Official F1 Topic

[Eutyphro]

They should just give Max the championship already because I find the odds of anyone challenging him unlikely.

[Jason]

17 minutes ago, Eutyphro said:

They should just give Max the championship already because I find the odds of anyone challenging him unlikely.

 

We literally have drivers saying they expect RB to win every race. They all know just how far ahead RB are, and with the current best driver on the grid, well, I mean we saw the result today. Max was nearly 50s ahead of a non-RB car and the man was racing at like 50% for the majority of the race.

 

In the past in cases like this we've seen the FIA nerf the leading team but I always find that a bit of a backwards approach. In terms of a championship fight we sorely need one of the other teams to make a massive step up ASAP otherwise it's possible we'll get RB's version of Merc 2016. Great if you're a Max/RB fan, but for neutral it has the makings of a very uneventful season at the top.

[Nico]

I don't like Lance as a driver, but honestly kudos to him for performing so well with wrist pain. I certainly couldn't have done it better even at my 100%. Not much else to add, I want to see AM keeping their pace through the year (Alonso hasn't had a car to fight for victories in well over a decade!!! It's a disgrace) but that will also depend on how well Merc and Ferrari evolve. Never underestimate the Brackley team, especially if they finally bend the knee on their ill-fated no-pods concept. Ferrari is still Ferrari sadly, gonna be a rough time for Leclerc and Sainz. Unfortunately the RB dominance is so strong I think I will start hoping for them to make mistakes or have failures. Don't want to see them doing a McLaren 1988 situation. Speaking of Mc... damn. Kind of reivindicates Ricciardo a bit. Williams done reasonably well with Albon, and Sargeant being so far the best of the rookies, although doesn't help the other two are in arguably the slowest cars so far.

[smokeless6]

Not the best race, but having Alonso in a fast car is so spicy and that made it better. What a great drive and after Stroll strolled him at the start. Aston Martin off to a dream start. Stroll takes some stick sometimes, but you think back to a race like Turkey 2020 when he was the best driver in those monsoon conditions and he's probably better than we often give him credit for. I think he'll make some noise in this car. And it must have been difficult to run that race with his injuries. So credit where it is due.

Red Bull off to an even dreamier start. Double one-two for the first time since 2013. Max nailed his start, and I was worried about that. And then drove lights out. Checo did the gunner job and yeah, perfect start. Going soft-soft when everyone else put on the hards was a great call. It let both Bulls easily pull out of pitstop range since everyone knew it would be a two-stop. So they could go hard to finish it out and most teams did that anyway so had no real tire advantage.

Ferrari were a mixed bag. From an organizational standpoint they had a better race than it feels like they've had in a long time, which is encouraging. Leclerc's DNF is a killer though, and they'll hope it's a one-off. But both drivers ran well, the car is quick. It felt like Sainz was going to be swallowed up in the final few laps, but he held on. They do seem to have worse deg than those around them, but maybe not as bad as I thought.

Merc lack pace, but it feels like they are in a better place than one year ago. George had me laughing out loud with his "Is he managing or is he just slow?" comment. All year we get treated to this. Gold.

Haas disappointed and had a lousy race. I think their car is much better than that. They need to get it together. Hulk was a big drag on my fantasy. But I think they'll come good and be right in the mix.

Williams seemed bang on where I said they'd be. All the pundits had them last.  Really good result for them. They scored and Sargeant should be proud of that performance. It should give him a big boost that rookies always need.

McLaren. What a disaster. We knew it wasn't going to be pretty, but that was as bad as it could be really.

I voted for Alonso driver of the day.

[Jason]

4 hours ago, smokeless6 said:

George had me laughing out loud with his "Is he managing or is he just slow?" comment. All year we get treated to this. Gold.

 

Pretty sure he locked up and went wide immediately after that lol.

 

Honestly I think Merc are in deeper sh*t than people want to admit, they were pretty much the 4th best team yesterday. They should be fighting RB, but Merc at max was over a minute away from RB who were both coasting to victory for most the race - hell, Max put his feet up 10 laps in and that's not even an exaggeration.

 

I think they've completely and utterly missed with their design for the current regulations. I've also read that they've lost a lot of the talent that was there in their dominant years too, many of them now at other teams. Merc need to go back to the drawing board and start again but in the budget cap era they obviously can't otherwise they'd have done it already. There's talk of mythical upgrade packs coming soon(tm) that'll fix all their problems, or "plan B", but this has been dismissed by people at Merc. This seems to be what they have, they're already basically writing off their championship hopes already. It straight up looks like they are f*cked.

