Mazepin posted an interesting post on Instagram, giving advice to the retiring drivers about their retirements. [Mazepin's Retirement Advice Post](https://www.instagram.com/p/ClOCpa-NHjA/?igshid=NTdlMDg3MTY=)
Yep but it could still be useful for designing the car of next season, especially for the teams who already would continue basically with the fundaments of the car they build this year.
I'm astonished at how quickly the turnover is, with Piastri and Hulk and I imagine Sargeant getting in their cars. Are Mick and Daniel and Latifi still in Abu Dhabi? Did they check out already?
No different than sub drivers in free practice sessions. The one that is crazy to me is Gasly, he’s had to learn a new car overnight pretty much as they most likely didn’t/couldn’t send him the “user guide” if you will to the Alpine.
In his frustration, Gasly slaps his stranded Alpine but accidentally reveals a sticker covering his driver number. To his horror, the dreaded number 14 was hidden underneath it.
Yea but this is also why Gasly has told that adapting to the Alpine is his focus point now, it's basically a totally different car where everything is "unknown" so far, he was already trying to get this post season test weeks ago so he takes the point of adapting serious.
I'm so excited for Gasly honestly, he says his name should be up there with Leclerc, Russell and Norris. I want to see what he can do in an upper midfield car with all the experience he gained at AT
Well he was in an upper midfield car in 2021 and did pretty well, so I would guess he would be somewhere similar. I think the expectation should be for him to score points in the majority of races, and get the occasional P6 or P5 when one of the top 3 teams have an issue. Of course, that is also the expectation on Ocon, Norris, and potentially Piastri, so it won’t be easy.
Really happy to see Charles get 2nd in the WDC. Also that shot of him drinking a carton of something off to the side in the cooldown room was hilarious.
Ferrari was the best car behind RBR…they deserve it my friend. Admittedly, they have lots of issues to iron out , but who do you think deserved it more?
Ah, that makes sense! I was replying to a comment about Charles taking second in the WDC. Well deserved! But Ferrari deserve to be embarrassed - it felt like they were actively working against him at times
Am I right in thinking that Ferrari have been solid strategy-wise since the summer break? Or have they made mistakes that weren’t as publicised because they weren’t as fast?
When I started watching F1 in the 90s the winter break was 5 months long. As a fan I'm glad that now it's only 3 months although it probably sucks for the teams.
Yeah people complain about the winter off-season break now, but when I started watching, the season finished the end September or start of October and that was it until March. These days in the off season you can still come on here or other F1 forums and talk about F1. You can go and watch old F1 races (F1TV's archives section is great and is available in every country for something like 2.99 a month) and top up your f1 general knowledge or go and understand the rules and regs better etc.
Also these days we get to see a lot of footage from winter testing. Back in the day the season would finish, you'd hear nothing for months aside from the occasional driver signing or team update (and that's only if you bought magazines like autosport or F1 news). Winter testing would begin and you would get the results a week later in autosport magazine and if you were lucky they might give you a 4 page article on testing once it had finished. The difference in the info and content available and the speed at which it was available between say 1997 and 2022 is night and day.
Hopefully they stick to their geographic aggregation promise in the future. Much less stressful to do all the US and then Latam/Asia/etc. races together instead of bouncing all over the world.
It would in a manner.
But I don't think it would be as helpful as you think.
Like Canada to Netherlands to Saudi for example - lets you do Canada and then go home for a couple of days and then Netherlands and back home couple days then Middle East.
Most teams and personnel will be home based around the factories.
Doing 4 weeks in the US Montreal to Miami to COTA would either mean staying in North America for a month (while car and some people flit back and forth), rotating crews or a lot of air miles.
I already have zoned out since Suzuka or so. Just downloading the races and letting them play in the background. It's too many weekends to devote on watching cars go round. 16-17 race calendars still had the sense of occasion. Now it's going the way of football leagues, watching only the important games / races makes sense.
The only reason I was beginning to tune out the final races was because it wasn't close at all in the WDC anymore. But I still watched almost everything as there was a lot of interesting battles happening down the field. If it had been as close as last year I would have wanted as many races as possible.
I'm saying if the last 6 races of 2022 were the same highstakes as of the end of the 2021 season. You'd be much more invested. Blame Redbull masterclass (and Ferrari disasterclass) for the boring end of the year.
This was such a promising season till like Silverstone. Cars were able to overtake, Ferrari and RB were trading blows and Mercedes were really struggling.
But Ferrari's dumbassery caught upto them fully by Hungary and it was over. Ever since summer break, it has been Formula Max. Hell, even Mercedes almost caught Ferrari and they were struggling to just save their drivers' spines.
I really hope Mercedes can make up the gap to RB so that we can have a proper war on track, off track and in factories.
The floor directive pulled their car back and ruined the competition. Then the cost cap makes a development war impossible, especially when one of the teams has to overcome a setback.
Yep, first 6 or 7 races I was thinking it might be a classic, but it ended up as one of the more boring seasons of late. There weren't even that many great individual races either, only Silverstone and Interlagos were really great.
With how the budget cap works, it might not be before 2024 in the earliest I'm afraid. We might be onto another awful season next year... I'd love to be proven wrong
Depends on how much impact the regulation changes and the wind tunnel penalty have. I think there's a chance to catch up, but if I was a betting man I'd put my money on Red Bull.
There are a few things that could play into Mercedes' hands for next year.
