[Closed] F1 2017 (Bound to contain spoilers!)

Excited!! 🙂

Amazing drive from the Hulk there! Faster than both Red Bulls!!!

Well done Bottas!

Amazing drive from the Hulk there! Faster than both Red Bulls!!!

Eh?

That was during Q2 🙂

Ah. Still, excellent performance by the Hulk and also by Palmer once I'd told him to pull his socks up (via the medium of my TV).

looks very much like last year, early promise from ferrari, mercedes press the turbo button and they are half a second down the road. I don't think lewis will mind Bottas up ahead its easier to manage the race from a 1-2 situation.

and also by Palmer once I'd told him to pull his socks up (via the medium of my TV).

...still 1.3 seconds slower than his team mate! 😀

I don't think I've ever seen someone less excited at getting their first ever pole 😆

Still amazes me how two squidgy humans in two cars can be so close over 90 seconds.

Still amazes me how two squidgy humans in two cars can be so close over 90 seconds.

I agree they're 'identical' but there are still so many variants.

Thousandths of a second over 90 seconds/3 and a bit miles. Just shows how precise they are.

And emphasises the importance of the extra effort they put in. If years of pre 10pm bedtimes, weird bespoke diets, mental exercise regimes and no booze are worth just split seconds, fair play to them.

...still 1.3 seconds slower than his team mate

He consistantly manages to underwhelm, hey? It's hard to imagine him being there next season.

Which brings up the question who will get his seat, which is starting to look particularly juicy considering Renault's upward trajectory in performance!

If Kimi goes from Ferrari too then that would mean potentially two top tier seats up for grabs!

Then of course if Alonso leaves mclaren you can guarantee that Honda will build a merc beater before his seat is cold.

Perhaps that's the best proven strategy to get a top performing car? Hire Alonso, get rid after a couple of years and your car then becomes great.

I have to say Alonso's adviser is consistently good at making those decisions

Bottas FTW please!

Loved that interview with Bernie

Stoffel couldn't even get round an installation lap. Things really not getting better for McLaren.

I think Bernie became his own parody and nobody close has had the balls to tell him firmly, it's all over for him. I wonder if the only reason he was left in place so long was because the F1 establishment thought he'd be in his box by now?

LOL @ Kimmi "interview"

I'm not sure Bernie knows if he's lying or not he's spent so long telling half truths.

Stoffel The Flying Waffle

I wonder if the only reason he was left in place so long was because the F1 establishment thought he'd be in his box by now?

He stayed for so long because he was making a ton of money for the right people

[quote=allthepies ]LOL @ Kimmi "interview"

just sat down to watch, worth watching it on catch up?

How long till Alonso's Honda hand grenades?

Not really, it was brief, mumbling and conducted at fast walking pace.

I can see a verstappen / hamilton coming together soon 🙂

ok its was a wall 🙂

[url= http://www.planetf1.com/news/alonso-in-shock-renault-return/ ]Alonso sniffing around, apparently[/url]

Wouldn't surprise me...and Palmer does seem to be useless compared to Hulkenberg

Going to cause problems for mercedes if Bottas is going to be so slow from pole.

Well that was quite good. Alonso and Kimi radio adds entertainment. Poor Bernie looks like billy no mates on the grid walk. I wonder if he'll take up the next invite to a race?

Bottas will probably be getting a few 'Hamilton is faster than you ' messages over the season. He's got 1 lap pace and steady in bringing the car home but no elbows out racing yet.
Just as well Massa is getting some points as I wonder if Strolls pay drive covers the loss in prize money ( constructor points) and crash damage?

yes cheekymonkey it does cover it and a whole lot more

Entertaining race!

That move from Sainz on Stroll was silly. He's received a grid penalty for next race.

Good result for Wehrlein.

Shame Bottas' race got a bit screwed by the generator fault on the grid. Not sure though why he was still struggling with oversteer at the end.

Shame Bottas' race got a bit screwed by the generator fault on the grid

And Hamiltons. Given VBs pace it was pretty clear Hamilton was just twiddling his thumbs for the first stint, Merc could have taken advantage the same way Ferrari did but their rigid thinking lost them any chance of the win. Also VB did his usual trick of managing to lose pace as the race wore on, he's really showing how good nico was. Ocon for merc next season?

Could we see Alonso in red after Monaco/indy 500?

I love Kimi but it's probably time to go, he can't keep getting away with only putting the effort in at contract time.

