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Formula 1 2020/2021: Shits getting crazier


TheLastWolf

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That was certainly an eventful race. I know they said they were going to be experimenting with sprint races this year but I didn't realise they meant surprise sprint races.

It is a real pity for Verstappen who would have deserved the win, although Red Bull will be feeling good about their decision to recruit Perez since he did exactly what they would want and pick up the win when their lead driver is out. It's not impossible Perez might have been able to challenge for the lead earlier as well if his pit-stop hadn't been slow.

In the last couple of races Vettel seems to have remembered how to be a Formula 1 driver, I think that was his best drive in a long time and if the race had gone on a little bit longer he might even have been in with a chance of winning.

That was one of the worst race weekends Mercedes have had in a very long time. Hamilton looked at times like he might have managed to wrestle a decent result out of it but then the restart went so badly wrong. Also an awful race for Bottas after he'd driven well in Monaco last time.

2 hours ago, Toth said:

Okay, my comment about Hamilton's luck didn't age well, did it?

I think you definitely jinxed him there.

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Yeah, but as far as I can tell Indycars are actually able to fight each other for positions through racing instead of mostly only through strategy calls, so... I don't know, I don't watch any American race series, so the judgement is yours.

I don't usually watch it but I've watched a couple of Indycar races over the last year due to the lack of anything else to do and the commentators were definitely talking a lot about tyre and fuel strategies. The big difference does seem to be that it is almost trivial to overtake another car.

I think there's maybe a happy medium between it seeming so easy to overtake that there's no drama to it and a F1 race at Monaco where overtaking would require defying the laws of physics.

1 hour ago, Raja said:

Drivers complain all the time about their car/ tires etc, it's par for the course for being an F1 driver :dunno:

I think maybe they broadcast more radio messages than they used to so it's more noticeable now.

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3 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I don't usually watch it but I've watched a couple of Indycar races over the last year due to the lack of anything else to do and the commentators were definitely talking a lot about tyre and fuel strategies. The big difference does seem to be that it is almost trivial to overtake another car.

I think there's maybe a happy medium between it seeming so easy to overtake that there's no drama to it and a F1 race at Monaco where overtaking would require defying the laws of physics.

Have you seen the Formula E Monaco race that I linked a while ago?

It seems making the cars smaller and more equal does the trick nicely. Modern F1 cars are far too massive for the track, but the Formula E cars have just the right size to remind you why Monaco has such a rich history with the sport.

5 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I think you definitely jinxed him there.

Sorry. Not sorry. XD

To be fair, I wasn't the only one who thought that he was lucky when his only championship competitor disintegrated.

6 minutes ago, williamjm said:

In the last couple of races Vettel seems to have remembered how to be a Formula 1 driver, I think that was his best drive in a long time and if the race had gone on a little bit longer he might even have been in with a chance of winning.

Quite literally. Perez' car had to be stopped because of some catastrophic hydraulics failure the moment he crossed the line, so one more lap and Vettel would have had it in the bag if Perez weren't able to somehow nurse it across the line.

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Things are certainly looking up for Vettel. I think the P5 finish in Monaco gave him his fighting spirit back, made him confident again. Stroll was also having a mega drive before the tyre blowout and I'm sure we would've seen both Aston Martins in the points even after he had pitted. He had a shaky season last year (Stroll) but his late season successes probably boosted his confidence as well. He's demonstrating very good tyre management skills overall being able to go on very long runs without suffering too much in pace.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that Perez' extended pitstop might not have been an accident. Without it he would've been in a good spot to squeeze past Verstappen. But that's tinfoil hat territory now.

I'm liking this season a lot :)

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1 hour ago, kungtotte said:

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that Perez' extended pitstop might not have been an accident. Without it he would've been in a good spot to squeeze past Verstappen. But that's tinfoil hat territory now.

Definitely not. If you tried to deliberately go long on the pit stop, you'd risk losing 2nd place to Hamilton as well. They badly needed Perez in 2nd to act as a tail gunner against Lewis.

Perez knows what's what and how far he is behind Max in the points. If necessary they could have just swapped them if he had suddenly gotten ahead of Max in the race. Perez needs to keep them sweet to keep his drive to next year (which is looking increasingly likely now).

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16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Toth, I finally got around to watching the videos you linked. Those first person shots are great. And the crash midway through the first video.... the driver would have died if that was in the 80's, right?

If it's not in the videos Toth linked then the ultimate example of driver survival happened last year in Bahrain:

Six months later he's happily racing in America.

If you're interested in finding out more about the history of the sport I'd recommend Senna which is one of the great sporting documentaries, although sadly telling the story of a time when things were more dangerous than they are now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQLeqRcgKc

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Toth, I finally got around to watching the videos you linked. Those first person shots are great. And the crash midway through the first video.... the driver would have died if that was in the 80's, right?

Well, surely quite a lot of drivers died in the 80s due to abysmal safety standards, so that would be a very broad yes as an answer. XD

I had to go back and see which crash you meant and... I think you mean Leclerc's full speed dive into the tyre wall? Yes, that was a nice reminder for me how horrific the Ferrari last year was and how it repeatedly tried to kill Leclerc and Vettel with how ridiculously unstable it was.

Oh my, if you found that crash scary already, then Grosjean's crash in Bahrain should show spectacularly just how advanced these cars have become: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ7_En2xEm4

Ironically since you mentioned cars driving ovals, that driver has switched to IndyCar and seems to do quite fine, getting pole position and second place in his third race.

(got ninja'd XD)

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7 minutes ago, Toth said:

Ironically since you mentioned cars driving ovals, that driver has switched to IndyCar and seems to do quite fine, getting pole position and second place in his third race.

