I am shocked by how competitive Haas is. We see successful new teams all the time, but they’re invariably just old teams under new ownership and team colors (see Brawn). Yeah, Haas basically just built its car around a bunch of Ferrari innards, but any F1 engineer will tell you that it’s the aero that’s hardest to get right. I am really happy for Grosjean, who is one of the sport’s good guys and deserved so much better than he got at “Lotus.”
I think one of my favorite things about Haas is that they are doing much of their development work in the US. It sounds a bit weird to say that (as a Brit), but British engineering dominance in F1 makes it feel “cheap” somehow. Mercedes is one of the largest automakers in the world and has thousands of brilliant automotive engineers, aerodynamicists and so forth - but their cars are designed and built by a bunch of English guys in Brackley, and their engines are designed and built by another bunch of English guys in Brixworth.
Almost every team in F1 is essentially British. Not Ferrari, of course, and I think Honda’s new engine works is in Japan. But everyone else.
He didn’t close the door. He maintained his position directly behind Rosberg, who pulled his normal stunt of slowing more than normal into the apex to bunch the field up behind him and thin the herd. He’s going to have to be warned for that at some point. But Bottas went for a gap that wasn’t there. He admitted that he was at fault in the post-race presser.
Lewis’ problem is not causing accidents. It’s operating a clutch. If he doesn’t get his starting problems sorted out we can call the season for Rosberg now (though I suspect the damage to Lewis’ car robbed us of a very good end-race duel between him and Rosberg).
But fuck all that. I’m just glad we are finally going back to the old qualifying system. The knockout scheme was just F1 trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.
I didn’t see qualifying today but it’s good to know that they are back to the 2015 format. The new format with the weird timing down thing was a total shambles. In the first event, there were people who would have otherwise got through to Q2, but didn’t because their time was disallowed - due to being outside of their allotted counting down thingy!
The race tomorrow will be interesting - Hamilton starting from the back. His best strategy would probably be to play it long, use the DRS on the long straight to help him, and go for the medium or soft tyres - in order to save a pit stop. He might get to 5th if he’s lucky?
Sure he’ll get into the top 10 though.
This year is going to be a bit more challenging for Mercedes - they had it easy the last 2 years, this time Ferrari and possibly Red Bull could be more in contention.
This was the best race in 3 or 4 years, at least.
Lots of passing, every pitstop put you back 10 places, actual figthing for position, everybody finished.
Raikkonen should have been assessed a penalty for driving straight back onto the track like that. You can’t do that. But Vettel should have hit Kyvat instead of him in the first place.
It was a fantastic race, other than Rosberg running off into the distance. I’m disappointed about Ricciardo’s puncture. It would have been interesting to see how long he could hold Rosberg off.
Oh yes, a very fun race to watch. Though he won it, Nico wasn’t the star of the show. That Hamilton kid really knocked-it-out and drove his ass off yesterday (though it slightly pains me to say so).
I don’t think that anyone’s to blame for that 1st corner thing. Maybe Kimi came-in quickly and maybe Daniil was being opportunistic, but I can’t imagine that the actions or outcome would have differed if you’d rearranged the position of those 3 guys.
No, the original crash was just a racing incident. If anything, Kimi was at fault for losing control and oversteering inward in mid-corner. But Kimi was unquestionably at fault for what happened to the back of the field. He drove straight back onto the track and forced Nasr offline, which is prohibited. From the F1 Sporting Regulations:
It was a good race, Shame that Hamilton’s car was damaged as he could well have grabbed a podium. Still, he seems fairly upbeat about it, taking the bad luck as it comes and that is probably a good thing…but…I can’t see him keeping that up for too many more races, not in his nature to be happy with second best.
Overall the cars do seem to closer to each other than in the previous few seasons and it bodes well for fun and games.
I’m not that worried about Hamilton. He’s just having all his bad luck at the beginning of the season. He’s clearly still got the edge based on his qualifying performances. The only question is whether Nico will have enough bad luck moving through the season for Hamilton to catch up.
I’ve been told that there’s a saying in poker–if you look around the table and don’t see a sucker, that means you’re the sucker.
Apparently, Kvyat looked around the grid, didn’t see a Maldonado, and so decided that he must be the Maldanado.
Other than that, I thought the race was rather depressing. Hamilton showed that everyone else still has a ways to go to catch up to Mercedes, and just when I thought there might be something interesting when Williams pitted Massa near the end of the race, I found it was a whopping 40 second gap, so it was no big deal.
More bad luck for Hamilton at the weekend. Last season, it evened out pretty quickly and he was able to regain lost ground. I don’t think that will happen again. While it’s far from over, he will need Rosberg to have at least a couple of unfortunate incidents to be in with a shout.
You guys summed it up well. Hamilton doesn’t have much to worry about. But the commentators will play on that drama, won’t they?
I found some entertainment in the various bits of pit-stop suspense, esp. Bottas beating the Silver Car to the corner (short lived, as it was). That graphic they showed surprised me how much time/distance that Lewis lost in the pit.
I was glad to see LH off the front row, but sorry that it was due to mechanical gremlins. That man can drive. I’m very happy for Rosberg.
Interesting that SV picked up the damaged wing and stuffed it in the cockpit. And I noticed that HE drove the scooter, ha!
No way in HELL would I get on the back of a scooter being driven by a RUSSIAN! :eek: That was the right call. Gives that track worker a good story, too. How many people get to be driven around by a multiple World Driver’s Champion?
