F1 2020 Season

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That said id rather the default position be racing incidents unless someone does something dangerous. We do want people to try to overtake even if it goes wrong at times

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Anyone not voting Hamilton driver of the day shouldn’t be allowed to watch the sport

There's people that would vote for Verstappen if he crashed out on lap one and took a steaming dump on the front of his car.

That was one hell of a race!

Funny how much more interesting F1 gets when the drivers are really struggling for grip.

Hamilton proves once again he is The Rain Master. What an amazing flawless drive. Thats what champions do...find the performance when it really matters. Congrats on a 7th title to equal Schumacher.

Also another great drive by Perez...managing to hold off the Ferraris (just) on worn tyres at the end to claim a very worthy 2nd. I've said it before and I'll say it again...they are gonna regret letting him go...

Surprised by how good the Ferraris looked at the end. Poor old Charles was looking good for 3rd...saw Perez go wide just a couple of corners from the end, got past, but lost grip going out on the dirty part of the track, letting both Sergio and Seb past. Could have had 2nd, but had to settle for 4th. Slightly fortuitous podium for Vettel, but he was in the right place at the right time.

Good performance by McLaren, coming back from their grid penalties. Very strong drive by Sainz and a decent race by Norris...did he manage to keep fastest lap?

Surprised that Red Bull looked much worse in the race than they did in quali. Suppose they'll just be happy to pick up some decent points.

Gotta feel for Stroll...looked like he was controlling the race until that last stop. Did they fit shopping trolley wheels to his car? That said, he did show his rookie tendencies to lunge and immediately try and get places back, which in the end just made things even worse.

Marky wrote:

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Anyone not voting Hamilton driver of the day shouldn’t be allowed to watch the sport

There's people that would vote for Verstappen if he crashed out on lap one and took a steaming dump on the front of his car.

That is what he did today

Good Golly I'm Olly wrote:Anyone not voting Hamilton driver of the day shouldn’t be allowed to watch the sport

Actually The McLarens and Ferraris get my joint vote for today.

Obviously Lewis did a great job to come back, take the lead and win the title...but we know he has that ability (not to mention the car) to do that.

Based on where they started today and the known limitations of the cars, I reckon Carlos, Lando, Seb and Charles probably did a better job.


BTW no comisserations for ya boi Lance?

Lance just got done, like Sergio has earlier in the season, by a judgement call on tyres. Not surprised RP engineers had a panic attack during that moment. It’s a department of their team that will need strengthening, if they want to be taken seriously going forward, because it’s costing them points regularly.

After that, Lance kind of just felt sorry for himself. Started to make errors in and around cars, and with the tyres not working, it just ended up a mess.

But that’s F1, in those conditions. You’re always on the edge of success or failure.

dyrewolfe wrote:That said, he did show his rookie tendencies to lunge and immediately try and get places back, which in the end just made things even worse.

Much like you showing your tendencies to try and blame Stroll for his team's bad strategy call.

I think Lance drove a mature race but the RP just didn't have the pace to maintain that position. There's a tendency to go after the strategists in hindsight, but I don't think there was really a "right" strategy. They left the driver who manages his tyres better out and brought the other in for fresh tyres. Either way they weren't going to beat Lewis.

Nice result for Vettel in a hard season. Form is temporary etc...

One of those days for RB. Probably the fastest car this weekend but missed pole and both drivers threw away winning positions with spins.

Don't really think much more needs to be said on Bottas at this point. We all know the job he's there to do.

GSC wrote:One of those days for RB. Probably the fastest car this weekend but missed pole and both drivers threw away winning positions with spins.

Don't really think much more needs to be said on Bottas at this point. We all know the job he's there to do.

Given Albon’s pace, there’s no doubt Max should of won that race. Best package this weekend, and he threw it away. Makes comments about it being easy to win in the best car, come back to haunt you.

As for Bottas, he’s spent. Looks disillusioned and beaten. A bold move from Merc would be to pay his one year deal off, and sign, Perez. Won’t happen though, unfortunately.

