I agree, you can hear the cockpit messages much more clearly and the squeaking wheelspin after a pit-stop.
F1 thrives on stories as much as the eventual winner. If it continues to provide intense rivalries throughout the pack then it’ll continue to be exciting. The main reason that the Schumacher era was tedious was that his car was the best and his team-mate wasn’t allowed to challenge him (imagine a young Alonso alongside an experienced Schumacher in a Ferrari!)
Something very similar happened at Red Bull but Mercedes seem happy to let their boys race…hurrah for that.
I’m not sure 4 races can prove anything in F1, but if this is the start of a trend that lasts the rest of the season, I think that’s a pretty compelling argument. I will say, there was cheering on my couch after Seb “allowed” Ricciardo to pass him, especially after “tough luck.” I’m not a Vettel hater by any means, but that was hard not to enjoy.
I’ve already gotten used to it, and the upshots are that you can hear the turbos, electric motors, and other cool mechanical noises, as well as the team radios.
I think this current push to make the cars louder is a symptom of F1’s reactionary rulebook. Ferrari is dominating with a certain tire brand, so F1 mandates the same tire for everyone. Canada 2012 is made more exciting by different pit stop strategies, so let’s make the tires fall apart to encourage different strategies. Vettel has the championship locked down too early in the season so let’s do double points for the last race. They need to trust that the spectacle itself is entertaining enough and quit trying to fix things that aren’t necessarily broken.
Did you guys hear about the checkered flag issue? Remember at the end of the second to last lap, Hamilton radio’d in a message about seeing the flag?
Apparently the flagperson was unfurling the flag in preparation for the last lap and decided to unfurl it over the track…which has resulted in that lap being declared the last lap! Which means that last minute pass from Kobayashi doesn’t count.
That happened at an IMSA race in 1989. Well, not exactly; the race was supposed to be 97 laps, the checkered flag was inadvertently shown on 94, Geoff Brabham (Nissan) passed Price Cobb (Jaguar) on lap 96. After a protest, it was ruled that the accidental early flag ended the race.
It’s definitely been interesting, and creates a lot of edge-of-seat moments when I’m certain they’re going to take each other out. Fantastic stuff to watch, though - some real skill on display there. I also admire Mercedes for letting them duke it out on the track rather than try to control things to guarantee the WC - although perhaps it’s so much of a given at this point that they don’t even need to bother.
I think Rosberg is a much cooler character mentally; at least that’s the impression I get from his demeanour. I don’t know about Hamilton destroying himself, but he’s certainly the more volatile of the two, and I wonder if there’s a certain amount of gamesmanship from Rosberg in trying to provoke him subtly. Adds to the interest, I suppose!
Yes, it does make it interesting in what could otherwise be a rather dull season - no doubt over-hyped by the media, of course. It was clear Hamilton had the edge until last weekend, will be interesting to see if that was a one-off due to the nature of the track or if Rosberg has found something extra in his setup.
But we’re not so sure that LH didn’t have the edge over NR at Monaco. With that pit-stop occurring as it did, it didn’t give LH a chance to do anything about NR’s pole position. In that specific instance, i can understand LH’s regrets (and I’m not a fan of LH), but he has to know that from a team perspective, there really wasn’t any other way to handle the pit-stops that day.
As a Mercedes fan I am loving every minute of this season, but I do wish that there was more of a friendship between LH and NR. I enjoy camaraderie more than drama.
I see the steward’s point on the Perez penalty, but if I’m Massa, and it’s the last lap, I have a DRS advantage, and the car in front of me had questionable brakes, I don’t take so tight a line that there’s absolutely no room for error going into the corner.
Interesting how the number of retirements has jumped these last couple of races. I wonder if everyone was being real conservative at the start of the season with the new cars, and now they’re playing with things more and guessing wrong in more cases.
Huh? They’ve been friends for years, and they still seem to get on well enough, despite desperate attempts by the media to make a big fuss out of whatever happened in Monaco. With the season turning out more boring and predictable than even Vettel’s strolls to the championship, I suppose a Senna-Prost type situation would at least add some drama, but I’m not seeing that at all.
At the time of watching the race, it looked like Massa’s fault to me as well - as has been said, why would he get so close to Perez when he had such a big speed and braking advantage anyway? But the stewards view seemed to be that Massa was taking a reasonable line and Perez braked early and dived to the left, either because of dodgy brakes or through driver error. Thinking it through, I can see that makes sense, and answers the question I posed above. However, I can’t help thinking that other top drivers may have avoided the incident if they had been in Massa’s place.
It may seem harsh, but I think Massa has lost something since his big accident. In the few laps before his latest crash, it looked like he could have pulled a move a few times but backed out of it. To me, that indicates a lack of confidence, and that his previous injury is still in the back of his mind. Sometimes, that can be more dangerous than being overly aggressive. The subsequent incident could be another symptom of this. Time for him to retire before he gets hurt again, or hurts someone else, I think.
Back to the main race, I don’t begrudge Ricciardo his win at all, he had a really good race. But I hope Hamilton’s run of bad luck evens out over the course of the season. If not, unfortunately it seems that luck will decide the championship, as that is the only reason Rosberg is ahead so far. He could yet prove to be the better driver, but that remains to be seen.
I also thought it interesting that Max Chilton blamed his accident on his team mate braking too late - not sure I fully understood how that worked but he seemed very convincing!
It was certainly an excellent race, let’s hope Canada can hold on to their place in the calendar.
Two cars today were tested with titanium skidplates, to make sparks, because sparks are exciting. I cannot facepalm this enough. The FIA is also kicking around the idea of standing re-starts after safety cars, and they’re going to take another look at the noise situation.
Now, I’m a relatively new F1 fan, this is only the 2nd full season that I’ve watched, so I have no problem with DRS, safety cars, or quiet engines. But double-points in the final race, cosmetic skid plates, unnecessary standing starts, vuvuzela exhausts… sometimes I wonder what clowns are running this multi-billion dollar industry.
