Formula 1 Discussion - And favourite driver?

[The Grognard]

Real question, was there ever a time when that wasn't the case? Isn't the history of F1 the top drivers driving the top cars and winning all the time? At least in general?

In a way, you could divide F1 into multiple eras. Fangio was famous for not only winning his 5 titles but doing so with multiple different manufacturers. After all, it became a bit of a saying back then that the easiest way to win the world title back then was signing Fangio. But yes, this is also very much a sport of the manufacturer since the overall quality of drivers on the grid is very good with some exceptions. If you ask me, it's easier to list the drivers that couldn't get a title with the Mercs of the past half-decade since it's a very fast car but above all, it is easily one of the most reliable F1 cars of all time. You also could say the exact same thing from the RBRs that Seb had in 2011 and 2013.

This sort of extreme reliability and consistency is exactly what guys at Ferrari have been lacking ever since the Schumacher years but at the very least, they've got a very good pairing of drivers and if they somehow end up with the fastest car, it might not matter for a real shot at the title. Merc won it's titles because they simply are very professional and clinical about how exactly to keep their advantage from slipping from their grasp and their ability to conduct car development is excellent. RBR in return has usually been carried by their aerodynamics department, clever strategists and relentlessly well-disciplined pit crews.

 

[Full Race Replay]

Really, the best way to describe Hamilton and his simps is to point out that he's the only driver who would ever get the idea of selling his bath-water and his simps would actually buy it.

Also say what you want about Shaquille O'Neal, dude starred in "Steel", "Kazaam" and some other hilariously campy movies. Thank fuck Hamilton hasn't had this idea, imagine the kind of SJW crap he'd inflict upon the world.

Hamilton is one of those guys who’s ego has progressed so far that he tries to make it only natural that he’s the center of attention. I remember back in may 2020 when the racial chimpout happened and there were a bunch of videos about just Lewis and racism or something. And then the whole kneeling segment too. These motorsports leagues have done a weird thing, and this happened in nascar too with bubba, they center themselves around the one black driver. It seems so arbitrary to put one driver on a pedestal. Especially a driver like Lewis who has had such a privileged life in f1 not only getting on the mcclaren junior program but getting promoted right to mcclaren mercedes, and he maybe should have won wdc In 2007 but Kimi stole it from him.

 

[JoseRaulChupacabra]

Merc won it's titles because they simply are very professional and clinical about how exactly to keep their advantage from slipping from their grasp and their ability to conduct car development is excellent. RBR in return has usually been carried by their aerodynamics department, clever strategists and relentlessly well-disciplined pit crews.

So, it's German Engineering vs People spazzed out on energy drinks?

If you ask me, it's easier to list the drivers that couldn't get a title with the Mercs of the past half-decade since it's a very fast car but above all, it is easily one of the most reliable F1 cars of all time.

Is there any technical resource that explores the innerworkings or at least provides an analysis as to why the W11 (and the sudden W12 gain in speed) is so fast? Same for the RB16?

 

[The Grognard]

So, it's German Engineering vs People spazzed out on energy drinks?

It's more that RBR is a well-lubed machine for building excellent racecars but until very recently, they mainly got ahead by not having to worry about the power unit as much as the others because it was the headache of someone else. Adrian Newey is the most known of current F1 car designers for a reason after all. Mercedes in return is a Swiss watch of a team where everyone knows their role and every department knows exactly what they're doing without causing headaches for other. They can adjust every part of the car and their engine of course, is still the best on the grid for packaging, reliability and until 2018, in power too. Any car they couldn't out-power, they could out-maneuver and vice versa. A perfect compromise of everything.

 

[Stoneheart]

The problem is Toto is 1/3 owner of the team (along with owning a stake in Williams and Aston Martin), Ineos is 1/3 owner and Mercedes is 1/3 owner so would be tough to do. The guy used to be an investment banker in Switzerland so is mega rich (estimated net worth is $450 million), hence owning all that shit.

Merc walked away from a team just to buy another one before...

