Formula One ( F1 )

Would not be surprised if Red Bull take the WCC this year, fingers crossed they can give Mercedes a run for their money throughout the season.

Quite enjoyed Max's pass on Hamilton. When they showed the slow mo on the replay he was almost completely sideways as he came past! If all the races are anything like that, I think it's going to be a good season.

To be fair to Mazepin, Schumacher also spun without any assistance from someone else. The only difference is Mazepin did a better job of it and took the Haas out of the race saving someone else the trouble of being crashed into.

I'm guessing they're still suffering from the unexpected rear ride height issues from last year, and given the lack of development they're forecasting I'm sure we'll see a lot more out of control Haas cars this year. At least they seem to have sorted their braking issues though. The amount of brake failures they were having a few years back was pretty scary.

I'm guessing they're still suffering from the unexpected rear ride height issues from last year

That's what it looked like to me. It looked like a handful when going into bends, the back end looked like it was all over the place.

They had previously stated that they weren't going to develop the car so they could focus on next year. Maybe they did little more than take a Skillsaw to the floor, adjust a few things and left it at that.

Slightly off-topic, finished watching Drive to Survive over the weekend and there was some footage of Romain Grosjean kitesurfing, he's not bad at all! Looked like he was getting a lesson/tips from Aaron Hadlow (pro kitesurfer) down at Hayling Island. There's a few short videos on his YouTube channel, always intrigued by what drivers get up to away from the track.

Could be as simple as "We hired two young drivers, we cant change the car much even if we wanted to and the Ferrari engine could be crap again. Lets give Mick a chance to get used to F1 whilst we look for a replacement for Mazepin (and his money)".

So apparently Mazepin's race was shorter than Bottas' pitstop at 37 seconds and 39 seconds respectively.

Reckon he could use ratchet straps to put a couple of bags of blue-circle over the rear suspension, maybe get the back to stick a bit better?

Great start to the season, fewer DNF's and more overtaking than we usually get at Melbourne?

Hamilton vs Verstappen is going to be interesting. I don't think Hamilton has been really tested mentally since Rosberg and that seems like his achilles. That said, as confident as Max is it'll be interesting to see how he copes at the top.

Leclerc looked sharp, so many good team battles this year.

Great start to the season, fewer DNF's and more overtaking than we usually get at Melbourne?

That's a low bar! Melbourne is down there with Abu Dhabi and Monaco for providing entertaining racing.

Here's an explainer why Verstappen had to give Hamilton his position back whereas Hamilton was allowed to do the same throughout half the race giving him a slight time advantage each round
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM9m5xnO0cc

Haven't watched the video but it is pretty daft that they were allowed to use that run off during the race, despite not being able to in practice or quali. Or (presumably) after Red Bull told Max to use more run off.

The lack of consistency is mind-boggling. There are white lines on the edges of the track, why not just use them? Some tracks/corners you have to stay within the lines, some the rumble strings mark the edges, some it's the green astro-turf like portion, and some you can just do what you want. Utterly daft IMO.

My assumption is that until people really start to use a track properly, you're just guessing how they'll deal with parts of it. Particularly where track limits are often modified at the end of a season.

In a similar way, in a bike park near here there was a sort of bermed chicane section to slow people for a technical section ahead. It became pretty common to use the first berm to gap the whole lot but obviously then you arrived at the tech section with a load more speed; great for racing, maybe not great if you're sharing the trail. The builder put trees in to stop it eventually; until he saw it done, it never occurred to the builder that someone would gap the section he was using to slow riders down.

My assumption is that until people really start to use a track properly, you're just guessing how they'll deal with parts of it. Particularly where track limits are often modified at the end of a season.

Maybe, but this has been a track that has been in regular use in F1 for 15 years or so (personally I'm still of the opinion that even on a new track, you paint a pair of white lines and you stay within them). I can see the issues in enforcing it, "How far beyond the boundary does someone go?", "Is it intentional?", "Did they actually gain time?". And of course it's not as simple as "Well just put some gravel out there" as that's not necessarily going to work for all types of car/bike racing.

