New regulations new season....
Can redbull keep up the pace
It's the right time to go because that's what he's chosen to do as there are other things he wants to focus on in life, but in terms of performance he's still easily in the top 3 or 4 on the grid. Performing better than anyone in the big three teams other than Verstappen or Leclerc for sure, Norris is probably the only other driver I'd put in that top tier this year. Alonso's had his moments of brilliance but I'd probably describe him more closely to how you described Kimi there, not really producing the goods consistently or outperforming his car like Vettel has done.
Back when Nyck de Vries had the opportunity to drive the Aston Martin and the Williams on the same weekend, he was pretty unequivocal that the Williams was the better package when asked about it by journalists. That basically confirms what most evidence shows, that the Aston is the single slowest car on the grid, maybe not at every track and in all conditions but certainly a lot of the time. Yet Vettel stands above drivers from Williams, Haas, Alfa Romeo, Alpha Tauri and even a McLaren in the standings. It's a pretty stunning performance all in all.
Vettel still has glimpses of greatness in a crap car but I think it’s difficult to take a relatively small sample of wet races as an indicator of driver performance. It kind of reminds me of Kimi’s third last season or something akin to it. Would get a few good results, more than the car deserved but spent a lot of races going through the motions and errors thrown in here and there.
Good performance in Japan but you must factor in things like the shortened race, the spin leaving him with no risk of losing track position by going straight to inters, Alonso maybe pitting too late and and staying in touch with Hamilton because he couldn’t pass Ocon. Singapore again there are mitigating factors but he kept it on track and earned the points. It’s great to see him get some good results but it feels like the right time to go at the same time.
Bahahahaaaa some people love alternative tables,usually comes with a flimsy argument/position too!
I probably shouldn't have picked 5% with it being the cutoff for moving from minor to significant breech of the cap.
It is a tightrope for the FIA trying to find something that some way placates all teams. The big thing they need to do is make the punishment enough that it is a deterrent for others to break the cap because this punishment will set the precedent for any future breeches.
I think Martin Brundle summed it up well over the weekend that all teams were doing some level of hiding money and there's probably a lot of different interpretations of the rules.
Maybe Horner should've suggested they split the bill
Yeah. The Red Bull is great in all conditions by the look of it. Perez being ahead of Verstappen demonstrates that wet weather isn't a reliable indication of who is best.
Vettel has scored well in the wet. It would be a big stretch to suggest he's still a good driver on points scored in the wet. People still try to make that argument though. When someone wants to suggest Stroll is actually some kind of misunderstood genius, they reference the fact that he scored a pole position in a wet quali once.
Wet points scored is an interesting bit of trivia, but it's not much more than that.
Erm, Perez is top, not Verstappen.
Interesting look at the championship if you just take wet races. No surprise that Verstappen is still on top but most telling has got to be that Vettel, despite having arguably the worst car on the grid, is ahead of Hamilton when conditions bring out driver performance a bit more over car performance. Norris in amongst the Ferraris too.
The FIA said it isn't over 5%. But 5% of 145m is 7.25m. So it could be a decent overspend without hitting 5%.
I don't know what to think. They said the overspend is around catering and sick pay. But if they overspent then it doesn't really matter where the accounting is wrong. It means they had extra money to spend on the whole operation, including the car.
I'm not an accountant but I work with financial auditors and I know enough to say that accounting and auditing isn't black and white, a lot of it is based on interpretation and judgement. So I'll just wait and see how it shakes out.
This is F1 anyway. They don't have to slavishly apply the rules. They'll find a level of punishment that doesn't piss off Red Bull by being too harsh, doesn't piss off the other teams by being too lenient, but also doesn't encourage other teams to make the same accounting "mistake". That's the real trick.
I think the punishment should be based on how much you have exceeded the cap, 5% over the cap you lose 5% of your points or something like that certainly should be harsh once you enter the + 5% significant range
There is also no malice at all from Red Bull. The FIA have even said this.
They submitted the accounts openly to the FIA...so if this is "cheating", they are rubbish at it. Along with the fact accounting is like a fine art as well, I was a sole prop for 5 years, my accountant would get me to move some savings around and expenses etc and get my tax bill way way lower, and that was just for me. Imagine what corporate accounting is like.
If anything, this is Red Bull doing what they do, and seeking an advantage within the rules just like they do with their cars.
It's a joke.
