Formula One - 2018

Do you have a mute button? Because that works. Or better yet, watch it on the Spanish station. Far more exciting!

In reply to stroker :

I agree, at the very least adjust the sound balance to allow the actually race sounds drown out the hypeman yelling. While watching the Spa race recording, even my one kid said, "Why is he yelling so much? You can't hear the car noises."

I don't mind them talking just the relative volume of it is off putting. We need the golf whisper commentators!  

SUZUKA!

I hope Honda can get a point this Sunday. That would be fun to see. 

My prediction is that Hamilton will just run away and dominate. Bottas will have a battle with Vettel and Kimi will have to fend off Ricciardo. Verstappen will crash out on lap 4 and also get voted driver of the day. 

Really though in practice MB looks strong. Qualifying will tell the proper tale on where Ferrari is. I think Hartley just might beat Gasly on this track.  Curious how HAAS and Force India will fare. 

Man, Ferrari dropped a clanger on that qualifying, didn't they?

stroker said:

Man, Ferrari dropped a clanger on that qualifying, didn't they?

I think it's more Vettel's own fault than the team's.  Basically every driver got 1 fast lap in that session, and it wasn't all that much wetter on Vettel's lap than it was on the one before when Hamilton/etc ran.  Kimi managed to keep it betwen the lines and get P4, so Vettel had the opportunity to do the same.

Eyyy, start of the second lap and - barring collision or pit mishap - the first two steps on the podium are already effectively spoken for.    
Stay up to watch the pack fight for scraps or sensibly go to bed before AX tomorrow?  
#F1Problems

One more example in a long list of pressure induced brain farts from Seb.  He can blame the team and decisions, but he's the guy who chucks the car into holes that are not there.

SnowMongoose said:

Eyyy, start of the second lap and - barring collision or pit mishap - the first two steps on the podium are already effectively spoken for.    
Stay up to watch the pack fight for scraps or sensibly go to bed before AX tomorrow?  
#F1Problems

If Verstappen hadn't bumped Kimi and gotten that 5 second penalty, I suspect he might well have gotten second.  Hamilton had lots of pace in reserve though.

I think the qualifying issue can be shared by both the team and Vettel- they kind of wasted some time with those wet tires, and while it *could* have worked out, then Vettel lost a drying advantage.

Then seeing that he *HAD* to pass a Verstappen that had a 5 second penalty- dude, you had that position if you just waited for the pits.  Or even the front straight with DRS.  But no, he had to push it, and almost gave the entire race away.  Managed to get back to a lonely 6th.

To Hamilton- what a great weekend.  Clearly loves this track, and just goes as well as the car does there.  Heck of a weekend, Lewis!  Amazing.   He just needs an 8 point gap at Austin, and he wins the championship.  Plus to Mercedes for finding some pace in the car vs. Ferrari, too- seems like both sides of the team is delivering this (just like Ferrari is the opposite).

I was surprised Crashtappen only got a 5 sec penalty for that.

Formula 1 would be so much better if they followed MotoGP's example of having teams declared as Factory or Satellite Teams. Satellite teams get to use more engines, more fuel, do in season testing and I think get more tire choices. They get these concessions until they get a certain number of podiums. I believe the numbers are three 3rd places or two 2nd places or a win in a season, then they lose the concessions the following year. Ducati did this and are now winning races, Suzuki used these concessions and this year had such good results that next year they are no longer considered a Satellite team. F1 should also go to a spec front wing which would be single plane, low downforce design that would lower costs and allow cars to follow each other better. I would also like to see maximum 4 mechanics working on a car at one time to slow down the pit stops where fans could actually follow what is going on and increase the chances of mistakes made.

It seems to be a race between Ferrari and Vettle to see who can sabotage the team the best, or is that the worst?  More than ever I hope that Hamilton ends his carrier at Ferrari for two reasons, first so I can watch the mushrooms clouds as heads explode on FerrariChat and second so he can finally prove how much better Hamilton is than Vettle.  It is a pity that Alonso made himself pretty much persona non grata at all the top teams as in pure driving talent I honestly don't know who is the best between them.  Let's see if Mini Max can continue the improvement in form we've seen of late.  I've been one of his harshest critics in the past but even Kimi said he should have left him more room so I'm not sure of the validity of the 5 sec penalty.

The 4 mechanics thing is boring.

No refueling, no track bar adjustments, etc. About the only thing they do other than change tires is maybe adjust the wing in dry to wet race.

Not much to see really.

Good race not great. I was sad that Honda fell out of the points positions. 

Am I the only one that thought MB could go to the super soft tire instead of the Medium? The commentary guys said something about them not having a choice of tire. When if you started on the Super soft you could go onto either harder tire? 

The Medium was just not a good tire for any of the teams that had to run them. 

Bottas seemed to imply he didn't really worry about Max as he had his engine turned down. If that is the case then wow he let that get close. 

Need to seek out how Gasly pitstop went so poorly. 

Hartley man!! He wasn't aggressive enough coming out of turn two at the start. Just took a line that got him bottled up off line into the S's. 

