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*****OFFICIAL FORMULA ONE GRAND PRIX THREAD***** (1 Viewer)

Red Bull moving to Honda power units is the most intriguing off-season change IMO.   The Milton Keynes based team has arguably had the best chassis in recent years but Honda has been woefully short of speed and reliability when paired with McLaren and STR.  If Red Bull-Honda slips back, the resulting two team race will be a lot less interesting.

I'm also curious to see how second year driver Charles LeClerc does with Ferrari.    LeClerc won consecutive championships in F3 and F2 before impressing as a rookie with Sauber last year.  He now moves up to the highest profile seat in the sport.  The Scuderia has had some off-season turmoil with Mattia Binotto replacing Maurizio Arrivabene as team principal.

The American owned Haas team remains pretty much unchanged after finishing fifth in the 2018 constructors championship.  The biggest change is title sponsorship from obscure UK based energy drink Rich Energy.  It's not sold over here and reportedly is very hard to find in Europe as well.  I hope the check clears.

 
Interesting look at both screenshot - different drivers, and they each have different configurations on the steering wheel.

 
So much for all the talk of Ferrari with the big advantage this winter...

ETA: Haas with a good qualifying run, with 2 in the top 10, Red Bull recovered to put Verstappen on row 2

 
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The guy who led into turn 1 on lap 1 wins by 20 seconds. Top 3 clear of the entire field by nearly a full minute. Just 6 cars on the lead lap.

man I don’t know how you F1 fans stand all that excitement 😀

Indycar at COTA next week - I don’t know what to expect but there will most likely to be a lot more than 3 or 4 cars with a chance to win.

 
Bahrain on deck this week.  For being just the 2nd race of the season, this is a pretty important race imo.

If Mercedes dominate again, its going to be a rather boring constructors championship all season, and perhaps limits the Driver championship to Bottas and Hamilton.

I suspect Ferrari will bounce back and show the pace they had at Barcelona.  One of the talking points coming out of Australia was that the track in Melbourne was much bumpier and that impacted Ferrari's setup more than Mercedes.

 
I didn't even realize the season started.  Oof. Who is televising this year?

 
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Eephus said:
Apparently neither did Williams
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Looking at the drivers new homes is interesting.  Why did Kimi fall so far ride wise?

Gasly to Red Bull is interesting imo.  Riccardo always seemed to be in the middle of some weirdness every time I watched.  Gasly should be boring in comparison.

 
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Kimi is 39 and has been in F1 long enough to have competed against both Jos and Max Verstappen.  It makes sense for Ferrari to get younger so there's some continuity when Vettel retires.  Raikkonen needed to go to a Ferrari-affiliated team which narrowed the choices to Alfa (Sauber) and Haas.

Ricciardo leaving Red Bull was the domino that initiated many of the off-season changes.  It's a risky career move going from #2 driver on the third best team to be a co-#1 on mid-pack Renault.   It's a factory team with potential but Enstone hasn't been a top three constructor in over a decade.

Gasly's first race for Red Bull didn't go well.  The team messed up his qualifying strategy so he started near the back.  Then he spent most of his race trying and failing to pass the guy he replaced in F1 driving an inferior sister car.  Gasly needs a better result in Bahrain.

 
Eephus said:
Apparently neither did Williams
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I loved the interviews on the grid before the start at Australia - Williams guys basically saying they had no business in the race. Most of the others admitting they had nothing for the car directly in front of them - it's not a good look. Needless to say I fell asleep after the first stops.

 
ffldrew said:
I loved the interviews on the grid before the start at Australia - Williams guys basically saying they had no business in the race. Most of the others admitting they had nothing for the car directly in front of them - it's not a good look. Needless to say I fell asleep after the first stops.
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It's sad to see Williams so completely out to lunch.  They supposedly stopped developing their 2018 car mid-season to focus forward on 2019.  Then they roll this turd out of the garage too late to take part in all of pre-season testing.  Now they've sacked their technical director and are flailing away at fundamental flaws in this year's chassis.  Melbourne is only one race but 3 seconds per lap is an enormous deficit to make up.  The FW42 will improve but their competitors aren't standing still either.