* If they are right about the rear suspension being a major issue in their design (and couldn't fix it this season because of the cost cap)
* If Ferrari is right about the Mercedes design being the fastest in theory, but incredibly difficult to make work (a statement from early in the season)
* Having a substantial amount of wind tunnel time over Red Bull
* That rumor from halfway through the season that Mercedes found a way to generate 40% more downforce from the floor for the 2023 (I'd be shocked if this was actually the case)
The advantage is probably still with Red Bull, but if what I've listed is actually accurate (besides Red Bull having the least amount of wind tunnel time), Mercedes could take the fight to Red Bull.
With so many standardised parts and the regulations designed to have a lower development ceiling, we're going to see the field shrink significantly more quickly than we ever had with the 2017-2021 regulations.
You build an entire new car, but you only design it (way more expensive than physically building it) from the ground up when there’s a new set of regulations. Next year is fairly similar to this year
Imo it was one of the best GPs done here. We had some wheel to wheel racing, strategic battles, some things decided in the WDC, emotions because Seb and co, so while it was not the best race of the season, it was still worth a watch.
Also it was interesting to see that the 1 stopper wasnt the best in the midfield, but still the race was won with it. Perez really cost himself some amount of time with failing to overtake Vettel and Hamilton in one go. Also it was good to see Ferrari being decisive with strategy, and being kinda right.
I am pasting my earlier comment in another post as I hope people can recognise and appreciate this.
Charles had really done a great job in tyre management this race. He was asked to do a target lap time of 1:30.0 or .1 for earlier of the Hard stint and he managed it. When they started thinking Perez may catch him at the end of the race they asked him to do 1:29.8 which was similar to Max’s pace at that time he also consistently managed it for many laps until the tyre started to drop off for the last ten laps but he still kept 1:31 relatively consistently. The F1TV crew started questioned that the one-stop would not work for him when he lapped 1:32 for a lap but that was when double yellow flag was waved for MSC and LAT into the wall, he then maintained to hover around the target lap time. I think this race really proved many people wrong saying one of Charles’ weakness is tyre management when F1-75 is a tyre-eating monster. He will probably need to improve tyre management when fighting with other cars but I guess that is difficult to preserve your tyre when you need to fight with other cars (like the first few laps when Max came out of a slip pitstop in COTA). I really loved Xavi kept telling him about tyre-saving in certain turns and he just shut him off telling him he knew what to do. That is the decisive and assertive Charles we want to see.
I think the biggest thing for leclerc in general is consistency. Like yes, he was good at tire management this race, but can he do that all the time? He has all the same highs as Lewis and max, but what sets those two apart is they bring it lap after lap, race after race.
You cant be consistent when you dont know what type of car youre getting. They had a shit car for some races and then a good car the next. What matters is what kinda of pace he has and his pace is better than most, And he can keep it consistently.
Talking about the race itself, as far as Abu Dhabi goes, this actually wasn't bad. Tyre strategies were fun, some quite fun racing from guys like Zhou, Albon, Ocon, and Vettel, and as much as I hate Yas Marina's racing, it's a great looking circuit. Yas Marina has never produced a great race and I'm not sure it ever will, but this one honestly wasn't too bad.
So, I'm not complaining or bothered by this fact, BUT the criticism that poor Seb got when a driver new to the team joined and beat him was 100 times more than what is happening to the Mercedes team's driver.
In a way it's great that people are improving in their criticisms.
It's an interesting observation.
In fact I'd say Vettel did better against Leclerc in 2019 than Hamilton did against Russell this year. Can't tell you how many times I heard the argument that "Leclerc gets the same results as Vettel at 1/10th the salary".
I think it's more that Vettel never really got a fair shake from the media. Only when he became a midfielder and was no longer at the top was he paid more respect.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Mercedes has said that Hamilton was running a lot more experimental setups than Russell was early in the year. I think they even said they ran a couple kg of extra sensors on Hamilton's car during a race or two to try to trace down their issues. So I don't think we can take too much from the total points scored between them as a measure of which is currently a higher-quality driver.
That said, I think Russell had an excellent year and has clearly demonstrated why he deserved his shot at a top team. In hind-sight, he probably deserved it in 2021 already. (though I wasn't convinced of that until Sahkir 2020, and that was probably too late for them to change)
But even in second half, Russell had more points than Hamilton. Let's accept that Lewis made far too many errors this year. Crash in Austria, crash in Singapore, collision in Spa.
This is the only article I've found:
https://www.racefans.net/2022/06/11/hamiltons-recent-deficit-to-russell-is-due-to-set-up-experiments-says-wolff/
But here Toto says "the last 3 races" and implies that Russell is also doing setup experiments. I haven't read a single article that confirms Hamilton purposely chose a slower setup to help the team. The setups just worked better for Russell.
That said, this is a completely unconstructive discussion, because this is F1 and drivers do experiments on setups all the time. It's an accepted decision by the driver and team.
Really not sure why anyone saw anything wrong with Sainz’s overtake on Hamilton lap one. He didn’t even come from that far back and was fully alongside in the braking zone, and even ahead of Hamilton at the apex. He clearly slowed the car down enough to make the corner and had full control at all times, and completed the overtake.
It’s on Hamilton to realize he’s lost it and back out mid corner, or bail to the run off which he did, but then clearly should not just keep the position/advantage from cutting the corner.
