowTV for £11.33.

A month's subscription is £33.99; the Tesco points are worth 3x, so it costs £11.33's worth of points.

You can cancel immediately you buy, so it doesn't auto-renew.

I have the NowTV app on an AppleTV box and on an iPad; it's available for a lot of other devices too.

Fretwired

prowla said:

FYI, I found a cheap way to get Sky Sports (inc. F1)...

If you've got Tesco Clubcard points you can get a month's Sky Sports on NowTV for £11.33.

A month's subscription is £33.99; the Tesco points are worth 3x, so it costs £11.33's worth of points.

You can cancel immediately you buy, so it doesn't auto-renew.

I have the NowTV app on an AppleTV box and on an iPad; it's available for a lot of other devices too.

I did something similar .. I used to buy the odd race .. when F1 restarted after lockdown they gave me a month for the price of a weekend.

fretmeister

prowla said:

FYI, I found a cheap way to get Sky Sports (inc. F1)...

If you've got Tesco Clubcard points you can get a month's Sky Sports on NowTV for £11.33.

A month's subscription is £33.99; the Tesco points are worth 3x, so it costs £11.33's worth of points.

You can cancel immediately you buy, so it doesn't auto-renew.

I have the NowTV app on an AppleTV box and on an iPad; it's available for a lot of other devices too.

I’ve been doing that for a while.
With the increase in Tesco deliveries in lockdown, my over eating family of 4 has raised me enough points to get a years worth of Sky,
. Sports, movies, and the entertainment/ box sets.

Boromedic

Just reading the results, didn't watch quali. Red Bull must be running the engine at a lower setting, can't just be an aero problem surely? Maybe they're worried about reliability. Hopefully there'll be some decent midfield squabbles, although I'll be more than happy to see Lewis trot off to a win. 

markr76

Boromedic said:

Just reading the results, didn't watch quali. Red Bull must be running the engine at a lower setting, can't just be an aero problem surely? Maybe they're worried about reliability. Hopefully there'll be some decent midfield squabbles, although I'll be more than happy to see Lewis trot off to a win. 

Redbull opted not to run their new aero upgrades on Friday for whatever reason. I was quite shocked that we were so far in front of everyone. It could be to do with the track being a lot cooler than usual. I think they were all struggling to get heat into the tyres. 

prowla

markr76 said:

Boromedic said:

Just reading the results, didn't watch quali. Red Bull must be running the engine at a lower setting, can't just be an aero problem surely? Maybe they're worried about reliability. Hopefully there'll be some decent midfield squabbles, although I'll be more than happy to see Lewis trot off to a win. 

Redbull opted not to run their new aero upgrades on Friday for whatever reason. I was quite shocked that we were so far in front of everyone. It could be to do with the track being a lot cooler than usual. I think they were all struggling to get heat into the tyres. 

They were struggling with the handling and also put Albon out into traffic for his last run.

markr76

Yeah the handling will be to do with the tyres not getting warmed up enough. 

prowla

The beeb have some commentary on RB's issue.

Formula 1: Verstappen and Albon exposed by trouble at Red Bull

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/53458707

Boromedic

Yeah it all seems a little weird, maybe they've pushed the aero a little too far chasing Mercedes? Clearly not the engines then, my bad!! Newey must be annoyed with himself, the tyre thing perhaps shows how useful the DAS system is?!

Thanks for the info too @markr76 !

Cols

Fingers crossed for a spot of rain then, otherwise it’s going to be a very dull afternoon.

markr76

Boromedic said:

Yeah it all seems a little weird, maybe they've pushed the aero a little too far chasing Mercedes? Clearly not the engines then, my bad!! Newey must be annoyed with himself, the tyre thing perhaps shows how useful the DAS system is?!

Thanks for the info too @markr76 !

I’m wondering if Redbull was targeted the original 2021 season, with its new regs. Putting all their efforts into that car. Same too with a lot of the grid. Good place to get an advantage, while we were tied up in a championship battle. 

But now the cars are going to be used next year too and the regs pushed back. I think it’s caught a few teams out. 

I know Redbull did want to make Max the youngest ever champion. The window for that is closing. Plus there’s rumours that Marco is stepping down soon. He wanted a championship with Max as his swan song so to speak. They might have pushed the envelopes too far. Who knows. 

