Formula One 2018

[Adam]

Bit of karma then as Force India have qualified 3rd and 4th, and McLaren and Williams, who forced them to give up their points, are the back two rows.

[Katsuya]

Feels pointless to post silly season stuff now given how crazy it’s got, but the newest rumour is that Perez has signed with Haas.

EDIT: oh, and apparently Ocon physically does not fit in the McLaren 🤷‍♀️

Edited August 25, 2018 by Katsuya

[Slogger]

41 minutes ago, Katsuya said:

Feels pointless to post silly season stuff now given how crazy it’s got, but the newest rumour is that Perez has signed with Haas.

EDIT: oh, and apparently Ocon physically does not fit in the McLaren 🤷‍♀️

Somebody call Scott Steiner? 🚨🚨🚨 

[Adam]

This race is on C4 so I'm giving it a watch, although I missed the Alonso crash.

Is F1 in such a state that the only time you can even overtake is with DRS now? Every overtake I've seen so far has been when a vastly superior car has DRS on a midfielder in front. Proper tedious viewing.

[FLiam]

I have no idea what Hulkenberg was doing at the start. Did he just forget that there was a sharp turn one or something? 

3 minutes ago, Adam es Tranquilo said:

This race is on C4 so I'm giving it a watch, although I missed the Alonso crash.

Is F1 in such a state that the only time you can even overtake is with DRS now? Every overtake I've seen so far has been when a vastly superior car has DRS on a midfielder in front. Proper tedious viewing.

Yes and no. The majority of overtakes are DRS assisted but you do sometimes get the odd one without but they are few and far between. This is one of my main gripes about F1. Especially since there is such a big gap in terms of performance between teams.

[JasonM]

I suspect Hulk had a brake failure, because by the looks of things he started braking at the right moment but suddenly shit went crazy and he punted Alonso over Leclerc.

At the same time, a legendary F1 picture again.

[Adam]

37 minutes ago, Liam Mk2 said:

Yes and no. The majority of overtakes are DRS assisted but you do sometimes get the odd one without but they are few and far between. This is one of my main gripes about F1. Especially since there is such a big gap in terms of performance between teams.

It's awful. One of the many things wrong with the sport now. Just had a good example, Ericsson legitimately overtook Hartley but then a few turns later they hit the DRS zone and Hartley went back past him as if Ericsson was driving a bus. I don't see what the point of it is.

Also, it used to be heroic when someone came through the field from the back of the grid but nowadays, if you drive one of the top cars it's a foregone conclusion. Bottas has gotten up to 4th from last place without really having to do anything.

[Gazz]

It's a lot of risk versus reward, why dive down the inside of a corner and risk getting the door closed on you and a retirement when you can just close up a gap out of the same corner and hit an uncontested DRS overtake down the back straight? You can see also now, Hamilton has no interest in attempting to overtake Vettel once the pit-stop undercut didn't get him into DRS range and now he's backed off from 1.5s to over 5.

[FLiam]

9 minutes ago, Adam es Tranquilo said:

Also, it used to be heroic when someone came through the field from the back of the grid but nowadays, if you drive one of the top cars it's a foregone conclusion. Bottas has gotten up to 4th from last place without really having to do anything.

Completely agree with this. They often play it up when Hamilton is toward the back of the grid because of a penalty or whatever. As you said, it’s literally a foregone conclusion that he’ll still end up in the top 6 at least. 

I would still prefer them to at least trial a couple of shorter races instead of one longer race. I understand that it certainly wouldn’t appeal to the purists though. 

Short races are part of the reason I prefer watching the British Touring Cars. You get much more exciting races that way. 

[Katsuya]

The shots of the halo with the tyre mark on it are the perfect example why it should be there

[JasonM]

20 hours ago, Liam Mk2 said:

Completely agree with this. They often play it up when Hamilton is toward the back of the grid because of a penalty or whatever. As you said, it’s literally a foregone conclusion that he’ll still end up in the top 6 at least. 

I would still prefer them to at least trial a couple of shorter races instead of one longer race. I understand that it certainly wouldn’t appeal to the purists though. 

Short races are part of the reason I prefer watching the British Touring Cars. You get much more exciting races that way. 

