F1 2021 – spoilers here

Well that was dull!

Agreed!

Amacing circuit which makes the cars look fast, multiple lead changes. Winner in third at one point. Last minute gasps at fastest lap, alpine scoring decent points, alonso overtaking lots, Lando proving he is real talent. But yet i agree, somehow dull!

Hamilton operates at a higher level than everyone else. He really had the bit between his teeth today.

Norris as well showing after Hamilton he is the best British talent on the grid. Great drive by him, that second stint on the Medium tyres was fantastic.

Amacing circuit which makes the cars look fast, multiple lead changes. Winner in third at one point. Last minute gasps at fastest lap, alpine scoring decent points, alonso overtaking lots, Lando proving he is real talent. But yet i agree, somehow dull!

Felt the same here. Watched the whole race and the good bits were good but at the end it felt like a waste of time. Really strange feeling for a life-long fan!

I’m worried I’ll lose interest at some point through the season as 20+ races just feels like too many. Each race used to be an event but now there seems to be one every weekend it doesn’t seem to matter if I miss one. Maybe I’ll try the theory out for the next one, Barcelona is always a borefest anyway. It just feels like the sport has gone down the Quantity over Quality path too much now: DRS overtakes, tyre saving, fuel saving and too many races makes things seem formulaic and contrived somehow.

I’m going to have a shot at F1 punditry and pick winners and losers from each race.

Portugal
Winner: Lewis Hamilton (also Lando Norris)
Loser: Nikita Mazepin

Italy
Winner: Max Verstappen (also Lando Norris)
Loser: Nikita Mazepin

Bahrain
Winner: Lewis Hamilton (also Lando Norris)
Loser: Nikita Mazepin

I think the boredom today came from the realisation that the Red Bull challenge is effectively over for this season. Mercedes have rapidly got around the low rake handicap from the new regs and Red Bull have never out-developed them.

Lewis really is on another level though. You could tell when he was sat in third he was keeping his tyres in good shape for a later challenge – then bam, first Max, then Bottas, then the race was his to lose.

Mercedes have rapidly got around the low rake handicap from the new regs and Red Bull have never out-developed them.

You sure? RB tend to come on strong late in the season, usually when it’s too late to catch up, might not be this time. Still think it will be Lewis, but closer than before.
The Perez/Bottas battle will decide the constructors.

I think the boredom today came from the realisation that the Red Bull challenge is effectively over for this season.

Too early to say that, it may be circuit specific. I think the Red Bull works better on circuits with a mix of low and high-speed corners and has a wider temperature operating window. I do think Merc will be relieved to be competitive, but a lot of it has come down to Hamilton driving superbly so it will only take one bad race to lose a big bunch of points. Plus reliability, of course. Honda pushed really hard on the performance front and seem to have a slight engine advantage. They may have reliability issues, but so may Merc if they are forced to run their engines harder to stay competitive. It would only take one blown engine to throw the championship wide open.

Merc really need to sort their pit stop times out

Iirc Bottas stop was 3.3 seconds, Max’s was 1.9 seconds

When Bottas came out the pits and had his wobble Max took advantage and passed, if Bottas had a 1.9 second pit stop he would of had a bit of wiggle room to correct and defend from Max

Has Merc ever done a sub 2 second pit stop? in the past their dominance meant they didn’t need to worry too much about doing the quickest pit stops but it seems to be much more important this year to get everything spot on given how close the cars are this year

Hamilton’s was 2.35 I think, so not too far off, but it’s true that Mercedes are consistently slower than RB. Over the last 6 seasons this really hasn’t mattered…maybe now they’ll look to change that.

Really a case of only recording the races and skimming through in the hope something exciting might happen. Got more entertainment from watching the Monaco Historic feed last weekend – proper cars and a pleasure to watch/hear them.

I see RB are morning again because they went off the track and so has fastest lap taken off them. Why do they and dc find it so hard to understand the concept of staying on the track?

Yep, fan of DC but his Redbull bias is quite noticeable.
On Max’s attempt at fastest lap, my OH looked up from her mobile phone game and commented that he went off track.

He made no comment when Hamilton lost a lap to track limits.

Good to see the Red Bulls in the same league as the Mercs, should be an exciting season.

I think the problem is lack of consistency. Track limits apply here, but not there, as determined buy the stewards. I think Max commented at the time that the stewards had not said they were applying track limits at that point. Barbed wire and tank traps on the kerbs might help.

Christian Horner did comment that it was a tricky business when tracks have to accommodate cars and bikes.

Yep, fan of DC but his Redbull bias is quite noticeable.

I never really noticed it until it was pointed out last week and after watching this weekends highlights he is pretty bad for it.

