The F1 2015 thread…

I wish this guy would take his money and sod off from F1 – a fair weather F1 team(s) if every there was one, and take Horner with him…

Mateschitz: You can’t force someone to stay when he wants to leave

Rumours of Renault pulling out also. The way things are going only Merc, Ferrari and a Merc powered Willimas will be left in F1.

This weekend already looks a snooze fest and yet another nightmare for Mclaren-Honda.

I can’t see RB just winding the team up – they are contracted to 2020 so their only way out currently is to sell, not to mention they’ll want to get some money back on quitting.

Alonso’s issue was systems rather than engine we’re told. If so, (and I know…) then that shouldn’t cause a problem for the weekend. Of course, the general lack of HP, driveability and fuel efficiency might…

Hami reminds me of a blind man dressed by some friends with a sick sense of humour.

LH seems to have got a fair bit of grief for that outfit.. still, he doesn’t sound bovvered.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/features/33135635

My taste for fashion

When I was growing up, we never had money to have nice clothes. All our money went into my racing; not even my dad and step mum could afford to go out and buy good-looking clothes.
In fact, my dad still to this day wears the same stuff he did 20 years ago – it’s hilarious to see him going around the house and wearing a sponsor’s jacket from when I was 11 or something. I’m like, “Dude, seriously!”
When I got to F1 with McLaren, I was made to fit a square box. You can’t show your personality, show any character. You can’t do this, you can’t do that.
Lewis Hamilton
Lewis attended the recent London premiere of the Minions movie
Once I got to Mercedes and really got my feet dug into F1, I felt like I could start coming out of my shell little by little over time.
Sometimes people don’t seem to like the clothes I wear, judging from some of the messages I get told about. But I could show you pictures of me when I was 17 and you wouldn’t see a huge difference.
I still wore big chains, and my clothes would have been even baggier than they are now.
But now I have got time to really pay attention to how I present myself.
I like to feel comfortable in what I’m wearing and to wear it the way I want to wear it, and I don’t care what other people think about that.
Fashion is a great thing to get involved in, especially London men’s fashion, because we have a lot of great British designers, many of whom I am avid fan of, and buy a lot of their merchandise. That’s why I was at London Fashion Week in the break between the Canadian and Austrian Grands Prix.
It is cool to be a part of something that is inspiring up-and-coming people at college who want to be fashion designers.
I love creativity, in all parts of life, and I hope it will inspire me one day to do something creative, in one sphere or another.
It was a really cool time. Plus I got to try and wear so many different outfits, so that was great!

engine issues for Jenson now ! and Vettel fastest with Hami having trouble getting a quali lap hooked up.

The way things are going only Merc, Ferrari and a Merc powered Willimas will be left in F1.

And Honda.

And probably Audi/Skoda/Seat/VW

wonder if Vettel is going to get a 5 place gearbox penalty? Would be a real shame as he is showing some pace. Would be great if kimi could win it.

On a side not I think lewis is trying to be Pharrell

actually there is 2 clauses thats already been mentioned by RBR that they can get out of the 2020 contract – 1 is if their engine supplier leave and they cannot get what they consider “a competitive replacement” and b they pay a diminishing figure value of $$million based on the number of years to 2020.

Hami reminds me of a blind man dressed by some friends with a sick sense of humour

It never ceases to amaze me that some folk really really care about fashion and then dress they way they do.

I don’t know who said it but I love “if fashion is so good why do they keep changing it?”

25 place grid penalty for button !

They’ll soon be starting at the back of the grid of the race before…

alonso has blown his new engine now….

i have to say to RBR it could be worse.. they cpuld be running a honda. If they though their image is being tarnished what about mclaren and honda. Even the Manor Marussia finishes more races than the McHonda with the 2014 ferrari. If only Manor could get their 2015 spec car up and running and they could pass the Renaults and Mchonda.