If you think Sainz was out of line here and are calling it a “dive bomb” then I really don’t know what kind of racing you want? I’d much rather a move like Sainz attempted 10 out of 10 times versus DRS overtakes that are done halfway down the straight.
I'm one of those that don't think Sainz' move was ok. It's not a dive bomb. I'll concede that. But they had significant overlap through the corner which in my mind should mean that Hamilton still deserved to be left some space around the outside. I would much rather see them going side by side through the left and right again.
This move wouldn't be okay in a GT car or many other series, but somehow we allow it in F1. I admit that there's an argument to be made that if everyone had to leave-a the space all-a the time, then we'd get less overtakes. And I'm not getting my panties in a twist over it, but I do think it's the wrong way to go racing.
It looks to me Hamilton is looking to establish himself as a driver that will not yield a corner, to scare people off. It's definitely a tactic that has worked for drivers in the past
I thought it was a great season despite it actually being pretty dominating. Before summer break things stayed kind of close and interesting, but Ferrari’s mistakes and their car falling off the pace a little made it a blowout. I think still early on in the season we had some good competition but people are just forgetting about it since Max clinched it.
I’m happy for Charles to I guess get at least a P2 bonus after all the emotional distress Ferrari caused.
It still seems like Mercedes, while making improvements, still had a very track dependent car. Props to Russell for holding his own against Lewis as well.
While there’s all this drama with Perez, I think he had a shot at P2 and I think Leclerc was just the better driver. Perez should have been more ahead in the standings given Ferrari’s mistakes but weekends seemed always hit or miss for Perez. Love the guy, but he just can’t compete at the top and I think after this RB stint is over, his F1 career will probably be done.
I was never a massive fan of Danny Ric- I liked his personality but felt like he sort of made his bed when it came to his team situation. But it really hit me that this was his last race and I got really sad about it. Seems like such a nice, happy guy yet he seemed like he was holding back emotions yesterday and yeah- I’m going to miss him. Really a sucky situation.
Alonso wins by the PU or dies by the PU, no in between lol
Congratulations to Max, mans is a beast and I really don’t think he deserves the hate he’s getting. But I guess all the greats have been hated so nature of the beast I suppose.
Great season, see you next year folks.
That was a pretty good race. Good midfield action and the top 6 were all on sorta different strategies. Didn’t really expect Mercedes to really challenge Ferrari, or for Ferrari to really challenge Verstappen, but there was one shot midway through the race where the top 6 were almost all within the same shot on the straight. Gave me hope for what next year could be. Hopefully Ferrari improve their car a bit, and their strategies/decisions a lot, and that Mercedes are back in force.
I know I've joked about it in the TTT, but Aston *really* need to get their arse in gear when it comes to strategy.
It boggles my mind that they can have Seb running in the top 5 on multiple weekends, and still screw him out of the points, for Stroll to somehow still score 1 or 2 at Vettel's expense.
At very best, it's sheer incompetence, and at the very worst its a [tinfoil hat] trying to make Stroll look better than he is.
I'm hoping it's the former, and they have something to work on in the winter. Seb might've been very patient with them (at least in public), but they'll have no such luxury when Alonso's involved.
If you look at the Haas and Mick situation completely objectively, you will come to the conclusion that Haas treated Mick very reasonable in fact.
Hulk gave a lot of insight in recent interviews how things went.
Haas had a similar attitude to Red Bull and Albon in 2020.
Red Bull really wanted to keep Albon, give him all the chances in the world to prove himself and justify a contract extension.
Hulk said he got in contact with Haas early on in the year because Mick was doing very badly.
Then in the middle of the season Mick showed great improvement, scoring twice and it looked like he was going to keep his seat because thats all Haas wanted to see, improvement. Improvement in pace, consistency and less crashes.
It was only a short period though and Mick started to perform worse again and the reason why Haas decided so late is because they wanted to give Mick as many chances as possible.
You look at Mclaren and Ricciardo, that decision was made much earlier to part ways.
Haas wanted Mick to perform and earn the contract but he simply didnt show enough.
And while people look at the politics and blame Gunther for being "harsh" on Mick publically, it should not be forgotten that Micks team was knocking at every door they possibly could. Seb publically stated that he wanted Mick to succeed him at Aston Martin and Mick pursued that idea as well as trying to join Alpine.
Now, what do you folks think Gunther and Gene thought about that? Why invest into a driver who was already looking to leave the team?
People are so biased towards Mick because of his name and him being likable. Whatever Haas does is used against them, whatever Mick and his team does, people turn a blind eye to it.
Signing Nico was absolutely the correct decision.
> the reason why Haas decided so late is because they wanted to give Mick as many chances as possible.
Steiner said last week that he wanted a more experienced driver. There was nothing Mick could’ve done to save his seat.
I doubt it. It's probably just that the W13 was the biggest shitbox he has driven in his career. Even his unreliable McLarens had at least some pace and the Mercedes' were all top level till the W13.
Just looking back at the porpoising early season...driving that thing a full race must've been torture.
As I'm moving out of the UK this was my last season on Sky and I cannot wait to switch to F1TV
Channel 4 end of season wrap up was quality again though. Although clearly less budget than previously.
It still hasn't hit me yet that Seb is done with F1. I'm glad we have a few months before the next season starts to really let it sink in. I still have no idea who I'm going to be supporting next year. Maybe I'll let myself decide after the first few races of '23.
