I didn’t see that anyone else had started a thread for the season, so here goes.
I’m hoping for another good year out of Williams. Maybe get Bottas to the top step of the podium, who knows? I’m also interested to see how Verstappen does over the course of a full season. 17 years old and driving F1. I barely had a drivers’ license at 17.
Discuss away!
Well, it was an amusing first round, though not necessarily in a good, healthy way.
Sauber managed to evade the cops long enough to actually start, and managed a decent finish. Presumably the race winnings will go directly in to Van De Garde’s bank account.
Maldanado managed almost two whole corners before crashing out. Though to be fair, it wasn’t his fault this time.
Everyone who actually managed to finish the race scored points save Button, but really, that Honda engine actually finishing a race is pretty much a win for them.
Ferrari looks better so far, but the constructor’s championship is pretty much a foregone conclusion already, and we’re back to which Merc driver takes the driver’s championship.
As a Hamilton fan I’m just going to soak this up while I can.
I feel bad for Alonso because McLaren is looking so ill. I hope that the race in Malaysia everyone can get to the grid!
I’m hoping this won’t be another Mercedes curbstomp season… I at least want to see Bottas get to race next time! I did feel kind of bad for Button, being the only finisher to not get points.
It will be another Mercedes curbstomp season. The only way Mercedes doesn’t win every race by a lot is if they both break or wreck each other out. But that’s just the smallest problem with F1. It’s always been obscenely expensive, but now they can’t even fill an entire field, and with McLaren so far behind because the new Honda engines are down 150 horsepower or more on the field and Red Bull running outclassed Renault engines all that’s left is Williams and Ferrari to put up even a token challenge.
Bernie is an absolute tool. He took the pinnacle of racing and did his level best to run it into the ground. I’m surprised Ferrari hasn’t tried to get Mercedes disqualified under some pretense, because Bernie has always been in their back pocket. Something has to change. And when I say that I don’t mean the usual change where some team figures it all out after they change the rules and dominate the field like Mercedes (and McLaren, Ferrari, Williams, and Lotus before them).
I don’t think an ideal scenario exists but then I don’t think F1 has ever been a level playing field. You’ve always had technological leaps that mean you have an uncompetitive period. Think of the MP4/4 or the turbo years or Red Bulls flexible “innovations”.
'twas ever thus. It may be that the best we can hope for is inter-team battles and at least Mercedes allow their lads to race. It was not the case with Red Bull or Ferrari in recent years.
For a triathlete, I thought Button would have been able to pedal faster.
I understand that, but in an attempt to contain costs, a joke all by itself, they have severely limited engine development. That means that Mercedes has an insurmountable lead that simply cannot be overcome. In the past they could run one car, develop another, and introduce the new car mid-season. No longer. What you have when the season starts is what you have.
There have been suggestions that they need to rein in Mercedes with rules that limit certain aspects of their performance. I am loathe to agree with those suggestions, but the FIA has been known to do such things. If that makes the racing more competitive, it might be the right thing to do. Otherwise we’ll have runaway winners all year (again) while teams with vastly inferior cars get to duke it out for scraps. Were it not for Mercedes it would be a hell of a season.
I agree, my previous comment was more of a lament rather than an endorsement of the current situation.
We can’t blame Mercedes for being very good at their job, and Renault/Honda/Ferrari have had plenty of time to get it somewhere near right, but it seems harsh to backtrack so soon on the current regulations. However, I suspect there will be something on the horizon.
But what? If you have continuous development through the year then costs escalate again favouring the big teams (but then the cost cutting measures don’t seem to have clustered the pack anyway).
We could simplify the cars, remove auto boxes, telemetry, adjustable brakes, engine maps etc. and put more of the onus on the drivers (but then big teams can afford the very best drivers as they can now)
Single make? Doesn’t appeal to me nor the manufacturers.
One thing that appeals to me would be, free development of engine and chassis throughout the season but that they then should be made freely available for purchase by another team for the following year.
That would reduce the costs of entry immediately whilst giving an income source to the better manufacturers. At worst you’d have a grid made up of MK1 and MK2 versions of competent equipment.
Two key things you’d need for this…a fairly stable set of specifications with no enormous leaps year to year and…getting Ferrari to agree.
Possibly stupid question.
Why is it that the fastest drivers start at the front of the starting grid? It seems like that would lead to the favorite getting out to an early lead and never losing it, which the order of finish strongly correlating to the order of starting.
It would seem that it would be more entertaining and a more level playing field if the fastest drivers started in the rear, so that they would have to do multiple overtakes on their way to the front, if they could get there at all. It seems like it would produce a much closer race with far more position changes with a greater chance of the field to win over the favorites.
It would eliminate the qualifying round, but you could simply do reverse order of standings from the last race or the overall season.
Is it a safety issue? Too many overtakes are too risky? Is this universal among the various sorts of racing?
I’m willing to give F1 a chance, so I ended up watching the Australian Grand Prix, but it seemed like there were about 2 or 3 position changes (aside from people in the middle getting knocked out of the race) during the whole race. Where the race was after 1 lap was pretty much where it was on every other lap, including the finish. Aside from those who were knocked out of the race.
I’m not an expert, but I don’t think it’s a stupid question, it’s worthy of discussion. Indeed, several formats already use or have used it (I think the BTCC (that’s the British Touring Car Championship, a sort of British version of NASCAR using smaller, less powerful cars and ‘road’ courses - I don’t mean actual roads, I mean as opposed to ovals) use it at least in part, or have done).
