Kimi really needs to be put out to pasture, he's gone full Arnoux roadcone now.
Kimi really needs to be put out to pasture, he's gone full Arnoux roadcone now.
Assuming Hamilton finishes, that should be that.
This Albon drive is one of the worst I've seen (Vettel aside, maybe) in a top team for ages.
Hulkenberg 9th
I can't believe he isn't at the least, under threat.Originally Posted by Jimmy Floyd
Hulk, on the other hand, is donning it. I wish there were more odd-race substitute drives like in the mid 90s, it's great fun.
Like fuck do you need a full safety car for that. Scripted load of bollocks.
'mon the Hulk.
They ran a NASCAR Xfinity race in the wet at the Charlotte 'Roval' this weekend and it was fucking mental. More rain than F1 would ever run in, stock cars running through inches of standing water basically in the dark, and on a track that flummoxes most of them in the dry.
I thought NASCAR didn't run in the wet? Or is that strictly on Ovals?
Xfinity is the second tier which they will run in the wet at road courses. Cup series will run practice sessions at wet road courses but until now never races, and the last wet running of any sort was twenty years ago. Until yesterday when they flew in wet weather tires so they could start the race in the wet. Stock cars on a drying track was interesting, especially this season where there are no practice or qualifying sessions.
That sounds class. The whole idea of lanes on an banked oval goes out the window if there's one dry line, presumably.
Yes, but then also no because they tried anyway. Large bits of the track are also painted and the drainage system appeared to be hoping it never rained very much. Given the main circuit is a giant asphalt bowl the infield was ankle deep in water at times.
Nascar trying to race in the wet would be fairly analogous to the brain melting incidents that would occur if NFL tried to play without helmets and padding, or if baseball fielders ditched the gloves. We're made of sterner stuff over here.
Grosjean and Magnussen both out of Haas for next year.
Perez and the Hulk, please.
Even though K-Mag is a complete bastard I do like him, hope he gets another gig but I doubt it. Can see him donning Le Mans in the future.
Imagine they will take Perez and maybe one of the Ferrari kids.
A quick glance at social media indicates that I'm wrong and it'll be the Russian kid with the money. Shame, don't believe he's any good.
Mazepin will be one, Perez likely the other. Tells you what Gene Haas is mostly concerned with.
Magnussen in sports cars would be amusing, his approach to overtaking not exactly the best fit. Touring cars maybe, or Formula E where there is no overtaking so it doesn't matter.
I am still, deep down, a 'Perez is shit' truther. He is almost always wank in close racing situations. Speaking of good fits for sports car racing, the fact that 'Checo' has been able to string out a successful career based on nothing much beyond making his tyres last tells me that Carlos Slim should be chucking all his dirty drug money at Le Mans instead of F1.
Yes, K-Mag in Australian V8s is the dream. He'll instead do DTM and be shite.
Decidedly midfield with a boat load of money behind him has always been my opinion. Kobayashi was the better of the two when they first arrived at Sauber.
I see Russell might be struggling to keep his seat for next year, some of those white car teams must be seriously strapped for cash.
Surely Toto could cough up to keep him there. They can't let a talent like Russell not be in F1.
He could, but the question becomes will he fork over as much as some oligarch who wants their man in the seat?
It’d be a real shame if Russell had to take the Ocon route and sit out for a year. Tells us everything we need to know about the financial state of the teams if people like Latifi can get on the grid and genuinely talented drivers can’t.
There could (will) be three young sons of billionaires on the grid next year, out of the supposed top 20 drivers in motorsport, and all three of them are basically shit. For all we say that there have always been pay drivers, there hasn't always been that sort of pay driver, especially not in such a closed grid era.
It really will be down to Max/Leclerc/Norris and hopefully Russell to carry the next decade or so because I'm not sure too many others with world championship talent are going to get a chance. Leclerc has looked sublime to me this season in a total tractor of a car.
Speaking of sublime, I am bang up for this Portugal race. Probably my favourite of all circuits to drive on a sim, just hope it stands up to the silly F1 cars - it's not really a big braking zone modern day track, but it is a beauty in every other respect. The blind apex for turn (11? Portimao corner) at the top of the hill is going to catch a few out I think.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 23-10-2020 at 08:35 AM.
I think Stroll deserves more credit. Latifi shows no promise.
Stroll is ok but I would expect anyone afforded the opportunities he's had to be at about the same level. As for other prospects I think we'll see Mick Schumacher in a seat next year and he (along with Zhou and Illot) was the pick of the F2 grid. He's maybe not on the level of Leclerc/Norris etc but massively improved over the last two seasons and raced really well this year.
Kimi and Alonso will have raced against both the Schumacher and Verstappen father/son duos. I wonder if Kimi ever did rallying against Carlos Sainz sr. Probably not.
I can't be the only one that thinks that Norris and Albon aren't actually that good. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see them sticking around too long.
Russell is quality.
I think Norris is very impressive and consistently puts in good drives. Albon is a bit more raw and maybe a little too rash, but I definitely think he has a career at a lower ranked team than Red Bull.
Norris is race winner material 100%. Albon, not sure, he's fast but has issues. That thing about why are they racing me so hard was a bit of a red flag.
Russell I think is world champ material.