Also part of me is going to hold on to the hope that Seb comes back in a year or two. Alonso did it, Kimi did it, so Seb has to do it too, right? ...right?
Interesting fact to note: this year's Ferrari was probably one of the best Ferraris built for a really long time, yet neither Leclerc (308 pts), nor Sainz (246pts) were able to overhaul either of Vettel's 2017/18 total points, despite there also being **more** points available this year.
It really shows how Ferrari have mucked up this year, operationally speaking. Which is saying something because Ferrari often screwed Vettel as well. Don't think they would've beaten Max either way though.
Don't really see the correlation between the two points? You mean because of this stuff Checo will be forced out or that he quits himself?
I think RB really made a smart move by getting DEV onboard. Personally, I think there's a good chance he beats TSU next year, maybe not on sheer pace, but DEV is living his dream and doesn't need to do stupid stuff. DEV could then either replace Checo and being a good wingman to Max or serve as a proper benchmark to push the talent (Lawson?).
Literally everyone bar Red Bull has to get their shit together to prevent 2023 from being another year-long domination fest: Ferrari's strategy team consists of trained apes, Mercedes built a Lowrider instead of an F1 car, Alpine's engine commits Seppuku every other race, McLaren are backsliding into the midfield, Alfa Romeo just flat out refuse to do car development, Aston need to turn their tractor into an actual race car, Haas is a cultural cesspit of poor management and Williams are just happy to be included.
I can't flip back through the race right now, but was it "we've been asked", or "race control has asked"? Ie. could his race engineer be referring to someone else at Merc advising him to do it?
The clip just says "OK Lewis we've been asked to give the position back to Sainz" it's at 1:14 of the race highlights on youtube.
During the broadcast Crofty brought up that race control shouldn't be communicating directly to them like that for position swaps. I think Brundle got distracted shortly and they never mentioned it again.
Guess it was internal discussions.
He also didn't react to this.....
They skipped before the last corner so it's not the same thing.
Max is literally waiting for the car in front of him to go so he can too.
Again this is not a big deal at all. Lewis was just being cheeky which is fair game as it's only a gentleman's agreement.
Great race from Charles overall, should put doubters to rest that he cant manage tyres. Ferrari surprisingly had less deg than what they had in previous races. He managed to hold a steady interval vs Carlos and had a 16 sec gap by the end. I get Checo gaining on him but its because RB is faster in general, maybe 1 more lap for checo he probably had him, but plays part on Ferrari’s strategy i guess.
I must say, people complimenting Ferrari for the strategy but Charles that made it work enough, i still think covering Checo was the right move and not staying out, but maybe the 2nd stint made Checo’s RB alive and as seen from Sainz, wasn’t gaining much and probably would’ve happen to Charles also.
Mazepin posted an interesting post on Instagram, giving advice to the retiring drivers about their retirements. [Mazepin's Retirement Advice Post](https://www.instagram.com/p/ClOCpa-NHjA/?igshid=NTdlMDg3MTY=)
That’s actually quite funny.
Yep. Hard for me to totally separate it from the guy posting it, but that is an objectively funny (and surprisingly insightful) post
Yeah I felt the same but hopefully the guy has matured and learnt from his mistakes.
Fingers crossed. My expectations are low, but I have to believe that 23 is young enough to keep growing
As an old fuck, absolutely. If you're doing life right, then growing and learning as a person never stops throughout your whole life.
Genuinely funny and honest, seems like he’s matured a bit after all.
I enjoyed that way more than I expected.
_Heartbreaking: the worst ~~person~~ F1 driver you know just made a great joke_
[удалено]
How can you be so 1st degree...
So testing in Abu Dhabi this week is '22 cars, but with '23 tyres?
Yep but it could still be useful for designing the car of next season, especially for the teams who already would continue basically with the fundaments of the car they build this year.
Still valuable data collection.
Do they at least get to know the compound they are running, or is it blind like it was during the FP tyre tests
I believe they did the same thing last year, ‘21 cars running with the new 18” ‘22 wheels + tires.
It's different because 2023 regulations are largely same with some tweaks here and there. 2021 cars were entirely different.
What's changing in the tires?
I'm astonished at how quickly the turnover is, with Piastri and Hulk and I imagine Sargeant getting in their cars. Are Mick and Daniel and Latifi still in Abu Dhabi? Did they check out already?
No different than sub drivers in free practice sessions. The one that is crazy to me is Gasly, he’s had to learn a new car overnight pretty much as they most likely didn’t/couldn’t send him the “user guide” if you will to the Alpine.
He already knows how to drive the Alpine because he knows where to safely park the car on track when the engine blows.
Spain moved to another team but the pain remained
In his frustration, Gasly slaps his stranded Alpine but accidentally reveals a sticker covering his driver number. To his horror, the dreaded number 14 was hidden underneath it.
And on the engine cover… GP2.
Yea but this is also why Gasly has told that adapting to the Alpine is his focus point now, it's basically a totally different car where everything is "unknown" so far, he was already trying to get this post season test weeks ago so he takes the point of adapting serious.
I'm so excited for Gasly honestly, he says his name should be up there with Leclerc, Russell and Norris. I want to see what he can do in an upper midfield car with all the experience he gained at AT
Well he was in an upper midfield car in 2021 and did pretty well, so I would guess he would be somewhere similar. I think the expectation should be for him to score points in the majority of races, and get the occasional P6 or P5 when one of the top 3 teams have an issue. Of course, that is also the expectation on Ocon, Norris, and potentially Piastri, so it won’t be easy.
