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Merc looking a lot better today, great job from albon but it's making me think RB and Ferrari are holding back a lot until quali
Seems to be almost zero 🐬
Has he got a 10 minute delay in starting then?
EDIT - this was about Latiffi
Who’s watching qually then?
I’m proper to excited to see how it pans out. Merc seem to have made some good improvements but P3 wasn’t a great session for them.. but who knows what fuel loads were.
Plus the circuit is pretty unforgiving. That concrete wall that Ocon and Sainz had a chat with is interesting. Martin Brundle was saying he thinks it needs something in front of it.
I reckon there could be a red 🚩 or three..
Very unlucky for Russell there
Aye, disappointing for Russell. Car looked a reet handful mind. Cracking lap by Norris in Q2.
disappointing for Russell.
Bottas must be having a wee chuckle to himself
Bottas must be having a wee chuckle to himself
Bottas is driving like an absolute banshee right now
Love seeing Bottas ahead of the Mercedes in quali. I wonder if they swapped Hamilton and Russells cars around and if Toto apologises for the unacceptable car they've given him
Good luck Leclerc!
God this Brundell grid walk thing is spine-bendingly horrid
It's looking good for Max
It's gonna take a big lump of luck for Leclerc to win this
This is monumentally dull.
It’s not great is it?! Ferrari have got no answer for RB and Verstappen. Once he was past that was it. Shocking pit stop for Carlos just there.. FFS
This is crap tbh
They had the opportunity to design a really good track and instead they designed this load of crap.
Effectively a street circuit though, they're alway far worse. I think Miami is trying to go for Monaco's crown of being the most prestigious race in the calendar while also being the most boring.
F1 is fast disappearing up it's own commercial backside!
I don't usually watch the WTF1 internet reaction videos - but I'm thinking this one might be quite funny
Definitely a case of money before racing. Perhaps there is a competition to see who can get away with making the most boring race. They are after Monaco’s crown, it will definitely cost more to beat Monaco as the commute for many in F1 is very short in the principality.
More seriously if the whole point is to build a bigger following in the USA for commercial reasons then you would have thought they would want a track that produced a decent race with lots of the right sort of action. Not just see who can hit the wall the hardest
I think the track can produce a decent race. The main problem seemed to be the nature of the track surface and the amount of small stones coming out of it.
I didn't even mind the twisty bit under the under-pass as it allowed cars to run close before the straight.
6/10 for me. Not a bad start, but needs tweaking.
And this picture of Max will exist forever!... 🤣🤣
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More seriously if the whole point is to build a bigger following in the USA for commercial reasons then you would have thought they would want a track that produced a decent race with lots of the right sort of action.
There was an interesting thread on Twitter about the revival of F1 by Liberty Media - unlike Bernie Eccleston, they knew the importance of getting a young audience involved, social media and the market to play into which was absolutely the USA, it's the most lucrative sports market in the world.
The 2021 Austin GP had 400,000 paying attendees, up 50% on 2018. Miami was packed out for the whole weekend. I'm not sure they're concerned with boring races at the moment so long as they get some content for the Netflix Drive to Survive show which is a huge hit in the States. Even that doesn't rely on exciting racing, it's a manufactured cliche of sporting dramas.
@crazy-legs. Thats probably very true but equally sad when the actual point of the sport no longer matters
Watched the 7minutes highlights on YouTube- and that was boring, can’t imagine watching the whole race 🤷♂️
Ended up watching the YouTube highlights as C4 still haven’t got it streaming yet!
when the actual point of the sport no longer matters
To be fair, I’m not sure that a couple of dozen blokes driving round in circles for a couple of hours ever had that much of a point to it 😉
futonrivercrossing
Free MemberWatched the 7minutes highlights on YouTube- and that was boring, can’t imagine watching the whole race 🤷♂️
It was poor TV direction again, we missed a lot of overtakes.
The highlights were shocking, almost no mention/view of how Russel went from 12th to 5th(?).
Yep Russell drove a great race, smashed it through the pack in the early stages
Pitted during the safety car too which gains a nice chunk of time. Felt for MSC TBH, silly mistake cost him his first points finish.
