F1 World Championship Grand Prix - bringing sexy back to the track

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Oh and to let people know, Hamilton broke a record for the fastest lap ever at Bahrain!  1:29.493

[Ripe]

Well, race went at least better than Australia in my opinion. Mercedes was still clearly the best but at least Räikkönen was able to get between them. Sad that Vettel wasn't even able to start the race.

But Bottas, sigh... So great start turned to a pretty dissapointing result which included a penalty which probably was deserved but I don't know.

Haas in the other hand has had a great start to a season.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

It was alright but it did get very frustrating towards the end.

[Phos]

Hindsight 20/20 and all, but I guess it's not that surprising how fast the Haas is considering that it's basically a Ferrari with different aerodynamics, but not even all that different. Gutierrez can't catch a break though, it seems.

On the other hand, not a good look for Williams, they've got Mercedes power but they don't have the pace. 

Sauber... Outch, I feel for them, so many financial problems, I'm no expert but I don't see them getting bought out to save the organization, sounds like they're in too much debt for that to make sense. 

Really impressive drive by Kevin Magnussen considering the car he's got, that team was a back marker last year with Mercedes power, but really interested to see how that car improves. 

Almost seemed line Rossberg was playing singleplayer, funny to think they at one point that team was Tyrrel with their funny experimental cars with six wheels. 

I still think the Super Softs fade too quickly to be worth mounting during a race, only a few laps and they're back at soft pace and fading. Whatever pace you gain is more than offset by how short a stint you're forced into. 

[Ripe]

Honestly, is Ecclestone completely blind to reality?

[Phos]

Of which boneheaded decision are you speaking?  The one that springs to mind for me are how many cost cutting measures have given the richer teams more ways to use that wealth and made the sport more expensive. Limiting on track testing means that Mercedes and Red Bull (and maybe a few others) went off and built their own full car dynos for their reliability testing needs. 

[Ripe]

9 minutes ago, Phos said:

Of which boneheaded decision are you speaking?  The one that springs to mind for me are how many cost cutting measures have given the richer teams more ways to use that wealth and made the sport more expensive. Limiting on track testing means that Mercedes and Red Bull (and maybe a few others) went off and built their own full car dynos for their reliability testing needs. 

All of those plus his recent qualification idea and the intend to change it to have two times combined (it was tried before, it didn't work) and his comment of how drivers should just shut up and drive  because all they care about is money (can you notice the hypocracy?)

[QuantumEdge]

1 hour ago, RipeFIN said:

All of those plus his recent qualification idea and the intend to change it to have two times combined (it was tried before, it didn't work) and his comment of how drivers should just shut up and drive  because all they care about is money (can you notice the hypocracy?)

This is why he remains one of the biggest problems this sport is facing.  No matter what pressure he's under, he'll never retire, so it's almost a case of how short a span of time will it take for F1 to kill itself.

[Ripe]

So Chinese GP is this weekend and thank god it is the old, good, qualification system now. Maybe Ecclestone has brains after all...

Other thing: Can't help but wonder how Codemasters would have handled the qualification in F1 2016 if the new system would have stayed. Speaking of the game,  it seems like that there is change that I may buy it even in the launch because one thing that I enjoy in the games most, career mode, is brought back. And it seems to be better than it has ever been, at least according to guys like aarava and xMattyG who were betatesters of the game.

[Phos]

And again all the cars run into each other on the opening corner like this is a driving game, I thought it might have just been how sharp that first corner in Bahrain is but this was a much gentler corner. Are the tires that cold or what. Do we need rolling starts? I know just the soundtrack for it:

I'd need to rewatch it to be sure but I'm not convinced that there was room for Kvyat in that first turn, funny to think that that led to Ricciardo's heartbreaking puncture, we might have had an actual race. Assuming Hamilton was anything to base it on, those Mercedes's can't handle dirty air. Rossberg just keeps lucking out, some pileup happens behind him and then he's just doing hotlaps for a while. 

[E-van]

7 hours ago, Phos said:

And again all the cars run into each other on the opening corner like this is a driving game, I thought it might have just been how sharp that first corner in Bahrain is but this was a much gentler corner. Are the tires that cold or what. Do we need rolling starts? I know just the soundtrack for it:

I'd need to rewatch it to be sure but I'm not convinced that there was room for Kvyat in that first turn, funny to think that that led to Ricciardo's heartbreaking puncture, we might have had an actual race. Assuming Hamilton was anything to base it on, those Mercedes's can't handle dirty air. Rossberg just keeps lucking out, some pileup happens behind him and then he's just doing hotlaps for a while. 

Well, Rosberg was actually just about to pass Ricciardo down the back straight right when he got the puncture anyway.

