What's this shenanigans? I've seen a load of twitter people, and one head the ball on our group whatsapp, that are convinced Hamilton "made the call" to have them pull him in for the puncture
What's this shenanigans? I've seen a load of twitter people, and one head the ball on our group whatsapp, that are convinced Hamilton "made the call" to have them pull him in for the puncture
Lewis Hamilton lives in more heads worldwide than possibly any other sportsman. People's entire personalities seem to break down into mulch on the altar of somehow proving that he is a bad driver and/or evil.
What we saw yesterday was very simple: Russell, a very good driver, drove the Mercedes, a very good car, about as well as did Bottas, another very good driver. This was above expectations given his relative lack of experience. However, Hamilton, a seven time world champion of vast experience, drives the same very good car better than either of them.
People drawing conclusions other than that want to get their heads checked.
And then old man Lawrence comes on post-race and says it wasn't luck, it was all on merit. The desperation to justify Lance's existence is mounting.Originally Posted by Disco
Stroll should have won, really, as he should in Italy and maybe even Turkey.
His base pace has been trained to be pretty good but his racing instincts are shite.
There was a mix up when both cars came in during the last safety car. They put Bottas' front tires on Russell's car meaning he had to come back in and change them again while they got them half onto Bottas' car before realising and having to put the old set of hards back on.What's this shenanigans? I've seen a load of twitter people, and one head the ball on our group whatsapp, that are convinced Hamilton "made the call" to have them pull him in for the puncture
The idea that Hamilton made the call from his sick bed (somehow assuming he has the power to make the team throw away a 1-2 finish) is insane.
Pretty sure it's a meme.
Which is a shame, really. There's got to be some psychology to it, as well. If you're coming up behind Stroll you know your mere presence is enough to wobble him. There's a lot of racey people on the grid and Stroll isn't one of them. Out on his own, he's pretty decent at ticking the laps off.
Mercedes have gone very quiet on the Hamilton front, I'm beginning to think we won't see him this weekend.
How could they get him cross-border without fiddling things?
I would've thought if he was in bed at the weekend, he won't make it. Also, Australia '94 is on youtube now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN7r2D5DVaE
Well they would fiddle things. As a prominent sportsman in the middle east I think he has options (a reported 40 million options a year) as long as he gets enough negative tests.
I had to lol this morning as I saw Nikita Mazepin was somehow trending on twitter, looked into why, and there's a video of him groping a woman in the back of a car (seemingly against her will), among other unsavoury episodes. He seems like a genuine villain as opposed to the Stroll rich boy thing.
Punching people in the paddock, flinging signage at other drivers, posting inappropriate things online, he's a real nice guy.
Oh dear:
Would be a good storyline on DTS, mind. 'Abhorrent' is a pretty strong word.
If only there were another driver who brings money with him that might be available for next season.
Mazepin is an all-round cunt - even his driving, whilst being quick, is shambolic. I don't know if anyone saw the F2 Feature Race this past weekend, but he made a number of outright dangerous defensive moves in that, and lost his podium because of them.
Also lost a win in Spa earlier this year due to an illegal move on Tsunoda, and then made some sort of racial ramble on his social media claiming Tsunoda didn't know how to lose.
It's Thursday and no-one is bragging about Hamilton getting any sort of negative test results and George Russell has rocked up to the track wearing his Mercedes clobber.
More leverage from crafty Toto. At this rate Hamilton will arrive at the first race of 2021 as a pay driver backed by Holland & Barrett.
In a Williams.
Depending on how long Hamilton wants to stick around it may not be lights out for Bottas. You'd want some crossover between Russell coming in (which he surely will in 2022 at the latest) and Hamilton going otherwise the line up is quite inexperienced.
What are your targets as 2021 Hamilton? Are you just going to 100 race wins and 8 titles, or are you hanging around for as long as possible and going for 12 titles and a billion wins.
He goes for as long as he feels like turning up. Maybe he fancies mugging Alonso off again.
I think he'll stay for at least the 8th, titles are the only true measure of who has been the best driver ever and I reckon he wants that on his CV. Only he will know how much further he wants to go, I could well see him going for 10 as a nice round number but that will depend on if he wants to drive in the next era of F1 and how strong the lure of becoming a full time American is for him. I'm undecided as to how important Toto will be, but I wouldn't be shocked if he didn't fancy racing under anyone else and they both left at the same time.
Good news for Russell I reckon, no opportunity for Valtteri to get it together and paste him.
All set up for an absolute snoozefest this weekend. Probably the worst track on the calendar, although Catalunya and Paul Ricard run it close.
