Formula One 2016 - Not sponsored by PDVSA

[Byron]

Nearly at the start of a new season and mainly triggered by this absolutely stunning lack of self-awareness

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/formu...cid=spartandhp

Teams and Drivers:

Mercedes: Hamilton and Rosberg.
Ferrari: Blown Floor and Raikkonen
Red Bull: Smiley Dan and Kyvat
Williams: Bottas and Massa
McClaren: Alonso and Button
Force India: Hulkenberg and Perez
Toro Rosso: Sainz and The Foetus
Renault (formerly Lotus): Magnussen and Palmer
Sauber: Nasr and Ericsson
Manor: Wehlrein and A.N.Other
Haas: Grosjean and Gutierrez

Main Points:

• Ecclestone is still alive.
• PDVSA are basically fucked, because of the crashing oil price, so they can't afford to shoehorn the most dangerous driver alive into any cash strapped team.
• Pirelli have introduced 'ultra-soft' tyres, to give more strategic variation (i.e. crashes). In addition of the 13 sets available over the weekend, Pirelli now choose two themselves.
• Cars are now made louder (lol)

Schedule:

March 20 - Australia
April 3 - Bahrain
April 17 - China
May 1 - Sochi
May 15 - Spain
May 29 - Monaco
June 12 - Canada
June 19 - The totally not corrupt and dodgy Baku
July 3 - Austria
July 10 - Britain
July 24 - Hungary
July 31 - Germany
August 28 - Belgium
September 4 - Italy
September 18 - Singapore
October 2 - Malaysia
October 9 - Japan
October 23 - USA
November 6 - Mexico
November 13 - Brazil
November 27 - Abu Dhabi

[Shindig]

Manor haven't confirmed their driver lineup? Bodes well.

[Pleb]

That German Merc dude will probably do something worthwhile which is to actually give a fuck and win a drivers title for once. Honda better get their arse in gear otherwise it's going to be a long year for them. Renault/Manor to finish bottom (as if).

Vettal to win (lol).

[Jimmy Floyd]

Manor haven't confirmed their driver lineup? Bodes well.

They seem to be holding some kind of auction for the seat.

Hamilton easily again and McLaren to continue being fucking tragic. Alonso to storm off mid season a la Alain Prost in '91.

Blown Floor Jesus will probably do alright as well. Are Ferrari rumoured to be quick?

Renault returning with those two drivers is good but I imagine this year's car will only barely move forwards.

[Disco]

Jolyon Palmer is the likely second driver for Manor.

[Pleb]

Jolyon Palmer is the likely second driver for Manor.

He's with Renault so that's out of the question.

What Jimmy said.

[SincereTheRebel]

Still praising allah and thanking jesus that pasta is gone. Hamilton to win again but as always, I want ferrari to do well. Hopefully vettel and hamilton fight it out with ferrari taking the title.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Jolyon Palmer has a seat at Renault. I read it was between Alex Rossi and (his name is) Rio (and he dances on the sand) Haryanto for the last drive.

[Disco]

Oh, I managed to completely miss that. Haryanto is bobbins from what I've seen, they should goose Ron and get him to loan them Vandoorne.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Which would be a great idea until Vandoorne in a Manor starts lapping the Ronmobiles.

[Magic]

Boring. Don't intend to watch a single race.

Yes, I felt the need to point that out.

[Pepe]

Boring. Don't intend to watch a single race.

Yes, I felt the need to point that out.

It's a shame that I lost interest in this in the past few years. Would be nice to care with two Mexicans on the grid and the Hermanos Rodriguez back. Oh well.

[Disco]

Which would be a great idea until Vandoorne in a Manor starts lapping the Ronmobiles.

Best chassis on the grid.

[Magic]

When are they making those 'BIG CHANGES' that's supposed to REINVIGORATE the sport?

[Disco]

They can't change it very much without killing it.

[7om]

I've barely watched any Formula 1 since my boy Villeneuve won the title in '97 so I'm out of the loop with this these days, but is it as much of a mess as it looks?

Why in the fuck are races split between terrestrial tv and paid tv? Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea? An absolute disaster for the casual fan and those without Sky, surely?

