F1 2015

I think MB starts need a lot of work. The other teams seem to have found some new start methods to get them up past the MBs.

Excellent race overall. Nice to see the McLaren guys have a decent showing. Lots of smiles there.

Lots of passing and pass attempts.

Force India had a weekend of a lot of scares. Hulk looked shaken up. Perez can't get a break.

Rosberg must be furious at Ricciardo. Hamilton probably will be stunned. I think Hamilton could have beaten Vettel. Rosberg just doesn't get this track.

Redbull doing their late season surge again.

Very strong show for Ferrari until the car gave up on Kimi.

Wish it was Williams stepping up instead of redbull but at least nice to see 5-6 drivers potentially able to win the race today.

Cant see it on TV unless subscribed to Espanol.

Not in the TV guide either.....

Being a Hamilton fan I groaned after T1. Wow, he could have lost the points lead but instead ends up with a 21 pt. lead. A very eventful race with many surprising turns of fate for both Hamilton and Rosberg

Tech question for the smart people: when Kimi had to reboot his (apparently Windows powered) Ferrari, why did it sound like a turbine spooling down? KERS flywheels?

In reply to bentwrench:

It was on CNBC.

replay on NBCSN at noon Mon … and again at 10:30p

What a E36 M3storm of a race, but it sure was exciting!

Nice to see Vettel on top and then to give it all to Jules afterwards. What a stand up guy.

racerfink wrote: In reply to bentwrench: It was on CNBC.

I learned last year to tell my DVR to record all F1 events on NBC, NBCSN, and CNBC. You never know where the races will end up.

Anyhow, that was one crazy race. I agree with the announcers that as soon as they lose control of a race, the Merc guys don't seem to recover as well as they should. Though, having said that, through all of his self-inflicted problems, Lewis still managed to do a great job of salvaging points. And Nico had 2nd locked up until Ricciardo dive-bombed him. For all the ticky-tack crap that they penalize drivers for, I was surprised that Ricciardo didn't get a drive-through for that.

I'm not really sure that was Ricciardos fault. 50/50, or Nico should have let him go and done a crossover...Nico must want to shoot himself after that, anyway.

NOW_ to the real cause of that event- What the hell was Merc doing sending him out on the obviously slower tires? If he'd had the good ones, he would have been beating on Seb, not defending against Danny. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And!!! They had to put a wing on Lewis after the restart. Take the extra 3 seconds and give him a set of new soft tires too!

Why should Riccardo be held responsible for holding his line and Rosberg allowing his car to drift out into it??

Wait, you guys think the Riccardo rosberg thing was ricciardos fault?

Whatever the rulebook says, it is dumb to move over and track out when any part of the other car is there. Even if you are right, your car is still broke. Dumb. He would have had 3rd at worst if he just gave slightly more room at track out.

WTH happened to Williams this race....

That noise you heard when they shut down the Ferrari is potentially the turbocharger unit.

In reply to Streetwiseguy:

I am confused... I thought lewis did have the softs on at the very end.

If not, they probably didn't have any for either car.

I feel like I need a lifetime to unpack exactly what I just witnessed. What an insane race.. I don't even know where to start.

Streetwiseguy wrote: I'm not really sure that was Ricciardos fault. 50/50, or Nico should have let him go and done a crossover...Nico must want to shoot himself after that, anyway.

I can go 50/50, maybe Nico should have left more room, but the way Ricciardo dive-bombed him (starting his passing move from way back, locking up on his way in) created the whole situation in the first place. I'm not saying he should have been penalized, but the way they call they call penalties for every little incident these days, I'm surprised they didn't in that case.

Ricciardo's move was clean. Aggressive, but clean. He gave plenty of room when coming through under braking. He went wide, and carried that line through. Nico came under, but tracked wide. Ricciardo would have had to brake, or at least hard lift, not to hit him as he came across. Nico has no right to force him off, or to slow, in that situation. My vote is racing incident, but with Nico being the incident instigator.

Very interesting race. Some unusual mistakes by Hami, some surprising pace from the Ferraris and Red Bulls, and a return to form for Crashtor.

Riciardo couldn't make the corner and caused the whole incident to begin with. He straightened out the corner as much as possible to slow his car down. I'm a bigger fan of Riciardo than Rosberg, but that was an extremely optimistic move that relied on Rosberg giving way to work.

Streetwiseguy wrote: And!!! They had to put a wing on Lewis after the restart. Take the extra 3 seconds and give him a set of new soft tires too!

They did change his tires. If you were paying attention, you could see it happen. Tire changes are concurrent and faster than wing changes, so it didn't take any extra time. I figured they'd do it so I was watching for it.

Lewis went from 17th to 6th in a fairly short period of time, I don't think you can say the Mercedes is only fast when it's out front. I do think they run a lot of downforce and rely on their superior horsepower to ram it through the air, and when they lose the clean air they suffer more than some others.

How many penalties did Maldonado get? Four? The BBC guys were politely making fun of him. And I loved the polite Mercedes response to Nico when he first asked for the option tires after hearing that Hamilton was going to get a set.

