2024 F1 General Discussion Thread

Yeah I've had a similar experience. There was such a culture of absolute corruption at McLaren under Ron Dennis, whether it was conducting corporate espionage and stealing Ferrari's blueprints, having drivers deliberately lie to stewards to get opponents penalised, the secret third pedal etc. They did have some likeable drivers at times like Hakkinen and Raikkonen but it was really hard to get behind the team with Ron Dennis at the helm.

After going through the stint of Whitmarsh and the return of Dennis, when Zak finally came in it felt like a breath of fresh air and I really liked where he took the team and was a fan at first. But the more you see of Zak over the years though the more dislikeable he is. Whether it's the constant mouthing off and bullshitting, the palling around with Trump, the mistreatment of drivers in Indy, he's a really easy guy to dislike.

I do still like the team currently though, I respect figures like Stella and particularly like their two drivers right now and want to see them achieve.

To be fair to Brown, the Trump thing was foisted on them by F1, they didn't ask for him to be in their garage.

And to give him his credit, he's turned the team around and look at their sponsor list too. Not bad…

Fair play to him if so, he must be annoyed with his chances lately, arguably faster in Canada and Max won, lost by less than a second to him in Imola, looked good to beat Max on merit in Austria and they collided, on another day he could be 4 victories into this season but he “only” has 1.

If McLaren keep up the pace and Lando learns from these near misses they will go only one way IMO.

Yeah hopefully Lando will learn from this, he didn't cover himself in glory with his attempts to overtake Max and probably let his frustration get the better of him in the end. A cooler head last Sunday might have seen him make the pass without any contact as he has a faster car with DRS.

That's not to absolve Max of his share of the blame either

Crofty has always remained unbiased doing his job, and having watched hundreds of Grand Prix with him commentating I couldn’t tell you who his favourite driver is.

And my problem with sky is not with their bias, it’s their anti- bias against red bull and max which has been ever present for close on 4 years

Simon Lazenby is particularly annoying with his bias.

I think it was on the coverage for Austria where the presenters on Sky (Can't remember her name off the top of my head) mentioned at least once that there were 2 British drivers in the top 3 and they're a British broadcaster and that's why they were devoting coverage time to them. First time they've actually mentioned it on air so I assume they must've got some complaints about their coverage being overly focussed towards the British drivers

Sainz to alpine being reported now

hes deserves a good seat, hes driving very well, its a shame he couldnt stay at Ferrari

Don't underestimate the flavio effect

sounds like Ocon has signed for Haas.

If RedBull do dump Checo you couldn't justify giving the seat to Ricciardo on current form when Tsunoda has being driving a lot better and has arguably earned a shot at it. I'm sure RedBull have Lawson,Ricciardo and Tsunoda on the sim

I don't think Tsunoda would pay second fiddle to Verstappen which would cause issues, Redbulls driver programme is pretty bad tho, do they even know what they are doing. Horner has the delusion that he can get the 2018 Ricciardo back, a very talented driver in Lawson just sitting on the sidelines, they've no intentions of promoting Tsunoda and Checo was awful last year then they give a new contract after a few races. I think it's only a matter of time before Ferrari and Mclaren catch them in constructors as it doesn't look like Verstappen can win it on his own again this year