Anyone going into F1 must know that getting into that sport is going to be a furnace for money for at least half a decade and even then you've merely crawled out of the money-furnace and into the money-pyre. It takes a lot of time to make an engine that's worth a damn, especially given the regulations it must fulfill, and then it takes longer still to get any money out of the sport ... you simply won't just plop that thing together in a year or two and rake in cash and trophies.

VW has the money and they are the company with the best chances to get going fast. they have been building racecars for decades and are the dominating force when it comes to supercars.

However Mercedes has been dominating this sport for almost an entire decade. And I don't just mean "strongly competing for the title" either when I say "dominating". Mercedes had many races where they lapped the entire field. And it's not Hamilton being this amazing wizard that pulls insane levels of performance from his car. Put in Russel and he dominates the race just as well in his first ever race in the Mercedes.

And this all happened because some english spastics stole information, forcing merc to do it alone.

 

[Things Better Forgotten]

It's also why losing this championship has hit so hard because "runner up" does not play as well as "reigning champ" for those companies he needs to let him do his side nonsense.

I wonder if he was foolish enough to guarantee these companies that this year would be as easy as all the others. Now there's tons of "8 time world champion" merch is being shipped off to sub-saharan Africa at a massive loss.

 

[blablabla]

what a great fucking pass

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=a-Jopqa6P8A
what a great fucking pass

You can tell that the line Max took was as wide as possible so Hamilton can't just accelerate down the outside of the corner once Max passed him. The cockblocking was masterfully done and the best thing: Max had precisely nothing to lose. If the overtake works, fine, if they crash out, fine.
It's a shitty situation for Hamilton and it could not have happened to a nicer guy

 

[Full Race Replay]

It's fitting that after red bull fans pile on Karun the whole weekend (unfairly) for supposedly helping mercedes (this was mostly joking though), Max makes use of the new hairpin to run it up lewis' inside for the lead.

 

[Coccxys]

Looks like the Hamilton media are finally reaching the acceptance stage of their cope.

 

[DapperShark]

VW has the money and they are the company with the best chances to get going fast. they have been building racecars for decades and are the dominating force when it comes to supercars.

There's been rumours of VW or one of their brands entering F1 forever and nothing ever comes out of it, I doubt it's going to happen anytime soon especially since both Audi and Porsche are going back to Le Mans.

 

[Coccxys]

Everyone ready for dodgy AWS stats or more sponsors on the wheels of F1 cars?



LED lighting in the rims to make a light up message. Apparently liberty media are fans because it makes it look all futuristic as opposed to video game like.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

It's a silly gimmick, but it could be pretty neat, depending on what they use it for. It's a shame with those rims we don't get to see the brake disks glow an angry red when the cars go into a late dive for a corner, but maybe this little gadget will give us something more interesting than a flat black surface.

And it might look really fucking cool in night-races.
Personally, on every overtake I'd display this smiley on there:

 

[Pee Cola]

Lando Norris is alarmingly stupid. Can drive a car and literally nothing else.

He's still the most likeable Englishman in F1 by a country mile, so that's something.

This is also important for his burgeoning profile in America. Being the one black guy who turns up and wins in the White Man Sport is pivotal to his brand and fanbase there. If he’s not there and not winning his brand is not going to sell.

That's why I suggested Hambone could pivot into IndyCar or NASCAR in the foreseeable future. It'd help maintain this brand of his that is particularly strong in the USA, and both IndyCar and NASCAR are way more white than F1 (especially the latter).

In a way, you could divide F1 into multiple eras. Fangio was famous for not only winning his 5 titles but doing so with multiple different manufacturers. After all, it became a bit of a saying back then that the easiest way to win the world title back then was signing Fangio. But yes, this is also very much a sport of the manufacturer since the overall quality of drivers on the grid is very good with some exceptions.

Then there was the odd freak out there that managed to win both the Constructors Championship and the WDC. I'm looking at you, Sir Jack Brabham.

That said, right up until the early '00s, the most successful teams had drivers that were hands-on with the car's development. The most obvious example is Senna, but there were plenty of other teams where drivers worked hand in glove with the engineers and designers.

idk why this is no longer the case, but if I were to speculate, I'd suggest it'd have something to do with the sport getting way more corporate to the point where the drivers, race engineers and R&D are now in silos rather than working together. That's why how you end up with a behemoth like Mercedes, where the car is so good that even Mahaveer Raghunathan could probably score an easy podium if handed the keys to Hambone's car, and Hambone has gone from being an F1 driver to fashion guru, icon of the woke and chair-moistener for the Mercedes F1 team.