Lance Stroll is able to learn from all of his mistakes because he is given the time.  Today it was a decision call - he thought he could stay out, he made the call, his engineers wanted to pit him.  He is very young still but not in terms of F1 experience.  This is his fourth season.

Ps: I agree - I was very disappointed in Bottas.   Another year of Hamilton - Bottas is going to be unexciting.  Mercedes has all the records now, it would be nice to put an up and coming fresh face into one of those seats.  Surely they must be looking towards the future.  If Mercedes plan to stay as a works team, next year would be a good time to put in a future prospect.

dyrewolfe wrote:That was one hell of a race!

Also another great drive by Perez ... managing to hold off the Ferraris (just) on worn tyres ... they are gonna regret letting him go...

Who is a better driver Vettel or Perez?  Who is better in the technical side in helping car development Vettel or Perez?  Also Vettel is a marketable name.

Ultimately Lawrence Stroll is paying for Lance Strolls seat and he can afford it and so the team can afford it.   Lance Stroll is a good driver and he is given all the time to develop from an early age, and is still young and therefore still has potential.  There are more naturally talented drivers but without the same breaks or the same amount of time given to them - they won't have the opportunity to develop into a better F1 driver.

Stroll is interesting - seems to be a very good wet weather driver, which is usually a good indicator of being an outstanding driver overall (see Schumacher, Hamilton, Vettel, Senna), but he regresses to lower-midfield level in the dry.

Not sure he got stitched up by his team yesterday - others (Leclerc for example) had excellent pace on the second set of inters, so it seemed a sensible move at the time. The fact that that particular set of tyres were made of plastercine may not have been predictable. One thought is whether they were a used set of inters where others were putting on new?

Lance stated in the interview he put on new inters. Similar with Albon’s woes. Some worked, some didn’t. Just seemed that those tyres, in those conditions, suited, Ferrari. It happens.

But you can see why the skill of tyre management is still so highly valued, and, to me, unappreciated. Hamilton and Perez, not only yesterday, but for a long time now, have been the benchmark in that department.

Lance's qualifying pace has historically been his biggest issue, he tends to start further down the field than the car warranted, so decent race performances go under the radar.

Don't think tyre management is under appreciated as much as generally wished it wasn't such a determining factor in this era

RP say Stroll had a damaged front wing

dummy_half wrote:Stroll is interesting - seems to be a very good wet weather driver, which is usually a good indicator of being an outstanding driver overall (see Schumacher, Hamilton, Vettel, Senna), but he regresses to lower-midfield level in the dry.

Not sure he got stitched up by his team yesterday - others (Leclerc for example) had excellent pace on the second set of inters, so it seemed a sensible move at the time. The fact that that particular set of tyres were made of plastercine may not have been predictable. One thought is whether they were a used set of inters where others were putting on new?

I'm fairly certain Stroll got new inters at his second stop. Seems it was a similar story with Bottas...he could barely keep his car on the track.

Whereas Hamilton just did the 1 stop and wore down his inters until they were basically slicks. Not surprised he was asking the team how long they could last...was likely worried he would hit a wall, or they would just blow out.

It really baffles me how you can get these "dud" sets of tyres, given they are supposed to be made to a certain specification. Yet we see, race after race, drivers complaining that they just can't get any grip from a set of tyres after a pit stop.

Scrub tyres that have done a few laps in practice or quali, you could expect differing levels of performance...but not new ones.

GSC wrote:
Don't think tyre management is under appreciated as much as generally wished it wasn't such a determining factor in this era

The new tyre regs really screwed F1 up. Firstly removing competition between manufacturers and moving to a single supplier, then demanding more variability, to promote different strategies...forgetting F1 is all about the meta and that teams would invariably gravitate to the optimal strategy regardless. Then trying to get Pirelli to produce longer lasting tyres with a wider operating window...which doesn't seem to have worked out too well.

