Formula One ( F1 )

Last couple laps made up for a dull hour beforehand.

Sainz must be hyped for 2021...

I love the trophy delivery robots. Slick they are not.

I'm glad they're covering a lot of midfield action in the race these days, as it's where the racing is. I watched a couple of old races from the Michael Schumacher era and they pretty much just followed him round, all by himself minutes ahead of everyone else, and showed nothing else. There could have been all sorts of excitement going on back in the field but you'd never have known.

Vettel-Perez for Aston Force Racing Point India Racing next year?

Looking more and more likely at this point!

Agreed, always used to get on my nerves when people would say how the racing was so much better in the 70s/80s/90s. So many instances of half the field not finishing and a minority of cars finishing on the lead lap. The current fleet of teams (minus Merc) are incredibly closely matched. Almost not looking forward to 2022 as we'll likely have a huge spread in the field once again and it'll take another 5 years for the teams to converge again.

When Lance Stroll's father owns the team? Seems unlikely.

Lance Stroll's father leads a consortium who own the team. While he may want his son to succeed, he and his co-investors want a return on investment.

While I'm unashamedly (well, that may soon change given the current trajectory) a Ferrari fan, I would love to see Vettel out-perform Ferrari next year after they've effectively kicked him out. It's astounding how the team has crumbled apart in the past few years.

There are other investors in Racing Point, but according to the information at Companies House over 50% of the shares in Racing Point UK Limited (the operating company) is owned by Racing Point UK Holdings Ltd, and Lawrence Stroll owns over 75% of the shares in Holdings. Stroll is also buying a 20% share in Aston Martin Lagonda ahead of the sponsorship deal. I think it's pretty clear who's in charge, and given the money he's already spent on dear Lance's F1 career, I can't see him replacing his son with Vettel. Still, we'll see. Stranger things have happened.

Lawrence Stroll calls the shots there. He has pretty tight control on proceedings and a vile temper to go with it.

lol

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Seb's gonna have to dye his eyebrows.

Apparently Racing Point have a break clause with Perez which needs to be activated this month. Supposedly other teams (supposedly Alfa-Romeo and Haas) have spoken to him already as he comes with a fair amount of sponsorship.

Yeah my betting position has now moved to Perez to Haas, which I hope doesn't happen as he's a great driver. Definitely deserves a great seat, his ability to eke out a set of tyres is pretty impressive compared to the competition.

^^^^hahaha

Also, Lawerence Stroll just looks like an overweight Mick McCarthy up there ^

ha. also good

Go home Max, you are drunk.

Well done to the RB mechanics though, not seen that before!

Interesting that Stroll beat Perez fair and square over the course of the weekend. I've never really rated Stroll, perhaps buying into the common perception that he's just a pay driver with a rich father. For all that though he had a good weekend. Maybe Vettel/Stroll wouldn't be such a bad combination after all. Mind you, Vettel had a pretty error-strewn race too.

Stroll has clearly bought his way into the best race seats in the lower classes with his Dad's money but he won the title in those classes for the most part so he's reasonably handy. You don't win FIA F3 without a little talent as usually at least one of the other Prema guys is good.

I don't follow F1 much, what happened with Ferrari at Hungary? They sorted out issues with their cars or was the course just better suited to them?

I'd say by coming in sixth and eleventh Ferrari still have a lot of work to do.

But sadly they'll probably just fire some people. Maybe it's needed but it didn't work the last time around that well.

Slow course with very little in the way of straight track means their engine's power deficit isn't as obvious. Still lapped by the Mercedes though so nothing to shout about yet.

Had a feeling it was that. Am I right in thinking their power fades quite heavily through the race too? Just watching the highlights and Leclerc seemed much more competitive at the beginning.

More likely a tyre issue, Leclerc started on the soft tyres which provide more grip initially but quickly fall away (in fact, most teams didn't plan to run them at all due to their short lifespan. I think the only reason anyone used them was due to thinking that they'd come up to temperature quicker on the drying track). I definitely recall Leclerc being quite vocal about how slow he was on his worn soft tyres, but they thought it was going to rain soon after, so didn't want to pit only to have to pit again a few laps later for wet tyres.

Power output should be consistent across the race, I think they use each engine for around 6 races or so these days. The only thing that really affects the power output of the engines is altitude as a result of lower air density (though this also affects the drag significantly, I think the highest speeds of the season are in Mexico which is over 2km above sea level)