Pretty mind boggling they are still plagued by an issue for two years. Maybe Newey drops them a hint out of compassion? But without Horner knowing.
F1 2023 Season
- Thread starter pauldyson1uk
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Not all drivers get worse, but most do.
World class drivers who can adapt their style will naturally last longer.
Something is wrong at Mercedes. I've been thinking this since 2021. They've lost a lot of key people, standards have slipped and complacency creeped in a long time ago.
Red Bull on the other hand are a well oiled machine that I don't feel will let up as long as the likes of Newey and Horner are there.
New floor upgrade, apparently. They know the rear suspension needs to be changed design wise, but cant be done this season due to cost cap.
They don’t have a low drag rear wing available as they’ve been prioritising other updates.
RB car was based on the best design principles, but they also identified the multi year advantages of breaking the rules. A seasons worth of winning and data is worth a fine and losing some wind tunnel testing.
Mercedes should also have ignored the rules and changed the chassis mid season. At least they’d be getting valuable data on whether their upgrade direction is going to work with the new design.
Sainz missed nothing, he hit the apex. Piastri was naive
You do realise the year they broke the rules was the last year of the old cars and it was only by 1.6% of the €145 million cost cap and they even showed how bad there were with accounting by not applying a tax credit which would of reduced it to .37% breach, a brand new mid season floor and suspension set up would be a massive breach as that would cost millions to produce.
red bull are the reason the nhs is failing.
Unfortunately he's gonna have to hang around until 2026 at least for that to happen - Red Bull are so far ahead that no team is catching them. It would be great for the competition if the FIA make a mini rule change to clip their wings (a bit like they did with the Merc in 2021 which led to the last race robbery), but the president has already ruled that out.
Why cant any team catch them ? We've seen in quali one lap pace is very close now.
Or as I now call it 2/3 of a Henderson week
Max beat second by .8 of a second to get quali this week, it’s the best all round car since the merc and his pit wall is just as ruthless as he is, Mercs during there 7 years weren’t they had a head banging mistake in them.
The mercs seemed pretty ruthless. The big difference to me between the two eras is that Red Bull have struggled with their second seat. Horner would kill to have someone like Bottas who can reliably get P2/3 every race but they have struggled to find someone who can qualify in the top 10 for some reason.
Max is unbeatable this season but people said the same about Hamilton. Eventually the rules will change or the other teams will catch up and we'll complain about the eternal dominance of whoever wins the next one.
As a side note: Ferrari are useless. They just had Sainz drive around for a while despite having a hole in his car big enough to fit his head through. Regardless of the rules or set up, they make so many stupid mistakes they'll never win anything.
Sky Germany saw Otmar visiting AM's motorhome for quite a while.
Otmar Szafnauer: "Yes, as you can see, my Alpine adventure has just ended. Now I can join a new F1 team from now on. Let's wait and see..."
Sky Germany: “You were just spotted entering the Aston Martin guest house."
Otmar Szafnauer: "I will not comment."
Otmar Szafnauer: "Yes, as you can see, my Alpine adventure has just ended. Now I can join a new F1 team from now on. Let's wait and see..."
Sky Germany: “You were just spotted entering the Aston Martin guest house."
Otmar Szafnauer: "I will not comment."
You cant fault him for this , its what he does and he does it very well, I just wish he had some competition, nobody is even close to him.
Pretty happy with Leclerc yesterday, finishing third ahead of quicker Mercedes and Mclaren in recent weeks is a big success. Red Bulls are uncatchable. Also he said he had to save fuel in the end and he was glad Hamilton pitted, otherwise it would have been tight, so that was probably a wrong move by Mercedes.
Even at 400k it only highlights the flaw in the budget cap that it can never be perfect.
Mercedes for example inflicted millions of damage into the Red Bull Cars with the crashes in Silverstone and Hungary.
Obviously Red Bull also inflicted damage on Mercedes but no where near as much.
So it's a big flaw that Red Bull or any team for instance suddenly has so much less money to spend all because another team crashes into them.
Hungary especially for Merc was the luckiest thing that happened to them because while not on purpose they destroyed one Red Bull, heavily damaged the other, gained a lot of points and also managed to lower Red Bulls budget for upgrades by millions.
