Car & Bike Formula 1 2018 Discussion thread

Brendan Hartley is one of the finest drivers on the grid. He'd beat anyone on the current F1 grid in an LMP1 car. As you may know, arguably WEC requires far more skill than Formula 1. To call the WEC champion "abysmal" is pushing it far.

By the way, the Red Bull driver academy is the best, bar none. The drivers who go through Toro Rosso are carefully picked as the best incoming talents on the grid. Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo are proven race winners, and each worthy of championships. Sebastian Bourdais is a multiple Champcar champion, Sebastien Buemi is a Formula E champion, and Jean Eric Vergne is the current Formula E leader. Carlos Sainz is surely a future race winner too. Perhaps the only two failures thus far have been Kvyat and Algersuari, the former of which was super quick on his day, just not consistent. Gasly is a GP2 champion and Hartley is a multiple WEC champion and Le Mans winner. Helmut Marko knows what he's doing, never underestimate Toro Rosso's selections.
 
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Brendan Hartley is one of the finest drivers on the grid. He'd beat anyone on the current F1 grid in an LMP1 car. As you may know, arguably WEC requires far more skill than Formula 1. To call the WEC champion "abysmal" is pushing it far.

By the way, the Red Bull driver academy is the best, bar none. The drivers who go through Toro Rosso are carefully picked as the best incoming talents on the grid. Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo are proven race winners, and each worthy of championships. Sebastian Bourdais is a multiple Champcar champion, Sebastien Buemi is a Formula E champion, and Jean Eric Vergne is the current Formula E leader. Carlos Sainz is surely a future race winner too. Perhaps the only two failures thus far have been Kvyat and Algersuari, the former of which was super quick on his day, just not consistent. Gasly is a GP2 champion and Hartley is a multiple WEC champion and Le Mans winner. Helmut Marko knows what he's doing, never underestimate Toro Rosso's selections.


Being good in one series does not translate to being good in another series. Sato is great in Indycar but was a nobody in Formula One. Nelson Piquet Jr. has found some success in Nascar but what did he achieve in F1?

How did you arrive to the conclusion that a driver who drives in WEC requires more skill than a F1 driver? WEC is an endurance series the strategies and driving style required for that are different to that of F1.

Kobayashi holds the LeMans Lap record at present and would have won had it not been for bad luck but when he was competing against Perez he didn't fare that well did he? Perez was more consistent over the season and drove in a way that opened up opportunities for alternate strategies.

Red Bull Driver Academy - It has been known for a while that their reserves are not as good as they used to be and even Marko admitted this.

Source - Red Bull F1 advisor Marko: Kvyat had more talent than Gasly/Hartley

The link proves that Marko doesn't know what he is doing but knows what he has done - Messed up.
 
Helmut Marko keeps the drivers under too much pressure. They are really a hire and fire team. They do not get enough support from the team (in my opinion).
 
Helmut Marko keeps the drivers under too much pressure. They are really a hire and fire team. They do not get enough support from the team (in my opinion).


The issue with their program is - If they end up with drivers like Vettel, Daniel or Max in the main team. You don't want to loose these drivers to a rival team which ends up bottle necking the entire program at the peak. The drivers in the junior team have contracts that prohibit them from joining someone else and by the time they are let go the seats are either gone or they are treated as Red Bull's rejected drivers. Also since Red Bull manages these drivers from very early on they don't have a lot of sponsors backing them as individuals.

Marko does play a role and at times his tactics have lead to drivers getting screwed for example when Vettel left it should have Vergne who should have been promoted. This would have saved both careers. Kvyat would not get promoted prematurely and would get another year to mature against Max. I don't think Kvyat would have beaten Max but I Kvyat was pretty decent till he got demoted prior to which he wasn't exactly getting destroyed by Daniel. Eventually of course we would end up with the same line up at Red Bull but in Toro Rosso the driver line up would be better in the form of Kvyat and Sainz or Sainz and someone else because they don't give more than 2-3 years to a driver to mature in Toro Rosso.
 
This season reminds me of last season and if this continues for next few races, i may skip watching the whole season. Hopefully, F1 will be as competitive as it was in the near future !!
 
Wow... nice race and more happy since Vettel won it.
This is probably the first race in last 2 years where I have watched both the qualifying and the main race completely and also enjoyed it.
Gasly's driving was really impressive. A great find who remind of Max Verstappen a few years ago.
Vettel was also lucky TBH. One more lap and he would have surely lost his position. Sad to what happened with Kimi. Not his fault. He followed the green light. Hopefully that chap is fine.
For now it seems that my interest is a level up to watch the next few races in the season. Specially if the Mercedes have competition it would be great fun to watch.
Liberty Media had a meeting with F1 team owners in Bahrain. Worth reading in the details. They are changing how the teams were paid till now. It seems that now it will be purely on performance.
 
