F1 2021 Season

First topic message reminder :

The season opening Australian Grand Prix & the Chinese Grand Prix have been postponed.

Bahrain Grand Prix on the 28th March to be the first race of the 2021 season.

Formula 1 to revert to 2pm race start times at European races this year.

F1 practice sessions will be shortened to one hour during Fridays across the 2021 season.

Cognizant have been announced as Aston Martin’s new title sponsor. They will be called ‘Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team’.

Alex Albon will drive in DTM this season, on selected race weekends

Lando Norris has confirmed he has contracted Covid, while staying in, Dubai.

dyrewolfe wrote:
RP / Aston seem to have made their car worse with each passing season. Also handicapped by having Vettel in the team

No surprise at all. Otmar Szafnauer reckons they've lost a second of performance this season, mainly due to the higher rake concept. Not sure what they were expecting, given no actual effort seems to have gone into recruiting any technical staff of note, other than marketing/advertising acquisitions, aiming to take advantage of the Aston Martin brand. Essentially, it's still Force India.

As for Vettel, he should of retired, and protected what's left of that legacy from Red Bull. Unfortunately, he's made a poor decision, and essentially swapped one dog of a car, for another.

In other news, seven of the sixteen corners at Melbourne's Albert Park track are being modified for this year's race

Agree John.

If Aston are serious about becoming competitive, they need to spend some of that sponsorship money and do what Ferrari and McLaren have done recently - namely undergo a serious restructuring...and maybe recruit a decent driver to partner Stroll.

If they stick with what they've got they'll continue to go backwards.

I'll reserve judgement on the revamped Albert Park until we see what kind of a race we get.

Nico Hulkenberg has joined Aston Martin as third driver. Rumours circulating that Sebastian Vettel is on verge of retirement/sack.

Read the news about Hulk on the BBC yesterday. At least he's got a foot in the door, should any other opportunities become available.

I'd give Seb a few more races for his performances / results to improve and at least be on a par with Stroll's.

Szafnauer can complain all he likes about the new floor regs hurting the car, but it didn't look horrendously bad in Bahrain.

Give it 6 races or so for the team to improve the car and for Seb to get his act together. If things don't look like improving on his side of the garage (and assuming Stroll keeps delivering better performances), I'd get Hulk fitted out for a race seat (unless you get one even if you're only a reserve / development driver).

Former Ferrari team principal Marco Mattiacci is set to join Aston Martin in a consultancy role.

Just the two spins in FP1 for Mazespin

Perez proves his worth by putting it on the front row and ahead of Verstappen. Bottas nowhere, Lando close to a front row start but lost his lap to track limits

R Lance into Q3 in an inferior car again is it

Be interesting to see how Red Bull use their advantage of two cars tomorrow. Perez on the soft tyre, if he can get a good start has a chance to really put the cat amongst the pigeons

Mercedes looking much pacier in quali (in Lewis' hands, at least).

Still unusually close margins for the top 3 places. Just a few 1/100ths in it.

Not that surprising Hamilton got pole, but an outstanding result for Perez to bag 2nd. Must be quite a while since Max has been out-qualified by a team mate.

Bottas' season looks like its already starting to unravel. Nowhere near his team mate, down in 8th.

Leclerc still flying the flag for Ferrari with a creditable 4th and Gasly doing a great job for AT in 5th.

McLaren pretty much where they were in Bahrain.

Ocon considerably quicker than Alonso, getting Alpine into the top 10 and Stroll showing he's still top dog at Aston with another 10th place.

Interesting to note Russell (12th) managed to qualify ahead of Vettel (13th).

Have a feeling Max will get the jump on his team mate early on and we could be in for another tense tussle for the win tomorrow.

GSC wrote:Perez proves his worth by putting it on the front row and ahead of Verstappen. Bottas nowhere, Lando close to a front row start but lost his lap to track limits

Hugely frustrating to watch (no doubt for Lando and the team too). Only consolation is knowing the car isn't really good enough to have stayed 2nd for very long.

Wet race...or start at least!

Could be in for all sorts of shenanigans today.

Early SC as Latifi bins it on lap 2. Lots of spinning and sliding as expected.

Max gets past both Perez and Hamilton to take the lead.

Too many sh!t drivers in F1 ffs. Clowns like Latifi and Mazepin have no business at this level

Hamilton should of conceded defeat at T1, Max just got a better start. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, in these conditions

Oh dear - Schumacher crashes and loses his nose while trying to warm his tyres.

Right near the pit lane exit...which now has to be closed while they clear the debris.

Dear oh dear.