It's a hard thing to fix but just shows it's not a black and white conversation.
TLDR': Red Bull had more damage inflicted by other teams and outside their control so therefore any overspend isn't really allowing for further upgrades.
But the cap is the cap so while unlucky and kind of flawed the wind tunnel penalty was necessary
Like I would have major sympathy if a team breached the cap because another team totaled their car In the second last race for instance. Suddenly they have a a few extra million they are forced to spend. It's bound to happen at some point too so will be interesting.
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Thought you might like this, unforced error, some crackers.
One thing i noticed is that both Häkkinen's happened on what looked like dry tracks with inters on.
One thing i noticed is that both Häkkinen's happened on what looked like dry tracks with inters on.
Indeed, I had given up on this season, but decided to come back recently and take it in. It's like Maradona for football, or Jordan for basketball, or Usain Bolt for running.
I want to be able to say I've been there and had the privilege to see it.
That a very good view to have.
The Bull’s didn’t win anything close to every game and even the seasons when they were ridiculous, they still had to have it all on the line for the finals. Maybe if Max had a race at the end vs second where winner takes all, it might be comparable. A better comparison would be Usain Bolt running against people with weights in their trainers, because it’s basically the fastest person, with far better equipment, and you don’t tend to get that in a lot of other sports I would imagine.
That’s not to take anything away from Red Bull or Max, they’re clearly miles above anything else on the grid right now and worked to create that for themselves, but the nature of F1 means that we all know they will win everything until the next regulation change, anyone who thinks different is kidding themselves. We’ve seen it for well over a decade in F1 now with 3 dominant eras.
The reason why those people/teams are so beloved is because of the close battles they had to win to come out on top (the majority of the time). Max is asking to do pit stop practice half way through Spa
The key difference between league sports and F1 (since you included NFL and nba) is you don't play the best team every week. You will win some weeks, even if you don't win overall. In F1 only one team and driver can win each week. So the patriots dominating NFL is not comparable to red bull dominating F1.
Saw somewhere that Verstappen has averaged more than 25 points per race for the first half of the season - obviously due to sprint races, but still
Even if there is a clearly dominant car/driver combination like we have right now, F1 will always have enough smaller subplots to keep things somewhat interesting. Of course, people care most about who wins the races and championships, but right now it's also relevant to follow how Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Aston Martin stack up, whether AlphaTauri, Haas, Williams and Alfa Romeo can get in the points, how drivers within each team compare, etc. Teams and drivers can still get massive results without actually winning the race, so there will always be something to cheer for, even if it's a given from the start that Verstappen will cross the line first.
Even if there is a clearly dominant car/driver combination like we have right now, F1 will always have enough smaller subplots to keep things somewhat interesting. Of course, people care most about who wins the races and championships, but right now it's also relevant to follow how Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Aston Martin stack up, whether AlphaTauri, Haas, Williams and Alfa Romeo can get in the points, how drivers within each team compare, etc. Teams and drivers can still get massive results without actually winning the race, so there will always be something to cheer for, even if it's a given from the start that Verstappen will cross the line first.
Why not? It was clearly Sainz's corner and it was on Piastri for sticking his nose in a disappearing gap. He hits the same apex whether he locks up or not. I don't rate Sainz much but he didn't do much wrong there. I think if Piastri had hit him any harder it would be Piastri facing a penalty.
Put yourself in Sainz's position, you have Hamilton on your left with nowhere to go and the corner is tightening, Piastri puts the nose of the car in far behind his vision and somehow expects to go around three abreast. It's a real pinch point of a corner and like Sainz says people trying that cause collisions. The natural line is to cut it and not do a big circle around. You need multiple cars to do a wide line for a sharp dogleg corner, it's naive. Sometimes in real chaos we've seen Kimi and others take a wide line.
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One thing I've noticed is how clean the drivers are nowadays for the most part on starts. You used to nearly always see a race ending collision for someone and it was always a bit of a surprise if everyone got away cleanly. Now it's reversed.