I do think Kimi will go, however all the commentators are saying that there is no way he'll be returning to Ferrari so maybe he has burnt his bridges there. Although, that said everyone said the same about McLaren! 🙂

Other possibles are Grosjean, Sainz and Ricciardo..

For some reason Perez is never mentioned in connection with the Ferrari seat, never been sure why!

Red bull have worked out what's wrong with their car

Mismatching data has been identified as the cause of Red Bull's problems early in 2017.

...

"We have understood our chassis problems," team official Dr Helmut Marko is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport. "But we need to wait until Barcelona for the solution."

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns36232.html

Whaaat?!? Vijay Mallya has been arrested:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/18/f1-racing-team-boss-vijay-mallya-arrested-london-india

Way to pick a country with an extradition treaty 🙄

is living in a £11.5m Hertfordshire mansion once owned by the father of F1 driver Lewis Hamilton

😯 on several levels 😯

Remember Anthony H was Lewis's manager for a while so taking his piece of the pie. This wasn't the house Lewis grew up in. Of course Anthony then stuffed a brand new Porsche hypercar through a hedge and got sued by Paul di resta, so maybe sold it to vj to cover some bills.

As for mallya, he's had his Indian passport revoked so has been stuck in the UK for a while, and has been at the centre of some pretty bad financial goings on in India. His side of the story is that this is the expected start of his extradition hearing.

As usual Joe sawards blog gives a better insight into the whole situation and implications for force India.

Honda looking better today than yesterday. 56 laps done according to AMuS.

What is AMuS?

Auto Motor und Sport - German web site

Damn, Billy Monger (dude in the F4 crash vid that was doing the rounds the other day) has lost his lower legs 🙁

Honda looking better today than yesterday. 56 laps done according to AMuS.

81 laps, full day gone to plan and 4th fastest time.

What's going on there then?

dooosuk - Member
81 laps, full day gone to plan and 4th fastest time.

What's going on there then?

Great quote from Boullier about it on motorsport.com:

"If we knew…this is the problem, I don't know," he said when asked about the turnaround. 😀

Great headline on Pf1:

McLaren baffled by trouble-free run

😆

Don't know if any of you watch the BTCC, but a 17 year old lad, Billy Monger, in the F4 support race was in a horror crash and has had to have both of his legs amputated.

A just giving page was set up to try to raise £250000.

The current raised after 24 hours is at £542152 including two £15000 donations, one from Jenson Button and one from Max Verstappen.

Thats terrible news for the kid and the parents.

A friend of mine races sidecars at the IoM and other places, his 11 yo son is a rising star in Mini Moto GP. Last year he was in a terrible crash, coma and many broken bones albeit he made a full recovery. My mate was inconsolable not only about the direct issue but because of the fact he encouraged and supported him to follow on from his dad and felt directly responsible. His son is now back into it 100%

I can't think how that ^^ situation must feel, thoughts with the kid & his family.

Bit more reading if anyones interested. Hate looking at it as he looks like a boy in the picture and I saw the crash live and it still makes me feel sick, but some positives in the article...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-39651283

Stay away from the other thread about Billy Monger you guys, it's pretty unpleasant over there - at least you guys are sympathetic...

Awful seeing that onboard footage, he didn't stand a chance seeing the car he hit.

Tragic for anyone let alone someone so young.

Auto Motor und Sport - German web site

Is there an option to read this in English? Or are you guys multilingual?

Google translate page. Am

Back to topic a puff piece on BBC for why Ferrari have improved today has an interesting piece about how the drivers are great but like their cars just so. I found the wording a little strange as by definition a Great Driver will drive the wheels off whatever he's given and won't grumble that it isn't just so, he/she will also win regularly in sub-optimal (to them) machinery. By this yardstick the drivers referenced would not appear to be Great. (Compared to me and my sub-'STW Driving God' status they are light years away in ability).

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/39647299 ]Source[/url]

The contentious passage I base my comment on

Vettel is a great driver, but he needs a car to behave in a certain way to be at his best. If a car won't do what he wants, he can get into a downward spiral, as happened last year and in 2014, his final season at Red Bull.

I agree that the true greats win races that the car isn't really up to but to suggest that they're not fussy or complain is wrong. Some do, some don't. Different people, styles, skills, etc.

I haven't read the article but I agree with the passage you quoted. I'll try and find a great post I saw on on PH or F1T a while back analysing what setups each driver preferred/needed, and their relative performance. I think it said Rai likes a very pointy car, i.e. tending to oversteer where as Vettel prefers a planted rear.

