Formula 1 2019 - General Discussion Thread

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Making last year's car available would be amazing. We the difference between teams from season to season would really only be the innovation teams can do between seasons. It would likely end the rules change dynasties we have had recently. Red bull race so far ahead that they win 4 seasons in a row. Then Mercedes win the next (probably 7 until the 2021 rule changes) seasons on the trot.

Let's be honest - dominations usually come from a combination of one team doing a great job and the others doing, well, shoite.

It was the same in 1988 (nobody but McLaren bothering with a fully new design since in was the last season of the turbos), 1992-1993 (McLaren and Honda parting ways, Ferrari in a political quagmire, Benetton had a great chassis but the poor V8 Ford) and the 2002-2004 period (with the "Bridgestone developing tyres exclusively for Ferrari" coup de grace).

Take this season: Ferrari had the fastest car right out of the assembly garage, but they failed abysmally in the early development race, when it's all about understanding how your new chassis reacts to setups, temperatures, tyre wear and track conditions. They kept going backwards until, before the summer break, Red Bull also overtook them. Come September, they FINALLY figured things out...too late.

Red Bull didn't really dominate all the seasons 2010-2013, despite what the final results show; Two of these ended up with less than 5 points between Vettel and Alonso. Again, these sessions were the result if RBR being consistent while the others alternatively screwed up design and development - in 2010, there were only 16 points between WDC Vettel and Hamilton in 4th place, while the next season the difference between 1st and second was over 100pts...then again only 3pts in 2012, and again over 100 pts in 2013.

recyclebin wrote: »

Ferraris resurgence is a bit baffling. The season and championship is all but wrapped up. Its strange to see a team improving by that much so late in the season. I suppose Mercedes are coasting and not taking any risks. They just need to keep finishing third and forth and pick up wins when Ferrari make a strategy mistake.

Red Bull are still only good around a very limited number of tracks so they are also out of equation.

Probably a bit of both things - Mercedes not pushing as hard as they could with updates, and the fact that Ferrari had a fundamentally good car since the beginning of the season, but they were struggling to understand its quirks.

patmahe wrote: »

Here you go: https://www.eurosport.com/formula-1/brawn-eyes-nascar-style-inspections-for-f1_sto6161414/story.shtml

Sounds good to me. Smaller teams don't have he budget to explore 5 r&d avenues to figure out which one works. So this would be a way for small teams to catch up. The bigger teams will still have the innovations before everyone else so they still get the advantage and other teams wouldn't fall too far behind.

On first glance, I'm in favour

This would be a serious change for the sport.
I dont think it would be as much benefit as some think given the technical nature of f1.
If another team were today given a few hours access to a mercedes f1 car to take apart and look at it, it would likely make little short term difference and by the time any other team could put some of the ideas of their car and make them work for them, they would likely be so far behind the curve as to be useless.
This could have the unintended consequence of just strengthening the B teams to run right with their A team because at the minute, as close as the links are, all teams do their own aero etc.
If it all opens up, it should be easier for B teams to turn up with practically identical cars.

Cool_CM wrote: »

Rumours floating around that Autosport might be stopping their print edition

Probably makes economic sense, I've stopped buying it regularly in recent years and would generally only pick it up for travelling, but sad to see.

There's an interesting point about the media we consume online. We're you might buy a magazine, carry it with you and read it, you're much less likely to buy autosport online and read it on your phone. Temptation is to just read the free stuff online even though it's much lower quality.

I'd say we'll move towards paying for better content. But the beat traditional media night be gone bust by then. Such is life.

I have a F1 Magazine subscription on the Zinio app. If you don't have this app, download it. Any subscription for feck all price. I got the annual F1 subscription for £30 inc. VAT.

Anyway, it looks like Suzuka could be affected by Super Typhoon Hagibis on Saturday night. Not super anymore by that stage but still packing a punch at 90 knots at landfall overnight Saturday/Sunday Japan time.

Infoanon wrote: »

Not just Autosport,the future of F1 racing magazine is also in doubt.

I used to buy F1 Racing on a regular basis from when it first came out in 1996 to around the late 2000's. I only buy it once or twice a year now. I'm sure the price of the magazine increased recently too.

I was Atlas F1 subscriber before it became Autosport. I stopped bothering at some stage after it became Autosport. It became a lot more British team driver biased. OH continued with the subscription till this year and had enough too. Now days the only reason I visit Autosport is Brexit thread in Paddock Club.

meeeeh wrote: »

I was Atlas F1 subscriber before it became Autosport. I stopped bothering at some stage after it became Autosport. It became a lot more British team driver biased. OH continued with the subscription till this year and had enough too. Now days the only reason I visit Autosport is Brexit thread in Paddock Club.