I don't think the Merc's got bad starts. If you watch the overhead they got average starts, it's that the Red purses got blinders, and Kimi's first three corners were nothing short of outstanding. He proved his chops again right there and then. It will be interesting to see how driver controlled launches will work out from Spa onwards. It could be great, my concern is it will cause havoc. Look how bad the Indy car standing starts have been, I hope they do better than that.

I'm inthe 50:50 camp on Nico / Ricciardo. It was a bit of a dumb dive bob, low low % move by Ricciardo in the first place. the actual contact was all down to Nico moving into Ricciardo, but it was an overly optermistic move by Danny boy to set it up. I was happy to see Nico get demoted to third, but I really didn't want to see that happen. He earned a high placing htan Lewis through a better thought out and driven race. He was also handicapped by the team. Lewis had gone soft, soft in his first two stints so had to go medium for his third. Nico had gone soft, medium so could have, should have gone soft for the last stint. If that had been the case he would have been well clear of Ricciardo and I think he had a shot at Seb for the win. The thing was the team had mediums ready for him and the laps were just getting tot he point where stratagy would have called for softs, but then the safety car came out and they had to jump before they were ready. Lewis got very very lucky yesterday.

No comments about Max the baby Jos? the 17 year old getting 4th, good show, but did you notice that Toro pinko gave him the undercut on his team mate Sainz at the first pit stop? pulling Max in first and flubbing Carlos's pit stop allowing him to jump ahead? In the end Sainz retired, but if he had finished behind Max he would have had every right to bitch up a storm at the team.

Very scary with Hulkenburgs front wing, practice and the race. Some one needs to check components natural frequencies against rumble strips or something. That could have been very very bad.

Excellent news for the McHonda camp. Good results and lap times were even more encoouraging. The list of fastest laps looks like this:
1. Ricciardo
2. Rosburg
3. Lewis
4. Kvyat
5. Vettel
6. Massa
7. Kimi
8. Bottas
9. Pasta Crashanrdo
10. Fred the brow
etc.

So McHonda are getting up there on laps times too, although a slow circuit flattered to deceive potentialy.

Having rewatched the race, I retract my "Why didn't Hammy have new tires" comments... I stand by my "Nico should have had softs".

We were wondering - if Max ends up on the podium in Texas, will they have to give him sparkling apple juice instead of champagne since he's not old enough to drink in the US?

I agree that Nico should have been on softs, and the team thought so as well (dunno if that particular radio transmission was aired on NBC, but they basically said "no, going to mediums is a stupid idea"). A poor call on his part. Nico just didn't have the pace on Sunday, I think he showed himself to be the weaker of the two Mercedes drivers quite clearly. I was really looking forward to what was going to happen when Lewis caught up.

As for Nico vs Ricciardo - if I had to blame someone, I'd blame Ricciardo. After he blew the passing attempt (good try, but it didn't work), Nico took a fairly predictable line. Ricciardo was in the position to avoid contact and see it coming, and he didn't. Did it remind anyone else of what Nico did to Lewis at Spa last year?

Streetwiseguy wrote: Having rewatched the race, I retract my "Why didn't Hammy have new tires" comments... I stand by my "Nico should have had softs".

Toto Wolf said in a post race interview that the soft tires for Rosberg were not warmed up in the back of the pit garage in some kind of "pot" which I took to mean a tire warmer. They didn't have time to prepare softs when the Virtual Safety Car came on. Apparently Rosberg was just three corners from pit in at that point.

Toto interview

I think David Hobbs has it right when he said Hamilton's error of the day was trying to pressure Rosberg too much on Lap 1 and putting himself off in the process.

He should have waited for DRS time and then get the team to pressure Rosberg to let him pass so he could run down the Ferrari's.

Advan046 wrote: I think David Hobbs has it right when he said Hamilton's error of the day was trying to pressure Rosberg too much on Lap 1 and putting himself off in the process. He should have waited for DRS time and then get the team to pressure Rosberg to let him pass so he could run down the Ferrari's.

Actually, I think Lewis' biggest problem was allowing himself to be so out braked going into corner 1. Of the four cars, he and Vettel easily were out in front, until he basically braked early- which let Kimi and Nico by. If he waited to be equal to the other three's distances, he was going to come out of the corner second. THEN he tried to push Nico too hard.

And that move seemed to get under his skin until his contact with Danny. Once the team got back into his head, he recovered really well and was enough into the points that he didn't need Nico to give him such an amazing present.

In reply to alfadriver:

Maybe yes. It looked like Vettel was going to push Hamilton into Rosberg. IDK if Hamilton was thinking Rosberg would outbrake himself and crash out one of the Ferrari or if he was planning some over under move or just made a bad brake point judgement.

I actually thought it a bit smart, as all non-MB driver's will take risks as the MB boys have more to lose. (See Ricciardo vs Rosberg) So no point going interlocked wheels into the brake zone with Vettel at turn 1 lap 1. Especially when you know you have a .7s per lap advantage. So letting them have T1L1 seemed smart.

Trying to take Rosberg at T4L1 not so smart.

So, with the three week break F1 news is slow. Forget the silly season, this is the bizarre season. JEson Button, his wife and friends were gassed with anesthetic in a robbery!

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/jenson-button-gassed-during-shocking-robbery-in-france-report