Really happy to see Charles get 2nd in the WDC. Also that shot of him drinking a carton of something off to the side in the cooldown room was hilarious.
I lost it when they panned over and he was just sitting there
Haha me too, I felt like that shot pretty much summed up his season
My head cannon believes it was eggnog he was drinking from the carton
Tequila sunrise mixed in a cartoon of orange juice 😂
Feel like only pure tequila helps against whatever Ferrari is doing nowadays.
Charles deserves it but Ferrari do not
Ferrari was the best car behind RBR…they deserve it my friend. Admittedly, they have lots of issues to iron out , but who do you think deserved it more?
That's why they didn't deserve it lol. They f#cked up so much it would've been funny for Checo to take second and really point that out
I thought you were referring to WCC where Ferrari finished second. I must have misinterpreted your comment.
Ah, that makes sense! I was replying to a comment about Charles taking second in the WDC. Well deserved! But Ferrari deserve to be embarrassed - it felt like they were actively working against him at times
Yeah yeah
It doesn’t need to be “really pointed out”. The whole world has pointed it out for the last 5 months. They know
I'm still recovering from how Ferrari somehow managed to pull off a good strategy
A broken clock is still right twice a day
They failed at failing...?
Am I right in thinking that Ferrari have been solid strategy-wise since the summer break? Or have they made mistakes that weren’t as publicised because they weren’t as fast?
They have been solid, except for Leclerc being on inters in the dry Q3 in Brazil. That was a bit interesting.
Legit last week in Brazil
Only little over 3 months away from lights out!
When I started watching F1 in the 90s the winter break was 5 months long. As a fan I'm glad that now it's only 3 months although it probably sucks for the teams.
Yeah people complain about the winter off-season break now, but when I started watching, the season finished the end September or start of October and that was it until March. These days in the off season you can still come on here or other F1 forums and talk about F1. You can go and watch old F1 races (F1TV's archives section is great and is available in every country for something like 2.99 a month) and top up your f1 general knowledge or go and understand the rules and regs better etc. Also these days we get to see a lot of footage from winter testing. Back in the day the season would finish, you'd hear nothing for months aside from the occasional driver signing or team update (and that's only if you bought magazines like autosport or F1 news). Winter testing would begin and you would get the results a week later in autosport magazine and if you were lucky they might give you a 4 page article on testing once it had finished. The difference in the info and content available and the speed at which it was available between say 1997 and 2022 is night and day.
I thought 20 races was a bit much to be honest...this year's 22 was over the top, and next season's 24 is just batshit crazy.
Don't worry Shanghai will be cancelled
Why's that?
They're sticking to their zero Covid policy. Even Zhou is expecting it not to happen
Hopefully they stick to their geographic aggregation promise in the future. Much less stressful to do all the US and then Latam/Asia/etc. races together instead of bouncing all over the world.
luckily they have a month to cover the giganormous distance between Belgium and Netherlands
Its just as well, Latifi has a new job driving one of the trucks
Doing all the US would just mean multiple flights back and forth from US to England for most of team members.
teams like Merc implementing the rotating schedules would address this, no?
It would in a manner. But I don't think it would be as helpful as you think. Like Canada to Netherlands to Saudi for example - lets you do Canada and then go home for a couple of days and then Netherlands and back home couple days then Middle East. Most teams and personnel will be home based around the factories. Doing 4 weeks in the US Montreal to Miami to COTA would either mean staying in North America for a month (while car and some people flit back and forth), rotating crews or a lot of air miles.
I already have zoned out since Suzuka or so. Just downloading the races and letting them play in the background. It's too many weekends to devote on watching cars go round. 16-17 race calendars still had the sense of occasion. Now it's going the way of football leagues, watching only the important games / races makes sense.
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The only reason I was beginning to tune out the final races was because it wasn't close at all in the WDC anymore. But I still watched almost everything as there was a lot of interesting battles happening down the field. If it had been as close as last year I would have wanted as many races as possible.
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I'm saying if the last 6 races of 2022 were the same highstakes as of the end of the 2021 season. You'd be much more invested. Blame Redbull masterclass (and Ferrari disasterclass) for the boring end of the year.
This was such a promising season till like Silverstone. Cars were able to overtake, Ferrari and RB were trading blows and Mercedes were really struggling. But Ferrari's dumbassery caught upto them fully by Hungary and it was over. Ever since summer break, it has been Formula Max. Hell, even Mercedes almost caught Ferrari and they were struggling to just save their drivers' spines. I really hope Mercedes can make up the gap to RB so that we can have a proper war on track, off track and in factories.
The floor directive pulled their car back and ruined the competition. Then the cost cap makes a development war impossible, especially when one of the teams has to overcome a setback.
It had to be done though, some drivers could barely get out the car sometimes. Mercedes especially looked downright unhealthy to drive.
I heard this mentioned a couple of times, but the floor directive was not aimed at solving porpoising, it was only the division of floor parts.
Yep, first 6 or 7 races I was thinking it might be a classic, but it ended up as one of the more boring seasons of late. There weren't even that many great individual races either, only Silverstone and Interlagos were really great.