I don’t think there is much of safety issue as drivers are already used to passing/being passed by slower/faster cars as most cars in a race either lap a slower car or get lapped by a faster one at some point. Of course, the key difference there is that the slow car is obliged to slow down and move out of the way, which would not be the case if they were racing for position. Even so, I don’t see it significantly increasing the number of incidents.
You are right that one of the big issues of F1 (for many years now, in fact for most of the 25 seasons I have been watching it) is the lack of overtaking. Having said that, I didn’t see the latest race but it does sound like about the worst possible example of this, so you were unlucky in that respect.
I think the major reason your suggestion won’t happen is qualifying is an extra money-spinner for the sport as it creates an extra day’s competition, if you replaced it with just a second practice day it wouldn’t raise as much revenue. There is also the argument that ultimately it is an elitist sport and as such the quickest drivers should be rewarded, not penalised. On the other hand, it would open up some interesting strategic possibilities - is it best to finish in a lowly position at the race before Monaco (where overtaking is very difficult) in order to secure a higher grid position there? There is also the practical issue of how retirements from the previous race are placed on the grid for the next race - seems unfair (and would lead to gaming the system) if they were put up front, but if you put them at the back it goes against the spirit of the rule.
I don’t really watch F1 at all these days, but back when I did, I would often find qualifying as much, or more, fun than the race itself. Qualifying is a competition in its own right, and, especially for circuits like Monaco, watching someone snatch pole in the dying moments of a qualifying session can be better entertainment than the two hour procession that sometimes passes for a “race”.
On the other hand, a top driver fighting their way to the front after bungling the qualifying can be good, too.
Having the slowest drivers start at the front isn’t going to happen, though, and it shouldn’t. F1 teams are experts at gaming the system, and the last thing anyone needs is having drivers going around as slowly as possible in the name of “strategy”. This sport is boring enough as it is.
Invert starts are the type of thing that really only works if the race is split in some fashion. Run one race, get points, then run a second race with the start positions inverted from the results of the first.
I think NASCAR at times did something like this with the all-star race, where they inverted the field between segments–but that was for fun, pride and some cash, not championship points.
Now that I think about it, did they do away with the idea of standing starts after a safety car they talked about last year? I was never really sold on that idea, but there has to be some way to make it better than the “Hamilton has a 5 second lead before he gets to the start/finish line” we got.
I know it is bad of me, and totally unjustified as I think the guy is brilliant driver, but last season I was always quite excited when Hamilton had a problem and had to start down the grid. Guaranteed action.
Since I mentioned Bernie screwing up F1, here’s the latest example: there will be no German Grand Prix for the first time since 1960.
Initially they were going to have it at the Nurburgring F1 track, but they had financial issues thanks to stupid investments like a roller coaster and a 5-star hotel that bankrupted the owners of the Nurburgring and has put its continued existence in doubt. There’s no way they’d rip up the Nordschleife, right? We’ll see.
Anyway, the long-time arrangement has been that the Nurburgring and Hockenheimring would host in alternating years, so it seems like a no-brainer that thy simply put the race on at the Hockenheimring, right? Nope. They don’t want to pay Bernie’s ridiculous fees when they only have a few months to promote it. Who could blame them? They don’t want to have a ton of empty seats and a big loss. But Bernie won’t reduce the fee, even though it’s pure profit for him.
Hell, they literally destroyed the legendary old track in favor of another Hermann Tilke-designed snorefest track to appease Bernie, and they are willing to take the race, but Bernie won’t give an inch. So, now the F1 season is down to 19 races.
How they ever let that crooked son of a bitch take control of F1 I’ll never know. I mean, I know how, but it still amazes me that a mere team boss could manipulate things and take over a long-standing high-level racing series the way he did.
Can’t help you there but certainly having the sport as the personal fiefdom of one man is unlikely to end well. Think FIFA and Sep Blatter.
Bernie is bothered about Bernie and the money, not necessarily in that order. The sport is just the vehicle (Ha!) for satisfying the first two.
So how about Vettel winning today’s Malaysian Grand Prix? It seems that Ferrari has managed to put together a competitive package. It helped that Mercedes completely mismanaged the race, and that Hamilton was completely thrown off his game by the fact that he wasn’t running away with it like he expected to be. But Vettel won and Kimi came back through the field to take 4th place, so it seems like it might be for real.
In other news, McLaren failed to have a car finish for the first time in 9 years. They have fallen about as far as they can, there is nowhere to go but up. Also, Bernie spent the last week making a jackass out of himself, something that has become the norm. He refuses to take any steps that might bring Mercedes back to the field, he suggests that maybe inverted starts would be good, and he says that a ton of changes need to happen but he can’t make them happen. Also, he cast doubt on the future of Italy and Germany hosting a grand prix, even though it’s his fee that is causing them to be unable to host.
Still, great race today. Let’s see if it continues throughout the season.
Yeah, certainly a wake-up call to Merc that they have to do more than just show up to guarantee a win.
Not sure what was going on with the stewards, though. I can understand the penalty to Perez, though I’m not 100% sure I agree with it, but how in the hell does Hulk get 10 seconds and two points for his incident?
Driver of the day was Kimi for me.
And we now have competition!
The season just got a whole lot more interesting. Never been a Vettel fan but it’s nice to see a good showing from Ferrari.