I live in Canada and it would be nice to have someone to discuss F1 with, for once…
There’s me, I guess. Kind of a ho-hum race yesterday, except for the first corner and the barbecue. Could Massa win the championship?!
Yea, the race was decided in the first corner. I thought it would be considering Alonso’s drive to win his home race in front of 140,000 fans and the difficulty in passing on that track. It’s amazing that both Alonso and Massa recovered from that squabble.
I am really excited about this season, though. We’ve got four guys coming from four different angles all in contention for the championship. I can’t wait.
It must be frustrating for Kimi: he fought with unreliable cars for ages only to leave MaC right when they got reliable, and then his Ferrari breaks down. Apparently, he went straight to the airport and flew home!
And Alonso is faced with Hamilton: The strongest rookie in ages is showing him up!
It’s going to be a good season.
For me, too many races are snooze-fests. Just plain boring. It’s the presenters’ fault as much as anyone’s: they concentrate on showing the leaders rather than the more interesting battles behind.
I’ve been following F1 since about 1996, but I’ve never followed it that closely. The race Sunday wasn’t that bad, considering it was the Spanish GP. Can’t believe Super Aguri scored points! :eek:
Count me in, I have been an F1 fan for as long as I can remember.
The weekends race was quite an interesting watch. I was keen to see if DC could hold on to the finish. Kubica was pretty quiet from a TV coverage point of view, but he had a good race and was consitently quick all weekend.
Im not a fan of Alonso, the last two season I said (probably unfairly) “Alonso is not a racer, he has a fast, reliable car, puts it on poll and sits there for full race” I know that he has raced well on a few occasions. However I feel Kimi, Massa and Hamilton all out shine him this season as they can race hard and overtake where it doesnt look possible. I think if Hamilton was on Alonso’s fuel strategy, he could have been the winner. We have seen a couple of times this season that Hamilton can get into a better position than Alonso from the start, but fall back from the leader as his car is too heavy.
Hopefully im proved wrong and we see Alonso fighting his way back into races with some exceptional driving.
The best start to a season in a long time.
The video feed on Speed TV is from the host country’s broadcast, they often moan right along with us when the cameras focus on something mundane right when something exciting is going down. Happened in yesterday’s race at least once, when the 2 Hondas got together maybe 20 laps from the end. The feed did go back and show it, but they switched away from the impending altercation as it was happening in real time.
Hamilton has really started off in spectacular fashion, as well as M-M. 4 races under his belt and he leads the championship, what a dream come true, and even more surprising since M-M had been struggling until this year, now they are right back in the thick of it and Renault is struggling. That’s enough to get me up before dawn on Sunday mornings.
I can’t believe people thought that Sunday’s race was boring. Admittedly, once Massa took the lead there was no looking back, but the rest of it was exciting. Kimi having electrical problems! Hondas colliding! Poor Heidfel’s wheel about to fall off but he made it back to the pits, only to go out for an unrelated reason! A clear, sunny day in Spain turning into a war of attrition! Super Aguri getting a point is worth a WTF in and of itself. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I screamed a little when Massa caught on fire.
Great race. Bring on Monti Carlo.
I polled my husband this morning, by the way, and he agreed with you guys that the race was kind of boring. I guess true car people rate position changes over random disasters in the interest scale. 
Sorry for spelling Heidfeld’s name wrong - I was late for a meeting and didn’t have time to double check it.
I’m a big fan, but I was staying out of this thread until I watched Spain on Tivo. Heidfeld’s wheel nut was pretty amazing. When he was making it around the track and the commentators were freaking out, I figured that he did have a nut on, and that was an extra one we saw being kicked down the pit lane. Later in the race, however, it came out from the team that there was no nut on, and they were as surprised as anyone that wheel didn’t fly off!
I’ll be making it to Indy in a few weeks, and MAYBE Canada. Any dopers ever been to the race in Montreal?
Used to be, bigtime, until the Indy fiasco brought to the forefront what had always been politely unspoken - that, to F1, the fans are just dumb cows to be milked, not customers for an entertainment business. Fuck ‘em. I ain’t comin’ back.
