F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

Ricciardo might still be driving for McLaren next year, just not the Formula 1 team.

Can see Ric staying put. Sounds like he had the option to end the contract early, not McLaren. So he might hold tight to see what unfolds.

The latest video by The Race mentioned it. It’s clear Ric wants to stay at McLaren, the car just doesn’t respond to his style, it’s not from lack of trying.

I hope he has a good rest of the season, solid points will take the pressure off

IndyCar driver Colton Herta also done some test days for McLaren in the past week. In their 2021 car at Portimao. There is an article on the F1 app about it.

As I said before, you can have a driver/team conflict that can cause these issues too. See Vettle and Raikkonen at ferrari or Gasly at Red bull in the recent past but I can give more historic examples

Edit Button and Rosberg discuss it here

Was a great race that with great racing. Man I miss that Formula 1.

I think Formula has passed its peak and will never be as good as it was like in 2010 or 2011 or 2012. I remember them years. That was Formula one at its peak when anyone could watch it live and when the wider media cared about it too.

Also look who commented on You-Tube

It was far harder to watch back then, no nowtv or coverage of practice sessions, pre event coverage or any of the channels covering f1 we now have on youtube like wtf1, the race, autosport etc. The cars were ugly as hell and the racing wasn't as good either. 2011 and 2013 were crap seasons, 2010 had its moments but the cars couldn't overtake and that lead to a total anticlimax procession of a finale, the start of 2012 was interesting.

Peak f1 definitely wasn't the early 2010s, we are in peak f1 at the moment, it's absolutely exploding in popularity across the world thanks to all the effort put in since Bernie got the boot. Liberty have done a fantastic job making the sport easier to follow.

Ye maybe not.

I agree about the tiny rear wings.

Two more races to go before the summer break. French GP this weekend followed by the Hungarian GP next weekend.

Reserve driver, Nyck de Vries, will take Lewis's car for FP1 in France. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to wonder aloud if this suggests Hamilton's retirement at the end of the year. But it's probably just business as usual. These things are probably arranged long in advance.

Motorsport.com: De Vries to replace Hamilton in FP1 at French GP for Mercedes.

The conspiracy theorist in you obviously doesn't know the rules of the sport then so.

He has to step aside, just like every single other driver on the grid.

I dont know about you but I couldn't give a shiny shyte about the teams. I'll cheer for one of the drivers in pretty much every battle, particularly the WDC. I've cheered for a Mercedes, a ferrari and a red bull to compete for the WDC in the last few years.

Max fans won't cheer for anyone but max. Dutch fans will probably cheer for both Dutch drivers and still have a favourite

Agreed, was the same back (a few) years ago with the Dutch following Jos. The only difference nowadays is there are celebratory drinks, as opposed to just finishing drinks.

An interesting tidbit from the last race weekend in Austria I came across was that Ralf Schumacher's demo run in his old 2003 Williams set a time that would have been third fastest lap of the race. That's a long-retired driver showing up for a couple of laps with no practice, a car with no time perfecting setup, and just doing a demo run where minimal risks were being taken. Yet it was faster around the track than anyone other than Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, and the sound it produced while doing so was absolutely sublime.

They've spent billions upon billions since that machine was built, with far more advanced technology available to them, and have achieved basically nothing other than more bloated less exciting cars.

I do think the new ground effect cars are a huge step forward in the promotion of closer and far higher quality racing over the absolutely dreadful hybrid era that nearly killed the sport entirely, but just imagine how spectacular the new aero concept would be when married to those V10 engines and the vastly smaller, lighter and more nimble cars they allowed.

The power units introduced a huge weight increase, which dropped performance dramatically by multiple seconds per lap in 2014 compared to what came before. At many tracks the all conquering Mercedes set slower lap times than a Minardi built on a shoestring budget a decade earlier. At some tracks a number of GP2 cars, which still ran V8s, actually set faster qualifying laps than the back row or two of the F1 field. For example in Spain 13 different GP2 cars set times fast enough that would have put them ahead of the back row in the F1 race.

So to compensate for the lack of performance of the new cars which was becoming an embarrassment for the sport, they set about increasing the size to allow for more aero surfaces and more downforce, and gave them wider tyres to allow for more mechanical grip, all in service of attempts to bring the cars back up to speed and compensate for drop in performance caused by the weight of the power units. So while it's true that the cars continued to grow after 2014, the root cause was still ultimately the hybrid formula. There were other contributors for sure, like the Halo and this year's lower profile tyres, but to a large extent the cars could still be much smaller and lighter if they returned to V10s.

Remember that the V10s ran on skinny grooved tyres to slow them down, so they could easily accommodate additions like the halo without losing performance with modern tech and slick tyres available to them.

They'd use more fuel per race of course which the marketing people don't like. But I bet they'd have a smaller carbon footprint given how much lighter they'd be and given that 99.9% of all the distance they'll ever travel will be in transit rather than under their own power.