[Ripe]

So Rosberg has won all three GPs. Because he is the only one out of the four top drivers who hasn't have any bad luck and in this race it was all of three. It would be a nice to see a race where any of the drivers would not have some kind of issues

[Phos]

4 hours ago, Falonso14 said:

Well, Rosberg was actually just about to pass Ricciardo down the back straight right when he got the puncture anyway.

Pretty sure Ricciardo was loosing speed to his puncture prior to the tire flying apart. The Renault engine is down on power vs the Mercedes but Rossberg passed him like he was standing still.

Man I just remembered something about that track that seems really weird to me: the grid seems to put pole on the wrong side of the track, 2nd place has the inside line into turn 1. 

[Ripe]

Russian GP is this weekend. And it seems like Mercedes is going to win again.

Sigh, I think this is becoming the most predictable and boring period in F1 that I have ever seen. At least with Schumacher and Vettel there were seasons when some other team was able to challenge them.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

anyone wanna bet that Sam Spee... I mean Rosberg is gonna win.... again?

[Ripe]

1 minute ago, Sonikku Mikyeong said:

anyone wanna bet that Sam Spee... I mean Rosberg is gonna win.... again?

Absolutely. Wonder what will this time happen to Räikkönen, Vettel and Hamilton. Perhaps a collision or engine will blow up.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

2 minutes ago, Ripe said:

Absolutely. Wonder what will this time happen to Räikkönen, Vettel and Hamilton. Perhaps a collision or engine will blow up.

I hope Hamilton finally gets his place but anything will happen. The underdog teams have been putting it into high gear

[Ripe]

1 minute ago, Sonikku Mikyeong said:

I hope Hamilton finally gets his place but anything will happen. The underdog teams have been putting it into high gear

Hamilton? No thanks. I hope Räikkönen will finally get to win.

Underdog teams? I hope that they would do well but it seems that Haas and Toro Rosso are the only ones that have had good start.

[Phos]

Kyvat defending that maneuver in China and then just drives right into Vettel from behind twice.  Seriously, do we need a rolling start or something?  

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

it was nice to see Nando in P6 today

[QuantumEdge]

Well, guess I an blame Kvyat for ruining Ferrari's chances this year...  Honestly, other than the start, it was a boring race.  Not to mention seeing Rosberg lap everyone up to sixth place was just painful in bringing up all that's wrong with this sport...

[TheOcelot]

1 hour ago, QuantumEdge said:

Not to mention seeing Rosberg lap everyone up to sixth place was just painful in bringing up all that's wrong with this sport...

What's wrong with the sport is that a few years back the FIA changed the rules to screw over Red Bull thus ending their dominance, and with engine development frozen it meant a double whammy because Red Bull were (and still are) stuck with the inferior Renault engines. As a result Mercedes are even more dominant than Red Bull were. Which is ironic because people used to moan about RB's dominance and now look where we are?!

Ferrari were never going to challenge for the title this year. Next year, however, with all the rule changes it should allow teams to rain-in Mercdes. At lest the fight for the title is proving interesting with all the bad luck Hamilton's had. With 17 races left (21 is way too many) I think Hamilton will still win it. Credit to Rosberg "Mr consistant" for staying out of trouble.

[QuantumEdge]

3 minutes ago, BenderBR said:

What's wrong with the sport is that a few years back the FIA changed the rules to screw over Red Bull thus ending their dominance, and with engine development frozen it meant a double whammy because Red Bull were (and still are) stuck with the inferior Renault engines. As a result Mercedes are even more dominant than Red Bull were. Which is ironic because people used to moan about RB's dominance and now look where we are?!

Ferrari were never going to challenge for the title this year. Next year, however, with all the rule changes it should allow teams to rain-in Mercdes. At lest the fight for the title is proving interesting with all the bad luck Hamilton's had. With 17 races left (21 is way too many) I think Hamilton will still win it. Credit to Rosberg "Mr consistant" for staying out of trouble.

Don't know about Hamilton taking it.  I think Rosberg may just clinch it this time.  As for Red Bull, I actually enjoyed their dominance because they weren't the only ones winning races.  Sometimes there were some close moments, unlike this hybrid era which Mercedes had been spending years of development on.  Luckily, Ferrari's rate of improvement may help take 2017 and Renault seems to be making one or two strides with their development, so fingers crossed we can look to next year as the tide turning moment.

[Phos]

Yeah, I don't really get the weird engine change deployment limitations, they just make it that much harder for anyone to catch Mercedes.  

[PaddyFancy]

Kvyat shunted back to Torro Rosso and Verstappen promoted to Red Bull. That'll teach you for crashing twice into a Ferrari in front of the Russian president.