 

[LetterlandMafia]

That said, right up until the early '00s, the most successful teams had drivers that were hands-on with the car's development. The most obvious example is Senna, but there were plenty of other teams where drivers worked hand in glove with the engineers and designers.

idk why this is no longer the case, but if I were to speculate, I'd suggest it'd have something to do with the sport getting way more corporate to the point where the drivers, race engineers and R&D are now in silos rather than working together. That's why how you end up with a behemoth like Mercedes, where the car is so good that even Mahaveer Raghunathan could probably score an easy podium if handed the keys to Hambone's car, and Hambone has gone from being an F1 driver to fashion guru, icon of the woke and chair-moistener for the Mercedes F1 team.

There seems to be a pattern in professional sport of positions becoming increasingly specialised as time goes on. For example football, once upon a time you had a manager who was in charge of pretty much all football operations off the pitch. Now it’s split into different areas: Director of Football for Scouting and Contracts, Head Coach for overall pitch tactics, and a sea of assistant and position coaches hyperanalysing every last minute detail. I think it’s a combination of increased finance and budgets allowing for the recruitment of additional staff (hence why lower league teams still tend toward the ‘manager in charge of everything’ system) and the realisation that a sea of specialists working in tandem is more efficient at producing results than a small team working on everything at once.

 

[LiveFromNS]

Speaking of the car being 80%+ if you want to win, does anyone remember the proposed race back around late 90s, I think in Hawaii, SuperPrix maybe it was called? All the top drivers were supposed to partake with a prize of 10 mil to winner. All would have identical cars. It never came off for whatever reason.

I wish they would do that every year. I don't feel the Race of champions thing is really how I would gauge the best driver in the world. I think Seb and Schumi Jr. are racing for Germany in this year's edition.

 

[Pee Cola]

Speaking of the car being 80%+ if you want to win, does anyone remember the proposed race back around late 90s, I think in Hawaii, SuperPrix maybe it was called? All the top drivers were supposed to partake with a prize of 10 mil to winner. All would have identical cars. It never came off for whatever reason.

I wish they would do that every year. I don't feel the Race of champions thing is really how I would gauge the best driver in the world. I think Seb and Schumi Jr. are racing for Germany in this year's edition.

That sounds a lot like A1GP, which was billed as "the World Cup of motorsport". It was a one-make series the teams were based on country. IIRC it was started by some dude from Dubai and it folded because of the assfucking Dubai got during the GFC (though I could be wrong on that last part).

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I'd love to see Hamilton in a stockcar. I assume he'd not be atrocious, but all of a sudden, he'd not be king big shit and very quickly give up on it to focus on TRUE and HONEST motorsport like F1 (as long as his car in F1 has 10-15% more performance than the next best car, that is).

 

[Things Better Forgotten]

I'd love to see Hamilton in a stockcar. I assume he'd not be atrocious, but all of a sudden, he'd not be king big shit and very quickly give up on it to focus on TRUE and HONEST motorsport like F1 (as long as his car in F1 has 10-15% more performance than the next best car, that is).

The first time he gets dumped by a Busch or anyone else really and gets told: "That's racing, take your licks rookie" he'll ragequit and do press ops with Bubba Wallace about how racist NASCAR is.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The first time he gets dumped by a Busch or anyone else really and gets told: "That's racing, take your licks rookie" he'll ragequit and do press ops with Bubba Wallace about how racist NASCAR is.

I'm not much into NASCAR, but it appears that it's not uncommon for a driver to bonk someone else off the track. The sport in general seems a bit more "full contact" than F1 and doesn't penalize stuff that would get you a DSQ in F1.

Hamilton would get his ass handed to him in a sling cause suddenly, everyone is driving a car with the same performance and people would just put their elbows out. If Hamilton thinks Checo's driving in Abu Dhabi was "dangerous", just cause he dared fight back effectively, imagine Hamilton getting a love-tap from another driver in NASCAR