Isn’t that what we had in the days of Prost and Senna? Whoever has more points has no reason to avoid contact. Verstappen would have been perfectly happy to collide with Norris as long as both cars were too damaged to continue. Lando needs to finish ahead of Max to get more points and catch him for the Drivers’ Championship. If both drivers DNF, that is to Max’s advantage.
It would be interesting if that became part of the stewards’ investigation of incidents between two title contenders. Absent clear wrongdoing by the trailing driver, the one who is leading in the championship is presumed to be at fault. Either he gets a time penalty, or, if both cars crash, a grid penalty in the following race. In the same way that DRS gives a trailing driver an advantage to catch someone ahead, give the driver who’s trailing in the points an advantage to catch a driver who is ahead.
Does anyone who has the F1TV app know if it’s possible to cast to a TV? I geniously scheduled plane flights exactly during the race lasr week and this week. In-flight wifi is too slow to stream the race, and I was a little surprised when I got to my hotel room and discovered no apparent way to cast to the TV.
Max proves himself to be a prick yet again, and again. But at least he got proper penalties this time. Though personally, I think he should get points in his superlicense. A bit boring in the middle of the race, but still good fun at the end. Great for Sainz and Ferrari, but also great for Lando!
I was waiting for Ferrari to tell Carlos to give the position to Chuck, so I could learn how to say, “Fuck You” in Italian.
That pass for the lead was insane! Watching the On-Board, I thought there was NO WAY he was going to make the first corner. He came from so far back and had so much speed, but it was brilliant! Even left room for Max on the outside. I still say Ferrari is losing the wrong driver.
ESPN is the cable network which carries F1 races here in the US. Rather than producing their own content, ESPN simply airs Sky Sports coverage. Which, despite protests by a few posters here, is pretty good. Especially compared to when NBC covered F1, with the insufferable Leigh Diffey and constant commercials interruptions. But despite being a sports channel, ESPN likes to keep to a strict schedule, and they tend to allow less time for for showing the Sky Sports content than what Sky produces. So while we know Sky has longer post race coverage, ESPN wont show it. What they do is to abruptly end the coverage, and do this with cutting to a studio shot of Nicole saying thanks for watching as ESPN changes to showing some important sport like axe throwing or senior pickleball. She is not part of the F1 coverage at all other than this.
Nicole is pleasant enough, but when she appears it is basically ESPN telling the viewers to fuck off. So we hate her.
What really sucks is that ESPN sometimes does this with their streaming content, where there is no time restrictions.
But ESPN doesn’t have Leigh Diffey, so it’s far superior than what we had prior to ESPN showing Sky coverage. We tend to forget that.
Ah, thanks for the explanation. I’m in the US, and I used to watch F1 on ESPN, but I guess that we before Nicole came on the scene. But I usually don’t bother watching the pre- or post-race shows, so maybe I just never hung around long enough to see her.
FYI, starting this year, I’ve subscribed to F1 TV, and I consider it one of the best deals in streaming TV. For $85 I get total coverage for all the races, sprints, qualifying and practice sessions in the year, live and replays, plus a bunch of extras. I don’t watch one-tenth of it, but it’s very convenient and well organized.
You can select the International commentary with Croft and Brundle, which I presume is the same as the Sky Sports coverage, since they talk about pushing “the red button on your Sky Sports remote.” Or you can listen to F1 Live, with David Coulthard, James Hinchcliffe, Will Buxton, and others. (I was familiar with the former, so I kept watching them, not realizing who was doing the other track. Since I just looked it up, I may start listening to the latter, to see how I like them.)
I don’t get the hate for Diffey. I watched his coverage of IndyCar and F1 for years, and didn’t find him as interesting and insightful as most of the former drivers, but I never saw any reason to hate him. But de gustibus, and all that.
And she’s a dirty liar! When she says that they are taking a break (for 4 minutes of commercials), she says we will pick up where they left off, without missing anything. LIAR!
The last couple of races, I watched live before TV trouble made me turn it off before the end of the race and have to wait for the replay. So I caught her in her dirty, dirty lies!
Abruptly is right! They cut that shit before the first drop of Champaign hits the podium. I was lucky enough to have them cut off the Post Race for Greasy Stairs.
Hinchcliffe is good but they have him alongside Alex Jacques who is absolutely awful. He shouts excitedly at the merest provocation. He has no insight and when he’s not shouting he’s reciting stats like “This is the first time since 2019 that two Frenchmen have been P2 and P3 in an F1 race”. Who gives a shit?. When he is shouting he’s just telling you the thing you just saw but really loudly. “My word”, couldn’t they find anyone better than him?
F1 is in Vegas this week, and it’s so undersold that track facing hotel rooms are rumored to be under $200 a night. Grandstands at T17 are under $500. While still significantly more than, say, Spa, that’s still much less than the original prices.
Shockingly, not a lot of Americans want to spend close to ten grand for a race that starts at 11 at night local after the “new race smell” wears off. Heaven forbid the European market be slightly inconvenienced in watching.
In other news, with Michael Andretti no longer being the point person for the Andretti Racing F1 submission, FOM is ready to talk, and it’s rumored to be a very near thing. Turns out it might not have been about money or the stupid Americans after all, just a guy at the new team and a guy at FOM that hated each other.
For the cost of a Las Vegas ticket, you could fly to Europe, spend a weekend watching F1 in a really nice seat, spend lots of money on food and merchandise, fly back and still have change.
Years and years ago, I went to Indy, with a camper. Met up with a couple of friends. It was like $120 bucks for 4 days camping, $55 for unlimited track access.
It looks to be official now that Cadillac will join Formula One as the 11th team starting in 2026. They will have an engine supplier to begin with (rumored to be Ferrari), and will start building their own engines at some later date.
I’ve haven’t seen any definite reason why they changed their decision from a few months ago when they rejected Michael Andretti’s bid to be the 11th team, with backing from General Motors. This sounds like pretty much the same group, but under a different name since Andretti stepped away. One site I read said that the earlier refusal was tied directly to Andretti, and that there was some bad blood between him and F1. It could also be that they want the Cadillac name to be more prominent, lest they join for a few years and bow out.
Anyone want to speculate how they’ll do? They’ve been racing in sports cars for a few years, and aren’t lacking for money they could put into an F1 team. How much experience does it take to be competitive in Formula One; can they buy it, or is there no substitute for spending a few years in the middle of the pack?
Also, just out of curiosity, what are the organizational issues involved. I assume there must be at least 11 spaces in the pit, but how many more teams could they admit in the future. Who else is likely to want to join? With 22 entries, will it be 16 cars in Q2 and 10 in Q3?
I’ve read (and too lazy to link) some articles that said that it wasn’t just Michael Andretti, but one (or more?) of the top F1 big wigs who also recently stepped down that was blocking Andretti’s entry.
As for buying your way to success, Toyota is famous for dropping over a billion dollars to achieve exactly zero wins, so while it helps, it’s not a guarantee. But that was pre cost cap days.
However, I do feel Andretti has a much better chance than Haas at being successful since they are 100% a racing empire that’s been around for decades as opposed to a machine tool company looking to spend as little as possible to advertise machine tools on a global scale.
I could be wrong though. Who would’ve thought a soft drink company would get so many championships?
A friend of mine on Facebook said the cars should be pink, and that Bruce Springsteen should be at the unveiling. I said they should bring back the ghost of Aretha Franklin.
