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F1 2016


Mandzipop

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4 hours ago, Antonius Pius said:

Edit: maybe Renault for Alonso?

He does have a history there so it would make some sense and it would be a step up from McLaren in terms of reliability at least. I'm not sure they're looking like challenging for race victories any time soon so Alonso might not be too motivated about a move where the best to hope for would be some mid-placed points finishes.

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I found the race pretty dull even if i could appreciate that Vettel and Hamilton drove to the limit, it rarely resulted in anything visually exciting.

Verstappen is having a similar year to Hamilton's where technical failures ruin their seasons. It would be good for him to last a race as I'm sure he'd be as much of a wild card as Ricciardo has been. The constructor and driver's titles would look very different with Red Bull in between Ferrari and Mercedes each race.

I think Alonso's bitching on the radio is his way of getting airtime. The digs at the engine is surely more in line with him encouraging mercedes to ditch renault. Knowing Alonso's luck the moment he stops driving a honda powered car will be the season it miraculously leaps in power.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It looks like the Alonso Saga is finally drawing to a close.

So, McLaren will get a Renault engine next year. Toro Rosso will swap to taking Honda engines, with the idea that, once Honda sorts their shit out and the engine gets really good, Red Bull can also take on their engines, since inevitably Renault are going to start focusing on the works team and then Red Bull will likely start getting less powerful engines. It sounds like McLaren are strongly considering building their own engines from 2021 onwards (which really they should have invested in thirty years ago, but okay) but are keeping cordial ties with Honda to renew their relationship if the engine becomes competitive.

Alonso will stay at McLaren and Sainz will move from Toro Rosso to Renault, to appease Renault for Toro Rosso effectively breaking their contract. Honda get to stay in F1, which Liberty is keen on as they want a more varied playing field.

Great news for everyone, apart from Jolyon Palmer who is going to be out on his ear, but then that was going to happen anyway.

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Come on honda engine be good next year and put torro rosso way up the grid haha. Would be great if it happened but cant see it really. Could be good for red bull in a year or 2 if the honda does start to be competitive but it has a long way to go before that happens.

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Renault tell Red Bull to fuck off and pull their engine contract after 2018, leaving Red Bull no choice but to run Honda in 2019.

This is genuinely hilarious. Red Bull spent two years blasting Renault and even threatening to pull their deal until they realised they couldn't get another engine, ate humble pie and had to admit that the Renault engine has gotten a lot better (even if it's still down on Ferrari and Mercedes). Renault now has another big works partner in McLaren who will pay them a lot of money, so they've taken the opportunity to backstab Red Bull quite spectacularly. Revenge is a dish best served cold and all that.

There must be quite a lot of egg on faces at Red Bull HQ right now. Unless Honda magically turn things around next year with Toro Rosso (and without McLaren's superior aero package to work with, it may be difficult to judge the effectiveness of the engine for the bigger team as it improves), they're going to be going into 2019 with below-par engines which will take them seriously down the grid order, and Riccardio and Verstappen are not going to stick around if that happens.

The only good news in this is that Honda will likely pay a large chunk of money to Red Bull to keep them sweet like they did with McLaren, which is more likely to keep Red Bull in the sport. Red Bull are also trying to get Porsche to enter the sport in 2021 as engine suppliers, so they may only have to work with Honda for two years.

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There are also rumours that Red Bull are trying to nudge Aston Martin towards manufacturing F1 engines; perhaps Aston Martin want to produce their own F1 car in time. No idea how serious that is, or how deep their pockets. You need a huge budget to develop an F1 car and engine from scratch.

Renault have been annoyed with Red Bull's complaints for a time, and the move was somewhat pre-ordained, what with Toro Rosso's obvious angling for a Honda engines. That could only have come about because Red Bull knew their enginedeal with Renault was coming to an end. Renault have been firing shots across the bow for some time now. Of course, Renault have wanted to focus on the championship since they restarted their works team.

Ricciardo and Verstappen are on record that they want proof or at least belief that Red Bull have a winning package after 2018, otherwise they're gone. 

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F1 has always needed more engine suppliers, and more that aren't in the sport already with a works team so, theoretically, everyone has access to a top engine rather than a hand-me down. So yes, there's lot of talk getting Aston Martin and Porsche involved. I believe there's even speculation that the long-term plan is for Aston Martin to come on board as an engine manufacturer and 4-5 years after that could buy Red Bull outright and turn it into their own works team. Mateschitz is cool on the new engines and has said he'll probably pull out if the next engine isn't more old-skool. By all accounts the 2021 engine will be an evolution of the current engine, not a step backwards, so that might convince him to leave the sport.

