F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

Williams Renault has been a winning combination before, but then again, so has McLaren Honda.

Seems a bit harsh to drop someone who demolished their team mate last year, before even the midpoint of the season. Either Mick is going through a bit of a rough patch or Mazepin was just really really bad, which of course is entirely possible.

What happened with the HAAS funding after the Ural Kali thing??

Was there an injection from other sponsors? Is there still an injection from sponsors? How much has funding dropped? Is Ural Kali still looking for their money back?

Think rothmans is still going. Never really took off in Ireland though.

The look was iconic but it's a bit cringe when people are nostalgic for old brands in F1. Like, the brands are part of the funding but they're not part of the sport.

Hamilton would be mad to retire form a race as a gesture. The demands to retire permanently would be massive, and justified. If he can't drive the car then he needs to retire.

You're right that's what they're doing. It's a bluff l, I'd say.

Yeah maybe. But I doubt it. Doesn't the fact that Hamilton and Toto weren't on the same page suggest they haven't seriously spoken about it or coordinated their responses?

I suppose we'll see if they're singing from the same hymn sheet at the next race. But I'd say it's a bluff. If hamilton is the only driver to retire because of back pain, it suggests he's too old and an older driver will be acutely aware of that. He's probably already acutely aware that he's being soundly beaten by his younger teammate. Russell is scoring the odd podium (when enough from the top 2 teams retire) and Lewis is retiring from races with old man pains. Lewis is really unlikely to agree to take part in that conspiracy.

That's true about Barcelona. He was proposing retiring the car to save the engine in thst case. I heard his radio in FP3 last weekend in Baku and he asked the team if the engine was ok and they said they turned it down to save it. So saving engines is important but he was still in a position to score good points in Barcelona so the team was right to not listen to him.

And its worth pointing out that he had a good race after that. Overtaking is usually difficult in Barcelona but between the new car regs and a good performance, he finished 5th, 20 seconds behind Russell in 3rd. Considering he was at or near the back after the first few laps, he did well.

It sounds nit-picky, but retiring the car to save the engine is different from retiring because the driver can't physically drive the car.

Has Magnussen called for an intervention? I haven't come across that anywhere but I could have missed it. What I have come across is media outlets taking things his physio said completely out of context in order to misrepresent them. The gist of what the physio said is that it was painful in Australia but it's no longer a problem as the team have worked it out. The majority of the reporting left out the second half and implied that he was talking about the most recent races and that it's an ongoing issue, which was not the case.

Gasly seems to be the only one outside Mercedes calling for an intervention that I've come across. I wonder if he's angling for the Merc seat if Hamilton retires after Perez had his contract extended.

Ricciardo too:

He told The Race that while drivers “can macho it if you want”, they can only do that for an individual race, not a season.

He added: “Obviously, like the compression, you are sore and you feel like you are kind of getting squeezed, so it’s not good.

“I’m, like, stiff now and painful, but also like getting out of the car – and I’m not exaggerating – I just felt, like, shook, so just, like, a bit rattled.

“So, it’s not a normal thing, and I think also the frequency, this kind of shaking of the brain and the spine, I don’t think it’s good long-term.

“It’s one of those ones where we don’t want to be naive or ignorant and just tough it out when there could be some kind of long-term damage.”

Melbourne gets new ten year contract for F1. There will also be F2 and F3 support races.

I wouldn't say I'm particularly nostalgic for the brands; cigarettes and F1 were always a strange match. But nostalgia is everywhere in F1. It's why Mercedes are "the silver arrows". Why Aston is green / Ferrari is Red / McLaren is orange etc. People love that stuff.

Papaya, not orange...

Wouldn't be nostalgic for the old cigarette brands, but the yellow Jordans were lovely looking yokes (not the gold one though, that was muck)

If done right, the occasional 'historic' livery can look fantastic, even if it is an old cigarette brand.

Porsche ran a 'not Rothmans' retro livery at Le Mans a few years back and it was beautiful: