F1 2019 (Not the game) Spoiler-All

r013nt0 wrote:

...I absolutely don't understand what they were thinking pitting Leclerc a 2nd time and losing track position to Bottas. He was never going to get past him. They didn't have anywhere near enough of a lap time advantage to regain P2 against a strong defender. Bizarre call.

They knew he was a sitting duck if they didn't.

I think Ferrari is begging for a Rosberg Hamilton rivalry with the way they are handling their strategy or lack thereof .

I dunno.. Even with the straight line speed advantage and DRS he was never able to get close to passing. Lewis was 16 miles ahead, so in P2 Charles would have been racing in clean air. I think he'd have held on to P2 even on mediums.

I don't have access to all the telemetry data, of course, so I could be completely talking out of my ass. But I wouldn't have pitted my driver in Motorsport Manager, that's for sure.

So, this is going to be an interesting weekend it seems!

Obviously first and foremost I hope everyone (civilians, etc) remains safe!

But it will be interesting to see how this affects the race. Especially poor Pierre! He's not driving in FP1, so if FP3 / Quali are cancelled he's in a really bad spot. And of course while I love the mixed up grid that rain can cause, Suzuka is such a great track that I'd much rather have a dry race so everyone can push.

Yeah, this is definitely on the list of tracks I'd rather see a clean, dry race at. The track is so good that it deserves perfect conditions.

Rats.

Qualifying has been postponed until four hours before the race to allow for the weather to calm down a little.

Bathurst 1000 is starting now if anyone wants to get warmed up before Quali.

Well that was absolutely Ferrari's race to lose... and boy did they pull that off spectacularly.

Fantastic race overall though! The midfield racing was a blast to watch.

I wish I watched the same races as you, because I feel asleep half way through this one, granted, I did attempt to watch it live and I missed half of lap 1 because I was watching Bathurst.

The first half was good, but the FIA just does such a bad job or showing the interesting fights. Half the time I'm watching the time sheets to see who is making progress on who while the video feed shows Hamilton 2 seconds behind Seb.

I thought Seb did great though. He had a terrible start, but to keep second by himself was impressive.

Glad they decided to end the race one lap early so Perez's last lap wreck was essentially him wrecking on the cool down lap. Yay to points finishes.

Not a bad race, but I wish some of that rain had stuck around.

I watch drivers' cameras when Liberty Media gets obsessed with the nothing going on at the front. Also yeah, I watched it in the morning instead of staying up. Danny Ric and Lando doing a ton of passing, Albon being solid as hell, Charles basically had to pass most of the grid to get back up.

So yeah, sometimes you need to dig a little deeper than just watching the broadcast I guess.

Seb holding on to 2nd after that atrocious start was great, agreed. I wonder what it would have looked like had Max not gotten taken out by Charles driving like an asshole though.

Sounds like Renault is in some hot water. Automatic brake bias adjustment. FIA has seized both cars' ECUs and steering wheels.

Renault info is at this timestamp, but it's worth watching the whole thing:

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/a...

More points for Perez.

Happy dance.

Oh, to be able to read the mind of Danny Ric this season.

Perhaps I am a cruel bastard, but I'm like "you're crying Lewis? After number six?"

I really wish he'd just retire. We get it, you're extremely good, possibly the best. At some point it's just running up the score and boring. Try out another racing discipline and see how that goes.

I really hope the new regs shake things up. The inevitability of the Merc dominance this cycle is very blah. Especially since the TV coverage does a bad job of letting you keep track of the midfield that actually has some interesting fight happening for the scraps.

Well, he's gonna win again next year almost certainly.
But 2021 has the new regulations and new cars. Perhaps his fight to surpass Schumacher's titles will be more difficult than his fight to equal him has been.

Also, I was at CotA on Friday and took some photos of the goings-on. I'll post a few once they're done transferring etc... Unfortunately due to family circumstances I wasn't able to stay for Saturday and Sunday, though.

I'm glad Lewis is challenging Schumacher's record for titles. I wasn't watching F1 back then so I'm glad to see it now.