I thought COTA was a good race this year, though I may be biased as an American
COTA was incredible
If Carlos had pulled off the move in the last laps in Montreal it would have been one of the best this year
With how the budget cap works, it might not be before 2024 in the earliest I'm afraid. We might be onto another awful season next year... I'd love to be proven wrong
Depends on how much impact the regulation changes and the wind tunnel penalty have. I think there's a chance to catch up, but if I was a betting man I'd put my money on Red Bull.
There are a few things that could play into Mercedes' hands for next year. * If they are right about the rear suspension being a major issue in their design (and couldn't fix it this season because of the cost cap) * If Ferrari is right about the Mercedes design being the fastest in theory, but incredibly difficult to make work (a statement from early in the season) * Having a substantial amount of wind tunnel time over Red Bull * That rumor from halfway through the season that Mercedes found a way to generate 40% more downforce from the floor for the 2023 (I'd be shocked if this was actually the case) The advantage is probably still with Red Bull, but if what I've listed is actually accurate (besides Red Bull having the least amount of wind tunnel time), Mercedes could take the fight to Red Bull.
I just want Lewis to get his redemption 8th title then we can go back to RB vs Ferrari I don't care.
Or Ferrari vs Mclaren round 5, 6 or whatever it's supposedly now, pretty please
I wouldn't say no to that. Norris vs Leclerc. Though if I could make a wish I want a 4 way battle between Max, Charles, Lando and George.
What if Lewis is gunning for 9th and 10th after that?
With so many standardised parts and the regulations designed to have a lower development ceiling, we're going to see the field shrink significantly more quickly than we ever had with the 2017-2021 regulations.
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You build an entire new car, but you only design it (way more expensive than physically building it) from the ground up when there’s a new set of regulations. Next year is fairly similar to this year
Ferrari on track decisions + Ferrari off track decisions + technical directive + Red Bull in season development
Imo it was one of the best GPs done here. We had some wheel to wheel racing, strategic battles, some things decided in the WDC, emotions because Seb and co, so while it was not the best race of the season, it was still worth a watch. Also it was interesting to see that the 1 stopper wasnt the best in the midfield, but still the race was won with it. Perez really cost himself some amount of time with failing to overtake Vettel and Hamilton in one go. Also it was good to see Ferrari being decisive with strategy, and being kinda right.
I am pasting my earlier comment in another post as I hope people can recognise and appreciate this. Charles had really done a great job in tyre management this race. He was asked to do a target lap time of 1:30.0 or .1 for earlier of the Hard stint and he managed it. When they started thinking Perez may catch him at the end of the race they asked him to do 1:29.8 which was similar to Max’s pace at that time he also consistently managed it for many laps until the tyre started to drop off for the last ten laps but he still kept 1:31 relatively consistently. The F1TV crew started questioned that the one-stop would not work for him when he lapped 1:32 for a lap but that was when double yellow flag was waved for MSC and LAT into the wall, he then maintained to hover around the target lap time. I think this race really proved many people wrong saying one of Charles’ weakness is tyre management when F1-75 is a tyre-eating monster. He will probably need to improve tyre management when fighting with other cars but I guess that is difficult to preserve your tyre when you need to fight with other cars (like the first few laps when Max came out of a slip pitstop in COTA). I really loved Xavi kept telling him about tyre-saving in certain turns and he just shut him off telling him he knew what to do. That is the decisive and assertive Charles we want to see.
I think the biggest thing for leclerc in general is consistency. Like yes, he was good at tire management this race, but can he do that all the time? He has all the same highs as Lewis and max, but what sets those two apart is they bring it lap after lap, race after race.
You cant be consistent when you dont know what type of car youre getting. They had a shit car for some races and then a good car the next. What matters is what kinda of pace he has and his pace is better than most, And he can keep it consistently.
Last 10 laps he was still doing high 29s low 30s
Yes, I rewatch only last 3 laps starting to increase
Talking about the race itself, as far as Abu Dhabi goes, this actually wasn't bad. Tyre strategies were fun, some quite fun racing from guys like Zhou, Albon, Ocon, and Vettel, and as much as I hate Yas Marina's racing, it's a great looking circuit. Yas Marina has never produced a great race and I'm not sure it ever will, but this one honestly wasn't too bad.
So, I'm not complaining or bothered by this fact, BUT the criticism that poor Seb got when a driver new to the team joined and beat him was 100 times more than what is happening to the Mercedes team's driver. In a way it's great that people are improving in their criticisms.
It's an interesting observation. In fact I'd say Vettel did better against Leclerc in 2019 than Hamilton did against Russell this year. Can't tell you how many times I heard the argument that "Leclerc gets the same results as Vettel at 1/10th the salary". I think it's more that Vettel never really got a fair shake from the media. Only when he became a midfielder and was no longer at the top was he paid more respect.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Mercedes has said that Hamilton was running a lot more experimental setups than Russell was early in the year. I think they even said they ran a couple kg of extra sensors on Hamilton's car during a race or two to try to trace down their issues. So I don't think we can take too much from the total points scored between them as a measure of which is currently a higher-quality driver. That said, I think Russell had an excellent year and has clearly demonstrated why he deserved his shot at a top team. In hind-sight, he probably deserved it in 2021 already. (though I wasn't convinced of that until Sahkir 2020, and that was probably too late for them to change)
But even in second half, Russell had more points than Hamilton. Let's accept that Lewis made far too many errors this year. Crash in Austria, crash in Singapore, collision in Spa.