Go Taku!
(and I also like F1 )
Spain was ok. Not the best, but certainly not the worst race we have seen in recent history.
I am just loving Honda so deep in the hole (although I have no feelings against them the way I do against Toyota).
This year has be Formula Dos, all the way. Number two drivers showing their number ones, B teams beating their A teams. I love shake ups.
Montreal is a great race to go see in person. The city is fantastic, not too expensive, great atmosphere all throughout the weekend, and the race itself is always interesting. Pity that I won’t be able to go this year.
What F1 forums do you guys follow? I frequent updatesport. I am known as arepera over there, and the front page polls are often mine. Good site with a good balance of fans from all nationalities and preferences.
I’m a fan of F1 and all other open wheel series, but I have to confess that my interest has become somewhat half-hearted in the last few years. I was a big CART fan in the early 1990s and suffered through the split. Somewhere in there I began following F1, although at the time the quality of racing in CART was far superior to F1 IMHO. But in the last few years the CCWS has lost its best drivers and some of its best tracks to IRL, and I just can’t bring myself to get worked up about the shrinking field of unknowns at Champ Car races.
I have (somewhat reluctantly) been following IRL more closely and have to admit that Danica and Marco have certainly added some excitement. I’ll be watching the 500, of course, but the heavy preponderance of oval races just doesn’t grab me as much as the road courses.
Which brings me to F1. When I first started watching I agreed with the commentator I heard who said that F1 wasn’t a racing series, it was a procession series. Certainly compared to the golden age of CART, when at least half the field had a chance of winning any given race, F1 was, and still is, much less competitive.
Nevertheless, in the last few years I have come to watch and enjoy it more, and now look forward to Grands Prix as much or more than IRL or CCWS races. Although I never rooted for him (or any frontrunner) I have to say I miss Michael Schumacher. But Lewis Hamilton is providing plenty of excitement.
Well, I personally don’t see the Indy fiasco as an indication that F1 sees the fans as dumb cows.
I see it as an indication that F1 is highly politicized and perhaps a bit archaic in its structure.
If I understand the event correctly, Michelin was unable to provide a safe tire compound for the race. The teams and the F1 administration were unable to agree on how to address this issue. With unsafe tires, the Michelin teams refused to race based on safety concerns.
So who’s fault was it? Well, I’d say Michelin’s to start, and then beyond that it’s hard to say… But in the end, it was the fans who got screwed. But that wasn’t the intention of F1.
I’d like to know the reason why Renault and Honda have fallen so far behind the mark this year.
I realize Alonzo’s departure had a negative affect on Renault’s performance, but WOW, to THAT extent?
And poor Honda, what’s going on? Button must be pissed off, especially to witness Hamilton as the new darling prince… And their cars are UGLY. Who was the marketing genius behind that paint job?
Ok, one more post for now.
I fully acknowledge that Hamilton’s debut has been flawless and he’s done a perfect job of “stepping up to the plate”.
But I wonder: how much of his success can be attributed to the strength of M/M’s current car?
I wonder to what extend he’s developing a false sense of security as to the overall difficulty that a driver generally faces in their effort to obtain and maintain success? I wonder if he fully knows how lucky he is to step into a top team with a top car?
I follow it because we do F1-related advertising for two of the major companies involved, but I couldn’t really call myself a big fan.
I love the engineering and technology that goes into designing the cars and will watch documentaries about it until the wee hours of the night, but the actual races just don’t excite me beyond 15-20 minutes or so. Rally and cycling races are more my cup of tea.
My pre-race mantra used to be
ABS!*
*Anybody but Senna!
About Hamilton. He is one of the most level-headed drivers I have seen in ages. I don’t think hardship would break him.
My take on F1 is that the races are secondary to the championship. Think of it as a chess game. Most individual plays are not exciting out of the context of the whole game and its strategy. F1 races are segments of a larger thing. For me, they are 2 hours of wondering and evaluating the teams, more than a series of exciting moves and passes (which they are not)
If it is racing that you want, GP2 is for you. Those are fun races to watch, even if you don’t know anyone and watch them with no sound.