Plus Schumacher always had rumors of cheating following him (traction control software embedded secretly at Benetton, incompliant cars at Ferrari). And I do believe Hamilton faced stiffer competition during his career.

I don't particularly like Hamilton, but I have to wonder how rewarding this really is for him. At some point, being on Mercedes has to be like playing the original Doom with god mode on. It just turns the game into looking at the scenery, hunting down the key cards, and wending your way through levels to find that switch to move on. It has to be so boring that it doesn't feel like a challenge anymore.

I don't have a problem with Lewis. He seems to be a genuinely good dude, and at least he's not from a legacy family of the son of a billionaire. He actually earned his seat. I agree that it's hard to gauge how much of his success is due to the dominance of the car, but I dunno... that's the sport. Nobody in any team sport plays in a vacuum. Obviously he wouldn't be dominant in the Williams, but his decision making and reactions and sheer driving ability would have him be quite successful in any competitive car, I'd wager.

That said, it sure seems like he says he's putting in the effort and feeling rewarded.

I'll not spam you all with the shots I took of the current cars, since those are everywhere. But here's some shots of the classic cars during their practice.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/mD22h0D/the-classics-1-of-2.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/T0mGgnz/the-classics-11-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/CbpFrbW/the-classics-9-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/z6VVV9V/the-classics-13-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/5THstnJ/the-classics-12-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/0MnhrV7/the-classics-6-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/yf4dQCp/the-classics-17-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/3yn801k/the-classics-16-of-17.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/55ZmP9y/the-classics-5-of-17.jpg)

There has got to be some diminishing return for Lewis, but I doubt you would hear it from him. Just like Brady would never say it either. I'm sure they'd say something along of the lines of, "There's nothing boring about hard work".

Being on a dominant high school team, there was more satisfaction in not losing than winning, if that makes sense. We would catch more grief for losing than we would praise for winning because we were expected to win. I'm sure Lewis is under a similar pressure.

Did you get any pictures or Perez?

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Did you get any pictures or Perez?

Yep! In a couple of them you can see he is on the 2020 test tires. (no markings)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/Tw07Kc1/Checo-4954.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/FV9J807/Checo-6374.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/sjYPRSg/Checo-5307.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/Dr9Wpfn/Checo-5768.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/tKZfvpX/Checo-6159.jpg)

EDIT: r013nt0 sort of beat me to this response in a much more succinct way, but whatevs.

NSMike wrote:

I don't particularly like Hamilton, but I have to wonder how rewarding this really is for him. At some point, being on Mercedes has to be like playing the original Doom with god mode on. It just turns the game into looking at the scenery, hunting down the key cards, and wending your way through levels to find that switch to move on. It has to be so boring that it doesn't feel like a challenge anymore.

I'm not sure that's really been the case, at least this year.

There have been a number of races where if you look at the results of practice and qualification there’s been every indication that the Ferrari has been the better car (hell, even the Red Bull at a few locations). The difference has been that Hamilton, Bottas, and the Merc strategy team have delivered clean and consistent race day performances even when their initial hand has been sh*tty, where Vettel, Leclerc, and the Ferrari team have managed to find the clown shoes every time their cards were great, with the notable exceptions of Spa and Monza (and they nearly did there as well). And as a result, a casual glance gives the sense that the Merc car was much more dominant than it actually was throughout the season.

It’s a vast oversimplification of the situation for sure, but the statistic represented by this graph sort of makes the point.
IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/de79fff7gpw31.png)

I mean, that definitely doesn’t communicate the fact that a non trivial amount of that difference is DEFINITELY due to the engineering and design approach for the cars — Mercedes unquestionably had a better understanding of how to make the tires work consistently this year, and Ferrari’s (potentially illegal?) approach to “party mode” on their engines gives them single lap performance that rarely is representative of genuine race pace. But, go back through the year and you’ll see that just as much (probably a lot more) the difference has simply been that Mercedes has a healthier, more effective team culture that lets their drivers and their strategists make the best of nearly every situation. And with respect to Hamilton in particular, he’s just been uncannily good at both not making mistakes AND at making what should have been impossible strategies look effortless thanks to masterful driving and tire management (as much as he might whinge about it on the radio in the process :P).

