Formula 1 2021 - General Discussion Thread (Read 1st post rules)

As a long time fan of Perez, I'm scratching my head at the description of Perez as popular. I haven't seen much evidence of that on here over the years. Many here considered him just a pay driver who was only on the grid because of Carlos Slim's money.

And before that he was the guy who 'tried to kill' Ocon after their incident at Spa or the guy who got a chance in a big team (Mclaren) and blew it.

Perez joined McLaren at the worst possible time, they had a big reputation and big expectations but the car was utterly terrible that year.

As a near rookie, he actually wasn’t too far off Button who was a well established team leader at that point having seen off Hamilton who he outscored over the previous three seasons together.

Perez lost the qualifying head to head with Jenson by just 10-9. His biggest issue was fighting Jenson too hard in the races leading to a couple of collisions, something he repeated with Ocon but seems to have matured out of in more recent years.

Anyway, I'm wondering how many here have shunted an F1 race weekend way down their list of holiday ideas.

The sad fact is that if F1 faced any sort of backlash from the Belgian public for this, Spa will get its slot filled by Sochi, and we'll get another race at somewhere built by sla-I mean, migrant workers.

Maybe before the full new rules are introduced, someone will ask "what if it rains?".

Jack up the ride height and put more reliance on ground effect to take from the aero effect and difficulty overtaking.

F1 is a confused sport. It's lost its place as the forefront of motorsport innovation. That's just the natural evolution of things, I suppose.

Bit I'd agree the fact that the cars can't race in some rain is ridiculous. They should be able to raise the ride height of the cars for rain.

Yeah the FIA never actually allow them to race in conditions that are wet enough for the wet tyres so hard to see what Pirelli can do there.

Motorsport.com: F1 set for talks over rule changes after Belgian GP "farce".

Suggestion here is that they're going to review it to ensure they don't award points without proper racing in the future. I suppose they'll just include a clause on your ticket that there aren't refunds if the race can't go ahead.

They're also suggesting looking at the possibility of holding the race on another day. I'd doubt that's likely to happen.

What about the design and construction of the track surface at Spa? There must be faults there. I don't know how pools of standing water can form on an F1 racetrack. It's rare enough to see that on a standard motorway for example. Conditions in Spa were far from monsoon like and it's not as if they are not used to rainfall. Watching the coverage yesterday there appeared to be no serious attempts made to clear water from the track.

Benevolent Bernie had it off the calendar when the cigarette money dried up.

Bottas to sauber is rumoured to be announced at Monza. This will trigger the announcement of Russell to Mercedes.

Only read a few mins ago on Twitter that Russell found out this weekend that he’ll be at Merc next year!

I find it bizarre that they've managed to come to the conclusion that it was the fact that the fans got to see a podium that was the problem, not the fact that the fans didn't get to see a race.