All the serious teams are building so called hypercars with F1 tech. This allows millions of costs to be pushed over to the hypercar programme when in reality the work could be benefitting the F1 team as much as the road.
Never happening. I think for titles to be taken away they would have to be caught out and out cheating - as in, having significant overspend and attempting to hide it - whereas this seems more like a difference of opinion of what comes under the cap or not.
Also, we really don’t know how serious the breach actually is, as in, how much was the overspend and in what area. I’m not sure if we’ll ever know for sure, I doubt this is something that will ever be publicly released?
My guess would be, at worst, it’s a case of RB chancing their arm that a minor overspend would be dealt with fairly leniently in its first year(and maybe naively assuming Mercedes/Ferrari would do it to an extent). If they lose the appeal they probably won’t take it any further and blame their auditors, and maybe get a reduced budget for 2023/24.
…they haven’t won a constructors title since 2013.
And also, this is the type of overreaction I was talking about over at Autosport. Big punishment for a minor breach…Jesus lads.
Which title would that be, the one they didn't win last year or the one they have not won yet this year.
I think stripping Red Bull of the constructors title would be an appropriate punishment for what is quite a significant breach of the regulations because winning it is regarded as a big deal for any team so having it taken away would hurt and be a harsh lesson. RB is the only team to infringe this regulation for 2021. Five percent is the equivalent of nearly two and a half million pounds of an overspend - the average salary for a driver in a lower team .
Was reading articles on the cost cap and sick leave was one of a handful of specific exclusions called out. Maybe there is unverified sick leave or maybe there’s some misinformation floating about.
Nothing to do with the cost cap but it’s reported that Stroll gets $10m per year base salary, same as Sainz and Bottas and more than the likes of Russell, Perez, Ocon & more. Different level nepotism.
If the roles were reverses and Hamilton won and Mercedes went over the cost cap, this forum would be a lot less philosophical about it.
Sickpay is interesting though. If there isn't a substantial penalty, of one kind or another, then I'd imagine the teams will look into having staff take a few weeks sick leave every year. In other words, getting them to work from home and run their wages through a sick leave budget which is outside the cost cap.
It should be tricky tonpolice because employers can't discriminate based on disability such as mental health, but if those people wages are included in the cost cap, then it creates an incentive to not hire someone with a long term mental health issue (which can count as disability) such as anxiety or depression.
It's not clear cut.
....lol
True,give it few more championships and everyone will have moved on from Hamilton and be hating Verstappen instead!
Fecker! Thought I had posted in the wrong thread. 😁
I've only seen one W series race so know very little about it but the cancellation news sucks for sure.
And then use the fine money to fund at least one more W Series race.
Not sure how you came to that conslusion based on what I said. In conditions like yesterday, where you have a car sitting on the track that requires a tractor and marshal to remove it, then yes, red flag it. That's very different to your "red flag for every car broken down on track" comment. Not like it happens every F1 race either.
Gasly was on full wets and driving slower than required past an object he didn't know was there. He did nothing wrong until he had passed the incident.
Anyway, I see the conversation has moved on to the budget cap, surprised the FIA didn't tell us by how much and in what why Red Bull overspent. If it wasn't on development of the car then slap them with a fine.
You think this is new? Throughout the Schumacher days dial up forums was full of Scum macher, Ferrari International Assistance = FIA, Finger boy Vettel wins again etc.
This new breed of online fans is an absolute pain to listen to
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Their punishment should be a diet.
The F1 subreddit is the same, as is Twitter(obviously). Everyone’s an accounting expert now.
RB will appeal, but even if they lose that they’ll never in a million years start taking points off them - they’d have to be found to ridiculously overspend before that’s part of the conversation.
I presume they, and Hamilton too are also demanding meaningful punishment over mercedes secret tyre tests back in ~2014
You should read the Autosport forums, people are openly calling for Max to be stripped of his 2021 title. Despite not knowing how much RB overspent by and in what department, and the FIA haven’t actually conducted an investigation into it all.
They are frothing at the mouth over it.
Since Horner likes to run his mouth every ten minutes then they can't really complain when other things are done publicly.
Wish they would deal with this the same way they dealt with Ferrari's engine discrepancy, ie Quietly and let us concentrate on the on track activities.
Knowing the show man the FIA have become these days they'll probably strip Max and Red Bull 100 points from this season in order to take the title to the wire in Abu Dhabi again.