Perez's race utterly wrecked by overtaking 2 cars after going off behind the SC. 10 second penalty will cost him a total of 30-odd seconds, which will put him near the back.

From hero to zero...

Hamilton coming back towards Max. Slicks soon

Argh! Hamilton's race over - he goes off trying to pass a back marker after the pit stops. Best he can hope for is a top 10 finish. Takes an age to get his car back on track.

Oh...2nd SC as Russell and Bottas come together. Both out. George actually going for an overtake on Valtteri.

Russell checking out next year's drive up close

Race stopped. Likely to clear debris and check the barriers where the incidents occurred.

Just seen replays of the Bottas - Russell collision...that was a huge shunt!

Max probably has one big barrier left at the restart now.

Slight hint of a right turn of the wheel from Bottas, seemed to spook Russell on to the grass. Huge crash.

Hamilton a lap behind. Advantage Max this weekend

You get your lap back on a red flag don't you?

Anyway, high speed crash on a wet circuit, be inclined to say racing incident and move on

Looks like a pretty dumb move by Valtteri - moving over while George was alongside him.

Spooked Russell into going wider...sounded like a wheel touched the grass, spun up and he lost control of the car.

GSC wrote:Anyway, high speed crash on a wet circuit, be inclined to say racing incident and move on

I'm blaming Valtteri for this one. It may be normal to try and squeeze a rival off track, but you don't do it on a wet track in a place with no run-off areas.

George had the run on him and it was pretty desperate defending.


But knowing Toto he'll just try and keep everyone calm and tell them not to do it again. Got his work cut out mind, as both drivers seemed pretty pissed off at each other.

I dunno, Bottas entitled to his defense and it's not the latest or biggest defense made in the last few years. Russell puts his car in a place where he has virtually no margin for error in these conditions.

Not also entirely sure Russell holds it on the track if Bottas keeps to the left anyway

Wow - drivers still slipping and sliding behind the SC at the restart...even guys like Max and Raikkonen.

GSC wrote:Not also entirely sure Russell holds it on the track if Bottas keeps to the left anyway

How do you figure that? He was charging up alongside Bottas and only lost it when Valtteri jinked right and George evidently felt compelled to jink too, to avoid a collision.

Holy crap - m'boy Lando gets past Leclerc at the restart. Just a couple of seconds behind Max...

Surely not...

Oof! Perez off again. This time it does cost him dear...all the way from 4th to 14th.

As expected Verstappen pulling away from Norris. Oh well - there was brief hope for a couple of laps.  

Hamilton could salvage a second/third here. McLaren soft choice was wrong

Red flag looks like it's going to be a get out of jail card for Lewis.

GSC wrote:Red flag looks like it's going to be a get out of jail card for Lewis.

Yep. Damage limitation job well done. Norris should be a sitting duck

Hamilton fastest lap. Good drive from Norris

One heart in mouth moment aside, Max the one driver to keep his head amongst the carnage.

Lewis largely bailed out and keeps the lead of the championship thanks to a red flag.

Statement weekend for Lando. And even then unlucky not to qualify on the front row and get p2

Great drive by Max for the win today. Never looked back after getting the jump on Perez and Hamilton at the start. Managed the restart and SCs brilliantly. Very worthy winner.

Probably the hardest-fought 2nd place Lewis has ever had. Great comeback drive after it looked like he'd be lucky to get a points finish at one point. A few uncharacteristic mistakes, but recovered superbly.

Fantastic 3rd place for Norris. Held the Ferraris at bay and even made Lewis work hard to get past him. Ricciardo also picking up points for his 6th makes it a great weekend for McLaren.

Good races for Stroll, Gasly, Raikkonen & Ocon to round out the top 10.

Agree with GSC. Looked a racing incident between Bottas and Russell, one of those things...more worrying thing for Bottas is what on earth is he doing about to be overtaken by a Williams in the race (on merit)!!

Verstappen imperious, Red Bull do seem to have just the slightly better car at this point, albeit Perez is suffering the 2nd seat issue!

Lando is class isn’t he - appreciate Riccardo is in a new car and adjusting, but he’s looked miles better through two races than his more experienced team mate.

Stroll being a boss again is it?


The Haas might be the worst car ever seen in F1?

The Bottas-Russell accident was Russell’s fault imo. Bottas was being his usual pathetic self but Russell was truly dreaming if he thought he could just drive around the outside unchallenged.

Don't think he helped his chances of the 2nd seat next year by trying it either

Just John wrote:Hamilton could salvage a second/third here. McLaren soft choice was wrong

Super softs allowed Lando to get ahead of Leclerc. Was most likely the difference between Lando being 3rd or 4th.