Drivers are better now than about 10 years ago, the average skill set is higher + race management is much more crafted now. You don't see drivers pushing their tires to the absolute maximum to defend from 2-3 levels superior car*, because they know that it's not the fight they can win now and might compromise their own race from that. The Witt and Racecraft + car management is at another level now. I remember watching in the 2000s or even 2010s, were drivers who were lapped by the race leader for some reason, unlapped themselves as they got faster and actually challenged for the fastest lap, etc* On normal racing conditions you don't see anything like that anymore or like it was brought out yesterday, that how you defend in DRS era from a car that has 20-30km/H over you on straight ready to overtake? Without killing your tires.
Horner touched Toto's ass while he was doing an interview. Toto laughed and called it harassment. The media:
F1 journalism makes football journalism look sensible
F1 journalism makes football journalism look sensible
You have to be kidding, right? Right!? I remember when overtaking was more than pressing a button. The current set of newer drivers now never even had the chance to hone that skill. Moderatedly skilled drivers, and by that I mean Perez in Austria, can walz through half the field without having to produce one memorable moment of racing.
Also please name a single f1 race where someone unlapped themselves on the track that wasn't lapped because of damage and then got fastest lap!?
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Loved this overtake from Ocon. There were actually a couple of nice overtakes in this one
I am not talking about overtaking only, the whole race management, tires and whole car performance related questions + keeping an eye on the whole race conditions etc overall.
Unlapping and getting the fastest times were very common back in the day, I can't remember any particular race or event from the 90s or 00s, but I remember seeing it plenty of times. Whether something had happened early in the race that caused actually fast driver to drop on the back of the grid and make it all possible.
+ Verstappen wins and races in total nowadays ain't as bad as many make it look. The 20-second gap that was last night was classed as "outrageous". Well, lapping everyone til like 4th place was a thing during Schumacher domination or even winning a race by almost 40 seconds or worst even happened within the Mercedes domination era. It just looks a lot worse now and the average viewer is much more knowledgeable now.
There was also a time when the 18th driver on the grid lost by 3 laps or worse even.
I wouldn't separate Hamilton's era from Verstappen's in that sense to be honest. Both times the best driver in the best car drives away with it. Same with Schumi in Ferrari or Senna in a McLaren (albeit with better opposition, but no one can blame or give credit to any of them for the skills of their peers).
The difference for me between the Hamilton & Verstappen era to the past is that cars used to change a lot more over a season (and a race!) and used to be a lot less reliable in the 90s and 00s and that they had a lot less down force while having pretty much the same weight/power ratio. They also had worse tires and widely fluctuating weight with refilling. The slowest were unquestionably slower in comparison but I'm not sure that says that much about the quality unless you're talking of the base minimum. (And I have to be pedantic on this. Being lapped and on pace with the front was not a regular occurrence at all. And no one needed an extra point for fastest lap to create a bit of excitement at a GP back then).
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Firstly, it isn’t that simple. Teams abiding by the budget might have turned down a £2m upgrade because they only had £1.9m to spend, and instead introduced smaller changes that wouldn’t be as relevant on next years car. It’s not just the case that RB benefitted by that amount only, especially as track data is now so important with wind tunnel restrictions.
Secondly, my broader point is that the FIA aren’t treating the rules in the way that everyone else expected. If people knew in advance that would be the punishment, you’d have seen a lot more breaches. Why not risk a major breach now the FIA have shown themselves to be spineless?
Using a football analogy, if you let people get away with going down under minimal contact, don’t be surprised if teams scream every time they are touched or systematically fake head injuries in the 60th minute to take on energy tablets.
I assumed they did this to support Leclerc E.g. try other tyre compounds first/ tested degradation etc.
I think you've missed the point entirely, they broke the rules in the old car, the only carry over was the engine, all the aero on the ground effect era cars was brand new car so there was little to no carry over data bar the engine.
54mins into the Autosport post-race podcast and Matt Kew claims the following:
Id say following reasons:
1. Cost cap is a major factor, have to try to keep it clean. The more damage you cause to your car the more it eats up your budget.
2. Cars are so aero sensitive that any sort of damage will effectly ruin your race, especially damaging the floor.
3. Penalties are overly harsh now. There aint no room for rubbin'.
Agree with this. Reliability has gone up so much from the prost/senna - schmacher/hakkinen eras.
Drivers in 80s had alot more skill, no power steering, manual gearboxes, higher reving engines with spiky torque curve delivery etc.
We have some good competition on the F1 prediction.
Not sure what he was implying,,, does anyone have any idea?