Appropriately enough, I suppose, it's a proper horse designed by committee, from the era when Bernie looked to have won forever and so Tilke was just designing 'best-of' type crappy compilation circuits. This one isn't even a decent selection; more like Now 42 or something with track after track of dogshit manufactured girl bands. It starts with the bullshit short straight from Singapore, the genuinely terrible 90 degree nothing first corner (more on those later), some pointless faster corners. Turns 5, 6 and 7 is one of the worst bits of track on the calendar, featuring yet another instance of his favourite hairpin-into-long-straight but making it even worse by preceding the hairpin with a slow complex so there isn't even a braking decision or a technical challenge to be rewarded with speed down the next straight. 8, 9 and 10 I can stomach, but I have never worked out why 11, 12 and 13 exist - what is the need for a mickey mouse triple chicane there when you could just have a normal corner? 15-16 is probably the only good corner on the circuit but it's instantly left down not only by the eyesore blue run-offs but then by the anodyne single file crap of the last five (five!) corners which seem to go on forever and I can only think are there purely to give the rich sheikhs on surrounding balconies a decent look at the cars going slowly.
Even the pit lane is an absolute gimmick embarrassment.
I think it probably is the absolute worst on the calendar, all in all. Paul Ricard is also terrible but at least that has a kind of purpose as a racing circuit rather than this which is the most horrendously conceived monument to vulgarity that motor racing has yet managed to come up with.
It's a gopping track and contains far too much of my pet peeve, terrible off camber corners.
Yep, it's that shit which aids and abets the cars not being able to follow each other. But it's ok because next year there's downforce coming off the cars and the designers won't be able to claw any of it back, will they, oh no siree.
It's quite amazing how he was actually the faster guy all weekend and still ended up looking much the worse driver.
It might be shit in real life, but Abu Dhabi is one of my favourites on the F1 games. Turn 3 is lovely.
It's almost like one driver had nothing to lose and the other one has had his confidence battered by comepeting against the greatest driver of all time for years.
The circuits ranked (I'm off work tomorrow)
1. Suzuka - has everything - Turn 1 is an underrated beauty and every corner is what it should be
2. Spa - also has everything but modern downforce cars take the edge off some of the best corners as they can just flat it everywhere
3. Interlagos - just a gorgeous old school track where the routing makes perfect sense and the corners flow beautifully from one to the next. The millionaires hate going there because it's in a poor neighbourhood which I always find funny but it's the great survivor of racing circuits and seems to have seen off yet another attempt to move it to Rio.
4. Monza - I have never liked the first chicane, but other than that it's the best place to drive a car fast in the world
5. Monaco - many newer fans (class of '94 here) hate this because there's no overtaking, but they just don't get it - the iconography is second to none and it just sums up motorsport - glorious pointlessness on wheels. There are also more good races than people give it credit for.
6. Montreal - loads of good races here over the years, the Wall of Champions is a class gimmick and things can happen at any of the corners.
7. Bahrain - this has really grown on me over the years. Sector 1 I can take or leave, but 2 and 3 are great. 9-10 is a really underrated turn complex and separates the men from the boys.
8. Hungary - on paper should be boring but actually produces great racing, partly I think because the heat makes things break. Turns 4 and 5 are great
9. Austria - I liked it more pre-DRS but the three long runs up to slow right handers is quite a fun race to have. On sims/games I absolutely hate the last corner
10. Baku - this gets more stick than it deserves, probably because its purpose is to shill for a truly horrible country. The actual track is about six corners too long but the second half of the lap is good fun, and I am in favour of the castle bit
11. Zandvoort - haven't seen the modern iteration, about 15 years ago when I last saw it it was quality for slower cars but I'm guessing Tilke has sanitised Tarzan to within an inch of its life.
12. Barcelona - it's basically a test track in that it has all the corners you would want to test performance on, but they aren't in a logical order. Like a more aesthetically pleasing Paul Ricard. Bumped up the list by turn 3, the fast right hander in the middle, and the long Sabadell corner which is fun to drive on sims.
13. Mexico - this would have been top 6 in its old guise, but Tilke murdered it. The esses in the middle are a disgrace and a great example of what Disco was saying about off-camber corners. The bit in the baseball stadium is truly awful, probably even worse than the Singapore Sling. Sector 1 is still good.
14. Melbourne - maybe harsh to be down here but there isn't a good corner on it - no track needs three right-left chicanes - and it tends to be a bit single file. The rare good races are down to chaos via no one knowing what their cars can do.
15. China - this one is Tilke in excelsis, like a shit copy of Sepang. What he was thinking when designing turns 1, 2 and 3 I can only guess. Marginally salvaged by the last third of the lap which is decent fun.
16. COTA - when this first came in I thought I liked it, but it's actually shite. Turn 1 is a stupid gimmick and the rest of it is a slightly better Sochi. The fake Turkish corner is rubbish.
