F1 2021 Season Spoiler Filled Race Talk

zeroKFE wrote:

George Russell P2.

Nearly pole, until Verstappen dropped a miracle lap at the very last moment.

P2, in a Williams.

Wow.

Wow.

Full qualifying results:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/QZ724y1.jpg)

This is an entirely new way for Williams to turn an impressive qualifying into no points.

As new follower of the sport this season, this whole thing seems bizarre to me. No one seems to know anything? Has this never happened before?

A poor day to pick for my first live formula 1 race

tboon wrote:

As new follower of the sport this season, this whole thing seems bizarre to me. No one seems to know anything? Has this never happened before?

I can't recall the last time a race didn't actually start due to rain. In Canada 2012 they red flagged the race for hours, but still finished it. That being said, they are a lot more safety orientated lately. This tracks recent history isn't helping.

Some ludicrously, there seems to be disagreement over whether or not the race has started. The bizarre technicality at play is that the occurrence of the formation laps means that, officially speaking, the race – which has a three-hour time limit – has started, and therefore points must be given out.

God bless F1.

Jesus if this is how Russell gets his first podium….

Words fail me

They ran enough laps to make sure George got his first podium and none of the in-person fans get a refund.

Make em' all run. Or ride bikes. Or whoever does the best slip-n-slide.

As a sidenote, I just saw the W Series crash from this weekend and good GOD should we all be thankful for HANS and the Halo.

There would have been at least one major injury without it.

Speaking of it. if anyone wants to watch the W Series race. https://burningwhee1s.blogspot.com/2...

I just want to draw people’s attention to the fact that Williams have just scored their first double points scoring races in a row since 2016 the last year of Botas and Massa driving for them.

I think of “races” like today as being part of the rich story of a F1 season. It’s kind of awesome to take Spa off the table like this. Dry Spa races can be interesting but this keeps everything really spicy.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

They ran enough laps to make sure George got his first podium and none of the in-person fans get a refund.

100% sh*tty with respect to spectator refunds, but satisfying the requirement for points to be issued to acknowledge the efforts for the rest of the weekend seems like the right choice to me. There were heroic efforts in qualifying yesterday up and down the grid -- and without question, Russell and Williams deserve that podium.

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Kimi just announced his retirement, so I expect a ton of driver market pins will be falling very shortly here as well. As such, here's my predictions/summary of the rumors:

Bottas to Alfa Romeo to replace Kimi.
Gio will stay on as his teammate (although there are strong rumors that Nick DeVries is in the running as well).

Russell to Mercedes.

Latifi will be kept on at Williams, and paired with Albon. Yes, they have a decent amount of talent coming through their young driver program, but Helmut Marko has been too vocal about Albon deserving another chance (just not with his teams) for there not to be fire associated with that smoke.

Red Bull has obviously just announced Perez for 2022, but they'll also be keeping Alpha Tauri as is. Gasly is too good with nowhere else to go to let go, and despite his struggles so far this year, they clearly see Tsunoda as deserving of time to show the talent his junior career clearly promised.

Haas will also keep both their drivers, but they might not be Haas next year. Or at the very least they'll be Uralkali-Haas.

And every one else will too, although I think technically Aston hasn't confirmed either driver. Vettel was announced as a multiyear contract last year, but it seems that may have been similar to Alonso, being more like a one year with strong contingencies/commitments to continue. And Stroll owns the team, so even if he hadn't been driving well enough (which I think he generally has been) he's going going anywhere soon.

I'll predict if Hamilton get's his eighth championship then he retires. If he doesn't he is going to be pissed about Russell.

Well, some spicy Friday practice action.

FP1 lost about half an hour in the middle after Vettel's engine started smoking (with Vettel himself grabbing a fire extinguisher to put it out). Then in FP2, Hamilton's engine went out, albeit with less drama than Vettel's issue.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-WrN0vXMBc2z4s?format=jpg&name=medium)

IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/6p3nqo01qal71.jpg)

Over all the track looks wild -- tight, short, and fast. Going to be a lot of sore necks at the end of the weekend! Also, I predict there's going to be drama with traffic and yellow/red flags during qualifying tomorrow -- probably worth watching if you can!

@zeroKFE, I just want to thank you for posting practice and qualification times consistently in here. I really appreciate them and thought I should say so here. So, thanks!

Heh, you’re very welcome.

Kimi tested positive for Covid overnight so we get a sudden return for Robert Kubica this weekend and probably at Monza next week as Kimi is in isolation.

All of Kimi's close contacts also had to isolate and because it's Kimi that was... one person.

IMAGE(https://preview.redd.it/x6qjyehtyhl71.jpg?auto=webp&s=5f3d48f2ccd42c1644c57eb6fa1bdc62901218b3)

Well, drama with traffic and red flags did indeed occur.

The Haas boys had a tussle in Q1, impeding Vettel in the process, and then both Williams crashed out in Q2 while on very promising laps.

VERY close at the front though, so tomorrow could be exciting — especially the first few turns.

Watch the first lap then you keep the procession on in the background and wait for the yellow.

Aw George. You deserve it kid.

Looking forward to next year when he and Hamilton attempt to murder each other.

So Bottas to Alpha, Russel to Mercedes and Albion to Williams.

The last two seats unconfirmed for 2022 are Stroll’s at Aston Martín (got to admire Papa Stroll keeping him on a year to year contract) and Giovinazzi‘s at Alpha.

I kind of hope Schumacher gets moved. I would love to see him compared to Bottas and Haas just seems so toxic for him.

I wonder if we should shut down the Slack F1 channel and move it all here or vice versa. I feel weird saying essentially the exact same thing to a bunch of the same people. Anyway....

As much as I wouldn't want to be on the same team as Maz, I'm not sure that Alfa will actually be the better team next year. Haas has abandoned the current car to work exclusively on next years car. It's possible they will be back in the front of the mid field next season. I don't feel that Alfa will be. Who knows. If I were Alfa I would try to get Nyck De vries. Champion in two different series in 3 years. Guy needs a shot at F1.

There's a Slack F1 channel?

Our racing league (Racing Dorks) has a Slack to organise and chat and it has an F1 channel.

It's GWJ-adjacent, but there are people on it who don't visit this forum, so I think we're fine to duplicate things here and there.

So there's a GWJ F1 Slack channel that is not Racing Dorks, meaning that we could triplicate things?