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

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I think his spell at Sauber has been a downward slope from the second Ferrari sprint. He's struggled to best Gio and they're both out of the sport. Neither were worth their place for next year.

Vettel could easily be the next former champion to become dead weight. He's got a poor teammate to make his mediocre performances look good (save a couple of good and very lucky results). They've got last year's Mercedes and the best power unit on the grid and both went out in q1 last time around. That's poor.

I wonder why some drivers lose their pace and others don’t? Lewis and Seb are a similar age and it’s night and day. Same with Alonso and Kimi.

It's a great question. It's probably to do with motivation. Both in terms of psychology and risk taking in the race weekend and motivation to train hardest. Vettel has a family life. He keeps it very private so I presume he's relatively normal at home. Being a dad is a job in itself. I think lots of drivers' motivation is blunted when they have children. In short, they have more going on outside of F1.

Rosberg spoke about how he had a child during the 2016 championship year ad he said was a useless dad and his wife had to do everything because he had to be completely dedicated to getting the correct amount of sleep and training etc. So that was surely part of his reason to retire so he could dedicate himself to some extent to being a dad and husband.

And with a bad car the motivation dulls. We're seeing Alonso as the exception, not that he's in a particularly bad car, but he (and Ocon) are getting more out of it than other drivers would.

Seb's energy and motivation was sapped by the toxic / pressured world of Ferrari. A non-competitive Ferrari is probably the worst car to be in; the Italian press are unforgiving and you have the whole "tifosi" counting on you to make their dreams come true. Which you can't, cos your car is crap.

If Seb had moved to Merc or back to Red Bull, his motivation would increased and therefore his performances would have too.

Because the Mercedes is quite different to the Aston Martin, and the Alpine is quite different to the Alfa - though we saw from their Ferrari days that Alonso was always a cut above Kimi, just as he was always a cut above the entire grid.

When there's a championship to fight for Seb is on a different level, and he was comfortably better than Hamilton and close to Alonso's level back when they had evenly matched cars. He hasn't lost it so much as circumstances have left him with little to fight for, and he doesn't have that killer instinct of an Alonso to fight tooth and nail whether it's for 1st or 11th. He also has a family life and interests outside of F1 so he doesn't need to take unnecessary risks with little reward.

Hypothetically if Vettel joined Merc ahead of 2014 he'd currently be fighting for his 12th title (as there's no chance in hell he'd have lost one to Rosberg), but instead he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kimi leaves F1 with the helmet he started with. Nice touch.

Looking ominous in FP2 unless the Red Bull is carrying a lot of sandbags.

So Merc have a large gap on one lap pace, but RB have a huge gap in race pace.

They both must have gotten a deal on sandbags.

It goes without saying that they are in different cars, everybody knows this. We've seen what George has managed with that williams. I don't recall any similar heroics from seb or kimi. Having children seems to be the common denominator though.

Hope Max can do it, been the best driver this season and him being dangerous is completely overblown imo. Over on Reddit today there was a tweet digging up an old Hamilton quote when he was questioned on his own aggressive driving style, and he said he needed to drive that way because he didn’t have the fastest car, which is pretty much spot on for what Max is doing now.

And I don’t hate Hamilton, I’m just tired of seeing the same team with the best resources win over and over again. This season has been generally brilliant, but the last few races have ultimately been a procession.

Yup he really is a fantastic driver and a very talented driver in rain conditions.

I was hoping Schumacher's record would remain for a long time but I wouldnt begrudge Hamilton he's been solid throughout his career and deserves it.

Croft and Kravitz wreck my head fawning over him but its the usual English BS over their own.

If Max remains calm he could become champion on Sunday. Last week he was too stressed and his driving was ragged. I think his father Jos, who seems to be a gung-ho, aggressive type of character, might be a negative influence in that regard. He would be better off listening to the wise heads on his pit wall. He has time on his side, unlike Lewis, and could potentially win ten World championships though not all with Red Bull.

String of bad cars, and a string of incredibly fast teammates who made for very difficult benchmarks he needed to match up to.

He was very impressive at Lotus and of course he was supremely fast before his sabbatical, before his WDC obviously but also after - the way Fisichella struggled so badly in that Ferrari when Massa was injured says a lot about how both Kimi and Felipe were performing - it was worlds apart from, say, George Russell or Nico Hulkenberg jumping a car last year and immediately being as fast as the regular drivers.

In his second Ferrari stint he just wasn’t quite at the level of an Alonso or a Vettel as both those drivers were dragging some pretty poor Ferraris to heights where they didn’t belong, even fighting for championships against vastly superior equipment, which was a task Kimi just wasn’t up to.

And of course he’s in his forties now so his performances were always going to dull. You could say he stayed too long but as long as he enjoyed it and Sauber felt he was a benefit to the team then I don’t think he cares in the slightest how it might change people’s perceptions of his legacy.

This notion of dragging a car to where it doesn't belong or out driving a car or getting more speed out of the car than the car has, is absolutely fairytale nonsense. Its fine for media to use this kind of guff to hype a story. That's their job. But we fans shouldn't be caught repeating it because its not real.

Kimi was very good, maybe even excellent once upon a time. Then he went off the boil and was exposed by faster teammates and he's been barely able to beat journeyman in Gio this year. In 5 years time nobody will remember gio because he was crap. And kimi has slid to that level. Kimi is crap now. He was once great, now he's crap and not worth a drive next year. He hung around too long and his career in totality is very much a mixed bag of reaching great heights and sliding all the way to being crap and coasting on reputation alone and eventually losing his seat.

I have a smart Sony TV and was able to download All4 app for it so it's possible but may depend on the model of your TV.

This is a nice little video. "I don't care at all if I'm remembered or not" is pure Kimi

My predictions are:Hamilton has the race pace to take his time, avoid major incident and overtake Max on track, in the pits or late in the race on different tyres.

If Lewis gets track position then its race over.

If Lewis attempts to overtake max, Max will get very aggressive and it will be up to Lewis to avoid the crash.

One driver who needs to step up today is Perez, if he gets a good start he needs to be aggressive early on and make it difficult for Hamilton.

I dont recall him taking points of Hamilton this year whereas Bottas has done so a few times on Verstappen, most noticeably in Turkey.

Kimi, we will leave you alone now..