MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Yes, the starts have been something of a dice throw so far, with second place seeming about as good a position to start as first, due to the strong tow down the straight. This race is certainly not settled yet.
F1 2020
- Thread starter 1%er
- Start date
Yes, the starts have been something of a dice throw so far, with second place seeming about as good a position to start as first, due to the strong tow down the straight. This race is certainly not settled yet.
Lord Camomile
Yipchaa!
I really don't know all that much about F1, but from Merc's point of view wouldn't they prefer someone like Bottas who will basically set Hamilton up and get a comfy 1-2, rather than Ricciardo who will try and beat him and put things at risk?
cybershot
Well-Known Member
Merc for the most part will let them race. Hence it’s wasted.
1%er
Well-Known Member
He's doing good almost always 2nd, like poor old Massa in the old Ferrari days of Schumacher, his team mate is a GOAT so just unlucky timing for him
1%er
Well-Known Member
Not like last week when he ran out of things to says waiting to speak to Gasly
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
I don’t accept the premise that F1 has such serious structural problems that almost ripping up the format and starting with something new is justified. It’s a fun idea, but solutions to fix whatever problems F1 has should be much more evolutionary than revolutionary. The distribution of prize money, to prevent smaller teams getting locked into a cycle of relative underperformance is already being addressed in the new Concorde agreement and no doubt next time its renewed it will go further in the direction of levelling the playing field.
Car and track design is being improved with the aim of allowing the cars to get closer to each other through fast corners. I’m optimistic the 2021 rules (delayed into 2022) will give better racing. Already now the field spread is remarkably tight in most races and 2-3 second gaps are common right through the field. Yes, Merc have been dominating, but they don’t open a 20 second gap to the rest of the field within 9 or 10 laps, then lap everyone up to 4th or 5th as Schumacher used to repeatedly do.
A lot of the “let’s fix F1“ ideas which get thrown around seem gimmicky or designed to increase random chance variability (like reverse grid quali races). I agree with beesonthewhatnow, you’ve got to keep the continuity of the sport going, and tweak rather than upend the rule book.
In so many ways it’s been the shittest of years, but this novel F1 calendar is one of the few silver linings for me. I remember the months when we were wondering how they might be able to race at all, so to get a vintage year with exciting different tracks is a great result. Yes the “Lewis keeps on winning” whiners will continue to bleat, but let him set his records now and he will he gone into a full time political activism retirement soon enough.
Bottas is Merc’s wet dream. They couldn’t have a better second driver. Fast enough to finish right behind Lewis most weekends and chillaxed enough to accept his defeats without causing trouble or playing mind games on Lewis. He is no doubt doing the job they envisaged for him when he was hired, even if he was not told that him being no.2 to Lewis would do them just fine.
a_chap
When the world came apart, where were you?
My solution to F1's "problems" is, and always has been, this: leave the regulations alone.
Leave them alone. Don't keep fucking changing them!
The teams with the deepest pockets adapt to the new regulations faster than poorer teams. The gap between fastest and slowest narrows as the season progresses and they then... shift the goalposts again! So, at the start of the next season, the best financed teams are, once again, on top.
Unless it's a rule-change for safety Leave The Fucking Regulations Alone.
Just watched the highlights on C4 
managed to dodge the result all day and someone messaged me to say Hamilton won just as I switched it on FFS 
What a race. A lot of calamity and so many DNF (most for a while?) but also some quality overtaking down the field.
Fair play to Albon, even though I was hoping Danny Ric would get the podium.
Great stuff from Kimi on the radio
managed to dodge the result all day and someone messaged me to say Hamilton won just as I switched it on FFS What a race. A lot of calamity and so many DNF (most for a while?) but also some quality overtaking down the field.
Fair play to Albon, even though I was hoping Danny Ric would get the podium.
Great stuff from Kimi on the radio
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
fuck me that's awesome.
I watched most of the race but not the before and after as I was tending to a BBQ. Wish I'd seen that live.
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Kimi really needs his engineer upgraded to one who answers his questions, rather than the current guy who seems to always give him the brush off.Great stuff from Kimi on the radio
1%er
Well-Known Member
Toto rubbishes Mercedes for sale rumour
Daimler has “no intent” of selling its Mercedes Formula 1 team and “nothing is going to change that” says Toto Wolff. Although Mercedes signed the new Concorde Agreement, committing the team’s future to Formula 1 until 2025, rumours of a possible sale have continued. The latest, spearheaded by former team boss Eddie Jordan, claimed title sponsor Ineos was planning a $700 million bid for the team.