Whilst it was understood that Renault and Red Bull had had difficulties, they did seem to be in the past and the relationship in the last season-and-a-half has been a bit more cordial (Red Bull having actually won races, albeit a couple of them more down to luck). Red Bull was certainly banking on sticking with Renault for the next two to three seasons and then either evaluate Toro Rosso's performance with Honda or see where Aston Martin's plans were at, and this announcement certainly took them by surprise. They've been scrambling to put a good spin on it all day.

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I thought it would be a bit crazy for Renault to supply engines to two constructors who are, better equipped to outperform the actual Renault team. Given the behaviour of Red Bull with Renault in the past, it was clear they'd be the ones cut loose though.

Hope Renault makes the most of Carlos Sainz next year as he's only on loan to them. He'll be dragged back to Red Bull as there's no way in hell Red Bull senior management will allow renault to keep him post engine supply. I suspect Verstappen and Ricciardo will be going to Mercedes and Ferarri, replacing Bottas and Raikonnen - not sure who will go where though, so Sainz will finally get his dream of driving for Red Bull. Shame it'll be with a shitty engine barring an amazing recovery from Honda

That said, given Alonso's luck I can imagine the Honda suddenly becoming the second worst engine next year and he'll be stuck with the worst.

As for engine suppliers. Looking at the disaster that Honda's return has been I can understand why other suppliers are reluctant to join. It's probably the most expensive form of racing from an engine point of view and if your engine is shit I think "No such thing as bad publicity" goes out the window. Honda paid Mclaren $100 million dollars a year for the partnership with Mclaren and that's before the development costs. Does anyone think after "I'll buy a Honda" because of F1?

The other issue is that a lot of the other engine suppliers do absolutely fine in other forms of motorsport. Unless they are confident they can achieve a lot in F1 why risk diluting the brand by underperforming in the highly visible F1?

Really hope Ricciardo gets pole today. This seems to be his "race" (most drivers tend to have a track they truly excel in) and it'd be great to see him dominate a race. For me, Ricciardo has been the star of the season (although Max has been let down by reliability) and is clearly outdriving that car and always getting whatever points he can.

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Anyway, excellent result for Lewis, who won it at the start (both in regards to the Ferraris and Ricciardo). Vettel should have known better than to cross so severely; he was the only one with something to lose. Verstappen had nowhere to go, he was just a passenger. In fact, I think it could have been Kimi who took out Vettel.

Great getaway by Alonso too, too bad he got caught up in the ruckuss. A bit disappointed that Ricciardo couldn't do more. It appears the Mercedes' had an ace up their sleeves. Bottas is cementing his role as nr. 2, he's done as a contender, even though he got closer to Vettel.

Great drives by Sainz and Perez too, by the way, and finally some luck for Palmer and Vandoorne.

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4 hours ago, Slick Mongoose said:

There's something very hypnotic about that gif.

One thing is for sure, Vettel will never make any admission that he might have done anything wrong despite being the one who crossed half the track on the way to the accident.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Palmer out after Japan, Sainz to Renault for the US GP. Kvyat back in at Toro Rosso in Austin, but as yet not confirmed for the rest of the season. Gasly is confirmed for the rest of the season.

I guess Renault have decided not to put up with Palmer anymore. He's been found wanting, and wanting badly. He has had a lot of bad luck, but he hasn't delivered at all this year. He didn't impress last year and was lucky that Magnussen chose Haas, this year he has been demoted by Hülkenberg. I think that's game over for him. Williams are apparently giving Kubica and Di Resta a face-off and then decide which one they'll take. They won't ditch Stroll, so that might just be Massa out as well. The only option for Palmer would be if Williams decide to go with him instead of Massa/Kubica/Di Resta, which I don't really see happening.

 

Good win for Verstappen in Malaysia. Hamilton will be sour over Vettel still claiming that many points. Vettel needs Hamilton to DNF to keep any hope of the championship.

with Hamiltons pole on Suzuka it could be great face-off between these two. The Red Bulls likely won't be able to keep up with them; perhaps Raikkonen will yet make it to the podium... and Bottas is feeling the heat. He can't seem to keep up with Hamilton no matter what he does. 

