Twitter shitting all over the Williams livery so naturally I like it. It's just a livery reveal though, that's the exact same show car Red Bull used.
Also Alfa just did a shakedown in a camo livery
Lord Sir Lewis Hamilton of Stevenage
Max Verstappen
Evil Daniel Ricciardo
Less Evil Sebastian Vettel
There was something in the air that night Fernando
Sharl Leglerg
MSC mk2
Alex Albon
Alex Albon
Alex Albon
Twitter shitting all over the Williams livery so naturally I like it. It's just a livery reveal though, that's the exact same show car Red Bull used.
Also Alfa just did a shakedown in a camo livery
I wish they'd try and even pretend it's the 2022 car. The Williams/Red bull don't even have DRS on them ffs.
It's very Toro Rosso. Might be a grower.
Williams and Alpine are going to be borderline indistinguishable unless Alpine go for a major departure with their livery.
There’s a photo of the actual FW44 from the shakedown. They’ve took a different approach it seems; a very early 90’s style nose and a VERY tightly packaged engine, the side pods are almost non-existent.Originally Posted by Gray Fox
It’s brilliant to see so many different approaches and we haven’t even seen the Red Bull, Mercedes or Ferrari yet!
That looks incredible.
I’m absolutely loving that retro nose. Just realised Williams have gone with no fin whereas Alfa have gone with a large fin. No doubt they’ll all begin to converge on design later in the season as a particular approach proves itself as dominant but the early rounds at least are going to be pretty mental.
Alfa are saying their car is one second faster than last year’s car. FIA were (at least to start with) expecting slower cars so either they’ve all nailed ground effect already and no regulation can hold back these mad men, or the Alfa is an absolute rocket and Bottas will be champion.
I feel like someone is going to Brawn 2009 the start of this year.
As for the cars being faster, I'm sure the original expectation was 4 seconds slower off a moderate time lap. Then cut to midway through last year they thought the loss was down to less than a second per lap, so it seems faesable that they could have found the way to make the cars even faster.
Although I think Hulkenberg said that from his simulator work, those who expect this change to lead to much closer racing will be disappointed.
Pushing it back a year probably give them an extra year to really think about it.
Yeah I definitely feel the better they make the cars (ie. increased downforce), the worse the racing will be. Best we can hope for is someone out of left field taking it by storm.
Hoping for a pink Alpine after they announced BWT as their title sponsor.
They changed from Renault to Alpine to promote the brand and their main colour is French Blue so it will still dominate. Pink trim could either be really good or really bad.
Some of the concepts I've seen have an all black car with a pink stripe on the engine cover/suspension. The wildest has been a weird pink/blue cuttlefish looking nightmare.
Tricolour I think. Blue for liberté, white for fraternité, pink for légalité at least to the letter of the technical regulations if not necessarily the spirit.
Some leaks of the Ferrari about. They at least seem to have a real car to show us:
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Not a fan of the black trim/wing but I approve of whatever is going on with grill thing on the side.
The grid's looking like a proper mish mash of ideas.
I like the red/black liveries usually. Not too sure about this one, will need more images.
HD images from the front and diagonal would be nice, but we'll get them soon. Some pretty looking cars coming to the grid.
The sidepods, or lack thereof, are blowing my mind this year. Hopefully one of the lesser lights have nailed it.
Also, are the new cars absolutely massive? Because the bigger wheels don't look all that out of place, and the cockpits/halo look tiny, or at least out of proportion.
Still almost 5m long.
Ferrari going the Aston route of big sidepods and grill. The airflow over the top of the pods on this Ferrari is unique so far.
Williams (and purportedly Alpine) going with next to no sidepods. Amazing that with regulations supposedly so tight, they're all coming up with wildly different concepts.
Mercedes tomorrow.
That Ferrari looked stunning in the reveal video.
Seeing tweets from a lot of sources that Masi has been removed from the race director position. Wittich and Freitas to alternate.
The sidepods are wild.
Good riddance to Masi. Charlie's shoes are very difficult to fill but there was just too much chaos (even disregarding Abu Dhabi).
