Formula 1 2019 - General Discussion Thread

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I'd say Ferrari's leaning towards Leclerc is because he offers more of an upside than a - let's face it - aging Vettel who's got a family to worry about.

Ferrari also have form in ousting Germans in favour of younger talent.

Leclerc is the best option to counter the "Verstappen effect"; He's easy to sell, especially in Italy as he's seen as pretty much a local boy being from Monaco (a place that will forever be stuck being a bit French and a bit Italian) and most importantly, he's a product of the "Ferrari Driver Academy", a program which has been under intense criticism for failing to bring out ANY talent compared to Red Bull's and Mercedes young driver programs; Sure, there was Jules Bianchi, but we all sadly know about that history of unfulfilled potential.



In terms of charisma, sheer likeability and old-fashioned racer mentality, Ferrari haven't had a driver of the same impact on the crowds since Jean Alesi; Schumacher won hearts with victories and world championships, but to be idolized like Jean was when the best hope was for the occasional podium, it takes a different type of character. Which Leclerc is - people in Italy were absolutely crazy about him well before the maiden win in Spa. If he goes on to win a WDC in a Ferrari, he may very well go down in history as the most popular Ferrari World Champion.

Cork Trucker wrote: »

I wonder if Schumacher would have been dropped for 2007 if he didn't go of his own accord, or at least it looked that way publicly. They drop Finn's also. Salo would have been a good number 2 for Schumacher in the same way as Barrichello was, instead they dropped him and Raikkonen (twice).

Back then, it was a well regarded "rumor" that Schumacher's decision to retire at the end of the 2006 season was born out of contingency - Ferrari had already hired Raikkonen, and Michael had an option to stay on for 2007, which he decided not to exercise, in part to take a break and in part because it would have meant Massa, to which he was pretty much a mentor, would have lost his seat.

Infoanon wrote: »

That would be the same Adrian Campos-racing-aiming-to-begin-new-team-in who was involved in the team that became known as HRT.
Plan has already been knocked on the head with Rossi Brawn quoted as saying no new teams before 2022.

Maybe they will be like Haas they will be starting up in 2021 but will not actually race until 2022. I would say it would be no harm if they were there in 2021 if they do not have to build there own engines as they would be getting them from one of the manufactures in the sport more than likely it would be Renault and they would have the capacity to do that as they would just give them the engines that Mclaren would have been getting from them.

Now this is an interesting development: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/teams-open-source-designs-proposal/4552508/

Teams broadly agree that publishing some part designs online would be a good idea. The idea being everyone can see what everyone else is doing and so the smaller teams are less disadvantaged by reduced R&D bugets. I think they do something very similar in Nascar already.

I had thought of something similar. That the season winning car should be made available for all teams to inspect in detail. Possibly with a time delay. Or something lke making last season's winning car available to everyone to examine and/or test during winter testing.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Making last year's car available would be amazing. We the difference between teams from season to season would really only be the innovation teams can do between seasons. It would likely end the rules change dynasties we have had recently. Red bull race so far ahead that they win 4 seasons in a row. Then Mercedes win the next (probably 7 until the 2021 rule changes) seasons on the trot.

Let's be honest - dominations usually come from a combination of one team doing a great job and the others doing, well, shoite.

It was the same in 1988 (nobody but McLaren bothering with a fully new design since in was the last season of the turbos), 1992-1993 (McLaren and Honda parting ways, Ferrari in a political quagmire, Benetton had a great chassis but the poor V8 Ford) and the 2002-2004 period (with the "Bridgestone developing tyres exclusively for Ferrari" coup de grace).

Take this season: Ferrari had the fastest car right out of the assembly garage, but they failed abysmally in the early development race, when it's all about understanding how your new chassis reacts to setups, temperatures, tyre wear and track conditions. They kept going backwards until, before the summer break, Red Bull also overtook them. Come September, they FINALLY figured things out...too late.

Red Bull didn't really dominate all the seasons 2010-2013, despite what the final results show; Two of these ended up with less than 5 points between Vettel and Alonso. Again, these sessions were the result if RBR being consistent while the others alternatively screwed up design and development - in 2010, there were only 16 points between WDC Vettel and Hamilton in 4th place, while the next season the difference between 1st and second was over 100pts...then again only 3pts in 2012, and again over 100 pts in 2013.

recyclebin wrote: »

Ferraris resurgence is a bit baffling. The season and championship is all but wrapped up. Its strange to see a team improving by that much so late in the season. I suppose Mercedes are coasting and not taking any risks. They just need to keep finishing third and forth and pick up wins when Ferrari make a strategy mistake.

Red Bull are still only good around a very limited number of tracks so they are also out of equation.