 

Ferrari look quick in quali but they did all last season, and for me Leclerc as good a qualifier as anyone on the grid, but reliability, tyre deg and race pace compared to RB (TBD on that, we'll see over the next few races, but RB just look so quick) seems to be the weaknesses yet again. 

 

The sport is in a weird place if Sunday set the standard for what to expect, F1's no stranger to having teams dominate but they've put measures in place over the years to try and stop it, the budget cap being one, but we have a team right now who can race at 50% and win by a country mile. In the past we've seen the sport and FIA basically nerf those dominant teams to the point where people are now speculating (with a little memeing) that Horner/RB will be purposefully running their cars below max to stave off any such nerfing - Merc did this in the past with their engine modes IIRC, but yea, that's where the sport is right now.

 

Don't know the solution my self, no budget cap has problems of it's own, and I don't like nerfing teams just cause they nailed the regulations - not to underplay Max's ability who is the best on the grid, but there's many better drivers than Perez for me, and even he coasted - but yea, when we're pinning our hopes on Alonso winning a race so we have some season highlights it's not a good look is it?

[smokeless6]

Good post, all points.

 

Merc stuffed it no doubt. I said in my post-test post that I expected Merc to ditch their no-pod design over the winter. They did not. Then after one qualifying Toto is saying they need to start over. I don't want to read tooooo much into it, or slag off on Toto when he is down. But that just cannot happen, especially at Mercedes. Toto fills a villain role for me, but I've had respect for him since I watched the video of his attempt to set a lap record at the Nordschliefe in a 911 (it ended very badly, worth a watch. It takes big balls to do that and he is lucky to be alive).

 

But this is the first new regs he has presided over and it's fair to say they got it wrong. That happens. But to stick with it and then blow it up after one race has big consequences, especially under the cap. The new car doesn't generate enough down force and it's killing them in the corners.  But heading in to Jeddah is not the time to be rethinking it all. That should have happened in December at the latest. Aston's emergence has shined a brighter light on it too. And I don't see how Mercedes can do enough to correct it during the season. Could be a long one. But I was saying the same early last year and they came good at the end of the season didn't they?

 

It's all a very intriguing subplot to the season. How will Merc recover? I don't know, but let's see what happens at Jeddah which is a very different sort of track that rewards aero efficiency and low drag and maybe not so dependent on down force for lap time.

[Eutyphro]

Knowing Max he was probably already thinking about making sure his engine lasts so he doesn't get too much penalties for using too many engines. I expect Max to have been very conscious of every single detail that can affect the season, and therefore don't think this is even indicative of the genuine pace difference. As a Max fan I like seeing Max win, but this level of dominance will get boring to me as well. I rather see some good fights. My favorite races are where Max has to fight for his win.

[Jason]

4 minutes ago, smokeless6 said:

But this is the first new regs he has presided over and it's fair to say they got it wrong. That happens. But to stick with it and then blow it up after one race has big consequences, especially under the cap.

 

We can only presume that there is data telling them that this concept has massive potential, there's no reason why they'd make such a radical change otherwise. The problem last season was that the entire concept only really worked on one or two tracks in the entire calendar. This season we'll have to see where it's strengths are but regardless, they need a car that's good everywhere, not great in 1-2 places.

 

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the factory to see who is pushing the concept and why though. Budget cap means they can't do radical stuff but given what Toto was saying last season about this seasons car it sound liked they were wanting to move to a more RB style car. Maybe that car is literally not ready, who knows, but mid season upgrades to simply catch up to the top team don't usually have the impact you want, mainly cause the top team isn't just gonna sit and stagnate while you catch up lol. Lewis has flat out said there's no plan B car either, and that this is what they have. So it does sound like they're simply in the gutter.

 

10 minutes ago, Eutyphro said:

Knowing Max he was probably already thinking about making sure his engine lasts so he doesn't get too much penalties for using too many engines.

 

I believe he got told to slow down multiple times during the race lol. It was seriously something like 10 laps in that he just put his feet up and coasted to victory.

 

On that subject of saving engines, I still can't wrap my head around McLaren keeping Lando out when he was completely and utterly doomed. I'm guessing they wanted some data from his car or something, cause otherwise what a waste.

[Lonely-Martin]

Flawless from Max, and typical Ferrari unreliability strikes again, and .erc a second a lap off the pace still. Not the most engaging stsrt to a season where we'd like to.see more challenges for the titles.

 

But that charge from Alonso was highly entertaining though, good for him and Aston Martin.