You can also partly thank the removal of refuelling for this. With all the cars having to start loaded with fuel, the first 20-odd laps are always going to be about tyre management, with any actual racing almost incidental to this. Hence the mad dash for the first few laps before things settle down into a procession.

The second set of inters thing was peculiar - Leclerc and Sainz in particular were flying (at least when on a clear track), while Stroll, Albon and Ricciardo (iirc) really went backwards. Possibly the different cars working the tyres differently, although RP were good at the start and OK on the first set of inters. Could different pressures be that critical for keeping the tyre in the right temperature window in this case?

Interesting how Lewis managed to hang on to his inters for so long - there was a spell where he appeared to be about to mount a challenge on Vettel, but then settled for running at about 2-3 seconds back for a few laps and easing everything off, then really showing the speed left in the car on a drying track once he had clear air. Did something similar in the last race with slicks. I do think he was concerned about just wearing through the tyre, like (iirc) China in 07.

Oh, and of course the fact was Lewis just about managed to hang on to the car in the early stages when it was very tricky (had a few issues with running wide under braking), while Bottas was spinning repeatedly, and then was able to utilise it much better as the track became drier.

I do wonder if someone in the midfield missed a trick by not trying slicks for the last 10 laps or so

GSC wrote:RP say Stroll had a damaged front wing

They also said Stroll didnt have Coronavirus

No name Bertie wrote:

dyrewolfe wrote:That was one hell of a race!

Also another great drive by Perez ... managing to hold off the Ferraris (just) on worn tyres ... they are gonna regret letting him go...

Who is a better driver Vettel or Perez?  Who is better in the technical side in helping car development Vettel or Perez?  Also Vettel is a marketable name.

Ultimately Lawrence Stroll is paying for Lance Strolls seat and he can afford it and so the team can afford it.   Lance Stroll is a good driver and he is given all the time to develop from an early age, and is still young and therefore still has potential.  There are more naturally talented drivers but without the same breaks or the same amount of time given to them - they won't have the opportunity to develop into a better F1 driver.

Lol - another Olly /Marky grade troll post.

Last couple of seasons have shown Perez is far and away the better driver. He has adapted to the hybrid era far better than Vettel.

Seb has just been going steadily backwards and has been comprehensively beaten by every team mate since his last season at Red Bull. He may have been a marketable name when he was winning races and titles, but he's little more than a backmarker now. He's shown no signs whatsoever of helping Ferrari develop their car. Indeed a few of their upgrades have actually made it worse, so whatever input he's giving hasn't been very helpful. You could in fact attribute any improvements to the fact the team underwent a root and branch restructuring fairly recently.

Going to a new team may mean he starts with a clean slate of sorts, but he's going to need the biggest turnaround in form ever seen in the sport, if he's to keep Stroll in his pocket and make Aston his team. Of course it could happen, but I don't think you'll find any bookies giving good odds...


As for Stroll, he's a rich daddy's boy who's only in the sport because his dad can afford to buy and run a team (and buy a seat before that). He's shown himself to be competent, but no more than that. I seriously doubt he will ever reach the standard of the likes of Verstappen or Leclerc, no matter how much time he's given. I'd even say Gasly is better...he's actually won a race in an Alpha Tauri!

Pay drivers are bad enough, though sadly necessary for many teams, but Stroll's existence in the sport is down to sheer nepotism. When a driver of Perez's ability is left hunting for a seat at the expense of someone like "ya boi" Lance, it sticks in my craw more than usual.

Stroll literally, single handedly, earned pole position at the last race.

If you reckon that's now three of us trying to troll you by stating how he is actually a good driver, instead of three different people just having a different opinion to you, then maybe you're just wrong.

Also I like Perez, but please tell me how his 0 wins, 0 poles and 9 podiums in 188 races is so vastly superior to Stroll's 0 wins, 1 pole and 2 podiums in 75 races.

That's before you try to pretend Perez is better than a four time World Champion.

Marky
Perez is a consistently good driver. Not as good as Vettel in his prime, but there's a good chance that Perez 2021 is better than Vettel 2021.