 
Ferrari fastest in both Friday sessions in Bahrain.  Mercedes is a clear second with a real dogfight shaping up in mid-pack.

Williams is still 3-4 seconds off the pace and nearly a full second behind the next slowest car.

 
I'll put in my annual plug for Formula 2.  The season starts this weekend with a pair of races in Bahrain.  F2 is a spec series with engines producing around 600 HP.   Three current F1 rookies were the top three in last year's  F2 championship.

The race weekends are Saturday-Sunday doubleheaders of short races.  A tire change is required in the Saturday race but not in the shorter Sunday event.  The top 8 on Saturday start in inverted order on Sunday.  Gimmicks like these, coupled with huge talent differences between F1 Junior team prodigies and wankers with rich fathers, make for much crazier action than happens in F1.

I was worried ESPN would move F2 to their Plus tier this year but the schedule says it's ESPN3 this weekend.  Fingers crossed.

 
Ferrari re-found their pace - but interestingly, they may already be looking at a changing of the guard.

Leclerc was ordered to back off of Vettel in Australia, and wins the pole in Bahrain.

 
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Mick Schumacher (son of Michael) finished 8th in his F2 debut and gets to start from pole in Sunday's sprint race.

 
Very strange for both Renaults to retire almost simultaneously in the same sector.

The gremlins followed Ricciardo over from Red Bull.

 
Ferrari and Mercedes split the honors in Friday practice with Vettel tops in FP1 and Bottas in FP2.  Verstappen looks like he'll be competitive in Shanghai.

The midfield battle is tight about one second behind the top three teams.  Williams is a further 1.5 seconds adrift.

 
I love middle-of-the-night qualifying - wake up and watch the replay :thumbup:

Its been such an interesting start to the season, even with Mercedes off to a dominant start.  Ferrari looked to be fastest coming out of Barcelona, then they laid an egg in Australia.  Back to Bahrain, and Ferrari - and Leclerc - looked like they had it all figured out, only for reliability to come into question.  Ferrari makes a few early changes to the set-up before China - but it looks like Mercedes are back on top - speed-wise.

Oh - and love the camera view in China of the cars coming off the final turn towards the finish line...

 
Sinn Fein said:
I love middle-of-the-night qualifying - wake up and watch the replay :thumbup:
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I love Asian races.  11PM start time here.  I was able to watch qualifying live and then switch over to watch the last four innings of the Giants-Rockies 18 inning marathon.

I wonder how much patience Red Bull will have with Gasly.  He finally made Q3 but is still 8 tenths down to his teammate.  RBR has shown a quick trigger finger before although there are no obvious replacements in the system except Kvyat. 

 
Eephus said:
Crap race
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Finally got around to watching last night.

Its been an odd season - for all of Ferrari's promise in pre-season testing, they seem closer to Red Bull than Mercedes at the moment, and yet, I don't really have the sense that Mercedes is going to run away with the title this year - despite going 1-2 in each of the first 3 races.  I keep waiting for things to click with Ferrari.

I do think Ferrari are their own worst enemy - team rules, reliability, and in-race tactics have cost them points in each of the last two races.

The most interesting story lines might just be the intra-team battles.

 
Ferrari had better hope the old truism "the championship doesn't begin until the European races" still holds true.

They've dug themselves a hole while Mercedes has captured maximum points (except for the fastest lap bonus).

 
Sinn Fein said:
Just when Williams thought their season could not get worse - George Russel's car was damaged when a man hole cover got loose and damaged the underside of his car.

And, then, for comic relief - the recovery truck hit a bridge, which then caused hydraulic fluid to leak all over the car...