On 3/6/2023 at 12:07 AM, Jason said:

In the past in cases like this we've seen the FIA nerf the leading team but I always find that a bit of a backwards approach.

 

Yeah, no.matter how bad it gets, gotta turn catch-up off.

[smokeless6]

There must be a floor height at which Newey's floor magic vanishes

 

About that Toto Wolff Ring record attempt.... ESPN ran a good article about it a few years ago

 

https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/30063600/the-stupidest-thing-ever-done-story-toto-wolff-lap-record-huge-crash-nurburgring

 

I do a lot of sim racing, and my personal lap record is 5:19.456 in Race Room, in the Formula X-17. The next fastest was run in Senna's McLaren MP4/6 at 5:39 in Automobilista Motorsport SImulator 2. That car is a 12 banger beast and the last F1 car to win a F1 title with a manual transmission. So much fun to drive.

 

In GT style cars, which Toto was driving in that attempt, my fastest is 6:44.977 in a Nissan GT-R GT1 in Race Room. About exactly the lap time Toto was on course for when he crashed.

[smokeless6]

Hamilton is speaking his mind

 

"After the race Lewis Hamilton told BBC 5 Live that the team 'didn't' listen' to his input on the 2023 car, saying: "Last year, there were things I told them, I said the issues that are with the car.

"I've driven so many cars in my life, so I know what a car needs, I know what a car doesn't need. And I think it's really about accountability.

"It's about owning up and saying: 'Yeah, you know what? We didn't listen to you. It's not where it used to be and we've got to work.'"

 

Hmmm. This may well be true, and it seems pretty likely, but bad form to be saying this to reporters, isn't it? Not the unity front the team seemed to be presenting. This won't help matters at all, and will probably make things worse inside the team. How could it not, having your driver throw the team under the bus like that. Turbulent seas Mercedes are sailing on at the moment.

[Jason]

I have seen speculation that there's a divide in the Merc factory, with some still insisting this design works and some wanting to change. How true that is I have no idea.

 

It does fit with the comments being made recently though. It's never a good thing to air the dirty laundry but Lewis drove last seasons car all season and remained publicly supportive of the team at the factory, constantly praising them for every inch of performance they got out of it. Come this season and they've not listened to his (a vastly experienced drivers) advice leaving him with what looks like yet another uncompetitive car for the season, it's no surprise to see that frustrations are starting to work their way out and become public.

 

As I said in a post a few days ago, I straight up think they're in bigger sh*t than people want to admit. Even Toto came out and said RB will win every race.

 

It's gonna be a rough season to watch if there's just straight up zero competition at the front.

[smokeless6]

Yeah, I have to assume the team is divided for certain. Saying it for the third time, but I was really surprised Merc stuck with the zero pod. There must be some in the team who advocated for a change in design direction after last season. If so, they were overruled, but now -- if they exist -- they will be thinking they were right all along. Sort of like what Lewis is saying. Hamilton's comments may be true, and maybe they needed to be said? But it's not striking me as being the 'positive light' he said he must be just a few days ago.

 

It's all quite puzzling really. That they could decide to stick with their concept after months of discussion over it within the team, but then say they got it wrong after qualifying in the first race. Toto has to shoulder the lion's share of the responsibility, doesn't he? The real question is if their concept needs fine tuning, if they are close to finding that breakthrough, or if it all needs to be blown up and they start over. A second per lap is a big gap in F1. This might require some pain before they come good.

 

It will be interesting to see how they manage it.

Edited March 9, 2023 by smokeless6

[Jason]

I think one side are probably saying the no side pods are a scapegoat and that the underlying issues are the floor. But I'm no expert, no idea whose correct or not, but I think getting beat by a customer team has been what has set off the fireworks inside Merc.

 

They aren't even a second a lap behind, they're likely 2 or 3. The Merc car is reportedly slower than last years RB car lol. Max and Perez coasting has made some think they're not that far away but we genuinely haven't seen RB push yet, the first race taught us nothing of their car, only everyone elses.

[smokeless6]

Obviously I don't know what is causing their issues, and I reckon it's a confluence of factors anyway, but I am very willing to speculate

 

Is it the floor or something else? And whilst the floor may have problems, the word coming out of the Merc camp is that the W14 will be sporting new side pods in the coming weeks. That doesn't mean we will see Red Bulls downwash concept, but it is an indication they are attributing at least some of their problems to the side pods. It's all interconneted anyway, isn't it?

