Mercedes replaced DAS with RTBLH to heat the tires. Looked like Hamilton’s car was close to spontaneous combustion on the line. I figured his restart would be interesting. And glad he didn’t take anyone out, otherwise we would have missed those last laps.
(RTBLH - ride the brakes like hell)
Wow! Wishes can come true!
So as much as I dislike IndyCar for essentially being spec series and being like 15 or so secs slower than F1, I gotta admit that the races can be pretty exciting…the street/road races, that is. Both Detroit races were fun.
And Grosean, while not really killing it in the races (though he got 2nd in the Indy gp), is doing great in qualifying.
The races are pretty exciting. And there are similarities between F1 and IndyCar. For instance, F1 has Mazepin, IndyCar has Jimmie Johnson.
During the pre-race show, the commentators were discussing how Grosjean would fare in pole position with the rolling start. I think it was Townsend Bell who said something like “F1 starts are like a knife fight, Grosjean will have no problems here”. And he didn’t.
Now, before I start, I know what you are thinking. Dag, if you want to talk about IndyCar start your own fucking thread. And maybe I will one day. But face it, I predict Paul Ricard will be the usual snoozefest, and we’ll all be dizzy and have headaches from looking at all that paint on the course. So to recover from that, we have the opportunity to watch Kevin Magnussen race at Road America driving for Felix Rosenqvist. My second prediction for the weekend is that despite never having driven an IndyCar, K-Mag beats Jimmie Johnson in both qualifying and the race.
Pirelli has released the results of its investigation into the Baku blowouts.
On Tuesday, the Italian tyre company issued a release making it clear that the failures were not caused by a production fault, wear nor delamination.
It went on reveal that the blow outs were instead caused by a circumferential break on the inner sidewall of the tyres, rather than being the result of a cut from debris.
The statement suggested that the breaks in the sidewall were likely caused by the ‘running condition of the tyre’ – which is probably related to either tyre pressures or the temperatures they were run at.
So it’s not track debris, but it’s not Pirelli’s fault that the certain teams ran their tires to failure. 
Seems to me that Pirelli would have telemetry data for the rear tires on all cars, not just the two tires that failed. Certainly pressure data, I’m not sure if temperature data is something that is collected. Pirelli probably can’t release that data without teams protesting, but perhaps they did identify conditions that did lead to the failures. I agree that their explanation is puzzling, maybe absurd, but they may be limited about what they can say publicly without getting cross-ways with teams and how they prep or run the tires.
Pirelli not at fault in Verstappen loss, says man who blames his own loss on a steering wheel button.
I’m not quite sure he blamed the button. He blamed himself for knocking the button and apologised on the radio to his team.
Paul Ricard usually gives us a boring race: difficult to overtake with no real jeopardy for mistakes, and only one stop needed. But today I hope the weather will save us. Rain is in the air and a strong headwind down the main straight should hopefully spice things up. Plus new tarmac and pre-race rain might cause higher tyre usage and force some two stops.
No weather needed! That was tense to the end!
Au contraire.
I really dislike Circuit Paul Ricard. The blue and red runoff areas are butt-ugly and confusing. The track shouldn’t compete visually with the cars. One would think that the French could design a more aesthetically pleasing road course.
The race itself was looking pretty humdrum – no rain, no blowouts, no major incidents – until Max pulled into the pits a second time. And then it got really interesting. And Checo made it even more interesting with a one-stop strategy. Kudos to Red Bull.
I agree that it’s visually confusing. It doesn’t help that there are alternate circuit configurations joining with the F1 track, so it takes a while to recognize which strip of black tarmac the cars will be driving on.
But I’ve long thought that it’s slightly ridiculous how much F1 drivers cheat the edges of the track. Want to provide a little safety margin by adding a curb at corner exit? They’ll use every inch of it, every time. Grass runoff areas don’t stop the cars. Gravel stops them too well.
Someone in one of these threads said that there’s low-traction paint that some circuits use so that exceeding the track limit slows the cars down, but doesn’t take them out. I assume that’s what the painted areas beside the track at Paul Ricard are. It does seem like cars stay on the track there more so than other circuits. Perhaps another color would eliminate the psychedelic look; solid green, maybe.
It’s exactly the opposite. The blue stripes are explain as “high grip, high deg” while the red are “extreme grip/deg”. The point is to slow out of control cars down before they hit a wall. Like a gravel trap except the cars dont get trapped. The circuit was designed as a test track where you don’t want to constantly be repairing your cars after a new tweak goes wrong.
Paul Ricard is my least favourite F1 track. The only reason we got a good race was because rain before the race increased the tyre wear. Usually this race is dull as dishwater.
Interesting. I wonder what the state-of-the-art in track construction is now, and which track is closest to it. And what are the rules at Paul Ricard that prevent drivers from abusing the runoff areas?
Best last lap I’ve seen in many, many years.
Yes, Paul Ricard sucks, but remember, its mostly a testing track, hence all the sandpaper runoff area.
I get the purpose of the stripes, but do they really have to be such prominent colours? It does make for uncomfortable viewing.