[Disco]

I've barely watched any Formula 1 since my boy Villeneuve won the title in '97 so I'm out of the loop with this these days, but is it as much of a mess as it looks?

Why in the fuck are races split between terrestrial tv and paid tv? Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea? An absolute disaster for the casual fan and those without Sky, surely?

They offered more money and the BBC stopped caring about sport in general.

Viewer numbers are down but Bernard would tell you they're still reaching their target audience so it's all fine. That would hold more water if everyone wasn't struggling so hard to sell ad space because of the, you guessed it, shrinking audience. The whole thing is run on such bizarre lines that I'm not sure what the end goal is. Take the season just gone, in a series heavily steeped in technical innovation you had the official representative of the commercial rights holder (one Bernard C Ecclestone) actually briefing against the new ,incredibly complicated yet easily relatable, engines. Can you imagine that happening in football? If the Premier League made a rule change would you expect Richard Scudamore to repeatedly say to the press 'Yeah, it's a bit crap isn't it, we should go back to the old way.'

[Magic]

They aren't split, per se, Sky do show all of them. To be honest if it was entertaining as fuck I'd still watch it but even if it was on terrestrial I wouldn't, because it's a fixed snooze fest.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The end goal is for the rights holder to suck money out of it. I don't think they actually want in anymore, but they can't sell up for an acceptable price because their own shit, short-termist policies have made the product less valuable than it needs to be for a sale to be viable. It's a vicious circle and a half.

Bernie is just a talking head now too so you can't even really blame him. But as long as they keep doing things like taking this week's millions to go to Baku whilst shunning the actual profitable markets like France, Germany and America because the organisers won't cough up the lump sum, the sport will continue to be shit.

[Disco]

The end goal is for the rights holder to suck money out of it. I don't think they actually want in anymore, but they can't sell up for an acceptable price because their own shit, short-termist policies have made the product less valuable than it needs to be for a sale to be viable. It's a vicious circle and a half.

Bernie is just a talking head now too so you can't even really blame him. But as long as they keep doing things like taking this week's millions to go to Baku whilst shunning the actual profitable markets like France, Germany and America because the organisers won't cough up the lump sum, the sport will continue to be shit.

Yes, classic short-termism. They've priced themselves out of so many of the markets that would make it sale-able that they can't get the price they want.

[Shindig]

Something makes me wonder if Maldonado could nab that second seat but I suspect he's out of their price range and PDVSA would like to be seen further up the grid.

[Disco]

Something makes me wonder if Race Winner Maldonado could nab that second seat but I suspect he's out of their price range and PDVSA would like to be seen further up the grid.

[Jimmy Floyd]

I'm a fan of history as you may know and I reckon Pastor Maldonado has a good shout to be the outright worst driver among all those to have won grands prix. Sandro Nannini had a short career but was highly rated, and the journeyman single winners like Panis were all far better grand prix drivers I think.

Jean-Pierre Jabouille is a weird one in that his results consisted of two victories (in mental, souped up Renaults), a fourth place, and only seven more finishes in 49 starts, all of them in double figures.

[Disco]

Nannini was a genuinely good driver, he'd have been in a Ferrari had he not lopped his arm off. Having looked at the list there aren't any others than stand out quite as much as Race Winner Pastor Maldonado when compared to his peers. I can't claim to know much about people who won theirs in the 50s/60s but given that the bar to entry in those days was having a car and getting to the track on time I'd wager he (as a career professional driver who got a certain distance in the sport on merit) is a fair bit better than some of them. He got markedly worse with the new engine regs suggesting he was either unable to adapt properly (hi Seb!), frustrated at being in a shit car, or both. Other drivers have done worse and not been labelled dangerous (Grosjean was fast and a bit sexy so he got away with a mea culpa) and after a while every little thing is picked up on. The name Taki Inoue surfaces ominously in my brain whenever this subject pops up, never malicious but dangerously inept on more than one occasion.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Yuji Ide was in that bracket as well. Formula Nippon must be something.