According to the Irishman, Mercedes and Ineos were close to agreeing terms. “The ownership of the team is going to be taken over by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos,” Jordan said, “The Ineos name is already on the side of the car anyway and they have this technological partnership so this is a nice way out for Mercedes. The team will be called Ineos but it will still be run from the factory in Brackley and Mercedes will retain a 30 per cent share in it. It will not be known as Mercedes any more and Toto Wolff, the team principal, will no longer be in charge. It has become difficult for them. How can they keep winning? How can they improve on what they have already done? They can’t. Toto’s reputation as one of the great team leaders in the history of the sport is already secure. What he has achieved at Mercedes puts him in the same league as Ron Dennis at McLaren and Jean Todt at Ferrari but all good things come to an end.”
Wolff, however, says there is no truth to the report. “People pick up bits and pieces and construct a story around it,” the Mercedes motorsport boss told reporters. “Daimler has no intent in giving up the team and Ineos has no interest in buying a majority of the team and calling it like this and I have no reason to depart from my shareholding. So plenty of things that are made up. The future of the team is absolutely clear. It’s the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team and nothing is going to change that.” Ineos, one of the world’s largest chemical producers, teamed up with Mercedes at the start of this year, signing a five-year $100m deal with the reigning World Champions.
Daimler has “no intent” of selling its Mercedes Formula 1 team and “nothing is going to change that” says Toto Wolff. Although Mercedes signed the new Concorde Agreement, committing the team’s future to Formula 1 until 2025, rumours of a possible sale have continued. The latest, spearheaded by former team boss Eddie Jordan, claimed title sponsor Ineos was planning a $700 million bid for the team.
According to the Irishman, Mercedes and Ineos were close to agreeing terms. “The ownership of the team is going to be taken over by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos,” Jordan said, “The Ineos name is already on the side of the car anyway and they have this technological partnership so this is a nice way out for Mercedes. The team will be called Ineos but it will still be run from the factory in Brackley and Mercedes will retain a 30 per cent share in it. It will not be known as Mercedes any more and Toto Wolff, the team principal, will no longer be in charge. It has become difficult for them. How can they keep winning? How can they improve on what they have already done? They can’t. Toto’s reputation as one of the great team leaders in the history of the sport is already secure. What he has achieved at Mercedes puts him in the same league as Ron Dennis at McLaren and Jean Todt at Ferrari but all good things come to an end.”
Wolff, however, says there is no truth to the report. “People pick up bits and pieces and construct a story around it,” the Mercedes motorsport boss told reporters. “Daimler has no intent in giving up the team and Ineos has no interest in buying a majority of the team and calling it like this and I have no reason to depart from my shareholding. So plenty of things that are made up. The future of the team is absolutely clear. It’s the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team and nothing is going to change that.” Ineos, one of the world’s largest chemical producers, teamed up with Mercedes at the start of this year, signing a five-year $100m deal with the reigning World Champions.
Lord Camomile
Yipchaa!
Limejuice
Well-Known Member
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
If the FIA try to punish Hamilton/Mercedes for standing up to racism it would will be a clusterfuck
You’re right of course, and they know it. It only makes sense as a warning shot across Lewis’s bows in response to him publicly blaming race control for the crash at the restart. Michael Masi has already gone on record saying how offensive it is for people to imply the FIA procedures were unsafe.
I hope Masi gets put back in his box by someone more senior, because the last thing F1 needs is a culture where drivers are inhibited from raising safety concerns because the Race Director is too insecure to accept being questioned.
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Limejuice
Well-Known Member
Alas, the top bods in the FIA are under the ambivalent thumb of Mr Todt, Monsieur le President, whose resolve has the structural strength of a Kit-kat.
Limejuice
Well-Known Member
I get the FIA rule about political slogans. Imagine a driver wearing a 'Vote for Trump' t-shirt on a podium (assuming a driver wanted to lose every sponsor right down to the manufacturer of his athlete's-foot cream). However...