I wouldn't say Vettel was lucky. It takes a lot more than luck to get your tyres to last 17 laps more than the average. He won in spite of the bad strategy call by Ferrari. Really happy for Sauber getting their first points. Williams are absolutely trash this year though.
 
I wouldn't say Vettel was lucky. It takes a lot more than luck to get your tyres to last 17 laps more than the average. He won in spite of the bad strategy call by Ferrari. Really happy for Sauber getting their first points. Williams are absolutely trash this year though.
Obviously he was leading because of the way he started and lead the race. Its completely his talent there. Lucky in the sense that if the race had been an additional lap or so he would have lost the position.
 
that was a crazy race. Baku delivers again. Vettel with the big gamble that didn't pay off. Red bull being red bull. The upshot of all the retirements is that haas, sauber and williams got points.
 
I misse the race. Watched the last 11 laps. And it was worth it!!

Perez and Hamilton were the really lucky guys today. Don't know what happenned to Ocon. I guess he had an incident with Kimi. He was considerably faster than Perez all throughout the weekend. If he was still in play, maybe he would have had been on the porium!
 
One good thing came because of the Halo. This graphic is too cool (displaying speed and RPM against the curve of the halo along with the brake and throttle positions).

One thing I miss is the G force infographic when the drivers go through their laps. They have to work against huge amount of G force when they turn into the corners. Displaying it quantitatively allowed us to understand what their bodies went through as they turned into a corner and exited a hairpin bend. Most likely the drivers have neck muscles the size of Chris Gayle's palms.
F1.jpg
 
Formula1.com is producing some great highlights packages. This is the highlights package for Azerbaijan and also the team radio (the team radio package for Formula E seems to have much more interesting content. Either F1.com deletes most of the radio or F1 drivers are really very reserved!)


[DOUBLEPOST=1525155493][/DOUBLEPOST]I really need to find out where Super Truck series is broadcast. This is a crazy series -
 
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https://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2018...sjean-under-fire-as-f1-stewards-penalise-him/

This is what Hulkenberg had to say after the Grosjean crash -
“He (Grosjean) didn’t look great in that scenario, generally he likes spinning, but on the first lap is not a good time to do it with everyone there,” said a frustrated Hulkenberg. “I don’t know how many times he spins on a race weekend. If he does it on his own, it’s okay. But if he kicks others out of the race, it’s not okay

Grosjean is on the final year of his contract with Haas. Most likely LeClerc will graduate to the Haas seat and Antonio Giovinazzi will get the Sauber seat in 2019.
 
I kinda disappeared for a while but I am back now.

What was with Kimi today - He sounded very subdued on radio. All in all a great race from him today. Nice to see him on podium despite the unwarranted penalty. I honestly felt that it was a racing incident and all these talks about more penalty after Vettel got 5 seconds in France which too in my opinion was unfair because he was boxed in and had less traction under tow. The biased commentators somehow influence the people and stewards.

Lewis is such a whinger. I doubt his car was that badly affected considering how well it was performing on a newly resurfaced track that is bumpy. He was probably saying it to ensure that Kimi gets a penalty. Let's not forget Lewis is the guy who is behind the famous Lie-Gate.

If anyone was wondering why I don't like Lewis then today is the best example of why - Throwing others under the bus to absolve himself.

Bottas plowed into Kimi at Baku in 2017 and received no penalty and today it was just a tap because he locked up.

I hate the biased stewards and Liberty Media's changes like the horrible music, captions, overlays in background, cheesy sound effects for lap records or fastest sectors or sliding notifications.
 
The Ferraris showed the mercs who's boss today. I'm so surprised that both of them were quicker than the mercs in outright pace on a power circuit like Silverstone.

With more high power circuits coming up in Hockenheim, Spa and Monza, this is a very positive sign for Ferrari fans.
 
Despite Kimi's DNF I found the race to be enjoyable.

The thing that struck me the most is -

Jules Bianchi's death is what resulted in F1 introducing the Halo this season.

Charles Lecrec nearly got beheaded today and the halo saved him from that.

Jules was not just a close friend of Charles but a mentor to him. They were both thought of as exceptional upcoming Ferrari talents who were touted to replace Kimi in the Ferrari.

Weird coincidences...
 
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