The new liveries have been revealed, and testing begins in a week.
Fully expecting another procession for Red Bull (and it sounds like everyone else is too), but we'll see about the rest of it.
Was also wondering what the point of going to races as a fan is. Like, the camaraderie, sure, but you can't actually see any of the damn race, right?
Oops, guess I waited too long to make the new thread -- sorry about that!
Was also wondering what the point of going to races as a fan is. Like, the camaraderie, sure, but you can't actually see any of the damn race, right?
Ask again in April -- we'll be going to our first race as part of our vacation to Japan next month. 
Anyway, testing is underway today. This graphic is only for the first half of the day, but the main change in the most up to date timing is that Sainz has slotted in above Piastri, and Russell has swapped positions with Tsunoda.
So yeah, early indications would be that not much has changed from the running order last year. Verstappen in his Red Bull roflstomping everyone else, and there being barely anything between Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, and Aston.
Okay, day 1 sessions are over.
Apparently most teams were doing race simulations today, and even if that wasn't the case you never really can read too much into testing, but interesting final results.
It's PROBABLY the case that VCARB was doing quali sims with Ricciardo in the afternoon, but I think at the very least it should be safe to say that the Red Bull remains untouchable, and McLaren and Ferrari are looking solid behind them (and the Haas remains hot garbage).
For all the rest, probably going to have to see how the rest of testing goes, or more likely, see what happens after the first race.
Early days yet, but initial thoughts.:
Obviously Red Bull will continue their dominance
RB looking ominous for the midfield, their rivals will be squealing
Hamilton must be happy with his off season decision making
McLaren looking solid
Was hoping for better from Williams, but they didn't run much so maybe they'll look better soon.
Day 2 just finished, so all that's easily available at the moment is this screengrab of a trackside timing screen, but yeah, still roughly the same picture as yesterday:
And again, all usual caveats about "don't read too much into testing" aside, the rough word is that VCARB seems to be doing a bit more glory running than the other teams, so Ricciardo again being so high on the timing sheet might be even less representative than the rest.
That, or maybe it's going to be Red Bull 1-2-3's all year. Good for Ricciardo if so, but maybe less good for other reasons.
(Also, Zak Brown is reportedly making a lot of noise about how it appears there might be unfair levels of coordination happening between the two Red Bull teams, for whatever that's worth.)
Day 3 of testing is complete:
Worth noting, this graphic doesn't show tire compounds; the top 3 there were all on soft (C4) tires, whereas Max was on mediums (C3). Tsunoda and Albon were also on C4s.
I think the final takeaway is that things maybe haven't changed all that much in the competitive space from last season.
The Red Bull is still (incredibly) likely to be the dominant car, but Ferrari and Mercedes have probably both done a decent job of covering off their weaknesses from last season. The Ferrari race sims looked very good, and seemed to demonstrate that the car can be fast without destroying its tires. Meanwhile, the Mercedes looks much more manageable and under control. Meanwhile, McLaren also seems to have maintained their momentum with a car that continues to be a strong, balanced, consistent competitor. Also, there's a decent amount of chatter that Mercedes and McLaren might not have been showing as much of their true hand in their testing program as Ferrari might have.
So, will there be more than one race won by someone other than Red Bull? Eh, still hard to say.
But at the very least it seems like we'll continue to have strong competition for the rest of the podium places (both race to race, and in the overall championship), with the next three teams all looking strong enough to make it really hard to call between them. (Although Ferrari might have a slight edge.) Oh, and also there's signs that the midfield will also continue to be healthy, so one shouldn't be to surprised to see the likes of Aston, Alpine, and even VCARB or Williams turning in some very strong results from track to track.
EDIT: Top testing lap times across all three days with tire compound listed.
Anyone else remember the days when teams would sometimes show up at a race and they wouldn't take part because they weren't within 107% of the pole time?
Things are so close now it's truly wild. Haas would have been a midfield team in the late 90s.
New Drive to Survive. Didn't enjoy the last season. Maybe this year will be more interesting.
After a few year's hiatus from F1 because I worked every Sunday, Drive to Survive was basically my annual F1 download.
It's weird watching it now having seen a full season and knowing exactly what's coming. Got to what I assume is the first Steiner episode and they are really playing with the storyline in a way that's fun, although one has to wonder how authentic it is.