Of the group Albon is likely to be binned first but I maintain that he's been dealt a shitty hand by having to learn F1 in a horrible car against one of the best around. Norris is gold, that should be plainly obvious by now.
Apropos of nothing (other than I was listening to it), F1 really has made The Chain by Fleetwood Mac a very odd song. The middle section is, at least for me, inextricably linked to the titles/intro to Grand Prix on the BBC. So much so that I find it impossible to hear it as part of a longer piece, at a certain point Fleetwood Mac stops and F1 starts. I expect to see Mansell/Senna inches apart or the bit where there should be a Ferrari with sparks flying out the back, then there's the part where Murray Walker is supposed to start talking and it goes back to being Fleetwood Mac again.
I'm glad people are coming round to my view on Albon's fraud status.
I think it's an odd song to begin with. I can't think of another prominent track that is happily plodding along as a campfire singalong and then suddenly stops and restarts for a thunderous bass solo two thirds of the way in.
Like most of the classic BBC Sport themes, though, they absolutely nailed the choice for F1. The tension and mechanical rhythm of the bass hook and then the soaring guitar on top evokes the sport perfectly.
In the F1 music stakes Losing My Favourite Game is always intrinsically linked to the 1998 championship for me, closing music for the Japan GP back when you could still have some (small modicum of) empathy for Schumacher and maybe even Ferrari.
I literally never had any empathy for Schumacher whatsoever, and Ferrari lost me (after the somewhat romantic Alesi/Berger days with the sexy V12) as soon as they hired him.
As someone who first followed the sport mid 94 and whose cultural milieu made me an automatic Damon Hill fanboy, there was no way I could ever see Schumacher as anything but evil incarnate, and boy did he back me up on that. After Damon there was Mika, after Mika there were the dark years forlornly hoping that Kimi and JPM were going to get off their arses and do something, and then one had to grudgingly thank Alonso for ending the streak before Lewis came along - life as a Hamilton backer has been pretty great.
I've always wondered who I would have backed out of Prost and Senna, had I been around for it. I probably would have been Nigel Mansell till I die and hated both of them.
I can confirm (as someone who started watching in 86) that both Prost and Senna were the enemy. Mclaren too, my lingering distrust lasted until at least 1998.
They didn't get much wrong did they. Snooker, Skiing, F1, MOTD, Cricket, Grandstand all great. Tennis is a bit crap but ultimately fitting, even the Golf is an inexplicably banging prog/synth number. Darts and Horse Racing (Horse of the Year not included) are the only ones to rather let the side down.
You see, I came in at a point when McLaren had Martin Brundle and some other plebs in the car (Jan Magnussen! Fat Nigel Mansell! Philippe Alliot!) and didn't see my first McLaren win for fully 4 seasons, so I've always been a sympathiser for that reason. Plus Mika seemed like a cool dude compared to Schumacher and his fucking chin of doom. Mika also had a habit of needlessly binning it three times a season, which made him human and an attractive watch up against the superhuman.
I'm gutted not to have been around for Silverstone '87, that seemed like the mountain top of the whole thing.
Imola 94 was my first race so I was a Damon fan right from the off. I don't think I started hating on Schumi until Adelaide, mind. I don't recall being miffed at Benetton for their bullshit. I warmed to him retrospectively, like how I did with Valentino Rossi.
On Sainz vs Raikonnen, it never happened.What annoys me is Carlos retired from the WRC on a podium finish, meaning he was definitely still good enough. Hell, he's smashed the Dakar enough. Evergreen motherfucker.
Imola 94 was your first race? Jesus, that's bleak.
I definitely have a memory of Schumacher being black flagged at Silverstone so I must have been watching by then. I didn't see Imola, but I remember my dad telling me Ratzenberger had been killed (but don't remember anything about Senna).
Being able to choose from any song in existence due to the BBC licensing deal helps but yeah they do get it right most of the time.
I sort of liked Schumacher back in his comedy villain days at Bennetton, but, I was young then and invariably wrong about most things (much like my support for Hulk Hogan against the Undertaker in [the original?] Survivor Series). My dad was always a staunch Undertaker man/Schumacher-hater, so maybe there was some of that too.
Grandstand
I was 6 so the overtake on Piquet was immediately the greatest pass ever but winning is everything at that age so it wasn't until 1992 that I felt like we got redemption.
And when he finally did win (surely he should have pissed it in '91 as well) it was a bit like Liverpool's win last year, so crushing as to be a bit of an anticlimax. It would have been a complete travesty if he had never won it, though.
Suzuka 98 and Brazil 08 were the twin pinnacles for my fandom, Ferrari getting fucked over on both occasions. Jerez 97 also but that had the mild conflict of Jacques Villeneuve being the beneficiary.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 23-10-2020 at 06:18 PM.
I get a lot of TV memories from 1994. I guess seeing the West's garden being dug up prepared me for it.
92 was great, I didn't care one bit that it was a no contest. After the near misses, Mclaren domination, and various broken Ferraris it was like a sweet release.
Schumacher was instantly the antagonist after punting our Damon in Adelaide but it wasn't until Jerez 97 that he ascended to full cunt status.
Schumacher's most heroic year by far was '96, dragging that absolute turnip to three or four wins and also instantly rallying the team around him (much like Hamilton in '13) when others would have minced about and cried off.
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