Formula One
- Thread starter Fast3ddy
- Start date
<- - - casual fan. Once announcement came out concerning Formula One coming to Austin, I looked into it deeper. Followed some around the time Mario Andretti won F1 championship in '78.
Another reason I started following again back in 2012 was due to anex-lover former lady-friend over in Germany. She seemed real enthusiastic about Lewis Hamilton. In fact, she would not shut up about him. Honestly, I'm happy Verstappen dominated this year. Good for the sport.
Another reason I started following again back in 2012 was due to an
He’s a menace. Started from the 6th spot today and dominated like he was in the lead the whole time. Lewis tried to give him a run, but just couldn’t keep up
Verstappen didn’t dominate today. He only won by a couple of seconds, and he mentioned in post race interviews that he could’ve lost if Mercedes had gotten their strategy correct. Hamilton was matching or faster than Verstappen over much of the last stint.
Red Bull shifted their focus to designing next year’s car several races ago, and stopped developing this year’s car once it was clear they had the championship in the bag. That’s allowed McLaren and Mercedes to close the gap quite a bit, and today was a close race.
It’s a bit of a moot point though as it’s looking like Hamilton will end up being disqualified from today’s race after failing a post race plank inspection. I guess some of Mercedes’ gains might’ve come from lowering their ride height a bit too much.
Verstappen also didn’t start in the pole position and had to work his way up there
Moving up from 6th at COTA is not that unusual given the nature of the track. It’s a track where you can overtake, especially when you have teams like Ferrari continuing to make baffling strategy calls. Ferrari started out thinking they could manage a one stop at a high deg track, which is beyond stupid. This meant Verstappen could breeze by while they were nursing their tires early on. In other words, Ferrari gifted two spots to Verstappen right off the bat.
Red Bull won, but this was far from domination. Domination was what Verstappen did at races like Suzuka.
It seems you think everyone gifted Max the win except for McLaren. I’m not on the Red Bull train, well…. Not till 2026. I’m a George Russell fan (personal reasons). But I can’t deny that Max makes this look easy.
I’m terms of today’s race specifically, you cannot deny that Ferrari and Mercedes made terrible strategy decisions. Mercedes’ decision with respect to Hamilton’s first pit stop, in particular, was monumentally stupid. They kept Hamilton out too long and his tires fell off the cliff, costing him a massive amount of time.
The RB19 in Verstappen’s hands has been as dominant as the MP4/4 in Senna’s and Prost’s hands. This year’s Red Bull is one of the all time greats. But that doesn’t change the fact that today was not a dominant race for Red Bull. It just wasn’t.
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I doubt they were cheating. I suspect it’s more likely the result of limited practice due to this being a sprint weekend combined with all of the bumps at COTA.
During some of the replays, you could see large yellow streaks on the track where the planks were scraping along the bumps.
It's been clear, to anyone that pays attention (IMO) , that Verstappen has been the best driver for the last 5+ years. I think he's better than Hamilton (thought so, even when Hamilton was dominating with Mercedes). Schumacher is the greatest natural driver I've ever seen, spanning the entire sport of motor racing, but Verstappen isn't that much behind him.
Agree that Verstappen is better than Hamilton.
I’d put Ayrton Senna above Schumacher though.
Brazil is off to a brilliant start lol. Ferrari shot itself in the foot before the race even got underway.
Yeah, I don't really have a problem with that. Senna might have been the most naturally gifted driver in history.
The reflexes and quick mind it takes to drive those is on par with flying fighter jet.
I really like the circuit at Sao Paulo. Section 2 is a bastard, but there are plenty of straights for overtaking. I get the history of Monaco, but that race is generally a snoozer, because you just can't pass there.
Gotta say though, I really miss Kimi Raikkonen, and his tantrums on the radio. LOL Ironic that they called him the Iceman.
Gotta say though, I really miss Kimi Raikkonen, and his tantrums on the radio. LOL Ironic that they called him the Iceman.
In terms of making things more interesting, it would be nice if Verstappen had a stronger teammate. Perez just isn’t in the same league as Verstappen. But if someone like Norris or maybe Alonso was the number 2 driver at Red Bull, then I suspect we might have seen some fireworks at the front.
That was the saving grace of the 1988 season. None of the other teams could come close to the McLaren that year, but you still had a legendary battle between Senna and Prost.
Checo just doesn’t seem capable of pushing Max like that.
Agreed, Checo isn’t the right guy. But the right guy may not exist. Is it Lando? Fernando? I don’t think it matters. Max is so dialed into winning that only a driver with the physical and mental tools of peak tiger woods could compete with him. He’s the apex predator. Everyone else is just watching.
Why are those cars designed to be unraceable if they do more than barely touch? I mean they let unprotected wheels of one car bang into the narrow body of another & the only way to separate is to run over the wheel of the other car & tear them both up. Rather ridiculous waste of expensive machines. Put wheel width bumpers down the length of the cars.