It's also funny that having started watching F1 YouTube there are some familiar faces and voices popping up every now and then. Scott Mitchell-Malm from The Race is fairly regularly grilling folks and Kym Illman teasing Zak Brown struggling to get out of a McLaren Speedtail was fun.
About halfway through the new season, and so far I have found it better than the previous one.
Relatively speaking, less artificial insertion of drama, and more successful at filling in gaps in the story that I got watching the year unfold rather than feeling like mostly a skewed presentation of things I was well aware of.
Interesting prediction summary graphic:
Jolyon Palmer and Ted Kravitz seem closest to the way I'm reading things right now.
I'm kinda surprised that Aston Martin is still top 5 and a bit disappointed in Mercedes but that seems to make sense.
Interesting prediction summary graphic:
Jolyon Palmer and Ted Kravitz seem closest to the way I'm reading things right now.
Hard to know for sure, but I tend to feel the same. I think McLaren and Mercedes didn't show everything they had, and maybe Ferrari went out to impress, so things may be closer there.
The 2-5 group and the 6-10 groups are all so tight. A bit of consistency will be what makes a difference at the end.
======================
Finished DTS. The producers must have been so bummed about all the news coming out of the off season. Storylines were out of date 2 months before the show dropped.
I did enjoy the season. Some thought's I'll tag although nothing really surprising
* I didn't need 2 episodes of Alpine. although learning how much Gasly and Ocon hated each other was fun
* I'm actually glad to see the back of Steiner. The scappy underdog story was fun, but 6 seasons of "I must call Gene" "Yes Gene, shit race I'm f*cking embarrassed" was enough
* It's interesting to see what crews missed. Picking up Liam Lawson's story the race *after* Zaandvoort was jarring. People not following in the season probably wouldn't notice though.
Should we do a GWJ fantasy league? I mean it will be tiny but could be fun.
I didn't know Mr. Stroll needed me to hate him even more, but Episode 1 did a great job of it. The whole episode reeked of I paid Netflix to make me look like the greatest business man ever. The fact that his mediocre child is still driving proves that wrong though. I used to want Aston Martin to do well, now I am glad to see them so bummed after testing.
I wonder if Drive to Survive's getting negatively hit by the fact that it's getting blue flagged by real life.
Fans are re-living last year, but won't get anything until next year about Horner (case dismissed, btw), and Lewis choosing Ferrari reportedly completely undermines an entire episode of DTS this year.
Combine this with Red Bull's frankly boring dominance, and I do wonder if it'll take a hit.
I wonder if Drive to Survive's getting negatively hit by the fact that it's getting blue flagged by real life.
Fans are re-living last year, but won't get anything until next year about Horner (case dismissed, btw), and Lewis choosing Ferrari reportedly completely undermines an entire episode of DTS this year.
Combine this with Red Bull's frankly boring dominance, and I do wonder if it'll take a hit.
Stopped watching halfway through the third or forth season. Just lost interest in the storylines and characters and it was too repetitive.
It's funny, F1 is kind of like the PL to me, in that around 2000 or so, we started getting year after year of just one dude winning over and over again when before that you'd get a new champion every 2-3 years.
Between 2010 and last year, 4 dudes have won the Drivers' Championship.
From '86 to '99, you had eight.
Drive to Survive has always been at its best when it's focusing on the smaller teams. The first few seasons barely had Mercedes during their dominant period, and the show took a dip when it began paying more attention to the championship.
This season took a step in the right direction by largely ignoring the racing, outside of story relevant events, and the championship and they even countered some of the boring parts of the repetitive Haas story by mixing their story with the rise of Williams.
Next season won't have Steiner (in the garage at least) so that will be fresh and this silly season is going to be freaking *wild* so there should be a lot of lying and backstabbing hijinks. This season didn't have any driver movement so that was missing.
I think the show is inevitably going to be up and down in terms of the drama. Despite the fact they do heighten things they don't actually fabricate anything.
Ultimately it's an easy watch so I'll tune in whenever it drops for however long it continues.
This season was one of the better seasons. It does a good job at telling a story without painting any person as good or bad, just rivialries which was nice. I also liked seeing Claire Williams.
