F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

Yeah he works for Canal+ in France or Canada or whatever. Its 25 years since he won with a Renault powered car so he's driving last year's Alpine. Its all a bit tangential but it's just for TV.

Is Eddie going ? 😉

Be interesting to see how he gets on with it. Be funny if he pounded out a bunch of competitive looking laps times. 🙂

Is thr outfit yellow or white?

Leclercs hair looks very light, nearly blond, in that picture.

It'd be especially funny since he couldn't do it when he was still racing.

To be honest, I don't think so.

Yes, safety cars have become a more frequent occurrence (as overall safety has improved), but the safety car has been a part of motor racing for as long as I have been watching. It's just part of the rules of the game.

Waiting for a safety car is still a gamble - it's a risk/reward situation. It will pay off sometimes, but not always.

I'm hearing lots of talk this week about the 'fairness' of safety cars. There's absolutely nothing unfair about the safety car being deployed, as long as it is being done purely on the grounds of safety.

Perhaps it's the UK bias to our media sources, but these issues seem to raise their heads whenever things don't go Lewis' way. I don't recall any such conversations about fairness regarding the red flag situation in Imola last year. Nor was there any conspiracy theories regarding the fact that said red flag was caused by Russell and Bottas.....!

This is such a tired argument that gets brought out by people whenever their team / driver of choice makes a bad decision during a safety car and therefore they want the entire rules of the sport to be changed in response. Crofty was at his idiotic best in the commentary booth calling for this at the weekend.

If you ban pitstops during a safety car then that would be far more unfair.

An example: Latifi is in P1 and Stroll is in P2, with Latifi 5 seconds ahead. Stroll dives into the pits on lap 21. All other cars have now pit too, but Latifi, having managed his tyres extremely well, knows he can stretch out for three more laps until lap 24 without risking an undercut. However, on lap 22 Alonso spins and beaches himself on the gravel causing a safety car to be brought out. Latifi is now not allowed to pit. When the race restarts on lap 25, he is now on old worn tyres with Stroll immediately behind him. He has no choice to pit, leaving Stroll to win unchallenged while Latifi loses not just first place, but comes out in 20th due to the pack being compressed during the safety car.

They used to close the pitlane during the safety car about 15 years ago and it was well recognised that it was hideously unfair, but the reason for it was that we didn't have the accurate sector-by-sector VSC timings and cars would race to the pitlane at full speed to build a gap which was dangerous. As soon as it was possible to ensure they stuck to a delta time on their way to the pitlane, the silly rule to close it was removed and things have worked much better ever since.

So instead of calling for rule changes, lets just accept that the safety car rules have been the same and worked perfectly well for many years and hundreds of races now and calls to change them only ever happen when certain teams or drivers make bad calls and their cheerleaders in the media start sulking about it. The teams all know that safety cars can happen, and maximising their strategic calls to make the best of any given situation is one of the key skills they need to bring to the sport. An element of luck, and the need to think on your feet to react to that luck, is a key part of pretty much any sport for that matter.

I'm not suggesting a change because it benefited max or disadvantaged Hamilton. My issue is that it robbed us of a genuine fight for the lead which had been created by a mismatch in strategy. That's the kind of thing we want to see, isn't it?

Apologies - I wasn't trying to paint you into a corner as a fan of either driver. It was more of a follow-on observation.

Yes, I would have rathered that the SC didn't happen, and I still think Max would have won (albeit with a 2-3 finish for Mercedes). My whole point is that I don't think we need any changes in relation pit stops and SCs. It's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

In this case it may have detracted from the excitement, but in the vast majority of cases the SC spices up the racing. Sometimes, with a particularly **** race, the only reason to keep watching is the hope that a SC mixes things up.

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You'd miss Jordan Grand Prix all the same...

T

The original gold livery (1996?) was poor, but the switch to yellow was lovely.

Why was that on display?