I agree, but I feel a shorter race length wouldn't make much of a difference in making F1 more exciting, the gap in performance is too great and as you see in most weekends the final order is decided after 10-20 laps with some small deviations depending on retirements, crashes, or a top 3 car working his way through the field.

It's mostly a case of there just being too much downforce in cars this year and in past years, even engines don't make much of a difference anymore because you saw between Hartley/Ericsson that a Honda was overtaking a Ferrari and vice versa. If you look at the timing sheets at the finish of last race, you can see that only two cars were really at racing distance, and those were the two Williams' who were obviously not going to race against each other anyways because what's the point with 2 laps to go and over half a minute away from the top 10?

The insane amounts of downforce makes it too hard to follow another car through corners, it causes massive understeer in the car that is following, but to make things worse the dirty air also causes brakes and tyres of the car behind to become hotter. You hit the problem in that Pirelli has designed the tyres to have a very delicate operating temperature, and going above/below those temperatures means cars lose even more grip, hence they can't follow for too long else they'll cook their tyres and they lose tyre life AND tyre grip.

Next year it will be slightly better with the massively changed aero regs designed to give cars less aero downforce, but I feel the tyres will still be a big bottleneck to allow cars to truly fight. Their operating range needs to become larger, and to offset it they should just make the tyres wear quicker regardless of nursing, so that drivers know that they can get x laps out of the tyre and can push them, and nursing helping but not to the insane degrees like they are right now. Drivers are literally going seconds a lap slower in the knowledge they can do a one stop, than go all out on the tyres and go with a two-stop instead.

19 hours ago, Katsuya said:

The shots of the halo with the tyre mark on it are the perfect example why it should be there

Here's the pic of it for people who want to ogle it. People say it'd be a close call and he'd have been safe even without the Halo, but preventing close calls is one of the main reasons why the Halo got introduced and i'm happy that it did its job protecting the driver inside from any harm.

 

Edited August 27, 2018 by Jasonmufc

[Gazz]

14 minutes ago, Jasonmufc said:

Here's the pic of it for people who want to ogle it. People say it'd be a close call and he'd have been safe even without the Halo, but preventing close calls is one of the main reasons why the Halo got introduced and i'm happy that it did its job protecting the driver inside from any harm.

Those people are wrong.

[Taxation is Theft]

Fucking hell.

[Katsuya]

Yeah, the on board from Hartley shows it pretty well too. Even if it might have been an inch or two away anyway, it’s an inch or two *too close*. Honestly, the fact Charles even drove that car away from the scene a little bit is just a remarkable testament to F1 safety these days 

[JasonM]

Respect to the Hulk for admitting his mistakes and not burying his head into the sand like many other drivers tend to do whenever they mess up. 

[LUKIE]

Fuck anyone who complains about the halo. Safety of the drivers should always take presendence over anything else.

[JasonM]

Another brilliant Beyond the Grid podcast, this time with Eddie Jordan. Talking about his own racing career, starting a team, driving with future World Champions, 'finding' Michael Schumacher, and so much more.

 

[Katsuya]

Ocon confirmed that he went for a seat fitting at McLaren.

Interestingly - it only says that he wouldn't fit in the 2018 McLaren, which might be a good sign for him for 2019. Apparently McLaren will announce Sainz's partner in September.

[JasonM]

At this point i'd be surprised if it wasn't Ocon, to be honest. He's a quick young driver, would hopefully gel well with Sainz, and with two young drivers in the team the team can hopefully focus on getting their shit together for a change, because the state of that team is dire. 

[Katsuya]

I mean there's been a few times when drivers have slipped through the cracks and should have been signed - mainly Buemi/Vergne - but I think Ocon would be the worst example of someone missing out on a race seat in the last decade or so. I guess maybe Hulk having his off-year in 2011 because of Maldonado?

Speaking of which, Ricciardo and Hulk will both take engine penalties; Ricciard to fit the new Renault engine, Hulk for the B-spec again, although given that Hulk had a 10-place drop anyway it really doesn't matter to him. Max also gets it but won't take a penalty.

Edited August 30, 2018 by Katsuya