The F1 thread

fretmeister

Looks like Mick is out of a job.

SVD to Aston as reserve. Hulk in talks with Haas.

Cols

fretmeister said:

Looks like Mick is out of a job.

SVD to Aston as reserve. Hulk in talks with Haas.

Shame for Mick, who is by all accounts a popular chap and extremely hardworking.  He’s also a gifted and intelligent driver.

Unfortunately in the past 2 years he hasn’t really shown the murderous speed of the senior Schumacher; Magnussen’s quick, but he’s not exactly world class.  On top of that, he has had a lot of expensive crashes.

So if true, Haas will be swapping a young, fast German driver with a tendency to reduce cars to their component parts for an older, fast German driver who doesn’t crash quite so much.  Seems sensible.

chillidoggy

Blast from the past!

Just stumbled across these on my PC. Silverstone, but I'm not sure of the date. It was a test day, Damon Hill in the Jordan, I do remember him giving us a talk later, with Mike Gasgoyne.

https://i.imgur.com/09PVjYY.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/8v6vt8o.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/QTMFXS3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/u3FvY9F.jpg

Cols

Mauro Forghieri has gone at the grand old age of 84.  Technical head of Ferrari's race operations from 1961 to 1984, he was one of the most important figures in Formula One history.

fretmeister

KMAG!

What a brilliant qualifying!

roundthebend

Can't wait to watch the highlights. 

Cols

Well, the Haas cars are neatly bookending the rest of the grid…

chillidoggy

Finally, a Quali worth watching!

Oh, wait. It’s a fucking sprint.

stickyfiddle

Well I was in bed.  Feck! 

I did say KMag would be Fantasy F1 bargain of the year though!!!

thumpingrug

That wasn't a bad sprint.  It will be interesting tomorrow.

fretmeister

Max was on mediums.

When he’s on softs tomorrow he’s going to be very fast.

DesVegas

Yes George yes

Cols

Not a day of happy teammates, with both Ocon and (much more blatantly) Stroll running Alonso and Vettel off the road.  Unusually clumsy of Fernando to then run into the back of Ocon.

stickyfiddle

Stroll still demonstrating his utter lack of spacial awareness. I don't hate the guy like so many seem to but it's getting silly. Alonso will not be quietly putting up with that stuff like Set does.

Good sprint overall with Ham & Rus doing great stuff. But you have to assume Max on matching tyres and with a fixed front wing is going to find them easy pickings tonight. 

And while we finally got a genuinely good sprint, is that probably to the detriment of today's race? There's an argument to be made that the sprint was good because of the wet quali, and the first 15 laps of the race would have been better if they'd started in the order they were at the start of the sprint.

thumpingrug

Im not sure if I missed this but why did Max start on the mediums?

chillidoggy

Not a bad sprint, although I’m still unconvinced. George was a class act, though.

But WTF was Stroll doing? Unbelievable!

stickyfiddle

thumpingrug said:

Im not sure if I missed this but why did Max start on the mediums?

I guess they just thought the softs wouldn't do the whole race

Cols

stickyfiddle said:

Stroll still demonstrating his utter lack of spacial awareness. I don't hate the guy like so many seem to but it's getting silly. Alonso will not be quietly putting up with that stuff like Set does.

While I’m sure Stroll’s clash with Alonso at Austin was down to clumsiness and a lack of situational awareness, his move on Vettel yesterday was very deliberate.  Seb is so laid back these days he’s almost horizontal; his radio reaction of “…Ok” and then just blasting past Stroll on the next lap was priceless.

If he tries such shenanigans on Alonso next year I imagine the response will be more… colourful.

dazzajl

The response will be a crash. 

Cols

dazzajl said:

The response will be a crash. 

I don't think so; despite Alonso's famously volatile nature, he's one of the cleanest drivers I've ever seen.  I honestly can't recall any incidents where he intentionally caused an accident or drove someone off the road.

It's more likely that a future series of Drive To Survive will feature "Tune in next episode to watch Lance Stroll trying to pick his teeth up off the floor of the Aston Martin garage with broken fingers".