17. Singapore - gains points for having circuit landmarks like the bridge and 'Raffles Boulevard', loses points for everything else. The first sector is kind of alright but then it descends into single file street circuit vanilla and again, a mile too long. The final sector with the endless 90 degree left handers feels like it's never going to end.
18. New Silverstone - this feels like heresy but I absolutely hate New Silverstone. The old circuit had a logical flow to it - the lap actually went somewhere. This lap just goes out into an endless sea of grey runoff and everything is the wrong way round. The old majesty of Stowe as the central focal point of a lap is completely diluted having it at the end, and 'the loop' is rubbish. There are at least 4 better circuits in the country and now we've done the silly Bahrain 87-lapper, I don't see why Donington couldn't happen. Brands Hatch probably not safe enough.
19. Sochi - absolute guff from start to finish. That long, long left into a slow right in the first sector is circuit design for retards, and the rest of it is just daytime Singapore with vodka shots.
20. Paul Ricard - probably should be higher but OH GOD MY EYES, the circuit could be anything and that blue paint everywhere would make it unwatchable.
21. Abu Dhabi - as above.
Of the one off tracks this year: Portimao would be #3 (best use of elevation change I have ever seen - guess what, a local designed it and not some jet-setting German), Imola would be #5, Mugello would be #8 and the Ring and Turkey would both be about #10.
And finally:
Great.The Jeddah Street Circuit (Arabic: حلبة شارع جدة) is a planned motor racing circuit that is due to stage the inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. The circuit will be built on the Jeddah Corniche adjoining the Red Sea. The circuit will be designed by Hermann Tilke.
Paul Ricard's biggest problem is you really don't know what circuit you're supposed to be on.
I always liked Sepang, not sure why they stopped going (it'll be money).
Purely based on the games, my best and worst:
1. Bahrain. Love it, and I don’t even know why. There’s nothing actually spectacular at all about it, although I do quite enjoy the turn 4, 5, 6 and 7 section.
2. Singapore. I don’t like the street circuits, mainly because I don’t like changing front wings every other lap but I’ve never had that problem at Singapore.
3. Monza. Who doesn’t love this track.
4. Austria. Piss easy track. Literally the only part where you have to engage your brain are the final two corner braking points.
5. Abu Dhabi. I like it’s mix of long straights straight into slow corners. I love turn 3 and gunning it into the left-right chicane.
Worst:
1. Baku. Fuck this place. All them slow 90-degree angle corners can get to fuck.
2. COTA. Can’t master this place for love nor money. Blind turn 1 is shit and the esses are impossible.
3. Sochi. Trash. Sick of the 90 degree right handers.
4. Paul Ricard. Layout doesn’t flow, for me, and the colour design is migraine inducing.
5. Monaco. No room for error, which I make lots of.
I like the multiple apex right hander late in the lap at Paul Ricard. Somewhat reminiscent of the one at Snetterton. Don't like any other corner on the track.
Monaco is impossible to drive on sims unless you're good. When I watch youtube videos of the quick guys doing it lap after lap, my mind is basically blown. I find the whole of sector 3 more or less impossible.
I don't care much for Monza. Other than that, I agree with that list, especially the top three.
As has been mentioned the first chicane is terrible but the rest is great fun.
It wasn't any better in its old wriggly configuration either. I don't know what else you could do with that really, other than have a mental flat run all the way down to della Roggia which would probably kill people. I think Albert Park makes a reasonable fist of the same problem, but everyone moans about that not being tight enough.
You just spend way too much time flat out in Monza. The old one was even worse in that regard.
That's the whole point of Monza though. It's nice to have one of those on the calendar, a Monaco, a Spa and so on. Why you then need ten identical tracks with template corners and five billion acres of tarmac run-offs making them look identical to each other is the problem I have. I bore on about this constantly but even having corner names is vital in adding atmosphere to a circuit. The utilitarians who run F1 have no idea of this, however.
Yeah, I was thinking more about tracks in general rather than the F1 calendar itself. For F1, I rather have Monza than most of the other shit, of course.
If something could be done about the first section of the Nurburgring, I'd be happy. That first complex of corners is completely awful.
Hamilton on the second row for once. He'll be P5 in turn 3, P3 on lap 4 and then win by thirty seconds.
I turned off as it was all rather boring, what happened that he ended up there?
He turned in a good lap which looked a likely pole, but Bottas beat it and then Verstappen aced both of them with a basically perfect run.
Silverstone have renamed the pit straight after Hamilton.
That’s a good evening worth of Twitter seethe to tuck into.
Five minute warning for race.
I'd like to see Lando get another podium. His qualifying lap was brilliant.
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