Might be one the more interesting races?

I’ll go for

1st – Webber

2nd – Alonso

3rd – Vettel

Vettel.

Interesting? Probably not. 😕

The really good bloke with the finger?

Barring incidents it has to be Vettel.

Anyway, far more important……..

Lee McKenzie.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Bernie Ecclestone

Looking forward to Webber’s book.

what a piss take ! … feel for webber 🙁

Kimi going out of his way to post fastest lap with a new set of tyres for the last lap was quite funny!

They really need some better national anthems…

This season started quite promising but has turned back into a pit lane/tyre preservation competition.

Interesting to see whether the changes for next season do anything to spice things up!

That was so dull James Allen resorted to explaining why the phone in on 5Live was called slicks at six 😛 oh Vettel won what a surprise.

You know it has gone to pot when the Mexican was told not to race Vettel to save his tyres. That was for position as well. Technical exercise where the most money usually wins yes, racing no.

Yawn yawn yawn

Yeah, after the last race, I felt so deflated with the boredom that I took the opportunity to see some decent racing and saw Rush at the pictures. Should have done the same tonight!

I have no gripe with Vettel at all and think the booing is misplaced. However, the sport is in a bad way when it requires built in tire obsolesence to make it entertaining.

Congrats to Newey – a genius!

Pirrelli need shooting for destroying the season. Ever since they moved back to the 2012 tyre Red Bull had it in the bag. The FIA need to take some blame as well. F1 seems to be a mess right now with the tyre situation and it needs sorted ASAP to make it with watching again.

F1 seems to be a mess right now

FIFY!

it needs sorted ASAP to make it with watching again.

Why? Its not been worth watching for years and yet a lot of people still tune in for every race!

Why? Its not been worth watching for years and yet a lot of people still tune in for every race!

Hang on, you’re right! All this time I thought I’d been thoroughly enjoying the races, in fact I hadn’t.

….or maybe some people like things you don’t….?

Pirelli deliver what the FIA ask for , a dogs dinner of a tyre,so blame them IMHO
No one can say with any certainty that vettel is better than Alonso or hamilton so what is the point of the “competition”.
Which ever one of those 3 were in the Red bull would be dominating
The booing is because i assume the fans agree – I dont watch it anymore as thankfully my kids now find it dull.

Fee foo what do you like then about it? Serious question

….or maybe some people like things you don’t….?

What? No, never! Although the point I was trying to make (badly) is that people have been complaining about F1 being boring and needing to change since before I got bored and stopped watching it properly in the late 90s and yet there are still a lot of people who enjoy it!

Apart from the closer racing these days, of which admittedly there has been less this year, I love the whole world of F1.
That includes the technology, the people, the spectacle, the “politics”, the pushing of boundaries and rules.

I’ve loved it all the way through from Hunt and Lauda, Senna and Prost, Schumacher and Hakkinen to the present day.
The TV coverage in recent years, first with BBC and now with Sky HD just makes it come alive.

The tyres, the aero, DRS, Kers are variables that all add to the picture. Love it!

And an interview with David Clouthard on the podium.

It would be cruel to say that Red Bull have really struggled without him, wouldn’t it?

I used to watch avidly during the 90 s and early 00 s. Sort of got bored and ignored it for a few years and was surprised to find Williams was an also ran team when I came back. I watched the season, Vettals 2nd title I think, and couldn’t get back into it. 3 session qualify is a good idea and more fun than before

Might try again next year if the new engines and other changes make it interesting.

Mark Webber must be the unluckiest man in F1 at the moment, just goes to show luck is as important as driving ability and having a fast car of course

£20,000 for a wheel spin!

I’ve been following F1 since the mid ’80’s, but have really switched off over the past few years. Despite the ‘closer’ racing this season, which I am not enjoying as its staged and artificial due to DRS and the silly tyres, what I miss is being able to see the evidence of the driver input from a spectators point of view. F1 racing has become so proceduralised. The drivers are really following a set of instructions from the engineers mathematical modelling that tells them the what the perfect lap looks like; take this corner in this gear at this number of revs, drive at 80% for 10 laps then 5 hot laps, take this specific line through this corner, switch to this engine map on that lap, whatever you do don’t drift the car or it’ll wreck the tyres etc. I love watching playbacks from the early days where you could see the drivers working the cars, 4 wheel drifting, diving for gaps into corners – which in the modern game seems to be frowned upon!! Its definitely lost the plot.

Not saying the drivers are not as good as they used to be, and the speeds are definitely higher, but its not resulting in a better spectator sport – for me at least.

weare138 – Member
£20,000 for a wheel spin!

He knew he’d get a fine or reprimand for it and did it anyway. My estimations of him went up a bit today.

“We” need a new top flight series IMO – enclosed bodies/wheels but still high power engines, minimum roof heights and widths and no tyre stops, or at least enforce minimum duration for pitstops. (Sort of like crazier GpB tarmac rallying – that was safe, wasn’t it ? 😯 )

That way they may develop some relevant new technology.

He knew he’d get a fine or reprimand for it and did it anyway. My estimations of him went up a bit today.