My understanding is track limits are monitored where there is an advantage in going off the track. I presume it’s because run off areas before hitting the gravel means there are no real consequences of going off track is it’s faster

slowoldman
Full Member

I think the problem is lack of consistency. Track limits apply here, but not there, as determined buy the stewards. I think Max commented at the time that the stewards had not said they were applying track limits at that point. Barbed wire and tank traps on the kerbs might help.bikes.

Max was wrong on that, they mentioned it on Missed Apex’s race review.

It’s amusing me slightly that it appears that RB are in a “be careful what you wish for” situation with the track limits, stemming from Bahrain.

In Bahrain the limits weren’t being enforced on a particular corner so the Mercs were overruning massively there. RB complained during the race and it was decided that the limits would now be enforced. Verstappen then overtook Hamilton for the lead by going off track at that very corner and had to give the place back, handing Hamilton the win.

That farce and the slagging off the race management took for it has led to them being more strict currently, which has cost Redbull, as Verstappen has been incapable of keeping it on the island enough to not get pinged – my heart bleeds for them, oh, hang on, no it doesn’t, if there was a wall there then you wouldn’t have gone off, would you?

Why do they ever NOT enforce track limits? – surely that would be the most consistent and transparent thing to do on all corners on all tracks. Here’s the grey stuff, cars must remain on it at all times, now off you go.

If an accident or near-miss or mistake means exceeding them then no advantage can be gained otherwise its a penalty.

@tlr

That’s very sensible. I’m assuming you don’t follow F1;-)

Track limits apply here, but not there, as determined buy the stewards.

Its always been a case that the track is defined by the white line painted at the edge of the circuit. One wheel needs to be within that limit at all times.

They need to universally apply this all the time.
Picking and choosing causes ambiguity and inconsistency.

In an ideal world you’d change the circuits so that exceeding them lead to time loss.
A difficult thing to do though, and still keep safety standards for both F1 & MotoGP

They should have exposable gravel traps for the F1 which are for other types of racing covered by sections made of the same stuff as the track over a series of metal plates. Only the F1 cars are going to have the downforce to remove/displace them and they will all be removed for those races anyway.

Alternatively, have a duct which trickles/sprays water onto those sections during certain races. NO ONE will exceed track limits by choice.

NO ONE will exceed track limits by choice.

“Nelson, it’s Flav here…”

😉

So pleased for Grosjean! Not doing Mercedes PR any harm either 🙂

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.breaking-grosjean-to-make-fairy-tale-return-to-f1-with-special-one-off.4iaABiRi5Sq6XxTCch9llk.html

That’s great – really pleased for him – smart marketing too!

Surely there is sufficient technology now to remove any need for human adjudication of track limit misuse? Just adopt a zero tolerance policy at all corners on all tracks and penalise accordingly. An automatic 5 sec penalty(served in the pits) should be enough. At least that’s a milder penalty than hitting a wall/barrier.

so you lock up into a corner and run wide and have a 5 sec stop and go too boot, harsh!

Not as harsh as hitting a wall or barrier.

and yet they still do.

Yeah blanket penalty just doesn’t quite work, you’d also have to adapt it for overtakes and somehow draw a line telling the different being forced off and just keeping your foot in it as it’s still tarmac out there. It’s gone a little odd in here in that people as suggesting that cars have never done interesting lines involving grass/gravel in the past and been able to keep it going (at pace)

chance of showers for sunday….

Immediately makes me go back to….

Full day test at Paul Ricard – has the poor fella not suffered enough! 🙂

Jumping Ship

6 key members of Mercedes engine team heading to Red Bull. Hamilton to jump ship next year? He made the right decision when he left Mclaren!

Hamilton to jump ship next year?

There is zero chance of Hamilton going to any other team. He will retire from driving someday, but he will still be driving for Merc until that happens.

The Red Bull hirings are to work on an engine for 2025. They will be on gardening leave for the rest of this year and the existing engines will be frozen next year, so the reason everyone is excited about this is that it means they have a long-term plan to build engines and stay in the sport. This will also keep Verstappen happy, so Red Bull don’t have to worry about Merc stealing him when Hamilton retires.

There’s also rumours about Porsche possibly do engines for RB.
There’s always been rumours though.

There’s also rumours about Porsche possibly do engines for RB.

Aren’t Williams and McLaren now run by ex-VW people? Would make a lot more sense to buy into them, surely.

#F1 #BBCF1 #SPANISHGP FRI: With 15 minutes to FP1, air temp is 21C & track 33C. Dry, settled conditions will continue today & Sat. Sunday will see a gradual increase in cloud, but risk of a shower during race window is low (~20%) ahead of an increasing chance of rain in evening.

— Ian Fergusson (@fergieweather) May 7, 2021

rats

Lol, sounds like Mazespin has done it again 😂

Mazepin has spun already. <5 mins into FP1……cripes!