F1 has embraced the anti-racism message. It would be strange to jump on a pithy example of that message on a t-shirt. F1 has already nailed its support to the wall here. And it's not party political, surely? Is the FIA in tune with F1, or not? The inconsistency seems illogical, apart from being just wrong-headed.
This is about to become an example of The Streisand Effect. When the attempt to suppress a message only serves to amplify it beyond all proportion to its original impact.
Some social media people, it seems, don't like winners using their moment to highlight a cause close to their heart. Well, what's the point of winning if you can't say, in as much time it takes up to read a t-shirt, 'this is what I think'?
F1 has embraced the anti-racism message. It would be strange to jump on a pithy example of that message on a t-shirt. F1 has already nailed its support to the wall here. And it's not party political, surely? Is the FIA in tune with F1, or not? The inconsistency seems illogical, apart from being just wrong-headed.
This is about to become an example of The Streisand Effect. When the attempt to suppress a message only serves to amplify it beyond all proportion to its original impact.
Some social media people, it seems, don't like winners using their moment to highlight a cause close to their heart. Well, what's the point of winning if you can't say, in as much time it takes up to read a t-shirt, 'this is what I think'?
1%er
Well-Known Member
Lewis Hamilton not under investigation (but only because no-one complained)
Lewis Hamilton will not now face an investigation by the FIA over the t-shirt he wore at the Tuscan Grand Prix. It was thought the six-time F1 champion may have breached FIA statutes with the t-shirt that highlighted an act of police brutality in the US, and calling for the arrest of those involved. During the now customary pre-race anti-racism demonstration, in his immediate post-race tv interview after winning his 90th grand prix, and again while he stood on the podium, Hamilton wore a t-shirt with the message 'Arrest that cops who killed Breonna Taylor'. On the rear was a picture of Taylor and the words 'Say her name'. The 26-year-old medical worker was shot and killed in March by plain-clothes police officers who mistakenly raided her home in Louisville, Kentucky.
The FIA had initially stated the matter was "under active consideration". However, no complaint was made to the stewards at Mugello about the potentially offensive t-shirt, while the FIA will not be investigating Mercedes driver Hamilton personally. Instead, world motor sport's governing body is to undertake a review of its pre- and post-race guidelines on what can and cannot be worn, and is due to issue a clarification to that effect. The suggestion is t-shirts or other apparel of the nature worn by Hamilton on Sunday are unlikely to be tolerated in the future.
Naturally, the t-shirts proclaiming 'End racism', as worn by all the drivers at present during the pre-race anti-racism demonstration, and the 'Black Lives Matter' t-shirt, as previously worn by Hamilton, will continue to be allowed. While one of the officers involved has since been sacked, and two others placed on administrative duties, no criminal charges have been filed against any of the trio.
Lewis Hamilton will not now face an investigation by the FIA over the t-shirt he wore at the Tuscan Grand Prix. It was thought the six-time F1 champion may have breached FIA statutes with the t-shirt that highlighted an act of police brutality in the US, and calling for the arrest of those involved. During the now customary pre-race anti-racism demonstration, in his immediate post-race tv interview after winning his 90th grand prix, and again while he stood on the podium, Hamilton wore a t-shirt with the message 'Arrest that cops who killed Breonna Taylor'. On the rear was a picture of Taylor and the words 'Say her name'. The 26-year-old medical worker was shot and killed in March by plain-clothes police officers who mistakenly raided her home in Louisville, Kentucky.
The FIA had initially stated the matter was "under active consideration". However, no complaint was made to the stewards at Mugello about the potentially offensive t-shirt, while the FIA will not be investigating Mercedes driver Hamilton personally. Instead, world motor sport's governing body is to undertake a review of its pre- and post-race guidelines on what can and cannot be worn, and is due to issue a clarification to that effect. The suggestion is t-shirts or other apparel of the nature worn by Hamilton on Sunday are unlikely to be tolerated in the future.
Naturally, the t-shirts proclaiming 'End racism', as worn by all the drivers at present during the pre-race anti-racism demonstration, and the 'Black Lives Matter' t-shirt, as previously worn by Hamilton, will continue to be allowed. While one of the officers involved has since been sacked, and two others placed on administrative duties, no criminal charges have been filed against any of the trio.
Got to love the F1 gossip, but I really miss the politics now Bernie is no longer there