So been thinking about Miami after watching some practice, qually and parts of the race.
For me it seemed to be more about being there an who's turned. Many many shots of the cup areas, fake harbour, occasionally the grandstands.
I can't have been that good a race as I watched the first 5 laps, went and watched something else and watched the last 8 laps.
A couple of things though:
It was still a race around a car park and under a motorway.
In F1s push for environmental relevance* are temporary tracks like this against that philosophy? Lay down a surface to dig it back up?
The cars are many times more efficient than the old turbo era with transferable tech.
Even the highlights had lots of famous people I didn't recognise. It did seem a nonsense bucket list race.
So, a theory gaining traction regarding Mercedes lack of pace is that the "zero sidepods" theory exposes too much of the floor and creates the instability that leads to bouncing . Toto has not quite called time on the project, but I've heard several journalists and so on expressing the notion that the W13 is now a test bed design, and they may even go back to the original Barcelona version.
shermer75
Free Member
Yep Russell drove a great race, smashed it through the pack in the early stages
He really didn't. He dropped from 12th to 15th and spent ages in that position. It was only when others started to pit that he was able to jump up the order as he was on the hards not the mediums so could go longer. Had he not had the benefit of the safety car and a few retirements, he'd have been lucky to get into the points.
Russel was 8th and would've dropped to 11th without the SC. Norris' crash promoted him to 10th and the time saved bumped him upto 7th. Bottas' mistake allowed both Hamilton and Russel to pass after the restart giving him 6th and the new mediums he had fitted allowed him to pass for 5th. He was lucky - nothing more.
t was only when others started to pit that he was able to jump up the order
Not really. It took a while for the hards to get going but once they did he started overtaking - this was before cars started coming in for new tyres.
The hards didn't take a while to get going, it was the mediums losing their edge and thus the resulting pitstops which allowed Russel to move up. I watched the race this morning. Russel was 14th on Lap 10 and that position gain was because Zhou retired. he was upto 9th by lap 17, but only because, Mag, Msc, Tsu, Alo had pitted the only person he overtook by this point was Ric who made a mistake on failing mediums. Norris and Gasly then pitted giving him 7th. 1 overtake in 25laps. He was essentially 18 seconds behind Hamilton at this point. Had he then been forced to pit normally, he'd have come out in 13th-14th place based on the delta. I don't know what race you were watching, but it wasn't the Miami GP. He was lucky.
I’ve heard several journalists and so on expressing the notion that the W13 is now a test bed design, and they may even go back to the original Barcelona version.
I doubt that they would go back to that spec. They would probably compare the performance of the new one at Barcelona with the data from the first test then develop a new spec aimed at addressing the weaknesses. Even if it is visually more similar to the original spec, it would still incorporate what they learned from the zero sidepod design.
Yes i think so, it's not like the "Barcelona" design was spectacularly better anyway.
Anyone see Seb on QT? Not watched it yet but the clips I've seen look like he did well
https://twitter.com/bbcquestiontime/status/1524856532789346326
I think I have a man crush on Seb. He speaks so well and genuinely tries to do what is best with what he can influence.
He really does 🙂
Feel like we’re edging closer to a Hamilton-Vettel double team on various topics now. Will see what happens after watch-gate and pants-gate but it could be very funny
Yeah all the clips of seen he comes across really well. Can't watch the whole thing cos...well, Suella "as thick as the back of an ax" Braverman.
And the visit to the Feltham Young Offenders institution was really good too.
I’m genuinely surprised that people were surprised by this. Seb has always been intelligent, articulate, funny and self deprecating. Even back in his first year with RB, he came across well. He loves F1 and Monty Python - how could we not like him? He also has a temper, which I quite like in a driver.
how could we not like him?
Because this place is generally a Hamilton love-in
I’m genuinely surprised that people were surprised
Who said they were surprised?
I think Vettel is a nice guy, who went of the rails in a toxic environment, but is back to being himself.
Hamilton's a bit of an entitled prick, in a supportive environment that often allows his public image to be more controlled.
