Wait.. what?!? I need to know more about that. Anyway. Williams slow steady turn around has been wonderful to watch. Having 2 'proper' drivers was the last step after Vowles dragged Williams kicking and screaming out of the 90s over the last couple of years. I can't imagine how he felt when he got there from Merc and found them still working from printed spreadsheets. Probably quite ill.
'Mr Wife Beater' was indeed referring to Jos... nasty piece of work that he is... Gianpiero 'GP' Lambiase, Max's race engineer just comes across as an arsehole...
So it's day 4 of the extra special pre-testing test and Mercedes are already within 1.2 seconds of last year's fastest race lap at Catalunya. Seems like fears these cars would be struggling to stay in front of F2 were premature. Or everyone other than Mercedes is in serious trouble. Edit, 0.9s now. Edit again, 0.6s via Ferrari.
It was always overblown. The cars were going to be slower, sure. But they were never going to be that much slower [or stay that way for long].
None of today’s F1 drivers, possess a proper moustache… Come back Mr Mansell, show them how to do it. EDIT: Dick Strawbridge is the number 1 moustache man.
So media day brought some fun Honda engines risk nerve damage to drivers - Newey After seeing that I thought well Honda were able to "recreate" the vibrations once mounted to chassis and gearbox on a chassis dyno, which says to me they weren't really there on bare engine dyno, and would point the finger at some aggressive mounting hardware shoehorned in by newey. For it to be coming through the steering wheel is mental, and if I were another team, I'd be trying to figure out why and what they're trying to do before they get on top of the problem. Could be some DAS style trickery. And I don't mean actual DAS, but some other suspension-stereing related loophole. Then saw this snippet of the press conference and debrief from our lord and savior Jesus Kravitz From about 5:30 mark, they say "it wasn't a massive layout change that they were pushed into by the chassis side", so there was definitely a change in design late on that had to adapt to, resulting in the vibrations, which I think is why they're both downplaying or refusing to lay blame. All very interesting.
Anyone want to start a pools? You have to guess the amount of times cars are forced into super-clipping on each track. Baku is gonna be at least 5 on the pit straight alone.
No, but I'm loving it. These cars are hard to drive, hard to keep in the operating window and the performance drops off a cliff the moment they get it wrong. After years and year of hyper optimised F1 cars finishing in team rder over and over I'm loving this randomness, even if it's looking like George Russell's second reign of terror is about to begin. Max just crashing this morning was a bit cathartic, after the business with 2021, then the budget cap nonsense, then the various drivers Red Bull sacrificed for him, it was funny seeing him look genuinely out of his depth just driving the car. He'll be back in no time, but the RB looks like the most difficult car he's ever driven and he's not having fun.
Apparently 'These are supposedly the best drivers in thee world, they should quit whining and get on with it' only applies when it's a bit wet and not when the regs give them vars that are a pain to manage...
I do like how tricky they are to drive. The cars should be a challenge to drive not because of the sheer g force of 500 wings pushing them into the ground and trying to remember all the buttons and options, but through lack of adhesion. But then randomly slowing down every now and then is a bit weird. But yes. Max binning it in q1 was glorious
Yeh wasn't bad. If it wasn't for Ferrari pulling a Ferrari it might have been competitive to the end.
Well there has to be something consistent... Also Coulthard seems to have summed up who is whinging about what when he said, essentially: The ones that are complaining are complaining because they're not at the front. Followed by JP winding up Max when he was complaining about the cars: Well the drivers at the front seem to be having a great time. Are the rules the greatest ever? probably not. Will they survive long term? doubtful. But tbh I'm just going to enjoy the unpredictability and unreliability of these cars whilst it it lasts.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w4EyX1f_o38 So we have mushrooms, Aston are supplying the banana skins (which Oscar hit), max tried using the feather in quali but didn't do it at the right shortcut, Lindblad got himself a star but used it waaaay too soon, merc dropped a fake power up in quali but lando had 3 green shells so didn't land.