[Disco]

I feel like we used to get more Japanese drivers than we do these days; Nakajima, Suzuki, Katayama, Nakano, Takagi, Sato, Nakajima 2. Lately I can only think of Kobayashi so where did they all go? I think we should be told.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Lack of sponsors? Japan is notable by its absence from everything in F1 these days, bar still having a race. They used to have not only a quota of 1-2 dangerous drivers in the second half of the field but also Honda engines (oh hai), Toyota for a bit, and sponsors all over front running cars. Bridgestone tyres too. Suppose it all went the way of their video players.

In 1995 they had two races, three drivers, Mild Seven on the championship winning car, and their engines were in the back of both the Ligiers and the Tyrrells, which kind of explains how Katayama and Suzuki got their drives I suppose.

[Shindig]

Sega sponsored Williams for a hot minute.

[Disco]

Some of the new tubs for 2016.

Understandably, we've just brought last years car.

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Mercedes

Boring and horrible so no-one realises we made it.

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McLaren

Only one decent shot because our photographer was a) A bellend, b) Stood in a three foot pit, or c) Both.

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Red Bull

What looks suspiciously like a mocked up shot because we haven't finished it yet.

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Renault

Finally one that looks rather nice.

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Ferrari

We took these in our kitchen for some reason.

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Williams

[Jimmy Floyd]

So much dark grey everywhere.

[Disco]

That reminds me, I forgot Sauber:

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[Shindig]

Applause. Not content with performing like one, McLaren now look like a Minardi. If Sauber still have the Banco ..thingymajig sponsors, it'll look nice.

[Disco]

Applause. Not content with performing like one, McLaren now look like a Minardi.

Wash out your mouth sir.

[Gray Fox]

Must have overlooked this thread somewhere.

I think I've come full circle on the livery of the Sauber. Last season I thought it looked shit, but they and Ferrari seem to be the only people who like an actual colour on their car.

Not even sure I'll be able to watch any of this season anyway.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The Haas has just been unveiled and I'll give you one guess as to what colour it is.

[Gray Fox]

Is it black with a tiny bit of red or yellow?

[Byron]

Decked out in the Red, White and Blue. With FREEDOM plastered down the side.

[Gray Fox]

Decked out in the Red, White and Blue. With FREEDOM plastered down the side.

I forgot they were American.

Please tell me that last part is a joke?

EDIT: Never mind.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Feel the grey. That looks like a car going out in Q1 every race.

[Disco]

The concept was black and yellow (like a shit Jordan) but I always expect it to be red.

[Shindig]

Yeah, with the Ferrari connection I expected something red.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Mr Ecclestone has made some characteristically reserved remarks, I see.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/201...nie-ecclestone

[Clunge]

The Mercedes, Williams and Force India just look exactly like last year's car.

I actually like the Haas colour scheme - simply, but striking. The new Manor has the longest nose I've ever seen in F1. It looks extraordinarily ridiculous.

[Giggles]

What are these teaser ads showing an F1 car and the hashtag #C4F1? Have Channel 4 got coverage for this season?

[Gray Fox]

They have limited coverage, like the BBC had last year.

[Giggles]

They have limited coverage, like the BBC had last year.

Is it instead of the BBC? I presume it won't be the other half alongside the BBC as there'd be no point in Sky having it then.

[Gray Fox]

Is it instead of the BBC? I presume it won't be the other half alongside the BBC as there'd be no point in Sky having it then.

Yes. There's no F1 on the BBC any more.

[Giggles]

Yes. There's no F1 on the BBC any more.

Hadn't heard that at all. Presumably they'll just shift a lot of the presenters, etc over.

[Gray Fox]

Hadn't heard that at all. Presumably they'll just shift a lot of the presenters, etc over.

A few years ago they gave up their live coverage to save BBC 3/4 instead.

This time they've had to move BBC 3/4 online only to save the cash and opted to not bid for any coverage at all.
Coulthard is on C4 now, but I'm not sure who else they have. No idea why Sky haven't gone for him as him and Brundle make an almost perfect commentary team, with Kravitz patrolling the pitlane.

[Disco]

Coulthard owns/part owns a production company who've got the contract to handle the C4 coverage, some of the BBC crew will inevitably join him. I'd imagine he's making a pretty penny more than Sky would be paying him.