 

Merc may not be the only team in upheaval, as it has been announced that Ferrari's David Sanchez has left the team. Not sure exactly what his role was this year. Chief aerodynamicist? Or was he the concept director or something like that? Regardless of the title, he was the main architect of the new car wasn't he? This is very odd timing. It could be for any number of reasons (McLaren?) But an announcement like this just one week in to a new season is very odd. Internal power struggle? Vision at odds with Vasseur's? Who knows. But the timing is not good for a team looking to close the gap to the Bulls.

[smokeless6]

FP1 hot takes inbound

Max and Red Bull look really good.

Aston Martin do too.

Fez not so much, and Merc too, although their times were not so bad. But the word is they are suffering from bad deg, and that's not really expected at a track like this. Not bad over one lap, but long runs? Merc's main issue is they don't generate enough down force for any given aero drag. That kills them in the corners, but Jeddah doesn't require much of this. I expect Merc to punch above their weight this weekend, if the deg doesn't screw them over too much. Right now they look on top of Ferrari. That probably won't last, but it is unexpected frankly.

Guru says Williams look good. All hail the guru. Sargeant maybe not so much, but Williams could make some noise and score again here. Albon was turning some nice laps. This is the sort of track that favors them.

What happened to Lando. Dead last on the timing sheets. Alfa not giving much reason for optimism.

Haas are intriguing. I said after testing they looked fast, and then Bahrain happened. But that wasn't down to poor pace but just a bad race weekend for the entire team. I expect them to be in the fight at Jeddah.

Ferrari though are the biggest disappointment so far. They could come good, and I won't put it past them. But that was a poor first practice.

[Jason]

FP1 etc etc but not a good start for Ferrari powered cars is it?

 

Aston look like the real deal in terms of putting up a best of the rest fight, but RB continue to look completely untouchable.

[smokeless6]

FP2 done and dusted.

 

Alpine making some moves up the order.

 

Ferrari did not manage to overcome their poor first practice and these are worrying signs for the Maranello outfit. Merc look to be right there with Ferrari based on the FP2 times. Of course we can't know everything, but night practice at tracks where there will be night qually and night racing tend to be representative. Each team will have run qualifying and race runs to prepare for the business end. Both teams could find gains overnight, but both are on the back foot and look to be in a battle.

 

Aston Martin continue to prove they are for real. To be this fast at two very dissimilar circuits is a very good sign for their design.

 

One half second covered 10th to 20th. Spicy!

 

[Jason]

Alonso's still completely got it hasn't he?

[smokeless6]

Yes, he does. It's remarkable really. Makes me sad he didn't make better choices when he moved teams, and that he was out of F1 for a bit. Like we've been denied even more greatness. And not only that, but he's such a salty character and just makes the sport better having him in it. I want to both root for him and against him and that's cool.

 

Anyway, I can be thankful he's in a fast car now.

[Jason]

Not to say Perez is a bad driver, he's not, but he's not as good as the drivers he's competing with, so the fact he's gapping them just tells you fast the RB is. Max was lightyears ahead of them all before the transmission (?) failure.

 

Max's drive from 15th and the midfield battle should hopefully have spice but yea, I still see a RB 1-2 barring reliability issues. Max will win.

[smokeless6]

I'm not so sure about that. This will be a train race and Max could struggle to pass so many cars. He could win, obviously, but I think he won't. Not here. But of course anything can happen. 100% safety car record so far, and with no run off anywhere I reckon we will see another.

 

Really good result for Piastri, I'm impressed. he needed that.

 

Checo and Fernando on the front row. Spicy!

[Jason]

I have visions of Max coming from deep in the grid to win the race multiple times from last year. It got to the point where I expected him to win those races too, and knowing the pace of the RB, I do genuinely think he'll win tomorrow.

 

If he doesn't then it's potentially going to be a very exciting race, so I hope I'm wrong.

[Stahli]

The performance of the RB19 and Max are very good. There's a good chance he'll get on the podium and maybe even win. Depending on how well you can overtake on this course. But first he has to get through to the front without being touched. Magnussen starts in front of him. 

 

11 hours ago, Jason said:

If he doesn't then it's potentially going to be a very exciting race, so I hope I'm wrong.

Even if he should win. Still more interesting than if he had started from pole and it was a lights-to-flag win. So there might be a few great overtaking maneuvers to be seen.

[Eutyphro]

On one hand I'm disappointed in the qualy result, on the other hand Max having to start from the back has been the most exciting thing in F1 in recent years. Max definitely has a chance, but in a normal scenario Checo has to win this one.