Norris and Alonso would do just fine if you put them in the Red Bull. Their racing this season has shown that. I think Verstappen would still come out on top as champion, but he likely would be pushed throughout the season and there probably would be several good battles along the way.
A robot couldn't approach what Max is doing. When he was with a less than dominating Red Bull team, he alone, put pressure on the untouchable Mercedes Benz team. And he did it in a car, while still top tier, wasn't in Mercedes' class.
I sort of get the robot comparison, but, to me, it is much more applicable to Lewis Hamilton.
Schumacher is the closest comparison I can think of, with regard to Verstappen. I said, eariler in the thread, that Senna was the most ethereal driver I've seen, but he exceeded the limits of his car, a LOT. Schumacher and Verstappen share the unique ability to fly as close as they can to the sun without melting the wings.
There was a racing magazine a few years ago that did a fairly in-depth analysis of Schumacher’s driving style that I always found really interesting. It compared Schumacher’s telemetry data with that of Rubens Barrichello.
Schumacher was one of the first generation of drivers to do left foot braking, so it was really interesting to see how in certain corners, he would apply both the brake and the throttle at the same time. This allowed him to not only adjust his speed, but also to control the balance of the car and maximize the grip.
Below is one of the graphs from that article that shows the brake and throttle traces for Copse corner through Maggotts-Becketts at Silverstone.
Schumacher’s use of the throttle and brake pedal allowed him to get through these corners over three-tenths faster than Barrichello, who was also driving a Ferrari. The precision needed to do that while also managing the steering wheel, shifting gears and picking the right line always blew me away.
Yep. I love this kind of stuff. The difference between making the podium a few times a year, and winning multiple driver championships is in the stuff you DON'T see. Or rather, you can SEE that something looks different, but until someone analyzes it like this, you don't REALLY know what it is.
But being able to push a car right up to but not beyond, the breaking point, is really what makes a driver (no matter the format/league/circuit) transcedent.
If I'm interpreting that data you posted correctly, Schumacher "power steered the car, in hairy turns, at the last second possible, by (for lack of a better term) "power sliding/drifting" the ass end of the car, rather than through pulling the nose end through the turn, and letting everything else follow. Or, at the very least, a combination of the two. What balls...
I likened F1 drivers to fighter pilots, and I honestly believe it's a pretty fair comparison.
But being able to push a car right up to but not beyond, the breaking point, is really what makes a driver (no matter the format/league/circuit) transcedent.
If I'm interpreting that data you posted correctly, Schumacher "power steered the car, in hairy turns, at the last second possible, by (for lack of a better term) "power sliding/drifting" the ass end of the car, rather than through pulling the nose end through the turn, and letting everything else follow. Or, at the very least, a combination of the two. What balls...
I likened F1 drivers to fighter pilots, and I honestly believe it's a pretty fair comparison.
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For anyone who’s not aware, the Brawn documentary comes out next week on Hulu.
The Jackie Stewart documentary that ESPN+ started airing this past summer is worth watching too if you like that era of F1.
The Jackie Stewart documentary that ESPN+ started airing this past summer is worth watching too if you like that era of F1.
I want to see how max does with a ford engine in 2026. Im not a Red Bull fan now, but I will be then. I’m a huge ford guy.
Landon has to be the #2 guy but he drives for McLaren so they’re holding him back.
I agree but I have concerns. Perez has always been great in qualifying so why is it different now? I think it’s obvious that he’s the number two on the team and maybe he’s just doing his job and serving as a buffer.
It appears to me to be some combination of: 1. Checo is not as good at adapting his driving style to suit how a car needs to be driven and 2. he doesn’t seem to be able to remain consistent under the pressure of driving a car that gives him a shot at the championship.
Think back to Australia this year. Checo couldn’t keep the car on the track during practice and, similarly, locked up and beached the car in the gravel during Q1. That poor qualifying result was purely the result of driver error on Checo’s part, and he’s been making mistakes throughout this season.
He’s certainly a good driver, but I just don’t think he has what it takes to compete at Max’s level. He ends up pushing too much.
So I will admit that I watch/follow F1 very casually although I have begun to read about it more. Each team has two cars. How identical are those cars to one another? From a design/mechanical standout it is the same right? But do they adjust each car differently?
The cars are identical, with one exception. Sometimes, when teams are bringing upgraded parts to the cars, they may only have one set of the new parts available. If that happens, one car runs the new spec parts and one car runs the old spec, but that usually only happens at one or two races per year.
Other than that, the design of both cars are identical. What’s different between the cars at each race is the set up. Each driver has their own engineer and team of mechanics, and they can set up the car up however they want to suit their driving style.
The set up differences would be things like: ride height, springs and dampers, tire camber and toe. Sometimes one car might run more a bit more wing than the other if one driver wants more downforce or wants to shift the balance of the car. The driver’s can also adjust their brake bias and differential settings using their steering wheel.
The fact that the cars are identical is why a driver’s biggest rival is their teammate.
You don’t wanna run the race during the day in Vegas. The appeal is all the bright lights. Although that sphere has to be distracting as hell
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