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1 hour ago, Antonius Pius said:

I guess Renault have decided not to put up with Palmer anymore. He's been found wanting, and wanting badly. He has had a lot of bad luck, but he hasn't delivered at all this year. He didn't impress last year and was lucky that Magnussen chose Haas, this year he has been demoted by Hülkenberg. I think that's game over for him. Williams are apparently giving Kubica and Di Resta a face-off and then decide which one they'll take. They won't ditch Stroll, so that might just be Massa out as well. The only option for Palmer would be if Williams decide to go with him instead of Massa/Kubica/Di Resta, which I don't really see happening.

I do have a little bit of sympathy for Palmer that he's had so many things go wrong that weren't his fault, but F1 has always been a ruthless business and he's never done anything that's really impressed. The best drivers find a way to show their talent even in poor teams.

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34 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I do have a little bit of sympathy for Palmer that he's had so many things go wrong that weren't his fault, but F1 has always been a ruthless business and he's never done anything that's really impressed. The best drivers find a way to show their talent even in poor teams.

The first that comes to my mind is Alonso putting his Minardi on P6 when that was the points threshold (and an Italian driver in tears, retiring his Minardi from P6... was it Martini? Trulli?).

Palmer certainly didn't have luck on his side, but his points finish in Malaysia was too little too late. Outside underdog-sympathy Palmer really doesn't have anything going for him, except somewhat impressive sponsoring.

 

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Well, that was an interesting race. Verstappen suddenly back strong in the game (if too little, too late) and Hamilton having to fend off several issues to win. Vettel's DNF is almost beyond belief. Ferrari and Mercedes have suddenly swapped reliability issues. Hamilton now has two DNFs in hand over Vettel, which we can assume won't happen, so that's the title pretty much sewn up.

Force India also had a phenomenal race and there was a nice improvement from Haas, but you had to feel sorry for Hulkenberg. He looked set for a good result on strategy but the car failure took him out of a strong finish contention. Sorry to see Sainz go out from Toro Rosso like that, but it's surprising that they're bringing back Kvyat.

I'm hoping next year it's going to be much more consistent between Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. The first half of this season was a genuinely interesting inter-team battle for the first time since 2012 and it added a lot of interest to the season. If they can get back to say 2010 and have multiple drivers and teams in the battle it'll be great fun.

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I was away over the weekend and I knew the result before getting the chance to watch the highlights. There doesn't seem much point now.

I'm a bit disappointed. We should have been witnessing a genuine fight between two worldclass drivers and teams battling to win the championship. Instead we've had reliability problems and a crash (which I'd at least say was part of the battle - Vettel maybe wouldn't have risked the accident if not under pressure) which has given Hamilton an almost insurmountable advantage. The only way for it to get back to a nailbiting finish would require Hamilton to have reliability problems. Even if that were the case, we're still being robbed of a man-to-man championship fight.

While I'm sure Hamilton will take the wins happily, I'm sure he's also partly missing out on winning a straight fight. Because if it had been that way, the winner could rightly claim to be the best driver.

On 08/10/2017 at 9:20 PM, Werthead said:

I'm hoping next year it's going to be much more consistent between Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes.

Me too. I'm hoping we can throw McLaren into the mix as well. That would make for an electifying season where Hamilton, Vettel, Verstappen and Ricciardo are battling for points (let's face it, Bottas and Kimi are just there to mop up points). If Alonso and Vandoorne (who could easily be a Verstappen just stuck in a Honda car at the moment) are in there too - I wouldn't want to put my money on anyone. Although Vettel should in theory have the best chance given Ferarri's clear number one driver policy. Fingers crossed there aren't any drastic changes in rules next season to upset things.

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That's a good point. The Renault power unit is clearly pretty decent (if suffering from the lack of straight-line speed it always has, but making up for it in the corners) and the McLaren chassis this year has been very impressive. I'd be surprised if McLaren can jump straight back into winning races next year, but they may be able to pull a couple of Force India-style upset podiums.

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9 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's a good point. The Renault power unit is clearly pretty decent (if suffering from the lack of straight-line speed it always has, but making up for it in the corners) and the McLaren chassis this year has been very impressive. I'd be surprised if McLaren can jump straight back into winning races next year, but they may be able to pull a couple of Force India-style upset podiums.

I'd be curious to see what Alonso could do with a semi-competitive car. I suspect he'd be pretty galvanised after the last several seasons. With a weekend off for indy 500 of course.

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