Can mchonda get a 30 place penalty? whats the biggest penalty you can receive on the race weekend. Back in the day they just started from the pit lane. At this rate they may start a mile behind the start line

another mchonda engine goes bang ! lasted about 10 laps behind the safety car 😯

and Alonso parked up on lap 1 😉

Probably the most boring thing I’ve watched in a long time, where was the racing? Is this what F1 is like now?

McLaren woes are all about the gearbox this weekend – no sure thats anything to do with honda, although engine power delivery could effect the gearbox stresses – another disaster weekend as they really needed mileage on that new “upgraded” engine.

congrats to Nico – great race from him with no mistakes, just look at how much they have in hand of the williams even on such a short lap circuit.
its going to be a boring season i think….

not sure if kimi will last out the end of season – last 3 races might be a new driver for ferrari if things / luck / attitude continue as they are….

Fasinating and scary watching Pastor and what happens to modern F1 cars when you get close to the car in front! 😯

Hamilton proving he’s every bit as gracious in defeat as Rosberg.

I did think it was a bit strange that hamilton didnt acknowledge Rosberg’s win in the podium room. Also it was great to see a Brazilian and a German speaking Italian to each other.
I thought it was an ok race with a bit of potential that didnt really unfold. I wonder if Hamilton will rue that monaco result come the end of the season. On the basis of last year I still beilieve Hamilton will romp it after the summer break.
Is it just me that winces everytime Maldonado gets close to another car..

This weekend already looks a snooze fest and yet another nightmare for Mclaren-Honda.

Well predicted Dragon (Sky footage I watched), although ‘Crofty’ reckoned it was exciting so must’ve saw a different race from his commentary box.

why is Horner trying to wangle Brawn to step up to be some kind of F1 “sort-it-out-new-rules” leader – i’m not sure i get his angle,
for sure i think brawn could come up with a set of rules better than the current ones (a monkey could!) but why Horner is trying to push this i dont know.
perhaps because Brawn has not been running a team for a while and could be considered “neutral” – and perhaps he’s already spoken to other Team leaders and they think its a good idea also…..but lets face it, even if they do think its a good idea right now, when it came down the nitty gritty of what Brawn’s scope is, it will just be a pseudo-role for him, so they dont have to give up any real power so they can all keep creaming the money off for themselves…

Alonso managed a lap of the circuit after all…

I wonder if Horner will get the boot? Bet the rival team boss must be kicking his informant about putting his size 10s in.

The problem is I cant take anything RBR say at the moment because it just sounds like sour grapes as they arent winning at the moment. Every comment about honda is followed by renault. Its like Bob Fernley at force india moaning about dosh all the time.

it just sounds like sour grapes as they arent winning at the moment.

I think there is a bit of that, but equally from their point of view the position of Mercedes is now essentially locked in, as RBR and others have little chance of catching them up within the rules. That is the main problem of F1 right now, balancing ‘reducing’ costs while allowing enough development so that teams can close gaps between each other. Right now the rules achieve neither.

Simple fix for the fia would be to allow a second homologation during the year. The current tokens thing is a fudge for this year, so next year they’ll officially be stuck with whatever they run at the first race. Allow a second homologation date just before the August shutdown, then that could allow development but not a spend frenzy.

Edit – weren’t engines normalised in the last set of regs, IIRC merc had the lead then too but I think there was some equalisation. The problem then though was just power, not reliability and power and driveability

i also think the crackdown on engine development due to “reliablity” has hurt a lot of teams that would exploit this loop hole to catch up.

i think the key thing here is that do we really want a Formula championship where no one can make real gains in PU development during the season – if thats the case, then this is what we have, otherwise we have to free up the regs on the PU development but that would increase costs for teams, the gap between bigger and smaller teams in terms of performance would end up being huge – well — bigger than it is now 🙂
especially as the introduction of all the hybrid stuff and technology in the gearbox and other areas have becomes so complex.

