F1 2014

Maybe it wasn't his choice. Kvyat probably brings money with him, Seb is a very expensive second driver this year. And who knows, Mercedes wasn't exactly a powerhouse when Hamilton joined them.

ncjay wrote: Rumblings are going around Bernie is looking for 3 car teams. Seems unlikely, but that would allow Button to keep a McLaren seat. I am very surprised Alonso stayed with Ferrari as long as he did. Prancing horse is more like a prancing donkey the past few years. All that money and resources available and they can't build a decent car. Doubtful you'll see another F1 driver go to Indycar unless it's a very sweet deal. Ruben Barichello's former team wanted something like $4 million just for him to stay in their car.

the way I see it, is since the in season testing has been done away with, Ferrari has had problems … it seems they seldom hit the road running, but as pointed out, with their resources, they were able to "fix" whatever was wrong between races … and then continue to improve the car as the season went on … can't do that anymore

Why would McLaren go after Alonso? He 'turned states evidence' against McLaren to Ferrari when he left!

ncjay wrote: Seb Vettel must be smoking crack. Why on earth would you leave a team like Red Bull to go to Ferrari? Vettel must not be watching Alonso or Raikkonen this year. Maybe he'll make me eat my words next season, but I doubt it.

When Schumi joined Ferrari they hadn't won a drivers championship since 79 or a constructors since 83. At least kimi won in 07 which is positively recent history plus both Massa and Alonso came >< close to winning. I say its a smart move. He'll be getting big big bucks as a 4 times WDC and Kimi will be a solid number #2 as he's looking very past it this year. Ferrari is in E36 M3, but rebuilding and throwing cubic $$'s at it.

racerfink wrote: Why would McLaren go after Alonso? He 'turned states evidence' against McLaren to Ferrari when he left!

Because he's the best there is. I don't like him and I think they are making the right choice.

racerfink wrote: Why would McLaren go after Alonso? He 'turned states evidence' against McLaren to Ferrari when he left!

Loyalty isn't as important as ability. Any top F1 team would put Adolf Hitler's clone in the car if they thought he could win races and score points for them. It's a business before anything else.

Prayers for Bianchi

Bad bad news. Let's hope he's OK. Severe and head injury are not words you want to hear in the same sentence. I saw Sutil go off, but not Jules

The camera coverage was pretty weak in that area, just the single long shot; maybe no one in a booth could see Bianchi's car from that angle. I figured something bad was up when the medical car came out and passed the safety car.

oh man.

i hope he fully recovers.

i saw ferrari said he is out of surgery and is not on life support.

does anybody have a link to video of the wreck? i kinda dont understand what happened.

Hit the removal tractor? Couldn't find a video. Not on life support is encoraging.

No video of the actual accident has been released and it probably won't be.

Yeah, not sure if there wasn't coverage of a accident or they just don't want to air it not knowing if he was ok. I have no problem with that. Best wishes for him and I'm glad the news in encouraging.

Im not happy about the circumstances but perhaps Rossi will get the seat for the remainder of the season?

That was a rough race from beginning to the unfortunate end

Terrible event. Hope Bianchi will be ok.

Racing wasn't bad up until then- really amazing what happenes in the rain.

Shoot.

A bad day gets worse. Andrea de Cesar is was killed today at 55 in a motorbike accident.

There have been a couple of race weekends with yellow's that I had to raise one eyebrow at the lack of caution being taken by the drivers passing through that yellow. Like it is only there to prevent you from passing instead of ensuring that you are aware to chill out. J Biachi was simply going to fast for the situation and especially for the location. Unless the car broke then no one needs to look at fixing anything with the cars, track or series. He should have been cautious when in that area. I hope his helmet did it's job and that he recovers from this serious impact.

You can at least tell a little bit about how he went into the tractor. Extremely lucky he didn't hit two feet further back.

https://twitter.com/jimdaniels_jd/status/518767573773467648?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=jimdaniels_jd&utm_content=518767573773467648

racerfink wrote: You can at least tell a little bit about how he went into the tractor. Extremely lucky he didn't hit two feet further back. https://twitter.com/jimdaniels_jd/status/518767573773467648?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=jimdaniels_jd&utm_content=518767573773467648

I can't determine how both corners of the front of the car were smashed off as well as the intake and rear wing. There is a high likelihood that most of that damage is from the extraction team doing an excellent job of clearing a path to his body to remove him with MINIMAL risk of damage due to body movement.

Man that sucks. I watched it again and realized that they DIDN't have the safety car out when Bianchi went off. So that would be something I would change. If Charlie knew where Sutil's car was and that a tractor was on course then he may have to throw out the safety car faster. I think he had disabled DRS already so. IDK hindsight.... I think a few races ago there was a another situation that seemed to need a safety car but none came out as it was deemed too close to the end of the race.

IDK maybe all of their Millions of $$$ in F1 can pay for some awesome F1 car extractor with safe barrier skirts plus deadman switches for the guys with the guide ropes to prevent similar accident to the one in Canada 2013. There is definitely the technology just need to decide to do it.

In reply to Advan046:

The safety car was because of Bianchi's accident, not the rain.

When it went out, the NBC team totally missed the second car- the SUV looking thing, which is actually a high speed ambulance. Which is the car that follows the race for the first lap, too.

The extra safety car was deployed purely for Jules.

There is no footage of Bianchi's wreck, because there is NO footage of Bianchi's wreck. The world feed didn't catch the accident, so we will only ever see pictures.

Hoping for a speedy and full recovery.

I think the next safety change in F1 might be some kind of external bumper around any kind of tractor used on track, sort of like a bumper car. This will prevent cars from going under them and maybe prevent anyone from being run over like the Canada 2013 accident.

I remember a test driver lost an eye from hitting a truck a year or two ago...high-ground-clearance vehicles working on the track are becoming one of the biggest dangers.

z31maniac wrote: There is no footage of Bianchi's wreck, because there is NO footage of Bianchi's wreck. The world feed didn't catch the accident, so we will only ever see pictures. Hoping for a speedy and full recovery.

People have cameras everywhere, don't forget. I found this on Reddit:

First off, the force of the impact is simply amazing. Look at how the crane gets lifted up. Second, why is there a green flag waving? And finally, the fact that he survived is the most astonishing thing of all.

Forza Jules.

Unberkeleyingbelievable. That was NOT double yellow flag speeds, as originally reported by F1A.

That's unreal.