Yeah I think it's pretty much inevitable with publications - often a new director brings a new editorial line.

Years and years ago, I religiously bought "Autosprint", the Italian version of Autosport. The "shift" was very clear every time a new director came on board - it went from being pretty much neutral and a "motorsport's enthusiast" publication in the early '90s, to a "Tifosi's official magazine" in the Schumacher era, back to a more neutral stance in 2006/2007. Similarly, the space given to each discipline would change - for a few years there'd be pretty much equal space given to F1, Indycar, WRC and Touring Cars (DTM, EuroSTC and WTCC depending on years), then it'd go mostly F1, then switch back to more space for rallying and so on.

Still, call it what it want, "it's the modern times" as a justification for the loss of publications doesn't reassure me in the least - we're heading for lower and lower quality of journalism as we are. People will not want to pay for their news source, which will give way to even more amateurism.

I am as guilty as the next guy - I don't really buy magazines anymore, unless I'm traveling. Especially in my fields of interest (motors, computers, modeling) you can find mostly everything online...yet, if I stand back and take a look at the QUALITY of what you find online, well...you need to filter through a LOT of crud.

AMKC wrote: »

I also do not buy Autosport as much as I used to. It has increased in price a good bit and all I am really interested in in it is the F1 segment which has deteriorated a lot lately. So I can not say I will be sad if it does go.
As for the F1 magazine that can be hit and miss. Sometimes its good other times not so good. I only ever bought it the odd time but not often. It would be good if there could be a bi-weekly F1 magazine a bit like Autosport but just for F1.

Part of me thinks the quality has deteriorated because of the volume of coverage. There's a race every 2 weeks so there's really only the race weekend to cover plus a small bit of actual off track news like the mclaren-Mercedes engine deal. But pieces of actual news like that are pretty rare. So they have to fill daily segments on Internet sites with junk rumours.

Did anyone notice how little talk there was of the mclaren merc deal until it was actually imminent? The real news is usually kept secret. The junk and misinformation is fed to the press who eat up up because they need to fill pages. How many times do we hear about the possibility of Lewis to Ferrari while he's negotiating a new Contract with Mercedes? That's the clickbait.

The real news would be a report of the race, preview of the upcoming race and a bit of actual news that barely fills a few pages every fortnight. It's the volume and frequency of news that waters it all down.

I have f1 news in my Google news feed. Sometimes I get a bit of news that isn't also discusses in this forum bit it's rare. Sometimes the news will be a day ahead of this forum, but actually much more often them not, the forum is about as fast as my Google news feed.

I basically don't need to read the news and could rely on this thread for f1 news.

Yes, could get interesting. As previous poster stated, it'll pass over on Saturday evening, so just either side of the qualy and race times. It's early in the week and is expected to die out as it goes north. By Thursday we should have a good idea of how it impacts.

Didn't they have fog issues in fuji too.

You also might be thinking of the US Grand Prix of 2015.

To clarify - yes £10.99 per issue - an increase from £3.99 per issue.

Sterling - from the Autosport website - it's been seen as a cynical way of killing the magazine with immediate effect.

Why go down this road and not just cease is not immediately known. The Editor in chief is gone .
Maybe - as it's almost certainly the last edition - the premium price is because it may become a collector item in the future ??

OSI wrote: »

They might have term contracts with advertisers that would require repaying fees if they just straight up kill it.

That is very possible, there are a lot of theories doing the rounds but undoubtedly this is a move to kill the print edition with immediate effect.

In the day it was the motorsport magazine but over the years the quality dropped as they chased different markets .

uchimata83 wrote: »

flazio wrote: »

Zak Brown had a role in Autosport's parent company. Not anymore.
https://twitter.com/ZBrownCEO/status/1181880225568829440?s=19

After watching that Netflix documentary, I said he'd be gone by Sept. Out by a week

If only hed carefully consider resigning from McLaren.
Cant warm to him at all, think hes an awful spoofer

g1983d wrote: »

uchimata83 wrote: »

flazio wrote: »

Zak Brown had a role in Autosport's parent company. Not anymore.
https://twitter.com/ZBrownCEO/status/1181880225568829440?s=19

After watching that Netflix documentary, I said he'd be gone by Sept. Out by a week

If only hed carefully consider resigning from McLaren.
Cant warm to him at all, think hes an awful spoofer

If you think he is a spoofer, what do you think of Eric Bouillier?

A quick weather check for Japan shows the typhoon hitting Suzuka region at around Sat qualy/7-10am (our time). It should be gone by Sunday morning. So possible chance for big interruption on Saturday only.

I'm following the Windy app. Looks savage!