The F1 2015 thread…

Max Verstappen hits back at Felipe Massa over Monaco crash criticism
Rookie tells Williams driver to look at his own crash in Canada in 2014.

Brilliant news Max is about the only driver who is treating F1 as a race not a procession

Er, that’s old news – Massa pointed out that Perez had moved under braking and was penalised, whilst Massa was cleared. To be honest Verstappen is sounding like a jumped up kid, a bit overconfident about his own abilities and needs to sort out his attitude and grow up a bit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/33015978

This has been a dull race

Some of the midfield scraps were pretty good

Ouch… Alonso on team radio…….

Honda and the pup engine in a dog car.

all those mclaren updates are making so much progress –
the fact is the car is a disaster

alonso or dennis or both wont be at mclaren by the end of the season.

congrats lewis, and mercedes, what an engine in the back of those top 3 cars

pleasing to see williams up at the top after the disaster of monaco, ferrari the best of the rest ,so i think we are looking at williams/ferrari battles to get our entertainment “at the front” for the rest of the season.

that mclaren is a shocker !

Next year will McHonda be together?

Will Alonso even make it through to the end of the season?

No one could fault him if he left. It sounds like hes on the cusp and who would blame him?

I’m guessing he must have some sort of performance clause that would let him walk. No one would be naive enough to think they’d be winning GPs from the start but the performance has been absolutely woeful.

Bernie was being interviewed (by Sky) and was asked if he thought Alonso would ever win another WC. He quickly said No.

Interesting on the McLaren front, it could be that the energy recovery systems are off the pace, requiring compromises with the engine and the downforce.

I felt genuinely sorry for both drivers today. Jenson is very savvy and is unlikely to to put his foot in it in front of the media. Fernando is pretty unhappy, the comment about “looking like amateurs” was very telling.

Twenty years ago, Ron was the right man to steer the course. Even back in 1994, McLaren rescued a couple of podiums, even with the disastrous Peugeot engine. Now, they seem all at sea…no results, no sponsors, the most able driver pairing on the grid (with the possible exception of Ferrari) bringing up the rear and no hint of a way forward.

He quickly said No.

[sigh]…Bernie really is a massive a-hole.

Surprised no one’s made a complaint about Vettel’s pass on Hulkenburg.

I like Vettel, but that was at the limit of acceptable overtakes given he didn’t make the turn.

The stewards looked at it and decided there was no penalty needed. He didn’t make the turn because Hulkenburg didn’t give him room. Neither driver seemed particularly upset by it.

Tbh when was his last title? V soon it’ll be a decade.

alonso would be a fool not to have a get out clause, and he’s no fool !

but, where would he go? *cough*williams*cough*….

Would Alonso leave mid season?
He’s unlikely to get a good drive until next year. He may as well see this season out, there’s a (very) small chance things will get better at McLaren.

Things probably will get better at Maclaren. Question is how soon.

As I see it, Alonso is a winner, he like winning and not just finishing 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th. With Ferrari that’s what was happening and is still happening.

Merc had tied up their drivers for the next few years so his only realistic prospect of winning another WC is with McL. Unquestionably it’s somewhat of a gamble and clearly as a winner, he doesn’t like racing at the back of the field even if it was guaranteed that he’d be winning again by next year.

Is his (and JB’s) reaction really so surprising? Given how many people complain that the drivers are all boring PR machines, isn’t the frustration being shown a positive? It’s no wonder PR rules when as soon as a driver doesn’t give a PR answer, people speculate as above in this thread.

Redbull would be an option.

Redbull would be an option.

So jump from one team who’s engine is rubbish, to another who’s engine is rubbish!

Red Bull aren’t short of drivers either!

Why not head back to ferrari? apart from upsetting the status quo they have at the moment. Once the Ferrari is on par with mercedes they may as well go aggressive with the driver lineup. I would relish the races between them and it would give us another piece of the jigsaw regarding who is best out there!

We’ve had
Hamilton v Alonso
Hamilton V JB
JB v Alonso
Vettel v Raikonnen
Alonso v JB
possible matchups
Alonso v Vettel
Vettel v Hamilton
JB v Raikonnen

Would/could Redbull have a different engine next year though?

Who else currently looks like Challenging Merc? Ferrari don’t really, not this year at least and I think FA lost confidence in them to change that.

RB won’t have a new engine next year or if they did it wouldn’t be a Merc one and therefore is unlikely to be any more competitive.