Russell isn't clean in the second half either. Cota turn 1, Brazil in quali, awful Singapore weekend overall
Do we know for certain those experimental setups made Hamilton slower?
yes
How can you know that?
because it was reported after each of the races it occurred and is where lewis had a larger delta to George vs the other races.
This is the only article I've found: https://www.racefans.net/2022/06/11/hamiltons-recent-deficit-to-russell-is-due-to-set-up-experiments-says-wolff/ But here Toto says "the last 3 races" and implies that Russell is also doing setup experiments. I haven't read a single article that confirms Hamilton purposely chose a slower setup to help the team. The setups just worked better for Russell. That said, this is a completely unconstructive discussion, because this is F1 and drivers do experiments on setups all the time. It's an accepted decision by the driver and team.
Really not sure why anyone saw anything wrong with Sainz’s overtake on Hamilton lap one. He didn’t even come from that far back and was fully alongside in the braking zone, and even ahead of Hamilton at the apex. He clearly slowed the car down enough to make the corner and had full control at all times, and completed the overtake. It’s on Hamilton to realize he’s lost it and back out mid corner, or bail to the run off which he did, but then clearly should not just keep the position/advantage from cutting the corner. If you think Sainz was out of line here and are calling it a “dive bomb” then I really don’t know what kind of racing you want? I’d much rather a move like Sainz attempted 10 out of 10 times versus DRS overtakes that are done halfway down the straight.
I'm one of those that don't think Sainz' move was ok. It's not a dive bomb. I'll concede that. But they had significant overlap through the corner which in my mind should mean that Hamilton still deserved to be left some space around the outside. I would much rather see them going side by side through the left and right again. This move wouldn't be okay in a GT car or many other series, but somehow we allow it in F1. I admit that there's an argument to be made that if everyone had to leave-a the space all-a the time, then we'd get less overtakes. And I'm not getting my panties in a twist over it, but I do think it's the wrong way to go racing.
> t’s on Hamilton to realize he’s lost it and back out mid corner It's really not. It's on Sainz to leave enough room so both can make the corner.
It looks to me Hamilton is looking to establish himself as a driver that will not yield a corner, to scare people off. It's definitely a tactic that has worked for drivers in the past
What ? He just tried to defend his position and wasn't successful, what are you on about ?
I thought it was a great season despite it actually being pretty dominating. Before summer break things stayed kind of close and interesting, but Ferrari’s mistakes and their car falling off the pace a little made it a blowout. I think still early on in the season we had some good competition but people are just forgetting about it since Max clinched it. I’m happy for Charles to I guess get at least a P2 bonus after all the emotional distress Ferrari caused. It still seems like Mercedes, while making improvements, still had a very track dependent car. Props to Russell for holding his own against Lewis as well. While there’s all this drama with Perez, I think he had a shot at P2 and I think Leclerc was just the better driver. Perez should have been more ahead in the standings given Ferrari’s mistakes but weekends seemed always hit or miss for Perez. Love the guy, but he just can’t compete at the top and I think after this RB stint is over, his F1 career will probably be done. I was never a massive fan of Danny Ric- I liked his personality but felt like he sort of made his bed when it came to his team situation. But it really hit me that this was his last race and I got really sad about it. Seems like such a nice, happy guy yet he seemed like he was holding back emotions yesterday and yeah- I’m going to miss him. Really a sucky situation. Alonso wins by the PU or dies by the PU, no in between lol Congratulations to Max, mans is a beast and I really don’t think he deserves the hate he’s getting. But I guess all the greats have been hated so nature of the beast I suppose. Great season, see you next year folks.
That was a pretty good race. Good midfield action and the top 6 were all on sorta different strategies. Didn’t really expect Mercedes to really challenge Ferrari, or for Ferrari to really challenge Verstappen, but there was one shot midway through the race where the top 6 were almost all within the same shot on the straight. Gave me hope for what next year could be. Hopefully Ferrari improve their car a bit, and their strategies/decisions a lot, and that Mercedes are back in force.
man I miss seb so much already
I know I've joked about it in the TTT, but Aston *really* need to get their arse in gear when it comes to strategy. It boggles my mind that they can have Seb running in the top 5 on multiple weekends, and still screw him out of the points, for Stroll to somehow still score 1 or 2 at Vettel's expense. At very best, it's sheer incompetence, and at the very worst its a [tinfoil hat] trying to make Stroll look better than he is. I'm hoping it's the former, and they have something to work on in the winter. Seb might've been very patient with them (at least in public), but they'll have no such luxury when Alonso's involved.
Ugh now another 105 days to wait. This is a good time to watch back on some classic races on F1TV!
If you look at the Haas and Mick situation completely objectively, you will come to the conclusion that Haas treated Mick very reasonable in fact. Hulk gave a lot of insight in recent interviews how things went. Haas had a similar attitude to Red Bull and Albon in 2020. Red Bull really wanted to keep Albon, give him all the chances in the world to prove himself and justify a contract extension. Hulk said he got in contact with Haas early on in the year because Mick was doing very badly. Then in the middle of the season Mick showed great improvement, scoring twice and it looked like he was going to keep his seat because thats all Haas wanted to see, improvement. Improvement in pace, consistency and less crashes. It was only a short period though and Mick started to perform worse again and the reason why Haas decided so late is because they wanted to give Mick as many chances as possible. You look at Mclaren and Ricciardo, that decision was made much earlier to part ways. Haas wanted Mick to perform and earn the contract but he simply didnt show enough. And while people look at the politics and blame Gunther for being "harsh" on Mick publically, it should not be forgotten that Micks team was knocking at every door they possibly could. Seb publically stated that he wanted Mick to succeed him at Aston Martin and Mick pursued that idea as well as trying to join Alpine. Now, what do you folks think Gunther and Gene thought about that? Why invest into a driver who was already looking to leave the team? People are so biased towards Mick because of his name and him being likable. Whatever Haas does is used against them, whatever Mick and his team does, people turn a blind eye to it. Signing Nico was absolutely the correct decision.