Perhaps the only other thing Lando could have done was to maybe keep Leclerc within the second needed to maintain DRS, but that we never going to be consistent enough.

Fluxy wrote:

Just John wrote:Hamilton could salvage a second/third here. McLaren soft choice was wrong

Super softs allowed Lando to get ahead of Leclerc. Was most likely the difference between Lando being 3rd or 4th.

That was more or less what Lando said in the post race conference. Given the difficulties regarding overtaking on the circuit the team thought it would be an advantage to go on the softs rather than the mediums. That worked for Lando - Leclerc never really got close enough to attempt an actual overtake. He said Hamilton sort of defied that notion by carving through the field, but Lando was only about two laps away from getting second. On the restart Lando said Leclerc got poor traction and that allowed him to overtake him.

GSC wrote:Don't think he helped his chances of the 2nd seat next year by trying it either

Well, it got Hamilton back in the points

Lowlandbrit wrote:

GSC wrote:Don't think he helped his chances of the 2nd seat next year by trying it either

Well, it got Hamilton back in the points

Also contributed to his trip off circuit

Sprint qualifying to be held at 3 grand Prix weekends this season (Britain, Italy and nominally Brazil if it goes ahead)

There will be a quali session after fp1 on Friday with the sprint race to go ahead in the Saturday slot. The race itself will be a third of usual race distance and will not require a pit stop.

Parc ferme itself will be applied following the Friday quali

Canadian GP cancelled replaced with Turkish GP

Good old Nikita Mazepin with some pearls of wisdom in the past week. ‘Schumacher has an unfair advantage by using the simulator at Maranello, Ferrari haven’t let me use it’.
Funny that when you’re employed by Ferrari you get privileges...

GSC wrote:Sprint qualifying to be held at 3 grand Prix weekends this season (Britain, Italy and nominally Brazil if it goes ahead)

There will be a quali session after fp1 on Friday with the sprint race to go ahead in the Saturday slot. The race itself will be a third of usual race distance and will not require a pit stop.

Parc ferme itself will be applied following the Friday quali

If you break this down, it really is a truly awful, awful concept. In fact, completely and utterly pointless. F1 will always be about the sole Sunday race, the weekly, or fortnightly anticipation leading up to it. Now, we've got this gimmicky attempt to create some artificial entertainment, in the pursuit trying to get more people to buy full-weekend tickets. Qualifying on a Friday, on a workday? Ridiculous. A Sprint race on a Saturday, for a meagre 1-2-3 points with no podium, whereby nobody is really going to risk crashing, or even attempting to risk themselves, ahead of the real race on a Sunday. We also now only will have two set of tyres to choose from in the Sunday race.

This will add nothing of any value to the race weekend as a whole. It's a concept which won't attract a bigger TV audience, as people want quality, not quantity of racing, and watching football or another sport on the Saturday, is far more appealing. Terrible idea, which is hopefully binned after the three weekend trial.

Just John wrote:

GSC wrote:Sprint qualifying to be held at 3 grand Prix weekends this season (Britain, Italy and nominally Brazil if it goes ahead)

There will be a quali session after fp1 on Friday with the sprint race to go ahead in the Saturday slot. The race itself will be a third of usual race distance and will not require a pit stop.

Parc ferme itself will be applied following the Friday quali

... we've got this gimmicky attempt to create some artificial entertainment, in the pursuit trying to get more people to buy full-weekend tickets. Qualifying on a Friday, on a workday? Ridiculous. A Sprint race on a Saturday, for a meagre 1-2-3 points with no podium, whereby nobody is really going to risk crashing, or even attempting to risk themselves, ahead of the real race on a Sunday. We also now only will have two set of tyres to choose from in the Sunday race ...

My concern is one of safety. This year Free Practice on Fridays has been reduced to 60 minute periods. This means that on the sprint race weekends teams and drivers only have 60 minutes to balance the car before they are into qualifying. If FP1 is cancelled because of bad weather, or greatly curtailed due to red flag conditions then there won't be any time to get the set up right. Even in good conditions there may be a few drivers that have technical faults, failures or damage.

It seems to me that matters could have been improved if the sprint weekends had both practice sessions on the Friday, the qualifying and sprint race on the Saturday, and then the race on the Sunday.

However, despite my safety concerns, all the teams have now signed up to it - so maybe and most probably they know something I don't.

Could be entertaining, if not it won't be back again next year. Qualifying isn't particularly exciting beyond the last 30 seconds anyway, I don't see the harm in trying new ideas