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

Too funny!

I wonder how Aston Martin will fair with the new regs, seeing as their best results came in a clone car from the 2019 Merc it will be interesting to see if they can make a competitive car from "scratch".

F1 have conducted a survey (interesting read) about a variety of things, including the most popular drivers.

Max is the most popular, followed by Lando and then Lewis.

Alonso helmet this weekend:

Yes, it's got some good corners. What'll be interesting is the bumps at the end of the straight. They seem to be getting worse every year!

Of the ten races Schumacher finished in 94, he won 8 and came second in 2. He never finished a race outside the top 2. For one of those second places he was stuck in 5th gear for most of the race by the way. The FIA disqualified / excluded him from one quarter of the races that year, for extremely spurious reasons. They hounded Benetton as Williams were the big money works team of the time while Benetton were a clothing company who had little political clout in the paddock (strong parallels with the influence of Mercedes over the FIA versus the drinks company these days) - despite all their best efforts to pin the spurious claims of traction control that you're making, no evidence could ever be found. The fact is that Schumacher's car control was just so good that to lesser drivers it looked like traction control, and rumours got out of hand, which the xenophobic British media were always happy to play up. There was a good BBC piece on Schumacher's incredible throttle control in 1995 where they compared Herbert's telemetry to Schumacher's, you should check it out on youtube.

If not for the FIA's interference Schumacher would have run away with the title that year and the collision at Adelaide never would have been relevant. And you are correct, Verstappen did score two podiums across the whole season, both in races when there were multiple retirements from Williams, Ferrari, McLaren and Jordan, all of whom were generally ahead of the second Benetton which was barely in the top the rest of the year. Schumacher scored 92 of the team's 103 points that season. Despite missing an entire quarter of the season's races. That's unheard of.

I never said the 95 Benetton was as poor, yes it was a lot closer to the front and was the clear second best car to the point where a solid driver was usually 4th place in it and could pick up a win here and there when there were retirements. Which was good enough for Schumacher to dominate that season winning the title with races to spare and matching what was at the time a record number of race wins in one year.

The world and his wife knows that Benneton had traction control, launch control (option 13) and the illegal fuel valve in 94. It was confirmed by the FIA who said that the system existed but couldn't prove Benneton had used it. Herbert himself commented how hard it was to spin the wheels on the benneton after the first test in it vs the lotus.

Verstappen and Herbert are hardly benchmarks of the pace of car. Verstappen in his first year and no one rates Herbert more than Johnny Herbert, who never beat a single team mate he had, when they had a full season in the car.

I did not know about that bit am delighted they did. Only right. Mercedes complained about Ferrari in 2017 and 18 when they were competitive and then about Red Bull this year so only right they Mercedes that is receive some back if they were cheating.

Haas are worse than the 2019 Williams

must be tough for haas himself, he entered into f1 with major fanfare, only to find out, its really a big boys game, with deep deep pockets

They were pretty clear that they didn't do any development on this year's car. So everyone else developed it from half way through last year and brought lots of upgrades to the car through out the season. That means that Haas has fallen further and further behind all year and they're now the furthest point behind everyone else. But that's not surprising as this is what they were telling us when they said they weren't going to develop this year's car.

Bad and all as they are, they're nowhere near the 107% quali limit. There was a time when teams were very poor and were never sure of making the 107% cut-off. The rest of the teams are so close and competitive that it makes Haas look terrible by contrast. Next year will really need to show the fruits of their sacrifice this year.

I think to publicly punt a season for the sake of new regs coming in next year they must be somewhat confident of being back into the midfield but we will see, hard to imagine they will be as bad again next year. Mazepin is so far off the pace on top of that.

True. They're trying new things out like the sprint race format and Drive to Survive. The Fan Survey suggests they're growing the fanbase and it's moving away from being old, white and wealthy, the average fan is 4 years younger and more likely to be a woman than ever before. Things are changing and diversifying which can only be good. More change in fanbase will lead to more change in the race format, but that's not a problem.

It's definitely interesting that the high fan numbers coincide with a good championship battle for the first time since 2016. Another year or 2 of Hamilton domination might have seen a different story in the Fan Survey.

It's a shame this increased viability of running a team hasn't translated into new entrants. 20 cars is just too low to give enough opportunities to young talent.

I don’t think new teams are necessarily needed. A field of 20 cars should give enough competition and interest. Focus should be on increasing the quality and diversity of those teams — more manufacturers, fewer satellite/sister teams.