[Jason]

Almost right, but credit where it's due Perez was perfect today, had the pace to keep Max at bay. Though the pair of them were a full second a lap faster than anyone else, this is gonna be a terrible season for the neutrals sadly. Max's fight up the field wasn't even entertaining, he just... drove past everyone, the car is just that quick.

 

I did get a chuckle out of Max asking on the radio what the fastest lap is and was told "that's not something we're concerned about" and he goes "yea, but I am". 

 

Alonso with his second of what I imagine is going to become his token third place this season. Merc's don't have the pace to keep up with them when they push and Ferrari are a mess.

 

Decent midfield action today though.

 

[Stahli]

Yes, I also have to say that Max's overtaking maneuvers were not spectacular. He knew he had the faster car and was taking it easy. No risk of an accident, even in the starting lap, always braked much earlier and waited to see what the others were doing in front of him.

 

Congratulations to Perez. He surprised me today. After the safety car, I thought that Max would easily overtake him. But he fought. I was always listening to the Teamradio. Actually, both should always drive 1:33 laps, but neither of them stuck to it.

[Jason]

Oh, post-race penalty for not handling the 5 second penalty correctly for Alonso. Don't know why stuff like that isn't handled during the race especially as they had so long, and these issues keep happening so it's clear the FIA need to control this stuff. Just apply every penalty after the race or have more specific rules about it. Alonso could've perhaps pulled 10s ahead of Russell if he knew, so these post-race penalties aint fair. Edit: he's now been reinstated to 3rd after AM provided evidence of others not getting punished for the same thing, lol.

 

Meanwhile Merc/Toto basically confirming their RB-like car is coming soon(tm). Given his mood about it, it's clear they're now as a team moving away from the current concept.

[Eutyphro]

Aaaaand Alonso is back on the podium. Silly race stewards. Good correction, sad that they ever gave him that dumb post race penalty.

[smokeless6]

I didn't expect Max to win unless Checo had a problem, or like last year, got caught out by an ill-timed safety car. This time the safety car came before Checo pitted so it worked out for him. Still, Max's drive was impressive with that safety car erasing a 20 second deficit. Finding the right balance for DRS has been a challenge for race control,with detection lines and zones needing tweaking here and there. It felt like it was just right at Jeddah,except for the Red Bulls. Their DRS advantage looked insane. Max's pass on Russell was madness how he blew past. Perez ran a great race. Poor start, but the Red Bull could make up for that. They need him to pick it up when the other side of the garage is off song, and they need him to be better on Saturdays, so that he starts near the front to give himself better chances and the team more strategy options during the race. Job done on both accounts.

Good race for Alonso. He couldn't hold his start, but another podium, his 100th in F1, is good reward. Losing it, then getting it back after the race is something I hope we don't see much of. I'm critical of race control. And the explanation I read essentially said that it probably should have been a penalty, but it wasn't clear everyone had agreed it would be (jack touching car while counting off 5-second penalty) so therefore we won't penalize him after all. How there are any grey areas like this in F1 rules is a mystery. Get it together. Tough luck for Stroll.

Merc had a good race, but will be dismayed how far off the front they are. I think it was expected they could have a good race with Jeddah not putting much of a premium on down force, and so it proved. Really nice run out of Russell, who once again livened up the race with his "but Fernando has a 5-second penalty so we need to hold station. Oh **** " comment. Then he turned it up and pulled away from Lewis who was on softer rubber.Merc will be disappointed not to be further up the road, but that was a good points haul all the same. Especially because....

Ferrari are in crisis. They had nothing at all and morale must be low. Their cars had no chance to do anything yesterday and they just sort of drifted backwards.They would have been hoping to take the fight to Red Bull this year from the off, but aren't even the third fastest car at the moment, although I expect they'll outpace Merc at Austraila, but we shall see about that. Heads will be down, and Vasseur's job is much bigger than he would have bargained for I think.

Alpine maximized their result, both cars scored, and KMag nicked the final point to turn Haas's season around a bit. There's pace in that car, but the midfield is so tight. I was disappointed to see Sargeant go backwards in the end. Curious to know if the car just didn't have it on those mediums or if he was struggling to put it all together. Williams were right around the points, but finished far from any. This is the sort of track that should favor them so they'll be disappointed no to capitalize.

Tsunoda had a super drive and that was gutting to lose out on the points.

McLaren. What the hell McLaren? Too be this slow at two very dissimilar tracks is an ominous sign. Easily the most dispiriting team on the grid so far.