Agreed.

scaredypants – Member
“We” need a new top flight series IMO – enclosed bodies/wheels but still high power engines, minimum roof heights and widths and no tyre stops, or at least enforce minimum duration for pitstops. (Sort of like crazier GpB tarmac rallying – that was safe, wasn’t it ? )

That way they may develop some relevant new technology.

+1 on that. I really love F1 but it needs a kick up the arse.

I’d have manual gearboxes, minimal aero, big HP. A fixed amount of fuel you’re free to use how you want, V12, V6 turbo whatever.

Have you read Gary Andersons view on the redbull passive floor?
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I think all top level sport is getting boring these days, it’s all become too commercial with too much money riding on it, so the best teams make the most money & can increase the gap, gone are the days of F1 where a Jordan or Ligier can win. It’s the same with football, it’s going to end up where the only valid competition is something like the team world cups in football, cricket & rugby where money doesn’t have quite the same influence….yet.

bigdean – Member
Have you read Gary Andersons view on the redbull passive floor?
[/url]

Interesting! Hadn’t seen that before.

The booing is because i assume the fans agree

No, I think the booing is as a factor of his **** behaviour at the start of the season, especially when he pissed on Webber’s chips.

But yeah, I’m with Retro23.

“You have this much fuel, whatever tyres you want, and xyz mandatory safety features (the fact that no driver has died since Senna is frankly amazing, and that’s one aspect of the good old days we could do without), now make a car that gets to the end the fastest”. Even: “Because you have so little fuel, you’d better have some KERS or similar.”, then, just let them innovate, because whilst we’ve all found it boring watching Vettel drive off into the sunset, F1 is about the car as much as the driver.

That would make it more interesting. Perhaps cap the budget so that the smaller teams do stand half a chance occasionally also. I’d also say let the six-wheelers come back!

That article is very interesting Gary seems to know what he is on about most of the time.

I just ignore vettel and watch the rest of the races, much more interesting/less annoying that way

“We” need a new top flight series IMO – enclosed bodies/wheels but still high power engines, minimum roof heights and widths and no tyre stops, or at least enforce minimum duration for pitstops.

Been saying the same for years. F1 is a joke. It’s pathetic that they’re the state of the wheeled art yet they have exposed wheels and strict aero regs that force the designers to put as many winglets and flaps on the cars that they look crap. As you say they should have full body aero with no wings, flat floor to the rear axle and slicks that just last a race. I’d also go with full electric. Then we’d see some serious innovation.

That said there is loads of better motor sport to watch. Check the FIA GT series, Blancpain Endurance series etc.

Thta’s a very interesting piece by Gary Anderson.

I thought that Vettel’s celebrations at the end were great, we need to see more emotion like that in the races. I think the drivers make it look easy nowadays as they generally do a lot more training and don’t tend to make alot of fatigue related mistakes/misjudgements. It still takes a lot of chutzpah to drive the things and the speed of directions changes is phenomenal.

As above, the race represents a very small anmount of what F1 is about, I find reading about the politics and technical stuff just as fascinating as the racing and lends the race some context when you see a few drivers constantly ghetting into each other.

I must admit that this season I’ve missed lots of races and haven’t been fussed. I’ve seen the whispers about passive traction control and it reminded me how F1 management would love to break the big old teams dominance/leverage on agreements/Concorde.

Something doesnt smell right about F1. I’m out.

whilst technology has always been a part of the sport i think the problem now is that it is the sport
Engine mapping, computer simulations, engineering tricks to gain time etc

Does anyone really think , given equal cars to Hamilton and Alonso that Vettel would have won 4 back to back?
I doubt even Vettel does

Given that its not so much a sport as an engineering contest

For the first and only time I wholeheartedly agree with Junkyard.

What annoyed me was the trick Williams FW14 car that was waay ahead of the competition. Without that car would Mansell have won his title?

F1 has always been an engineering contest as much as a driver one (if not more), but I still think the tyre situation is a disaster. Pirelli do have to take a major part of the blame, because although the FIA asked for high degradation tyres, they didn’t ask for dangerous ones, as we saw earlier in the season. These resulted in a change back to a 2012 design which favoured Red Bull and a few others (Sauber?) massively to other teams disadvantage. Also I’m sure the FIA didn’t expect Pirelli to produce a tyre so bad that people were pitting after 1 or 2 laps yesterday, farce.

Worse it seems that the relationship between Pirelli and the teams is very strained, so god knows what will happen next year.

Does anyone really think , given equal cars to Hamilton and Alonso that Vettel would have won 4 back to back?

Mark Webber has the same car as Vettel, yet has consistently been way behind Vettel in the world championship standings. If the Red Bull is as far ahead of the competition as some might suggest, then why is Webber only 5th in the current standings? Considering he’s a decent racing driver. Alonso, Hamilton and Raikkonnen are in ‘inferior’ cars, yet are above Webber. To say it’s al down to the car is disingenuous. If that were the case, then surely Webber would have been the 2nd best driver over the last 4 years?

Vettel is an exceptionally talented driver who has the ability to get the very best out of his car (remember his win in a Torro Rosso? How many other drivers could have managed that?), in practice, qualifying and the race. His desire to win everything, even fastest lap, marks him out as a true great.

Boring? People have been saying that about F1 for as long as I can remember (early 80s onwards).