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/48065053
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Williams will need to change the chassis because of damage and so regulation dictates he will not be able to run again until Saturday's final practice.

That seems like a pretty severe penalty for an issue that was not the fault of the team or driver. But rules is rules i guess.

 
Ferrari continues to stumble through the season - Leclerc with a youthful mistake to knock him out of Q2, while Vettel still has to qualify for Q3 when they open the track again.

ETA - just saw the pit-lane start penalty for Gasly - meaning Red Bull won't have 2 cars at the front either.

 
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Accidentally caught the results this morning before I had a chance to sit down and watch the race.  Seems like a straightforward race - which is surprising considering the incidents in practice and qualifying.

4 races in, and it still only seems like Mercedes had the best car in 1 race.  Barcelona will probably be the make or break race for the season.  Ferrari obviously performed well in the pre-season testing, and they need their drivers to step up and deliver.  But, I think most teams will be brining upgrades to the race, so its hard to compare the pre-season testing results to what will show up in a couple of weeks.  :shrug:

 
Baku is a fun circuit to look at but the racing can be routine if there's no safety car.  Ferrari needed to split the Mercs in qualifying or lap one.  Leclerc's mistake yesterday took away one of Ferrari's bullets and the outcome was pretty clear by half distance. 

In the midfield, good weekend for Racing Point and McLaren.  Bad weekend for Haas and Renault. 

Another horrible weekend for Williams.  Russell's car got eaten by a manhole cover in Friday practice and Kubica walled it good on Saturday.  Their mechanics didn't get much sightseeing (or sleep) in.

As usual, the two F2 races provided a lot more action.  The Saturday Feature was better than today's sprint race.  Mick Schumacher had a nice drive today from the last row to 6th, although a lot of the gains were from attrition.

 
RIP Senna and Ratzenberger, 25 years gone.  A couple of weeks ago, there was a thread about "where were you?" sports moments.  The day Senna died is one of those events for me.

The Senna movie is still on Netflix.  It's a documentary that's worthy of its legendary subject.

 
The European season starts Sunday at Barcelona.  Ferrari pushed up their engine upgrade to try to compete with Mercedes.  It had originally been targeted for Canada next month.  I guess that can work out in one of two ways.

 
Eephus said:
The European season starts Sunday at Barcelona.  Ferrari pushed up their engine upgrade to try to compete with Mercedes.  It had originally been targeted for Canada next month.  I guess that can work out in one of two ways.
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I don't think they had any choice - but it carries a certain risk. 

Given how far they fell behind Mercedes at the start of the season, they had to stop the bleeding.  But, since they are only allowed 3 engines in the season, and each one expected to last 6-8 races - this puts Ferrari at risk later in the season for grid penalties.

 
Sinn Fein said:
Interesting reading about the first practice session - Ferrari ran an old engine,
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What's happening at Ferrari?

Andrew Benson

BBC Sport’s chief F1 writer

An update on Ferrari's upgraded engine. Ferrari told me this morning that it wasn't in the car today.

But they've just apologised for the error and said it has been in since this morning. So think of me as a conduit for their apology to you lot.

 
Williams showed some improvement in Friday practice.  They're still slowest but are now within a half second of their closest competitor.

 
Eephus said:
I saw four replies and I thought somebody new had entered the thread :kicksrock:
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I wish...  I enjoy our chats, but I don't know why this is not more popular. 

I am fascinated by the engineering that goes into the car - from the engine to the aerodynamics.  I like driving skills needed to get around these circuits.  I also like the qualification process and strategy.  

I get that there is not as much passing on race-day, at least not much in the front - but again for me, I still enjoy the performance of the cars and drivers.  And, from a competitive standpoint, it is really just Mercedes and Ferrari right now - but I suspect that is cyclical, and Mercedes is just on top of their game, and have two great drivers, right now.

I suppose it helps that I like the Mercedes team, but I also enjoy seeing Haas, Renault, and McLaren fighting for position.

:shrug:

 
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