But having one set of rules for quali/practice and one for the race is bad enough, but then flipping the race rules to match the quali/practice ones halfway through the race? That just seems ridiculous.

I agree - unless a safety issue develops during the weekend (curbs breaking suspension for e.g.) then have one set of regs and stick to them. Moving the goalposts through the weekend is silly, and introduces a random variable that makes a mockery of the racing skill and technology combination of F1.

I think the issue they may have been concerned about was the possible ramifactions of enforcing track limits at that corner over a race distance.
Lets say Hamilton was on his last warning (black/white flag?), defending hard in the closing laps, worn tyres sliding all over the place, and by an inch, went outside the white line with all four wheels. The stewards would be forced to issue a penalty of some sort, handing the race to Max without a pass being completed. Everyone would have been up in arms about how the stewards are ruining racing!

That's not an excuse for this mess - they should have thought this through more and the track should be adjusted to prevent this - but just an explanation of how I think we may have got where we are.

I was thinking along the same lines but in that scenario would Hamilton not be gaining an unfair advantage? Not sure how that differs from Max's overtaking move.

It makes sense to let drivers push the limits of the track to encourage racing/overtaking but this appears to be the one thing that they don't want drivers to do?!

I was thinking along the same lines but in that scenario would Hamilton not be gaining an unfair advantage? Not sure how that differs from Max's overtaking move.

Yes - but people would still have complained that the stewards were ruining racing even though they enforced the rules "correctly".

The question is how to maintain the integrity of the race, without requiring stewards to interfere too often with what people see on the TV.

Yeah, not sure how holding a position due to going off track and gaining an advantage should be treated differently to gaining a position due to going off track and gaining an advantage. And both have definitely been done in the past.

In fact, I was a bit surprised Verstappen didn't do something similar to what Hamilton did back in Spa 2008 against Raikkonen where he gave the place back but still put himself in the prime spot to re-pass.

Obviously this isn't like tennis where everyone can just stop for a moment to check whether something was over a white line or not, but ultimately there's a line to be drawn (pun intended). The one thing you can count on in F1 is that any grey areas will be exploited as much as possible.

Surely it's not too tricky to place some cameras purposely to monitor these likely track limit hotspots and make the call within a few corners or so?

While I think Hamilton definitely deserved the win there, you can't really blame people for being pissed that Verstappen lost the race due to going off track and gaining an advantage at the same spot where Hamilton was purposely doing it all race (nothing against Hamilton here, he and his team were following the rules set out ahead of the race).

personally I'm still of the opinion that even on a new track, you paint a pair of white lines and you stay within them

Given that even club racers usually manage to stay within track limits, I'm sure F1 drivers would be able to do so if necessary. When I was racing the rules were pretty clear - exceed track limits once and it's noted - anyone can make a mistake. Do it a second time and you get a driving standards flag. Do it a third time and you get a penalty.

It's still open to abuse, as some drivers treat the first and second off-track excursions like jokers you can use twice in a race, like in one race I saw where virtually the entire field used the run-off at Copse as extra race circuit. At least the rules are tolerably clear though.

Ultimately you'll always have people complaining with these decisions due to a combination of the tight tolerances involved and the mentality of a significant portion of sports fans.

But surely the answer is consistent application of the rules. Yes, you might have a race lost due to someone going an inch wide on their final warning, but is that better than (in this case) asking the race leader to pull over because they'd done the same thing their competitor was legally doing throughout the race?

Naturally there's no 'perfect' solution here, but I think we can all agree switching up the rules mid-race is a pretty dreadful decision

This isn't F1 but definitely interesting... NASCAR returns to its roots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF-M6YfnoQA

Makes figure of 8 banger racing look positively sophisticated.

That's a low bar!

Fingers crossed this'll improve matters, couldn't make it much worse

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/56604356