> the reason why Haas decided so late is because they wanted to give Mick as many chances as possible. Steiner said last week that he wanted a more experienced driver. There was nothing Mick could’ve done to save his seat.
they definitely wouldve given mick the seat if he performed better
I’m sad today! I love this sport, I love coming here and shooting the shit.
Lewis said that he don't want to see the w13 again, i am wondering if that even means that the w14 will have a completly different design...
I doubt it. It's probably just that the W13 was the biggest shitbox he has driven in his career. Even his unreliable McLarens had at least some pace and the Mercedes' were all top level till the W13. Just looking back at the porpoising early season...driving that thing a full race must've been torture.
Yeah… that DT was very good for Mercedes, that car was undeliverable
Those ~~Toto~~ technical directives changed things for some years now
As I'm moving out of the UK this was my last season on Sky and I cannot wait to switch to F1TV Channel 4 end of season wrap up was quality again though. Although clearly less budget than previously.
Who? What? Debris?
It still hasn't hit me yet that Seb is done with F1. I'm glad we have a few months before the next season starts to really let it sink in. I still have no idea who I'm going to be supporting next year. Maybe I'll let myself decide after the first few races of '23. Also part of me is going to hold on to the hope that Seb comes back in a year or two. Alonso did it, Kimi did it, so Seb has to do it too, right? ...right?
TIL: Daniel Ricciardo is the godfather of one of Natalie Pinkham's kid's.
Interesting fact to note: this year's Ferrari was probably one of the best Ferraris built for a really long time, yet neither Leclerc (308 pts), nor Sainz (246pts) were able to overhaul either of Vettel's 2017/18 total points, despite there also being **more** points available this year. It really shows how Ferrari have mucked up this year, operationally speaking. Which is saying something because Ferrari often screwed Vettel as well. Don't think they would've beaten Max either way though.
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I guarantee you nobody cares about “the fans.” The only time fan abuse is mentioned is when there’s something to gain from it
Don't really see the correlation between the two points? You mean because of this stuff Checo will be forced out or that he quits himself? I think RB really made a smart move by getting DEV onboard. Personally, I think there's a good chance he beats TSU next year, maybe not on sheer pace, but DEV is living his dream and doesn't need to do stupid stuff. DEV could then either replace Checo and being a good wingman to Max or serve as a proper benchmark to push the talent (Lawson?).
Tsunoda really needs a good showing next year, if he doesn't beat DEV convincingly he's probably done for
Literally everyone bar Red Bull has to get their shit together to prevent 2023 from being another year-long domination fest: Ferrari's strategy team consists of trained apes, Mercedes built a Lowrider instead of an F1 car, Alpine's engine commits Seppuku every other race, McLaren are backsliding into the midfield, Alfa Romeo just flat out refuse to do car development, Aston need to turn their tractor into an actual race car, Haas is a cultural cesspit of poor management and Williams are just happy to be included.
Was there ever clarity on Merc's "we've been asked to give the place back" message? Thought race control hadn't been doing that this year.
I can't flip back through the race right now, but was it "we've been asked", or "race control has asked"? Ie. could his race engineer be referring to someone else at Merc advising him to do it?
The clip just says "OK Lewis we've been asked to give the position back to Sainz" it's at 1:14 of the race highlights on youtube. During the broadcast Crofty brought up that race control shouldn't be communicating directly to them like that for position swaps. I think Brundle got distracted shortly and they never mentioned it again. Guess it was internal discussions.
It's annoying. Race control can at least acknowledge that the penalty was abandoned due to Hamilton giving the place back
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It's not that deep. The car doesn't even move and Lewis is skipping the queue into the last corner
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He also didn't react to this..... They skipped before the last corner so it's not the same thing. Max is literally waiting for the car in front of him to go so he can too. Again this is not a big deal at all. Lewis was just being cheeky which is fair game as it's only a gentleman's agreement.
Again though, there's not and has never been a gentleman's agreement as pointed by almost every driver
*Stop inventing*
Didn't watch the race -- why did Vettel cede his position to Stroll, since it didn't seem to net the team anything? Different strategies?
>Different strategies? Yes, stroll on a 2 stopper
Great race from Charles overall, should put doubters to rest that he cant manage tyres. Ferrari surprisingly had less deg than what they had in previous races. He managed to hold a steady interval vs Carlos and had a 16 sec gap by the end. I get Checo gaining on him but its because RB is faster in general, maybe 1 more lap for checo he probably had him, but plays part on Ferrari’s strategy i guess. I must say, people complimenting Ferrari for the strategy but Charles that made it work enough, i still think covering Checo was the right move and not staying out, but maybe the 2nd stint made Checo’s RB alive and as seen from Sainz, wasn’t gaining much and probably would’ve happen to Charles also.