F1 World Championship Grand Prix - bringing sexy back to the track

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Has anyone watched the practice runs? it was so damn fun to watch,

[Ripe]

I haven't because 1. in Finland live-broadcasts of F1 are behind a paywall and 2. it was like 4 in the morning here when they started. But times didn't really told much about the situations of the teams.

Other F1 thing: there was beta testing of F1 2016 and one of the testers, aarava, made a video where he talks about things he is allowed to talk:

Have to admit, this looks quite promising, especially to someone like me whose main focus in F1 games have always been career mode.

[Phos]

Outch, Nico makes an expensive mistake, costing Mercedes one expensive front wing.  

I think this picture is going to be updated:

And oh my, it sounds like Honda engines are still down on power.  

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

2 hours ago, Phos said:

Outch, Nico makes an expensive mistake, costing Mercedes one expensive front wing.  

I think this picture is going to be updated:

And oh my, it sounds like Honda engines are still down on power.  

Oh yes, I saw that! And they kept replaying it in slo-mo which was funny LOL

[TheOcelot]

It was a bit strange for Rosberg to lose control of the car on that part of the track.

I hope race day is wet. Wet races are always exciting.

[QuantumEdge]

Welp, looks like it's business as usual after qualifying.  Hamilton 1st, Rosberg 2nd and Vettel just a little bit behind in 3rd.  Now if you excuse me, I'll be praying Ferrari makes up the deficit before Mercedes gets to happily grab hold of that championship trophy.

[Phos]

In other news, Aston Martin entered a deal with Red Bull to get their badge on Red Bull's F1 car in exchange to get Red Bull's Adrian Newey to design a road car meant to be faster around a track than an F1 car. The Aston Martin rep went to great lengths to tout their authenticity and emphasize that this isn't a "marketing scam" even though the only thing Aston brings to the table is money. The resulting cars will promptly be sold to people who will buy them as status symbols, I imagine at least one will wind up as a sculpture, by that I mean permanently stored somewhere it can't drive out of. For example: I know one guy bought a left hand drive Jaguar XJ220 from the 30th floor of a Japanese office building, or an American guy who bought a vector (a brief American super car brand) only to have it placed in his living room. 

I imagine it'll wind up looking a bit like that Red Bull car from Gran Turismo 5, considering it's also planned to use ground effect fans.  

Looking back at this, I made much ado about it. The marketing spiel about authenticity that Aston trots out is really bothersom after they sold that rebadged Toyota Kei car. 

[E-van]

Hey, everyone. Just stopping by to post this pic that is very powerful to me. Thank god he's okay after that.

PS: For anyone that may not know who that is, it's Fernando Alonso after a massive crash in today's race, and that's his car absolutely destroyed.

[QuantumEdge]

The whole thing looks more like a pile of carbon fibre with some wheels glued on than a car.  Geez, it's been a while since I've seen a crash that violent.

As for the race, it kinda sucks Mercedes got it again, but the good news is that Ferrari appear to have the pace to challenge them for the title, thank god.  If only their strategy worked out a little better...

[E-van]

1 hour ago, QuantumEdge said:

The whole thing looks more like a pile of carbon fibre with some wheels glued on than a car.  Geez, it's been a while since I've seen a crash that violent.

As for the race, it kinda sucks Mercedes got it again, but the good news is that Ferrari appear to have the pace to challenge them for the title, thank god.  If only their strategy worked out a little better...

I still thought it was a very good race, regardless who won. Plus, out of the 2 Mercedes drivers, I'm much more of a Rosberg fan, so eh. 

[Ripe]

So Australia did not went that well. At least the race was more interesting than the qualifying and it seems that the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari is smaller now.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I'm glad Ham's team won again and I would be glad to see him win the championship 

[TheOcelot]

Yeah Alonso is a lucky boy. Glad he's okay.

Can't help but feel sorry for Alonso. He's driving for a team "a former giant" who are struggling so badly right now. Meanwhile his former team are going from strength to strength. The gap between Mercedes and Ferrari appears to have closed, although Mercedes still seem to have an overall advantage-at least in qualifying. Melbourne isn't necessary the best track to show how close the teams are in terms of pace, but the gap between Mercedes and Ferrari in qualifying should be a concern.