Stroll, as I put above, is a good wet weather driver, but unlike most others who are, is not good or consistent in the dry. His pole last weekend was clearly a combination of him driving well in really bad conditions and a weird set of circumstances including the fact that the Mercedes simply didn't work in the same conditions (or in the bad conditions at the race start - once it eased, the car came to LH).

I do think some exaggerate how bad Stroll is, because of him using family money to support his racing career. He isn't all that good (other than in the wet), but he isn't an embarrassment to the sport as some try to make out.

Wet qualifying tends as much to be about setting your lap at the right time as the grip level fluctuate fairly rapidly. But as before, Strolls issue has historically been poor qualifying pace which puts him out of phase in races. It's still not a strength as Perez is soundly beating him there but it's improving and no longer at the point where it largely puts him too far down the grid to make a meaningful impact on races.

At the start of his career he was nowhere near good enough for F1 and was catapulted in way too early. Compound that with a Williams team that was on a one way trip to the back of the grid and it largely cemented opinions on Stroll, which only hardened which his dad led a consortium to buy a team and install his son as a driver

Take that element out of it though and you can't deny he's beginning to deliver results that prove he is in F1 on merit, while still only being 22 (the same age a certain 7 time champion started in F1).

Is he a world beater/future world champion? Probably not, as Lewis and Vettels 11 WDCs demonstrate, you need to start at the front consistently to win titles and Strolls qualifying results just aren't near that level. But he's growing into a driver who can deliver results from the car he's given.

Also fairly point out, a certain Sergio Perez can also be defined as a "pay driver" .

dyrewolfe wrote:

No name Bertie wrote:

dyrewolfe wrote:That was one hell of a race!

Also another great drive by Perez ... managing to hold off the Ferraris (just) on worn tyres ... they are gonna regret letting him go...

Who is a better driver Vettel or Perez?  Who is better in the technical side in helping car development Vettel or Perez?  Also Vettel is a marketable name.

Ultimately Lawrence Stroll is paying for Lance Strolls seat and he can afford it and so the team can afford it.   Lance Stroll is a good driver and he is given all the time to develop from an early age, and is still young and therefore still has potential.  There are more naturally talented drivers but without the same breaks or the same amount of time given to them - they won't have the opportunity to develop into a better F1 driver.

Lol - another ... troll post ...

I was trying to stimulate discussion that I had not seen before.  Most comments I had seen were comparing Perez to Stroll, but I had not seen a discussion comparing Perez with Vettel, which in my view is more relevant here because Racing Point (Aston Martin) are replacing Perez with Vettel.

Whatever the debate is about Lance Stroll it is rather moot in this instance because Lawrence Stroll is paying for Lance Strolls seat.  However, in retaining Lance Stroll they must have had reasons other than him just being the son of Lawrence Stroll.

No name Bertie wrote:...

Whatever the debate is about Lance Stroll it is rather moot in this instance because Lawrence Stroll is paying for Lance Strolls seat.  However, in retaining Lance Stroll they must have had reasons other than him just being the son of Lawrence Stroll.

Let's be honest - the only ways Lance Stroll loses a seat in the next few years is if his dad yields ownership or if he proves incapable of retaining control of the car. He's demonstrated enough competence so far to not crash more than most F1 drivers (unlike Maldonado) and to get round the track at a speed where he isn't a mobile chicane (cf Luca Badoer, when acting as a temporary driver for Ferrari). He's had a couple of opportunities to challenge for wins, some of which he's let slip (Silverstone this year - effectively gifted a pit stop on the red flag that put him 2nd on brand new tyres but made an error on the restart) and some like last week where team strategy / luck wasn't on his side. I still think it was not a bad call from RP - he was not going to win without another stop as Lewis and Perez had more pace on what was left on their worn inters, and Leclerc in particular was closing rapidly on new inters. It was unfortunate for RP that Stroll was one of the guys who couldn't make the new tyres work. Still wasn't as bad as Bottas, who seemed to spend most of the race spinning like a top.

