Singapore was a pretty good race. Action right from start to finish. Great drives by the Ferrari guys. If it was another lap longer, I think Riccardo would have won.
James Allen is so much better than that Buxton clown. Hope he hangs around, but I’m sure he won’t. Too bad. He actually has intelligent input.
Hi guys, sorry i’ve been silent. I’m letting other duties get in the way of F1 watching. Gotta change some things.
But this…
It was great hearing Varsha’s voice a couple of weekends ago. And I thought it strange that we had a different pit-monkey this weekend.
Has something changed at NBCSN?
Safety car at Singapore… who’d have thought? Still watching this one, but i expect it to be the usual snoozer. (Apologies to Gatopescado) 
You could tell Hobbs and Matchett were happily surprised to get meaningful reporting from the man in the pits.
Diffey was sick for Italy, they said he was doing the Indycar finale this week. Buxton’s dad died, so replacements for 50% of the team.
My wife and I were taking bets on whether Ricciardo might take out Rosberg with one of his now-patented “dive for the inside from miles back and hope you can manhandle the car through the corner” overtakes.
I was hoping for yes, so Hamilton could extend his championship lead. She was hoping for a Red Bull win.
I think Ham may have lost his last chance to win this year. Mercedes will apparently have a substantial engine upgrade for the next race, but he won’t be able to use it without taking more grid penalties. Rosberg can, since his engines didn’t mysteriously blow up a lot. All he has to do is split the last races which shouldn’t be difficult with a better car.
This x100. Buxton grates on my nerves.
I’m guessing there were mixed feelings at your house after Malaysia?
Were they getting a different video feed from Malaysia than the rest of us? They kept saying the red lights didn’t come on and it was an aborted start. The delay before the lights was longer than usual, but I saw them.
I didn’t understand that either. It was obvious none of the drivers thought the start had been aborted because everyone took off at race speed.
You could say that. I was screaming at the TV, she was doing a happy dance. To add insult to injury, Rosberg managed to cheat his way to third and probably wrapped up the championship (considering that he’ll have the upgraded engine from Suzuka on and Hamilton won’t unless he wants to take another set of grid penalties).
I will say this: today’s F1 engines are almost impossibly reliable. Failures of the sort Hamilton had on Sunday used to be routine; in my F1 heyday (the late 80s/early 90s) you’d see at least three engines blow and spray oil all over the track in every race. Naturally there are still mechanical failures, but the engines themselves seem to be practically bulletproof now.
I think the problem was that broadcast control cut to an odd angle right before the start. Usually it holds at the front of the grid for the full countdown, this time during almost all of the countdown it cut to a side angle–you could still see the lights if you were looking for them, but they were not in the same area they usually were, so easier to miss.
I found this video. It’s not the NBCSN commentators, but it looks like the same video feed they used, except slightly zoomed in. It’s a front view while the cars are holding, then the red lights start to come on, it switches briefly to a high rear shot, then back to the front as the lights go out. The cars were held longer than usual, but then the lights worked normally and were visible in the video feed. I just wonder if the NBCSN guys were looking for them in the wrong place.
Hobbs also said it was Verstappen that ran into Rosberg; it was clearly Vettel.
Hey, if I was doing the commentary I’d make mistakes too. These just seemed particularly glaring.
Well, it looks like that’s that. If Hamilton’s engine hadn’t blown up last week he would be down 310-305 rather than 313-280. Rosberg’s lead isn’t insurmountable, but in essence he will have to fail to finish one of the remaining races to lose the championship. If Hamilton wins all four remaining races and Rosberg finishes second, Rosberg will take the title by five points. If Hamilton wins three of four and Rosberg wins one with Hamilton second, Rosberg will take the title by seven points. The decision to get rid of double points for Abu Dhabi looms large now. Considering that Rosberg won at all four of the remaining tracks last year except the US (and he was leading that one fairly comfortably when he went off and let Hamilton through), it doesn’t seem likely that Hamilton will win all four this year - though maybe he was just going through the motions having clinched the title last year.
Now there is still a glimmer of hope: if Hamilton wins all four, and Rosberg finishes second in two and third in two, Hamilton will take the title by one point. And the planned Suzuka engine upgrade seems not to have materialized, so the cars are still equal (Hamilton would not have been able to use the upgrade without taking a penalty, while Rosberg would).
On balance, I wouldn’t be hugely upset if Rosberg wins. Even though he’s had awful reliability, Lewis has caused most of his own problems this year with his terrible starts. In any event, I am looking forward to 2017, and what I assume will be a bit more engine parity with the new regulations. Much as I love Lewis, it’s getting increasingly boring watching everyone else fight for third.
They got rid of double points? Good! That was some old bullshit.
For the first time in a long time, there is more Formula One on TV this weekend than I care to watch.
Yeah, I thought the double points was silly. Too much like NASCAR trying to create drama.
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The championship is Rosberg’s to lose, but Hamilton has done himself no favours with his problems with starting well.
Wild Conspiracy Theory
Mercedes is sabotaging Lewis behind the scenes, because they want two World Champions driving for them.
Because Ferrari and McLaren do. 
Huh, huh? Makes sense, right?
Makes no sense at all. Though it’s very odd that out of the 10 drivers running merc power, Hamilton has had 5 plus power unit failures and nobody else has had any.
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Well that was entertaining. Am I the only one who didn’t think verstappen did anything wrong? He went off track but didn’t really gain an advantage. Vettel hadn’t passed him or anything.
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I presume you’re being sarcastic. There was some excitement at the start and at the end, but in-between it was a snoozer.
Q: What do those 5 failures have in common?
A: Someone who clearly abuses his equipment.
It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Vettel got hosed. Max screwed up, cut the track, then refused to give up the position which, had it happened outside the last 5 laps, he would have been penalized for. It was his mistake. Then he blocked Vettel until Ricciardo was right on top of him, leading to another dubious incident that never should have happened.
THEN the FIA kicked Vettel in the nuts with a 5-second penalty for something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place because he should have been long gone. So in the end Vettel finished 5th, behind the guy who hosed him, and Ricciardo finished 3rd. At least we didn’t have to see another shooey.
I’ll have to watch them both again. I don’t know that Verstappen benefited from going off track, exactly, but he braked way too late for that corner. He missed the corner, which would have cost him time and probably the position, but by going off track he managed to stay in front of Vettel. In that sense, he benefited.
As for Vettel and Ricciardo, I didn’t see a problem. I’m not sure they even touched. Was there an explanation for the penalty, like Vettel moving over under braking?