The king is dead, long live the king.
Only 102 days to lights out for 2023..
I've been going to th ICCR in Mondello to keep me entertained. Worthwhile for a day out!
All this talk of changing the weekend format and dropping Friday practice. What do people think of this?
I've always liked Friday practice, always interesting to see how teams progress from FP1 up to Qualy 1. It's kind of nice to have on the TV in the background too, you don't really have to pay too much attention to it.
Whats the change? Only thing i see is the removal of FP on Saturdays during Sprint races
Is the talk of change coming from reputable sources? Even if it was the FIA I'd be skeptical. I also see there's a Artificial Intelligence generated interview with Michael Schumacher in a German newspaper. Bad form. The Family are suing. They've always tried to protect his privacy.
But it's all about generating stories during the lul in racing. Believe the changes when they happen.
If I had a massive story I wanted to break, I might wait until the next race weekend. Whatever the real story is, it's unlikely to be as exciting as the made up stories. It will go back to normal business when the racing starts again.
I think it's important teams get to run their cars without any kind of jeopardy involved. It might not be best for the viewing public but I think you're going down the wrong route trying to keep everyone's attention for three days in a row.
I'd agree with 1 fp session. If I had my way dump Friday, have fp1 and quali on Saturday and the race Sunday. No need for sprints either.
The Race had a podcast about sprints/etc the other day. One of the contributors made a great point, currently each element of the weekend builds towards the race. But switching the sprint to be standalone ruins that element, so what's the point?
That point by The-Race is a challenge for the teams. Why would the viewer care about how the weekend is structured? Wouldn't the viewer just want maximum racing and maximum excitement?
Say a two day schedule is not (as) financially viable, particularly for the track.
The rest of the weekend structure ultimately has an impact on the race. Less practice means the cars are less well set up so could make the races more challenging and unpredictable, which could be interesting. The other angle is workload - they're on the road almost constantly with the 23 race season now so anything to lighten the mechanic's load during the race weekend would surely be beneficial.
I think they'd really need to balance it with more in season test sessions to allow time for car development though as they get so little running these days. Teams could do it at tracks near the factories with a factory-based engineering team to keep that workload balance. There's a cost cap now so there's no reason to regulate testing really. I don't think there's a sport out there that top tier competitors get less opportunity to practice than F1. It must hurt younger drivers who get so little time to develop their skills outside of high pressure competitive sessions. I'd suspect more testing would also benefit the smaller teams who have less effective wind tunnels, simulators and CFD systems.
We can relate.
People sometimes bang on about mechanics and crews as if they actually give a shiny shyte about them. The mechanics should definable bring this stuff up at the union meetings, but it's weird that the fans pretend to care about it.
If the workload is too much, the teams need to start thinking about having extra capacity so they can sub members in and out to give them a rest. Liberty has decided is wants more and more races. If its too much work, the teams need to adapt.
Big shifts over at Merc. Probably won't effect much this season, but they clearly needed a change in direction for next year and beyond. The game of catch up continues.
The drivers have backed a change to the sprint weekend format.
Channel 4 need to renegotiate their coverage of Sprint weekends because the two show weekend won't be enough anymore.
Yes we can, if we ignore the existence of WEC, FE, WRC, MotoGp, Indycar, Nascar and BTCC and many other series that have been running during the break!
I know its a meme for fun, just perplexes me how some people seem to treat F1 and it's immediate feeder series as the only motorsport around when it's so easy to watch so many series now!
Agreed. Here is hoping they do.
Actually do you know what on second thoughts I really don't care if they do or not.
As long as Channel 4 show the qualifying for the main race every weekend and the race itself then I do not care if I see the sprint quali and sprint race or not.
It's still the wrong way around. It should be FP1 on Friday then Sprint Quali then the Sprint race on a Friday then have the main events on the Saturday and the Sunday.
So untill they do that I will never be totally happy with the current format of it.
Exactly. For example - European Le Mans Series kicks off this weekend with the 4 hours of Barcelona, qualy today and race tomorrow. Plenty of Irish interest with Charlie Eastwood, Matt Griffin and Michael Fassbender all racing. Free to watch on the official European Le Mans Series Youtube channel too.
Berlin Formula E race on at 2pm today.
And it looks like Murphy Prototypes are back in sportscar racing with their new LMP3 and running in support races in the Le Mans Cup
I'm watching the Porsche Sprint Challenge GB on ITV4 and there is a driver called Robert Cronin from County Cork competing in it.
Yea, he made his way up through Irish karting and then did some euros last year and got some decent results. Stepping up to cars this year.
This is the F1 2023 thread, welcome.
It's race week. Can someone else start a race thread for a change?
I take the hits with the alerts for this thread, I'll do it for the main race thread too: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058293767/f1-2023-round-4-azerbaijan/p1?new=1
Well, well. Big changes at both "Scuderia..." teams ahead.
-Tost out at the end of the year with current Ferrari Sporting Director Laurent Mekies replacing him.
-Former FIA exec Peter Bayer becomes CEO.
Very interesting indeed! I guess they aren't for sale afterall
The Azerbaijan and Miami GP's are back-to-back.
That's pretty wild. From a logistics perspective it would make sense to have all the American races together on the calendar. But from a commercial perspective it probably makes way more sense to space them out.
Azerbaijan to miami is a bit wild though
With the exception of some mechanical items and the cars themselves, none of the gear in Baku will be in Miami next week, so it’s logistically fine to have the calendar the way it is. All the gear in Baku will be shipped to most probably Monaco or Barcelona after the race on Sunday.
Infact there is likely plenty of race day equipment from all teams in containers on a ship bound for Singapore as we speak. The logistics are insane and it’s not as simple as pack up and onto the next!
It is a topic for the calendar next year, trying to shorten the distances between races so the freight doesn't have to go across the world per race. Surprised it took this long for it to be considered, especially with F1 aiming for carbon neutrality etc