Albon wrecks the RB in FP2. Needs to be put down.

That seems a bit harsh, couldn't they just sack him?

GSC wrote:That seems a bit harsh, couldn't they just sack him?

Possibly John meant "put down" to Alpha Toro / Tauri Rosso. Although they've confirmed their lineup for next season, haven't they?

But yeah - AA has a lot of work to do if he isn't to be left without a seat.

After Bahrain Feature race

1- Schumacher - 203pts
2- Ilott - 191pts
3- Tsunoda 157pts (Great drive from 22nd to 6th)

Gasly has been confirmed at AT, but I’d expect Tsunoda to pip Albon to that seat.

Sergio Perez has also scheduled a press conference in Bahrain for Monday evening.

You wouldn't think Lance Stroll's own dad owns the team, considering how many times Racing Point seem to f*ck him

I would really like to see George Russell in a competitive car. In qualifying he has yet to be beaten by his team mate - 36 in a row.

Something happened to Stroll in q2 as his time was 0.9 seconds worse than what he posted in q1 (which would have been good enough to get into q3).

After Bahrain Sprint race

1. SCHUMACHER 205pts
2. Ilott 191 pts

Big mistake for Ilott, and Tsunoda had a nightmare, which drops him to fifth in the standings. Mick has a 14 point lead going into the final weekend.

See that explosion?

Red flag race

Holy crap that looked nasty! Hope Grosjean's okay...

Guessing the impact was bad enough to smash the battery electronics and the fuel cell...sparks...BOOM!

Unbelievable images. Ripped the car in half. Grosjean literally fleeing the flames.

Good news! He's in the medical car and looks okay...no obvious signs of injury anyway.

How on Earth has he walked away from that? The more they show of it, the less it makes sense.

Remember the complaints on how the halo looked

He's one very lucky guy. Testament to the strength of the "survival cell" the drivers sit in and the chassis in general.

Race will probably be delayed for at least half an hour or so.

45 min delay to replace barrier

Gonna be some awkward questions as to how the barrier imploded like that

GSC wrote:Gonna be some awkward questions as to how the barrier imploded like that

Or why they were using old-fashioned armco-style barriers. I'm surprised they barriers they use at Monaco haven't been more widely adopted.

Even a tyre barrier might have been better to absorb most of the kinetic energy & reduce the damage to the car.

As Brundle said, it was impossible for Dr Roberts to have got over that barrier and been able to save Grosjean, if he was stuck in the cockpit or unconscious. Incredible video of his escape. Impact to getting out recorded around 18 seconds in the fire.

Just John wrote:As Brundle said, it was impossible for Dr Roberts to have got over that barrier and been able to save Grosjean, if he was stuck in the cockpit or unconscious. Incredible video of his escape. Impact to getting out recorded around 18 seconds in the fire.

Pretty incredible when you think he wouldn't have been able to see what he was doing, (apparently the tear-offs on his visor melted), acting on instinct to unstrap / unplug himself, while trying not to panic.

According to Gunther Steiner Romain has minor burns to his hands and ankles. Could be enough to put him out of the next couple of races...might end his season.

Still, its a miracle thats all he ended up with.

Lance Stroll upside down

SC out

Jesus Christ - another big accident at the restart. Stroll upside down...but he sounds okay on the radio.

Just seen he had a coming-together with Kvyat, wasn't at high speed. A relatively gentle flip.

Kvyat working his way up the leaderboard...

Bottas pits after getting a puncture. Now going to have to work his way back up the grid. If it wasn't for bad luck he'd have none at all...

Just John wrote:Lance Stroll upside down

SC out

Now this is a story
All about how
Our Lance got flipped
turned upside down

If someone could finish this for me, that'd be great

Perez has blown up, and gifts Albon a podium. Massive result for McLaren in the constructors

No luck

RB will probably call this an epic drive from Albon, and re-sign him.