Makes sense when you consider how well he did with the EBD, and assuming the car is now setup more to Vet's liking, how Rai's relative performance now seems to have dropped off.

On the subject, insight to what makes Hamilton a great.

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/october-2014/30/decoding-enigma

And the top post here provides several quotes on the subject too.
http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8843&start=960

(and also to the point about greats, gives some insight as to why Schumacher struggled on his return with Merc)

Surely part of being a great driver is explaining to the engineers what is good or bad about the car and what they can tweak to allow you to get the thing around the track even faster.
Most of the "great" drivers seem to spend a lot of time with their mechanics and engineers - the ones who tweet from the hotel before the race is finished... not so much perhaps?

I reckon there are too many different types of great to look into things too much. Fangio for example was known for jumping between teams to make sure he got the best car. whereas Schumacher worked with Brawn (and Byrne) for years to sort out the garbage that Ferrari were churning out at the time

Surely part of being a great driver is explaining to the engineers what is good or bad about the car

Really? I thought it was winning races 🙂

Slightly facetious but presumably that's aimed at Hamilton who when you read from people in the know is not the person that the media (and to some extent he himself) like to portray. I'd argue that just spending more time on something is not the sign of greatness - in fact, it's being able to distinguish what the line is between gaining something and being effective rather than just getting into a spiral that doesn't benefit any more.

Surely part of being a great driver is explaining to the engineers what is good or bad about the car and what they can tweak to allow you to get the thing around the track even faster.

Nemesis - not pointed at Hamilton. I cannot warm to Hamilton (he may be lovely in person but I've never met him) however he is undoubtedly a fantastic driver.
The comment was more that driving what you've got fast is good, but working with the engineers to turn what they've got into what you want is also good (if it's fast for you).
Of course given the choice you'd want both.

I love him as a driver, less so as the person we get to see though I think this year has shown a marked change in him - Maybe there was just too much niggle with Rosberg and that made things prickly. We'll see how things go the first time he and Vettel tangle... 😉

Sochi this weekend, race is live on C4 from 12:00.

Bottas was quick here with Williams last year, so hopefully he'll be keeping Lewis honest 😀

[img] [/img]
Courtesy of https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/races/2017/Russia.html

[url= https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2016/races/941/russia/race-result.html ]2016 Results[/url]

McLaren have confirmed that Alonso's Indy 500 car will be in the proper orange livery, therefore making the F1 dog look even worse than it already does

Another Honda failure for McL.. Bet FA can't wait to get to Indy... (though it was Stoff's engine today)

[quote=nemesis ]Another Honda failure for McL.. Bet FA can't wait to get to Indy... (though it was Stoff's engine today)

Which means he'll be getting grid penalties for using too many engine parts over the course of the season - at the 4th race!

I'm curious - if JB has new engine parts at Monaco, do they count towards FA's allocation?

15 place drop... Probably won't really try quali to save the next engine in a vague hope of actually finishing a race...

Meanwhile, each driver is permitted to use only four of the six power unit elements ( during a single season. Should a driver use more than this, a grid penalty will be imposed. The six elements are the internal combustion engine (ICE), the motor generator unit-kinetic (MGU-K), the motor generator unit-heat (MGU-H), the energy store (ES), turbocharger (TC) and control electronics (CE).

So it's tied to the driver, not the car.
https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/inside-f1/rules-regs/Licenses_driving_protocol_and_penalties.html

Thanks - it did just occur to me as another reason to sub FA out for a race! 😈

They can give JB a brand new race almost every session and try out a load of upgrades (assuming they have any) without penalty.

Yeah, I suppose they could use it to try out a new spec of engine in JB's car without penalty but really given where they are it's a pretty marginal benefit compared to trying to keep FA happy...

So it's tied to the driver, not the car

I think its the opposite, did this not come up last year and the PU is tied to the car?

Edit: IIRC when Verstappen and Kvyiat were swapped they each took on the others PU allocation.

What happens with power unit usage?
The Sporting Regulations state 'if a driver is replaced at any time during the Championship season his replacement will be deemed to be the original driver for the purposes of assessing power unit usage

It'll be intetesting to see if the new regs concerning burning oil as an extra fuel will have an effect on Mercedes' special power-up Q3 engine mode..

Button will pick up where Alonso leaves off in terms of power units, according to radio 5