so, other option then is to totally restrict aero development and not spend millions on a new shaped carbon part under the car…
problem then is , if you have a team that went the wrong way with aero you cannot claw that back either, so we’d see complaints in that area too…

so the final option that gets kicked around is….custmoer cars… for smaller teams to buy “off the shelf” packages from teh bigger teams, even though they will be ‘b’ spec and let the bigger teams blow the budgets on whatever they want and it will trickle down…

yeah all of us who remember the good old days of a designer in a garage building and F1 car to take on the “big wigs” and winning think this is terrible… but those days are gone – and look at what the grid is now… 1 team winning, 2 teams whinning and 1 of the old guard teams unable to test/devlop and the rest struggling to pay for PUs gearbox’s while building their own chassis….

would it not be better to at least have 30 car grids with 12 cars fighting at the front with unlimited costs/development and 18 cars in the middle having a B team dingdong battle?

i dunno – i kinda given up on the whole “where f1 should go thing” because everyone just cares about money

Isn’t that exactly why Horner’s idea is being proposed – the rules should be designed to produce a competitive formula free of the teams’ self-interest. Of course, Horner wouldn’t have been suggesting this when RB were dominant (and I reckon he’d be candid enough to admit it) but that kind of proves the point.

Aside from that, the rumours of CVC being bought out seem fairly strong and if that happens, I’m sure we’ll see some changes.

To customer cars, the issue for the smaller teams is that it effectively completely destroys any intrinsic value their teams have – Force India for example is worth X millions. If they become just a customer team then they have no fundamental value so those X millions are wiped out. Not an attractive prospect for them and obviously it comes back to the question of what F1 is. For me, if they do go down the customer car route, it needs to be centrally run (as Bernie has proposed – 2013 RB car IIRC), with equivalency rules (which seems to work well at Le Mans) to make them right on the tail end of the big teams but with no customer rules to avoid them competing. Also allow some limited aero, etc tweaks so that the teams can keep some value.

Why not have in essence a second lower championship for lesser teams, all running a stock engine (PU). It happened previously when a lot of lower teams all ran Cosworths.

The head of Manor has some good points about F1 not having a strategy and not asking the right questions. Instead teams are cherry picking ideas that suit themselves.

I personally dont like the customer teams as it really just masquerades the problems, after all what if one of the manufacturers pulls out because they have a bad season. How will the money be shared out to the smaller teams . It all sounds a bit like motogp with satellite teams against yamaha, honda and possibly ducati.

The difference is that in Motogp they provided concessions and unlimited development for ducati and new entrants whilst frozen the the big boys. This at least provided Ducati with some success in getting parity.

Sauber highlighted how DTM allowed Mercedes to catch up whilst freezing dev for BMW and Audi to improve competition. I guess no one wants to see a 1 horse race except for the leading horse.
All the while Bernie sees it as a show to make money from sponsors nothing will really change. Hence his comments about drivers adding value and how Lewis is good for marketing F1.

bye bye kimi, Bottas will replace him even perhaps the last 3 races….

and perhaps sooner than we think its going to be bye bye bernie and CVC….

bye bye kimi, Bottas will replace him even perhaps the last 3 races….

Confirmed or speculation still?

Yes, this is pretty big news b2b. Have you got a link at all?

The discussions are almost certainly taking place but it’s really speculation as to whether Williams will go for the cash over the driver – who else would they get? Hulkenberg maybe? Not sure he’s considered as highly as Bottas.

Unless it’s a lot more money, I reckon selling him would be a pretty negative statement from Williams on their road to recovery.

http://autoweek.com/article/formula-one/ferrari-formula-one-team-courting-williams-valtteri-bottas

one more rumour not yet out there too much….hello williams to a spanish driver….

Yawn. Another rumour not out there at the moment is that Jean Eric vergne will be back in to replace ricciardo at Red bull. That’s because I just made it up., but at least I admit it.

Somber reading. Idle control keeps revs at 4100 and prevented change down to first gear, you cannot engage the clutch when the steering wheel is at full lock. The car rammed itself into the truck despite de Villotas best efforts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-33248493

Just read that Jambalaya, horrible 🙁