Probably a bit of both things - Mercedes not pushing as hard as they could with updates, and the fact that Ferrari had a fundamentally good car since the beginning of the season, but they were struggling to understand its quirks.

mickdw wrote: »

Is there anyone policing the f1 holiday shutdown.
Redbull went on a winning spree a few years back straight after the holidays. Ferrari are doing similar this year. It would suggest that perhaps some teams send the staff home and other teams run the 24 hour shift.

It's applicable for those people directly involved in design, manufacture and operation of an F1 car. There was something on racefans a while back about it, doesn't really go into detail about the actual procedures of how they would police it. I suspect the employees are happy to have the break and the fear of a significant penalty (financial or otherwise) is enough to dissuade the teams to adhere to it

https://www.racefans.net/2019/08/28/how-does-the-fia-ensure-f1-teams-stop-work-during-the-summer-break/

patmahe wrote: »

Here you go: https://www.eurosport.com/formula-1/brawn-eyes-nascar-style-inspections-for-f1_sto6161414/story.shtml

Sounds good to me. Smaller teams don't have he budget to explore 5 r&d avenues to figure out which one works. So this would be a way for small teams to catch up. The bigger teams will still have the innovations before everyone else so they still get the advantage and other teams wouldn't fall too far behind.

On first glance, I'm in favour

This would be a serious change for the sport.
I dont think it would be as much benefit as some think given the technical nature of f1.
If another team were today given a few hours access to a mercedes f1 car to take apart and look at it, it would likely make little short term difference and by the time any other team could put some of the ideas of their car and make them work for them, they would likely be so far behind the curve as to be useless.
This could have the unintended consequence of just strengthening the B teams to run right with their A team because at the minute, as close as the links are, all teams do their own aero etc.
If it all opens up, it should be easier for B teams to turn up with practically identical cars.

Cool_CM wrote: »

Rumours floating around that Autosport might be stopping their print edition

Probably makes economic sense, I've stopped buying it regularly in recent years and would generally only pick it up for travelling, but sad to see.

There's an interesting point about the media we consume online. We're you might buy a magazine, carry it with you and read it, you're much less likely to buy autosport online and read it on your phone. Temptation is to just read the free stuff online even though it's much lower quality.

I'd say we'll move towards paying for better content. But the beat traditional media night be gone bust by then. Such is life.

I have a F1 Magazine subscription on the Zinio app. If you don't have this app, download it. Any subscription for feck all price. I got the annual F1 subscription for £30 inc. VAT.

Anyway, it looks like Suzuka could be affected by Super Typhoon Hagibis on Saturday night. Not super anymore by that stage but still packing a punch at 90 knots at landfall overnight Saturday/Sunday Japan time.

Infoanon wrote: »

Not just Autosport,the future of F1 racing magazine is also in doubt.

I used to buy F1 Racing on a regular basis from when it first came out in 1996 to around the late 2000's. I only buy it once or twice a year now. I'm sure the price of the magazine increased recently too.

I was Atlas F1 subscriber before it became Autosport. I stopped bothering at some stage after it became Autosport. It became a lot more British team driver biased. OH continued with the subscription till this year and had enough too. Now days the only reason I visit Autosport is Brexit thread in Paddock Club.

meeeeh wrote: »

I was Atlas F1 subscriber before it became Autosport. I stopped bothering at some stage after it became Autosport. It became a lot more British team driver biased. OH continued with the subscription till this year and had enough too. Now days the only reason I visit Autosport is Brexit thread in Paddock Club.

Yeah I think it's pretty much inevitable with publications - often a new director brings a new editorial line.

Years and years ago, I religiously bought "Autosprint", the Italian version of Autosport. The "shift" was very clear every time a new director came on board - it went from being pretty much neutral and a "motorsport's enthusiast" publication in the early '90s, to a "Tifosi's official magazine" in the Schumacher era, back to a more neutral stance in 2006/2007. Similarly, the space given to each discipline would change - for a few years there'd be pretty much equal space given to F1, Indycar, WRC and Touring Cars (DTM, EuroSTC and WTCC depending on years), then it'd go mostly F1, then switch back to more space for rallying and so on.

Still, call it what it want, "it's the modern times" as a justification for the loss of publications doesn't reassure me in the least - we're heading for lower and lower quality of journalism as we are. People will not want to pay for their news source, which will give way to even more amateurism.

I am as guilty as the next guy - I don't really buy magazines anymore, unless I'm traveling. Especially in my fields of interest (motors, computers, modeling) you can find mostly everything online...yet, if I stand back and take a look at the QUALITY of what you find online, well...you need to filter through a LOT of crud.