I'm not sure Masi himself was necessarily the problem (although he made life difficult for himself I suppose), but I do like this as a solution:
In addition, as part of a wider restructure of race control aimed at providing a calmer environment, direct radio communications between the teams and the race director will no longer be allowed.
That is a good idea. If you don't like a decision, appeal it formally later. You don't need 'Toto' and co. telling the directors what to do.
Nigh on impossible really, he had so much built-over-time gravitas that he could basically pronounce on anything and it became the law, but, as you also say, it was too much of a farce last year.
Masi fucked himself by letting Wheatley tell him exactly what to do. Only letting the cars between Lewis and Max un-lap themselves was such complete nonsense that it should have seen him off long before today.
It's not like it's hard to set a proper rule for things like track limits, either. "Okay, you can exceed limits at these corners but ONLY in Saturday practice." You can't run a sport with moving goalposts like that.
Two wheels on track at all times is not that hard to follow, really.
Aye and I think I have a foolproof solution for late safety cars:
Release lapped cars immediately so they can queue up. Put up double-yellows and let them crawl through the incident areas. If it's not getting cleared before the flag, tough shit.
With the way they'd run the rest of the season chucking the red flag would probably have been the best decision [for 'let's go racing'] but the fall out from that would have been just as epic [as it would have been just as wrong a decision]. There was no good way out of it really, the right decision leads to the most boring [albeit fairest] outcome.
Can't wait for Merc to release something that looks completely unlike all the other cars tomorrow.
I think that having a rule that if there are only x amount of laps left then the lapped cars are not allowed through would be ok. Letting them through is some Nascar level bs, anyway.
While it was clear he did it for the show, got to have that soundbite of the champion winning after all, red flagging it would almost certainly have led to a collision between the front 2.
He was damned if he did, damned if he didn't in that situation Mr Masi. The one thing he couldn't do though is make his mind up, then change it immediately after one of the teams calls him with a demand. To exactly that demand no less.
He wasn't a bad race director in general, but he was pretty slow to react to safety issues through a lot of the season. Also the farce we got in Spa. Ultimately if him going leads to Hamilton returning for the year, then that's what the FIA will do. They want the star driver back.
Honestly, with the lapped cars in the way, Max still would've probably just pipped it.
Apart from the times they decide the kerb is the boundary and not the white line.
Absolutely farce is the whole track limits bollocks.
No chance.
Verstappen had two corners of one lap, the only way he could have won it was exactly the way it happened. Which is why Red Bull pushed specifically for that to happen.
Masi lost his credibility more I would say with the ridiculous grid 'offers' to RB in Jeddah - and if Verstappen wasn't going to be black flagged in that race then you shouldn't have a black flag, because clearly you will never use it.
Hear me out, fellas. Who wants to be the backmarker that influences a title race? You've seen what happened to Latifi in the aftermath. They'll let Max by on the straight and then gun it as soon as they get the chance.
Hamilton could probably have fucked about enough at the restart to get himself insurmountably ahead. The lapped cars weren't going to be on him like Verstappen was, pinch half a second and it's as good as done.
You have to be X car lengths behind right? Given there were about 5 cars in-between, you've got enough buffer there to stop Max for one lap.
Perhaps Bottas accidentally on purpose having a spin, exactly where Latifi dumped it, with a lap to go was the only way Mercedes could have fought back.
Merc have been proper cunts and released two cars. The one on their stream (top in image below) is likely the real one whilst the one in the nice pictures on social media (bottom) likely not. Silver is back baby.
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Looking at the nose in the pic the BBC have [angled] it looks like they've very much gone down the silver arrow route.
Bottom one doesn’t have DRS so is just a show car. The livery doesn’t pop as well on the top car, but it is great to see the silver arrows back.
Okay that looks lovely on track.
I don't care if the racing is better or worse. Having low noses again make the new regulations a complete success.
I like the old school wheels, but the idea of any of these cars (or any Formula 1 cars since what 1983?) being nice looking things is reaching a bit.
They are good, aren't they. Remind me of the 1993 cars. Shame about the halos I guess, I'll take a few deaths for smooth aesthetics.
The halo does suck, but what can we do about the pussified society we live in, right?
90s cars were very nice too.
EDIT:
Example:
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Last edited by Pepe; 18-02-2022 at 03:17 PM.
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