I didn’t see anyone had started a thread for this season, so here goes.
I’m going to be most interested to see how the Haas team does this year.
Got the DVR set for qualifying early tomorrow morning, I’ll watch it after I get up tomorrow.
Discuss away!
The new qualifying rules sound kind of goofy. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I feel sorry for the stewards and the impending flood of complaints about people holding up others and ruining the lap.
The broadcasters on NBC were not mincing words, they really don’t like the new qualifying. Hamilton took the pole with a Mercedes 1-2, so I’m fine with them.
This new qualifying process was farcical. Third and fourth determined with more than 3 minutes left in qualifying with the drivers just sitting in the garage getting out of their cars? The only ‘real’ excitement coming to see if Rosberg could make up 3/10ths of a second? Two rounds of qualifying with the flagman waving a chequered flag over some empty tarmac?
All because ‘ticket sales were slow on Saturdays’ according to Toto Wolfe.
Maybe they ‘mixed’ the starting grid a little more… Lets see… Mercedes 1,2? Check. Ferrari 3,4? Check. Oooh - Kvyat is strarting in 18th. That’s certainly a massive stirring up of the starting grid.
Colour me unimpressed.
Yeah,* fewer* cars running less laps ought to spur those Saturday ticket sales…
Just started watching the race and I’ve stopped it at the big crash (red flag). Glad the boys are okay.
But how `bout that start?! So glad to see Mercedes showing-up in somebody’s mirrors for the first (many) laps.
I deleted the qualifying without watching it… sounds like i’ve got some research ahead of me.
Naw, looks like they’ve already decided to ditch it for the rest of the year, it was really that bad.
Yay Haas! Solid points in their first outing, despite not actually having to do a pit stop!
Because of not actually having to do a pit stop.
Excellent job by the new kids. The luck really did fall Grosjean’s way, getting new tires during the red flag. Couldn’t really tell how competitive he’d be over a normal race. He was fast enough to keep Hulkenberg and Bottas behind him, at least.
I’m amazed that Alonso not only wasn’t injured in the crash, but that he popped up out of the car and walked away by himself.
Indeed. That shot of the wadded-up McLaren against the armco was powerful from many perspectives. Probably from a safety standpoint first, it’s great to see how protected he was through all that. The slow-motion shot from the “bunker” cam allowed us to watch how the car behaved w/o the benefit of any driver input. As soon as those outside wheels hit the gravel and the car’s body started to pivot, the crash began to look gruesome.
As a Monday-morning steward, it appears that EG lifted for the corner just a micro-second sooner than FA planned on him doing so. It also appeared that FA had a micro-second of indecision before he attempted to come by on the left. Shit happens quickly at 150+ mph.
I enjoyed seeing Seb fight for it in the last few laps and sad to see the Mercedes cars finish where they did. Great for Haas to win some points even if they had to *sacrifice *Gutierrez’s car to get them.
There were already reports that EG had some sort of problem with the car, I’ve seen some tweets since then saying that the car went into power reduction mode to harvest power due to low battery. From what I’ve read, this would mean that the car would then lose about 150hp–which would certainly look like he lifted early.
I believe the flashing red light comes on when that happens, but that probably wouldn’t be a useful warning at that speed/distance.
So has anybody read, or can calculate how far alonzo flew while upside down? He essentially flew from the start of the gravel trap nearly to the wall. How far is that?
Yeah, that crash was one of the scariest I’ve seen lately. Glad (and amazed) that everyone was OK.
Yay for Haas! 
Apparently we- and the NBC commentators- weren’t the only ones who didn’t like the new qualifying rules. Whose idea was that anyways?
Great first race. Pretty happy for Haas.
Dang, anyone else see Vettel pull out all the snark towards his old teammate on the podium?
As well as epic races, F1’s also witnessed the most epic sports press conference question of all time.
“Can you repeat the question?” 
I like that kid!
Grosjean won “Driver of the Day.” Which is interesting, because this is a pure fan vote, and by most accounts, it was being pretty solidly won by others–supposedly Haryanto was in the lead for most of the voting period thanks to a large Indonesian turnout, but those votes were apparently all magicked away.
I’m at least happy it’s not for any type of real competition bonus (Formula E only gets away with it because they’re still trying to get an audience, and even there it’s stupid), but really, if you let the internet vote on things, you may as well just get ready for Driver of the Day being Boaty McBoatface the rest of the season.
I assume from the lack of posts that most of us thought the race was a snoozer, eh?
I let the sweet purr of those F1 engines lull me to sleep on about lap 38 and woke up as the trophies were being doled out. I wasn’t surprised by what I saw but then I read that Haas bettered their Australian results… Go Haas!
There were some moments of note, but -unless they happened in the last ~18 laps- overall not much to comment on. Turn one crash? C’mon Lewis, you knew VB was coming in there but you closed the door anyway. I hope you lost sleep Sunday night with VB’s drive through penalty lapping through your mind.
Bad luck for SV. My first though was “at least it happened then instead of 3/4 of the way through the race”. But, on second thought (and keeping things relative), it’d have been better on the cool-down lap instead of on the warm-up lap.
Also, didn’t David Hobbs point-out that Lewis grabbed the pole with a qualifying lap in his 1.6-litre hybrid that was quicker than the big, old, screaming, V-10 cars?
Eh, of the four races I watched over the weekend (Formula E, Indy, F1 and NASCAR) this was probably the least interesting. The “Let’s try the same qualifying format again and get another crappy result” didn’t help.
On the good side, the new tire rules with three compound choices is mixing things up, on the other hand it makes a lot of that mixing seem artificial–seemed like there were a lot of “great pass there” comments from the announcers that were more a matter of supersofts vs mediums or softs.