I just hope Ferrari can take the fight to Mercedes, because otherwise it's up to Rosberg to take the fight to Hamilton, hopefully like he did in 2014. Rosberg is an excellent driver. He pushes Lewis hard and deserves his place in the team. Can't see him beating Lewis over 21 races.

[Phos]

Man, Alanso taking out that Haas, gotta wonder how the race would have gone otherwise (shout outs to Alanso's wheel retainers). On the other hand, those super softs, it seems like they were getting maybe 16 laps out of them and then loosing pace, has me wondering if Pirelli made the wrong call bringing them to Melbourne at all, kinda just seemed like where people's race weekend went to die.

Kimi Raikonen's race ended in an unfortunate but kinda funny way, some real visual humor to the fire out of the intake, and he was pretty nonplussed about his car being on fire.

Heck of a race for Haas, scoring in their first GP, out scored the heck out of McLaren.  I hear the news on the Honda power plant isn't brilliant, that the Honda engineers are already talking about next year, not a good look for them. Also that little maneuver Alanso pulled seemed really weird, not sure what he was going for there, unless he decided late to not try and pass and was getting back on a normal line? 

So, tires was such a big deal for this race, and I can't help but be reminded that there was a season or two back in the aughts where they were only giving each driver one set of tires for the race, and they were lasting, these tires are actually pretty "nerfed" compared to what's possible. 

Oh, interesting, seems we're hearing rumbles that Gutierrez's car abruptly started trying to charge the battery, meaning his MGU-K suddenly started harvesting energy instead of supplying it. 

 

[Ripe]

So, the geniuses who decided what happens in F1 decided to keep that trainwreck of a qualifying in Bahrain. So prepare to see again one of the most boring qualifyings in F1 history this weekend

[QuantumEdge]

19 minutes ago, RipeFIN said:

So, the geniuses who decided what happens in F1 decided to keep that trainwreck of a qualifying in Bahrain. So prepare to see again one of the most boring qualifyings in F1 history this weekend

I can't wait to see how much more humiliating this can get.  Seriously, if they continue to the third race with this system, the ratings are screwed.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

28 minutes ago, RipeFIN said:

So, the geniuses who decided what happens in F1 decided to keep that trainwreck of a qualifying in Bahrain. So prepare to see again one of the most boring qualifyings in F1 history this weekend

When is this again?

[TheOcelot]

3 hours ago, Mikyeong said:

When is this again?

Ths weekend.

Alonso will not be competing in Bahrain based on medical grounds due to chest CT scans he's had.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

1 minute ago, BenderBR said:

Ths weekend.

Alonso will not be competing in Bahrain based on medical grounds due to chest CT scans he's had.

Yeah I saw that on twitter.  I hope he is ok. 

I also heard that Rosberg won the Melbourne race. Part of me kinda hopes we wins against despite him being a prick but I really hope Bahrian is nicer to Hamilton this time around. He got off to a bad start last time.

[Phos]

Just saw the free practice 2 times, and... What?

Is this an April Fools? Was Ferrari really sandbagging? Was everyone but Mclaren and Mercedes sandbagging? Bahrain is a very top speed focused track, long straightaways, has Honda really come so far?

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Nice to see Lewis pull his weight. 

[QuantumEdge]

4 hours ago, Phos said:

Just saw the free practice 2 times, and... What?

Is this an April Fools? Was Ferrari really sandbagging? Was everyone but Mclaren and Mercedes sandbagging? Bahrain is a very top speed focused track, long straightaways, has Honda really come so far?

I never ever take practice times all that seriously.  I've never really seen a practice session line up match with qualifying, since that's all about testing, not necessarily about posting blazing times.

[TheOcelot]

Yeah, teams are always trying different set-ups and fuel loads in practice so their times don't normally reflect there out-right pace.

I'd argue Button did his best time on a very low fuel load because in Australia McLaren were still well down the order. Ferrari were clearly the second fastest team and I would be very surprised if this not the same in Bahrain.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

For the cars being mediocre, Button did well

[Ripe]

Ugh.. well, at least Q3 was better than in Australia. But the results were again so predictable. At least when Red Bull was he best team in two years Ferrari was really able to challenge them.