Verstappen is an entitled prick in a toxic environment.
Not sure why Hamilton would be entitled..it's not like mummy and daddy had pots of money.
Monaco Historic GP this weekend, plenty of coverage on YouTube
Bit of a costly d'ohment that 😬😬
Tracing Point are back! I'm quite interested to see how the Green Bull will do in FP1.
https://twitter.com/F1DataAnalysis/status/1527349565351170049
Red Bull have asked F1 for an inquiry into Aston Martin copying! 🙂
the-muffin-man
Full MemberRed Bull have asked F1 for an inquiry into Aston Martin copying! 🙂
Posted 20 minutes ago
Red Bull have asked F1 for an inquiry into Aston Martin copying!
They are so far behind on the grid, what's the point? Oh Christian Horner hasn't anything else to whine about this week (yet)...
Tracing point have form ..If ferrari win this years championship I expect an Green Horse
For criticising the stewards in the last race, Alonso has been referred to....the stewards! 😂
Good to see Vettel do well in a Red Bull again
Mercedes looking like they've made improvements!
Maybe, but it’s a high downforce circuit, so the porpoising would be reduced anyway, which would allow them to run the car lower…
I thought porpoising is made worse by higher downforce?
The extra downforce setup sucks the car down earlier and then the underbody air stalls reducing downforce and starting the cycle sooner?
Either way if the other teams are not sand bagging and waiting for quali to show their real pace then I think it’s an real improvement for Mercedes. Barcelona is full of mid speed corners where you need a reliable and stable behaviour from the car which so far has been Merc’s problem; the downforce and balance would change throughout the corner as the car porpoised so the driver’s couldn’t turn in with any confidence.
So this must be an improvement from Mercedes. We’ll see later today what everyone’s real pace is.
I think the porpoising is worse on circuits with a wide range of corner speeds. I think all the cars porpoise to some degree on fast straights, but the Merc was porpoising in fast corners and raising the ride height to eliminate that caused a huge loss of downforce. It may be that the nature of Barcelona just doesn't trigger it in the Merc so they are able to access the downforce they found in the windtunnel.
I thought porpoising is made worse by higher downforce?
It depends I think, If you can use aero to create the down-force (push from the top) rather than rely on the floor (suck from below) the bouncing isn't as bad. At least that's how I understand it.
Mercedes (at least Hamilton's) doesn't seem any faster than it has been all season, still a second off the pace
True Russell still faster than Hamilton. I guess we shall see when everything is turned up to 11 and Sainz and Perez stop playing around.
That was set with old tyres, 0.2 off leclerc on the same (new) tyres.
Merc def seem to have made a big step forwards.
Sky just saying that there may well be more room for improvement on the Merc than the others.
wow kmag was on fire in the Haas. Great result for Russell beating the Perez and Hamilton. I expect Red bull to take 1 and 2 after looking after its tyres.
Merc def seem to have made a big step forwards.
Yes, guess we'll know more tomorrow, but the analyses I've seen suggest they may be much more competitive on race pace than qualifying, kinda the anti-Ferrari - easy on tyres but hard to switch on for qualifying runs.
Also, Bottas and Magnussen showing why they deserve to be on the grid.
Love it !
Go george
Verstappen's anger and frustration is quite amusing.
Red Bull bending rules to breaking point with their driver communication
LeClerc out!!
Russell now leading!!!
Red Bull bending rules...
Surely not...?! 😉
Dirty little toxic team.
Daniel Ricciardo. Im a massive fan but he really is not fitting into McLaren well. Absolutely outclassed!
Red Bull bending rules to breaking point with their driver communication
How so? Because they were using the comms to Max to point out George didn't leave him room? Not much different to K-Mag saying Lewis knew what he was doing IMO.
Cracking race for Barcelona this. Hamo is flying
Great drive by Lewis. Seems his faith is restored somewhat with the car changes.
wolffs face was priceless. Great drive by Russell, Perez and Verstappen and Hamilton. Even a poorly Nozzer has the honey badgers number.