Given how many people complain that the drivers are all boring PR machines, isn’t the frustration being shown a positive?

I agree with this, it’s good to see Alonso being given some leeway to express himself at the famously buttoned-up (no pun intended) McLaren team.

The car is radical, the aero package consistent and the drivers both very motivated. Would be nice if it had some pace, too.

Would/could Redbull have a different engine next year though?

No – if Audi/VW were coming in it would likely be 2017 at absolute earliest. And then he’d be back at square one again.

He needs to move to sportcars!

What i thought Alonso was complaining about yesterday was having to follow a fuel saving strategy. Given the slim chance of finishing or getting points anyway I think he was right in just wanting to go flat out until it broke/stopped. A better test of progress than poodling around.

McLaren are truly awful, completely lost the plot. Where they go from now is hard to see, as they seem to have so many issues But then so has F1, hard to remember such a boring race at Canada. The rules seem totally loaded in Mercedes favour with minimal improvements allowed to ‘per units’, so we can expect them to dominate this season and next 😥

Anyway – best news of the F1 weekend is that Manor F1 have a sponsor!!!

Missed it (riding instead) – who were the first two?

McLaren are truly awful, completely lost the plot

Disagree. Those who understand this stuff and have access to the numbers reckon that given the power deficit of the Honda engine, the McL car itself is about a match for Ferrari. Not yet going to give Merc a scare but significant progress when you compare to where they were last year (incidentally, the McL was near enough the same speed this year in quali as last year which gives an idea how much better the chassis is). It’s clearly taking time but does anyone really doubt that given time, the Honda PU will eventually be around the same performance as Merc or Ferrari?

Those who understand this stuff and have access to the numbers reckon that given the power deficit of the Honda engine, the McL car itself is about a match for Ferrari.

Heard that before, test lab numbers mean nothing, results do. They can barely get a car to finish a race. From 14 starts they’ve had 6 retired, 2 DNS, and 6 finishes of which only one was top 10, and this is in a year with barely 20 cars starting a race.

Not test lab – on track figures that the teams calculate from watching the other teams to understand how their cars are performing. this isn’t McL saying that their chassis is decent, it’s other teams’ people calculating that.

The engine programme is clearly not going well and the lack of allowed testing/development rules are making progress slow but I still reckon it’s highly unlikely that they won’t get there.

does anyone really doubt that given time, the Honda PU will eventually be around the same performance as Merc or Ferrari?

Oh yes. Everyone has rose tinted hindsight about Honda, and McLaren and Senna and the good old days. More recently the ‘Earthdreams’ Honda of Button in 2008 was slow and unreliable. Sound familiar?

Honda should have got that engine to the ‘flashes of brilliance’ stage by now. Instead it wheezes around just in front of the Manor then breaks.

Remember Honda have so far had about half the development time that the others had before their first race last year. They are way behind on the development curve, but everyone else was doing this in private in 2012/13. There’s no doubt that Honda know how to build engines, so the likelihood is that they’ll get there.

I think alonsos best chance will be 2017. A rule change will disrupt the order and they’ve got nothing to lose by starting on their 2017 car today.

Everyone has rose tinted hindsight about Honda,

Not particularly. The Honda team clearly didn’t perform all that well though you’d argue that they had things going in the right direction when they pulled out but by my recollection, the engine itself was considered to be ok – it was the chassis that was weak.

the engine itself was considered to be ok

Trouble is, OK won’t cut it. The Renault unit is OK, but put up against the Mercedes unit it’s severly outclessed.

Honda need to get to be (at least) as good as the best; and that looks a long, long way off.

Ferrari have closed that gap this year and look good for it. Look at Vettel’s progress through the field.

I didn’t suggest that Honda were going be world beaters – I’m not rose tinted about Honda – just that they’d get on a par eventually.

That said, they have a good background in hybrid systems from what I’ve read up on it and they did have the advantage of know what they were aiming for. the issue they have is they’re effectively two years behind the rest based on when they started with the engine.

I think they had a disctinct advantage coming into F1 when they did.

They could watch Renault and Ferrari make their mistakes last year and have a good long look at the Merc unit in the back of the McLaren which is a tremendous leg-up.

I can’t see why all the best bits couldn’t be pulled together to make a decent unit. I get that it wouldn’t work straight out of the box but with all of Honda’s previous turbo experience etc etc

I thought by now there would be the odd race were they turned up the wick and had a few good showings before it exploded. There’s no power and no fuel economy; it’s starting to look hopeless.