Drive to Survive has always been at its best when it's focusing on the smaller teams. The first few seasons barely had Mercedes during their dominant period, and the show took a dip when it began paying more attention to the championship.
This season took a step in the right direction by largely ignoring the racing, outside of story relevant events, and the championship and they even countered some of the boring parts of the repetitive Haas story by mixing their story with the rise of Williams.
Yeah, this is exactly right.
Also agreed, this season definitely felt like they returned to the storytelling approach that worked so well in the first couple seasons, and was much better than more recent seasons as a result.
First free practice of the year:
Danny Ricciardo championship year confirmed!
Second free practice of the year:
Historic eighth Hamilton championship year confirmed!
Meanwhile, someone has leaked a google drive full of documents about the Horner investigation to F1 media and other invested parties (other F1 team staff and associated people, such as Jos Verstappen).
Clearly someone disagrees with the findings of the internal investigation.
Clearly someone disagrees with the findings of the internal investigation.
Or trolls be trolling
Even the gossip blogs that I've found aren't saying what's in the leak so the veracity seems sketchy.
I do agree with Wolff and Brown though that Red Bull needs to provide access to the finding to the FIA and F1 to confirm that they are what is claimed. The report doesn't need to be widely distributed, but a few senior folks from both organisations saying they're happy with the findings would calm a lot of nerves.
I've seen someone I broadly trust talking about the leaks and.... uh... they don't appear to make Horner look great.
Okay yeah, I've looked again and stuff has come out since my last post
https://www.independent.co.uk/f1/chr...
If any of that is accurate the dude is toast. And it's a big black eye for Red Bull apparently trying to whitewash this.
Yeah, I think there's a combination of things happening:
- The nature of the files in in the leak makes them hard to verify -- just a bunch of screenshots, which could easily be doctored or fully fabricated in a million ways.
- There were instant threats from Red Bull of aggressive litigation against anyone who talks about the content of the leaks.
- People are concerned about protecting the privacy of the involved parties.
On that last point, if the materials are legitimate f*ck Horner's privacy and f*ck Red Bull corporate for deciding to protect him. BUT, protecting the privacy of the person who made the original complaint does seem like a very important thing to do. Whether these leaked files are real or not, whatever consequences Horner faces, this person's life is going to be absolutely destroyed for doing the most reasonable thing in the world -- properly filing an HR complaint asking for an abuse of power to be handled appropriately. And, the more public the details get, the worse that's going to be for this person.
Anyway, I have no idea what the intent of the leaker was. Ever since the existence of the situation was made public, the rumor mill has been buzzing about power struggles within Red Bull, and maybe this is just some cynical, bullshit power grab, or just some malicious sour grapes situation. But if the materials in the leak are real, it's also very easy to imagine any number of people who were involved in the investigation being unfathomably apoplectic when the call was made that Red Bull management were going to let Horner go without even the slightest reprimand. And, while it's hard to say whether getting no justice or having your life ruined by having this shit be public is worse, it's easy to imagine any number of people deciding that they needed to pursue consequences for Horner regardless of the consequences for the other person, because, you know, if he did it once, he can easily do it again (and maybe has done it before and since).
Because yeah, there ARE leaks from the leaked materials out there (although they appear and disappear quickly) and the situation presented within is exactly what you'd expect it to be. Workplace relationship develops that's inappropriate from the start due to imbalances of power, subordinate becomes uncomfortable and tries to deescalate/end things, superior starts abusing the power imbalance to keep getting what they want from the relationship. Classic, f*cking tale as old as time, not surprising at all given his public persona, f*ck that guy, period. (If the materials are real, of course.)
Footage starts at about 6 min. Stay for Verstappen's wet lap.
Danny Ricciardo championship year confirmed!
Historic eighth Hamilton championship year confirmed!
And, qualifying says...
Normal service has been resumed.
The gaps are so tight though, less than 1 second covering all entrants in Q1, and Leclerc's Q2 time faster than Max's Q3.
Leclerc and Vasseur being disappointed with the Q3 time and Lando thinking he'd be way higher if he didn't whiff of Sector 1 gives a very different feel to everything.
Red Bull is still the team to beat, but I don't think they're unassailable. Yet.
Also, no sign of Horner at qualifying.
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