I know it’s very popular to complain about the dominance of Mercedes and Hamilton over the past few years, and there’s certainly a lot of valid complaints to be leveled at the way the sport heavily favors bigger teams and sets up positive feedback loops with regard to resourcing that must be discouraging (to say the least) to anyone outside the big three. But, Mercedes and Hamilton’s wins this year were NOT inevitable because of that alone. Ferrari’s budget this year was very similar to Mercedes’ (and the sport also has lots of weird little provisions baked in for supporting “legacy” teams that work heavily in their favor), and it shows in the fact that their car was VERY competitive for big chunks of the year. It was only made inevitable because the Mercedes team as a whole — very much including Hamilton — worked hard and delivered cleaner throughout the tear.

I’m also not so sure the wins next year are inevitable either, incidentally. Ferrari and Red Bull/Honda ARE catching up on engineering. Yes, the fact that the regulations aren’t changing (much) means that Mercedes doesn’t have to make big strides, but conversely it also means that they could be finding themselves hammering a lot of resources chasing diminishing returns if they’ve already pushed themselves close to the ceiling of what’s possible within the current rules. Meanwhile, (assuming Ferrari’s engine shenanigans are legal) number two has nearly reached (or exceeded) parity in the back half of this season, and number three seems to be improving fast as well.

As such, I expect that just as was the case this year, it will only be “inevitable” if the whole team continues to work to work together well while their competitors continue to keep being their own worst enemies.

My bet is that next year Mercedes will have their most dominant season as teams focus on the 2021 regulations and don't spend much time trying to compete in a league that is almost guaranteed to be won by Merc.

Vettels and Red Bulls most dominant season was the season just before a major rules change.

I agree with you ET. I don't know how much more the team can give but I think being so close to 7 championships might raise their effort.

On that front, an ominous moment at the Mercedes Championship party from Toto Wolff, when he said "the downs [this year] they have a reason, because there will be more ups next year."

https://streamable.com/7jviz

Maybe after their dominating start to this season they spent more time since the summer break working on next year's car, so some of Ferrari's gain in the second half of the season came because Mercedes had already shifted some of their focus to next year.

Or he could be referring to the loss of Niki Lauda this year.

Well, one thing that has been a huge constant in any interview with people from Mercedes (especially Hamilton and Wolff) is that Lauda's death was hugely impactful both to them personally and as a team.

That said, your other theory seems quite likely, especially given the changes coming in 2021. Something like:

1. If by midseason 2019 we have a strong lead (check), sacrifice development for the back half of 2019 (check) to get a strong development lead into 2020 (almost certainly check).
2. If (as soon as?) that development lead is translated into an early points lead in 2020, shift all possible resources into 2021 development as early as possible to get as much done before the spending cap applies.

Also worth noting: in various interviews throughout the second half of the season Ferrari has been pretty open about the fact that many of their gains have been made by advancing developments originally intended to be part of the 2020 package. Now, this could just be a preview that they have a lot more performance coming down the pike... or, it could be that they fired most of their shot early and their gains at the start of next year might be even more marginal. After all, they too will be racing to build a 2021 car before the spending cap comes into place.

In any case, 2020 is going to be a weird year for sure.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with Hamilton as a person, or with Mercedes as a team. Use your resources and talent to maximum effect, that's fine. It's just that as a viewer, it's increasingly boring to watch, especially when the regs and resources mean that the rest of the field has a harder time mounting a consistent challenge to Merc dominance even without having a generational talent behind the wheel.

I wouldn't mind so much if the coverage did a better job at tracking and showcasing all the midfield battles going on, but they mostly don't. I could get the F1 TV service and build my own coverage with driver cams and such, but that's more work than I really want to put in right now.