That was one of the races I mentioned I watched, partly because I'd heard Grosjean got pole and wanted to see if he could win. Apparently he's only doing the non-oval races, his second place was the circuit they used to use for the Indianapolis F1 race so probably a style of track that was a bit more familiar for Grosjean.

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1 hour ago, williamjm said:

If it's not in the videos Toth linked then the ultimate example of driver survival happened last year in Bahrain:

Six months later he's happily racing in America.

If you're interested in finding out more about the history of the sport I'd recommend which is one of the great sporting documentaries, although sadly telling the story of a time when things were more dangerous than they are now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQLeqRcgKc

 

 

The number of WTFs in that video seems like an understatement.

I found the doc and will check it out soon, but it's too late in the day to watch a three hour film when I need to study for 2-3 hours after I make dinner.

 

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33 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The number of WTFs in that video seems like an understatement.

I found the doc and will check it out soon, but it's too late in the day to watch a three hour film when I need to study for 2-3 hours after I make dinner.

It's worth watching Rush as well. It's a fairly recent Ron Howard film starring Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda, two of the all-time greats who fought arguably the greatest and certainly most insane championship battle of all time in the 1976 season, culminating in Niki Lauda's car literally exploding with him sitting in it, his burned body being rushed to hospital where he was given the last rites and basically told he was going to die within hours, and six weeks later he was back in a car fighting for the championship again. Lauda went on to mentor Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes forty years later and helped him win multiple world championships in a row. Lauda passed away a couple of years ago, so that doctor was slightly off with his predictions :) 

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4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's worth watching Rush as well. It's a fairly recent Ron Howard film starring Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda, two of the all-time greats who fought arguably the greatest and certainly most insane championship battle of all time in the 1976 season, culminating in Niki Lauda's car literally exploding with him sitting in it, his burned body being rushed to hospital where he was given the last rites and basically told he was going to die within hours, and six weeks later he was back in a car fighting for the championship again. Lauda went on to mentor Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes forty years later and helped him win multiple world championships in a row. Lauda passed away a couple of years ago, so that doctor was slightly off with his predictions :) 

Lol, I love Rush, and find it odd when people say they didn't enjoy it. >99% of my knowledge of F1 comes from that movie.

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54 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I found the doc and will check it out soon, but it's too late in the day to watch a three hour film when I need to study for 2-3 hours after I make dinner.

I don't remember it being that long. I have it on DVD and it says 1 hour 45 minutes, although maybe there's an extended version out there?

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Lol, I love Rush, and find it odd when people say they didn't enjoy it. >99% of my knowledge of F1 comes from that movie.

I thought it was an excellent film. From what I know it's a relatively accurate depiction of events as well although some things are a bit simplified.

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25 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I don't remember it being that long. I have it on DVD and it says 1 hour 45 minutes, although maybe there's an extended version out there?

Just double checked and that's the runtime on Amazon. Maybe the site I first found it on for free included commercials in the runtime? If so I'd happily pay the $3 to skip that nonsense. 

Quote

I thought it was an excellent film. From what I know it's a relatively accurate depiction of events as well although some things are a bit simplified.

I really liked how it addressed Lauda and Hunt's friendship afterwards. My understanding is the former had some say in the film and cared about making sure it was relatively accurate, within the bounds of Hollyweird. 

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11 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I really liked how it addressed Lauda and Hunt's friendship afterwards. My understanding is the former had some say in the film and cared about making sure it was relatively accurate, within the bounds of Hollyweird. 

As far as I can tell the only serious embellishment is pretending their rivalry existed outside the cockpit at all. I read Lauda lived at Hunt's place during the time frame of the movie and that they made absolutely sure that anything on the track wouldn't affect their friendship. They sure must have made an odd couple. I grew up with Lauda as a sports commentator and he never bothered to soften his attitude.

Amusing anecdote: Last year when I got back into F1 during lockdown the F1 Youtube channel uploaded some older races which caused me to track down the oldest races I could find on Youtube. One of them was a recording of the 1977 Fuji Grand Prix with one of the commentators being Niki Lauda. Who, at the time, still raced. F1. As it turns out Lauda had a total falling out with Ferrari (some things never change) and when he got enough points to win the championship, he simply flew home, not even bothering with the last race, and somehow got to join commentating the race. That was an absolutely absurd watch.

Unfortunately now I can't find it anymore... I hope I remembered to download it...

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5 hours ago, Toth said:

As far as I can tell the only serious embellishment is pretending their rivalry existed outside the cockpit at all. I read Lauda lived at Hunt's place during the time frame of the movie and that they made absolutely sure that anything on the track wouldn't affect their friendship. They sure must have made an odd couple. I grew up with Lauda as a sports commentator and he never bothered to soften his attitude.

I remember Lauda complaining that the film made it look as if he never went to any parties or had fun when he did go to parties, just not as many as Hunt did.

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Hunt was a commentator here in the UK for many years, and sparring partner to Murray Walker for a long time.

Some of the stuff that happened in the 1970s was barking mad by today's standards. Lewis has often won the championship with multiple races to go (the only time he won it at the last race was his first in 2008). If he just said fuck it and didn't turn up to the last 2-4 races, he'd be rinsed with legal action by the sponsors (who are not paying top dollar to have their brands advertised by Valtteri Bottas, no offence).

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5 hours ago, williamjm said:

... just not as many as Hunt did.

Well, the number of people out of the entire human population of the earth for the entire span of time who went to MORE parties than Hunt could probably be counted with three hands, so, yeah.

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