One thing we know at work though. Is Redbull are very quick at sorting problems and adding performance to their car. So they’re always a threat.
 

markr76

Ferrari on the other hand are on a long road to recovery. They need to look at themselves, right to the top. 

Instead of putting in the hard work of trying to make a sound car with natural pace. They took the cheap easy route and cheated. Now they are paying the price for it. 

We genuinely thought that Ferrari had caught us napping with their car and engine. We were baffled at how they were so quick. But thanks to them we had to step back and re evaluate. Push ourselves again. It looks like we’ve built a strong car. Which I love. But I also understand that it might be bad Viewing and boring for the neutral fan. But us at Merc genuinely want Ferrari and Redbull to really challenge us as we love the fight. 

But in the meantime I’d love to see us, as much of a pain in the arse it would be. To put Max in our car along side Lewis and let them both go for it!

Boromedic

I don't think it's boring, I was more than happy to watch Michael stroll to wins and I'm even happier to see Lewis doing it now. Best driver ever, and he deserves every win he takes. (With the honourable exception of Jim Clark, genius)

sweepy

Wet F3 race and more rain due about midday, could be fun 

Fretwired

Brundle made a good point last year - Red Bull have opted for two young drivers with limited experience in helping to develop the car. When the car is not working well they can moan but they don't have experience in helping to move car development forward. According to Wolff Hamilton spends hours with the engineers and is always pushing for 'perfection' .. I doubt Max has the experience to do this yet.

The current issues could be why Marco may swap Albon for Vettel if things don't get much better. The team could maybe do with his experience.

markr76

Boromedic said:

I don't think it's boring, I was more than happy to watch Michael stroll to wins and I'm even happier to see Lewis doing it now. Best driver ever, and he deserves every win he takes. (With the honourable exception of Jim Clark, genius)

Me and a couple of colleagues were talking about how lucky we’ve been. A few of us were talking after watching Rush again the other night. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Niki Lauda on a few occasions. He was just like I imagined. Very funny too!
the only time I was ever star struck though was meeting Schumacher and he was super nice and had a hand shake like a death grip! At the time he popped in, I was machining a chassis for what would have been the first Mercedes. Michael was asking questions about how we do certain things and he asked which chassis number that was. I replied it’s no.3. Michael said cool, this is one of mine then. Then he explained he only had odd numbered chassis as he was superstitious. I replied that’s a shame as Nico has already bagged this one! Michael laughed and said yeah we’ll see about that!! 

Saying that though Lewis has a handshake like a death grip too. He says it’s because he has to hang on for dear life in the f1 car! I’ve spent a lot of time defending Lewis. He really is believe it or not a genuinely nice guy and very down to earth. He’s also quite shy in real life!

markr76

Fretwired said:

Brundle made a good point last year - Red Bull have opted for two young drivers with limited experience in helping to develop the car. When the car is not working well they can moan but they don't have experience in helping to move car development forward. According to Wolff Hamilton spends hours with the engineers and is always pushing for 'perfection' .. I doubt Max has the experience to do this yet.

The current issues could be why Marco may swap Albon for Vettel if things don't get much better. The team could maybe do with his experience.

Hamilton hates all that side of things too. It’s just part of the fame though if you want to succeed and he knows that. That’s something Nico was very good at. He really knew how to set a car up and tell the engineers the right info they needed. Schumacher was legendary at this side of things!

stickyfiddle

Great stuff @markr76 - more please!! 

I'm honestly perfectly happy to see Merc winning as long as it isn't entirely one-sided, and this year looks very close between him and Valteri, so it's great. And behind that its the closest midfield in years and it looks like we'll have at least 4 other teams capable of getting on the podium which is fantastic - maybe even more if Renault have a good weekend and bit of luck. 

I do hope Lewis gets a 7th title, to shut the haters up as much as anything. You can't objectively judge between Fangio, Senna, Prost, Schumacher and Hamilton, but I don't think it's especially controversial to suggest they're the top 5 drivers in history.

(Clark, Moss, Stewart, Lauda and Alonso probably the next 5. After that is more tricky... off the top of my head I'm thinking Graham Hill, Mansell, Hakkinen, Vettel, and probably Max Verstappen or an in-form Kimi. Any other obvious ones?)