Glad to see this thread!
I used to watch F1 every weekend as a kid, then stopped sometime in the 90s. Also started again with drive to survive and now I watch every race weekend.
Leclerc/Sainz fan BTW. I hope Ferrari gets back to early season form.
Mercedes look like theyâre closing the gap a lot on the top 2, could be some interesting 3-way battles in the near future.
Unfortunately, the overall title may be all but over. Last race Charles had a good chance of winning nearâŚerr max points vs. Max, but the safety car really shuffled things and he only ended up gaining 6 instead of 20+. I guess more Red Bull engines could fail, theyâve had what, 4-5 major failures and a couple other drops in HP this season.
I still donât have a team I want to root for yet. I like Hamilton but Mercedesâ seems like a cop out. McLaren seems like a good middle of the pack team with fun personalities; plus the car colors are dope.
So a sprint determines the starting order tomorrow and awards points 1-8 correct? Anything else?
Thatâs all it does. Itâs a pretty new thing in F1 and I wish they did it more than 3 times per season. Itâs a nice way to add more competition during the weekend though I guess itâs a pain for the teams because of the added work and lack of preparation for the race.
Most older F1 fans donât like sprint weekends as it doesnât really add anything. It mostly gives people an additional chance to recover from a bad qualifying. Liberty and the tracks love it as it brings more attention on Friday. Looks like there will be 6 sprint weekends next year and I donât really care either way.
What is the point of Ferrari having both their drivers do exactly the same thing? Itâs just a waste of their 2 v 1 advantage. So many options: Pit Leclerc to cover Max and have Sainz go on a 1 stopper, or at least keep Sainz out this stint to slow Max instead of pitting both drivers right away.
Maxâs car is so shit that not even Ferrari can bottle this.
Track is kinda meh imo
Crazy unfortunate for Sainz there.
Ferrari reliability needs to be fixed or this championship becomes very boring very soon. They were heading for an easy 1-2 and almost lost it all. Mercedes very disappointing as well compared to their Silverstone pace. Looks like their engine will never like high altitude races.
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I really donât understand how Red bull can have huge reliability issues for the first three races and then theyâre gone, while exactly the opposite happens to Ferrari.
Good to see Leclerc win today after several tough races. Hopefully he can take the fight to Verstappen again.
I think people are still overrating the value of track position on tracks with good overtaking opportunities. Getting stuck in a midfield DRS train sucks but beyond that itâs not a huge penalty to end up behind a slower car. Youâll get past quickly. So your strategy shouldnât depart significantly from what you would do if you had the track to yourself, racing for time. Max pitted way early for a 2 stop and I think Ferrari finally got it right just sticking with their better strategy and making the position back on track. No reason to respond to an opponentâs error by switching one of your own cars to an inferior strategy.
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RB reliability issues the first races were all minor. A fuel pump issue and a hydrolic issue being the main ones. Unrelated as well so no underlying problems to be scared off and parts you can replace without penalties. Ferrari tuned up their engines I think after the 4th race or so to keep pace with RedBull and the engines started failing which is bad news as you need approval from the other engine suppliers to make reliability changes to the engine and you can only use a fixed amount of engine parts before penalties kick in.
This is the main reason I think Max will win the WDC again as DNF are so costly when only 2 teams are battling for wins.
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Cool, thanks for the explanation. I follow F1 news pretty closely and didnât know that Ferrari had turned up their engines. Obviously they needed that as they couldnât keep the pace at Imola and Miami.
I also think that this is Verstappenâs championship to lose. Heâs driving so consistently week after week with seemingly a lot of patience and maturity. Iâd love to see Leclerc take the fight to him like heâs done several times this season, but reliability plus some bad Ferrari strategy decisions are going to tilt the scales towards red bull.
Mercedes always seems on the verge of making it a 3-team battle for wins, but never quite there. They had some pace last race, then the double spins in qualifying kinda killed all momentum.
Mercedes engines sucks at high altitudes so Austria is not representative of the gap between Mercedes and RB/Ferrari but I do think people underestimate the race pace gap Mercedes still has. It looks like it is still 0.2 seconds on an average track which is too much to challenge for wins as you need both Ferrari and RedBull to make mistakes. When Ferrari and RedBull had similar gaps to Mercedes they only won when Hamilton messed up and because Bottas is an overrated driver but now Mercedes needs Verstappen, Leclerc and Sainz to mess up and Perez not to do his magic on tire management.
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My first car was a 1977 Chevy Monza, powered by a 2.4L (140cid) Vega engine, which featured an aluminum block and cast iron head. Curb weight on this thing was substantial, see below:
https://www.automobile-catalog.com/make/chevrolet_usa/monza_chevrolet/monza_chevrolet_22/1977.html
0-60 time in the 19-20 second range, but that listed top speed is way low. Speedo on mine only went up to 85, but if you kept your foot on the floor you could approach 120. I base this on a previous race where I fell behind early but cruised past the other guy easily and his speedo read 113.
Thatâs a lot of words to say that Ferrari needs better in-race strategy and to fix their engine reliability.
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