I guess you cannot deny that it was a good weekend for BMW Williams, but I wanted one of them to get at least 2nd. I want to blame their pit stop strategy, but in the end, the Mercedes team probably were going to finish one two no matter what. I think with a little luck Williams can surpass Force India, and take the fight to Ferrari this year. That is of course if Raikkonen can't get his shit straight. Nett, Did you see the report that Ferrari asked Kimi to slow down and cool his brakes two laps in? I only saw the headline, but is this proof that his car isn't up to snuff? In my opinion we are in an era that the car is the deciding factor on how successful you are as a driver. These guys are the cream of the crop (except Maldonado), and any one of them given a good car could win a race. The only guy (in my opinion) that matters more, to me, is Alonso. I think he gets the most out of what he is handed in the garage. Your thoughts?
The thing is that the cars are on the bleeding edge of falling apart at the best of times. They are engineered in such a way that they are constantly running near their failure points in order to shave grams of weight off of the car and to gain almost imperceptible performance gains. All it takes is one element of the race to be outside of their design/testing parameters, like air temperature, air density (due to altitude), etc., etc., and things could go wrong. If it's unseasonably cold or warm, the braking/cooling/whatever system that they designed for that particular race might not work as required. Or if they had a problem with getting the ERS to work, it might not have been providing the substantial amount of braking that it does normally, thereby forcing the mechanical brakes to pick up that slack. If those mechanical brakes are set up to operate ±5% of the required force, and the lack of ERS pushes that to ±20, then the brakes are going to fail, or if not fail, at least move to outside of normal operating specs, as more braking force means more heat generated than expected and therefore more heat retained than expected, and hot brakes are a problem. (Brake systems are all about the balance between weight and heat absorption/dissipation). It could also be that Kimi's driving style doesn't fit well with how the systems are designed. Driver style is huge when it comes to how the car and it's pieces-parts work, especially for the duration of the race. There are some drivers that are overly aggressive with their turn-ins, which might rotate the car better and allow them to get on the gas sooner and be faster out of the corner, but it could be less effective on the suspension, so they may suck in the rain or harder on the tires as a result. There is a reason why some drivers can get their tires to last longer than others; either driving style, suspension setup, car design, or mixtures of all three. So take any or all of these factors, and put them ever so slightly near or beyond their limits, and it can all add up to an overall problem over time. It was interesting how quite a few drivers had problems with their push-to-pass and were told to not use it... that's why Vettel's car died there for a bit at the beginning of the race. That also could have something to do with Kimi's problem, depending on what parts are supplied by the FIA to all teams.
Wow... Fernando and Kimi nowhere to be seen? What a crazy last lap in qualifying... Rosberg and Vettel on the front row? It's going to be a hell of a start tomorrow.
I get that it was some weird weather that caused teams to not know whether slicks or inters were the appropriate choice, but, no Ferrari, and the team that started 1, 2, last race didn't get out of Q1........? WTF? And if you're Hamilton, you gotta be pissed at yourself for aborting that lap. He has had a run of bad luck, and bad runs, and bad decisions, and it will probably cost him the championship this year. And I think he is the better driver over Rosberg. I knew Williams were gonna have a rough weekend with Massa wrecking in P1 this weekend, but I expected them to get out of the first round of qualifying. Also... (I'm halfway into a bottle of gin), did I hear that Kimi isn't racing next year? I guess that was a short experiment? Just me being a dick, but how is Massa looking now Marinello?
I thought that was a great race. The battle between Alonso and Seb was outstanding. I don't know what telecast everyone else watches, but on (NBC) they were playing Seb's radio during the battle, and he was bitching up a storm. About what, I don't know. From what I could hear, it seemed like he thought Alonso was blocking him. Currently Ferrari is only 3 points ahead of Williams. I think I read somewhere that its more points already than the last two years combined. I could only imagine how many they would have if Massa didn't have shitty luck.
Just finished watching the Hungary race, and holy fuck was it entertaining as hell. Daniel Ricciardo was on FIRE, and Hamilton, for the second race in a row, does some amazing driving from the back of the pack to hit the podium. Interesting to see the feedback from the "team orders" for Hamilton to let Rosberg by, but I'm with him; if you want by, then get the fuck up here and pass me, but I'm not going to slow down and give it to you". Seems like the vast majority of the drivers are of the same state of mind. But you have to love a race where it raining, but it's not, just about anything can happen, and it's down to the raw talent of the drivers more than anything. All in all it's been a fantastic season so far, and I'm depressed as hell now that we're heading into the summer break. A month is going to seem like a very long time, I'm thinking. Time to go tune back into TUDOR.
The only good thing about the summer break is knowing that Spa awaits you at the end. It is going to be long month.
Always. I love the old original prewar tracks like Monaco, Spa, Monza, LeMans. I have my alarm set to 4:30 to watch.
In the qualifying, Sky showed an aerial view of the old, banked part of the track that was recently redone. It looks awesome, and I'd LOVE to see a modern car try to negotiate it. Never gonna happen, but I'd still love to see someone try.
Quite enjoyed the race today. At first, when Hamilton's electronics went all weird, I thought he was going to revert to a whiny little bitch... I could sense it coming. Then it got resolved, and he ran hard after his teammate. It was lots of fun watching him get in Rosberg's head so much that Rosberg over-braked himself twice, giving Hamilton the win. Then the whole podium body language was hilarious... Hamilton saying, "Oh yeah, we're friends and teammates", with Rosberg's body language saying "blow me, you annoying fuck". And it was good to see Masa up on the podium as well... finally getting some good results. I don't think he's going to lose that grin for a few days. Also interesting to see that Vettel is starting to catch up a bit to Riciardo, and finished ahead of him... seems like he might finally be wrapping his head around how to drive his car. I think Kimi owes Botas a beer... how Botas missed him with that braking failure, and not lose it into the wall/grass, I have no idea. Kid has some SERIOUS fucking talent. Gotta suck to be at Ferrari right now... losing that big in front of your home crowd.
It was a very good race. What goes around comes around and Hamilton is getting some breaks and Rosberg is making some of the mistakes that Hamilton was making earlier in the year. Certainly, this is starting to look a bit like the good old Senna, Prost Mclaren years and that can only be good for F1. The bad news is now they leave the traditional tracks and head to Singapore for a night street race. Of course, I will still be watching.
He crashed into a large forklift tractor that was removing a previously wrecked race car. The race was run in a monsoon with pretty poor conditions. Sad for all.
Damn. Meanwhile, about 4 times before this happened, Sky's Martin Brundle (a former F1 driver, now commentator) talked about when he hit a tractor in that exact same corner in the 90's sometime, and was totally freaking out about the corner workers there, well before the accident. Gee... maybe they should have done something about it? For those wondering, Reddit's /r/formula1 has a pretty good thread about it with some pics: http://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/commen ... confirmed/ A pic of him in the car, waiting for the extraction team, while being attended to the track-side doctor: A layman's breakdown from that thread:
Various official channels are now reporting that he's out of surgery and off of a ventilator... here's hoping he recovers completely.
Mika Salo is one of the race stewards who saw the footage of it happening. Dude went straight under the tractor, face first, with him being strapped in and basically immobile in the car. I don't want to know any more details.
Video of the accident has been released (and pulled by F1 Management), but a few gifs exist. A tractor is heavy. Look how much it moved when it got hit. Spoilered for "holy shit" reasons. Spoiler