At least they can send a message to Alonso to ask if he wants a GP2 engine now! 

Almost title number 5 again. Should clinch it in the USA again! Go Hamilton.

In reply to Advan046 :

Your note of the tires.  Both Merc's only brought two sets of mediums, four sets of softs and seven sets of super softs.  I can't find what tires they used in each session right now so I don't know if they'd used all their sticker SS's or if they really just felt it was too long to go on them to the end.  I did think the commentators were saying one of the lower teams found their car worked better on the mediums than the super softs.  I think it may have been Williams.  With the track temps much higher for race day than practice or qualifying maybe it was more of a wear issue?

OK, I"ve re-thought my statement above.  I'm backing off of my defense of Max.  I still think Kimi (by his own admission) could have given more room, but the whole thing was 'icked off by Max's mistake.  No matter, Max has improved his race craft in leaps and bounds this year.  I feel he really was too young to make the step up to F1, too much learning, beyond the immense natural talent, was still needed.

With the wheels looking like they are falling off the Ferrari train, from all sides, the team, the driver and the boss, I really hope next years Honda is the equal of at least the Ferrari lump.  I'd love to see a hard fought battle between Lewis and Max.  Even better if I'm wrong about Ferrari and it's a true three way fight.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

Anymore, and I think Ferrari's real future lies with LeClerc.  Seb is really losing his mental edge, and the team isn't really helping him.  Whereas Sauber is being dug out of a deep hole with Charles.  

What's funny- with the fragility of Seb's demeanor, it kind of puts some perspective of how fast the Red Bull was when he won.

It's also interesting to consider Hamilton's demeanor back then, and compare it to now- he's really made a pretty big change from those days.  And his race craft has followed.

Max will win a championship, someday.  

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I guess I could understand if they used up all the super soft tires. But that seems odd strategy to me to plan to use soft in Q2 and use up all the new super soft. I figured they would leave one new SS and one new M. 

So going into the race they did have a new set of softs. 

Look at the closing speed differential with DRS

LOL

In reply to alfadriver :

Since the beginning of his career, Vettel was proported to be this individualistic new style of driver that negotiated his own contracts. His behavior at Torro Rosso and Red Bull exhibited several symptoms of his selfish and self focused mentality. The team always handled his demeanor. Note I am not saying his path wasn't a successful one or evil, I personally didn't like his style from his introduction.

Then all of a sudden he or the media get on this whole team building thing that he is going to do at Ferrari. Never made sense to me but I kept an open mind. I figured as a new family man maybe he had become a team building kind of guy. But then I started to realize maybe he is doubling down on his self focus and took the Ferrari contract to benefit his kids. 

Since joining Ferrari I haven't seen this team building in action other than some superficial Italian songs and post race rally the team speeches. He has started to get back into volatile selfish mode again.

"Multi 21 Seb!"

Sebastian Vettel is the David Price of F1.  

(Baseball reference)

Adrian_T if there is rain at Sao Poalo then your wish of Max taking it to Lewis will come to fruition.

I think Max completely deserved the penalty. There was really nothing Kimi could have done to avoid that short of nailing the brakes, which would have probably put someone else into his transmission. Max screwed up his braking and came blasting right back across the track into the Ferrari, expecting everyone to get out of his way. That boy thinks the whole world revolves around him.

I don't blame Seb for trying to get past Max, either. He had massive closing speed. Max did not leave him a car's width. In the post-race interview, Max claimed that Seb had understeered into him - that's not what the cameras said. I seem to recall Max claiming that someone else did that to him a couple of races ago. Max, dude, if you keep tangling with the other top-flight talent more than the rest of the field combined, it's time to consider that you might actually be the problem. I think he's got a long way to go before he wins a championship because he just doesn't think tactically. Lewis will have to retire first. It was funny that Max's race engineer basically told him over the radio not to do anything stupid to the Mercedes...again.

The commentators were calling for Ferrari to swap car positions - Kimi would have had to lose 40s to do so. He'd have to come into the pits and just sit for 20 seconds! Team orders are one thing, parking one of your cars for half a lap is a bit much even for Ferrari.

Bottas was managing that gap to Max. Every time the Red Bull got too close, Bottas would give the Mercedes full power and just drive away. It's pretty clear that the Mercedes cars took a pretty big leap recently and they had full control of the race from the start. The difference in tire management between the two Mercedes drivers is an interesting one.

I've never really appreciated what a cool track Suzuka was before. The onboards had me sucking in my breath multiple times per lap. Far more interesting than the Tilke cookie-cutters.

I think Lewis is going to tie up the championship in Texas again. If Bottas plays the good wingman role, that'll put Vettel in 3rd or worse and that's the end of it. Then hopefully Mercedes will let him really go for it, and I hope he picks up a win or two.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

IMHO, if Lewis wraps it up in Texas, he won't win the rest of the season.  When you hear the kind of focus it takes to run at this level, I get the idea that a small relief like winning the WC would take some of that focus off.  It's happened before...  And if he does, hopefully Valteri will step in and win one.