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Formula One

I’d completely forgotten that Hamilton was also Mercedes commercial director, responsible for all Mercedes team sponsorship.

I’m intrigued to see the response to Norris’s decision to move to Monaco in order to avoid paying tax, seeing as Hamilton comes under rather a lot of scrutiny for it (aware that they’re salaries are somewhat different, but principles are the same).

Enough about the politics of F1 though. This is going to be a key and exciting race weekend!
 
Free practice has been interesting, but unless RedBull are running different Spec cars, Max is over driving the car, or Perez is seriously under performing.

Gasly is doing a fantastic job in the Alpha Tauri.

FP2 was very much mixed up, and not where I would expect a few teams to be. Great effort by Mick as well.

I think qualifying is going to be fun tomorrow, but the track looks really narrow, so I am not sure how much overtaking their is going to be in the race. I am not sure about anyone else, but this track looks so narrow, I fee like it has a big accident waiting to happen. Leclerc had a big accident, but imagine two cars coming together.

I am expecting Lewis to Qualify half a second up on Max, and then just drive off in to the distance. I think the only thing that will stop him winning is a mistake, or contact with Max at T1 on the race start. So the race might not have plenty of overtaking, but I guess a few Safety Cars could mix things up. I dont see how VSC is going to work here, and a big accident will probably result in a red flag, so two or three races starts could make it more interesting.

Will be interesting to see what the F2 drivers make of it tomorrow as well.
 
Well, Lewis did drive off in to the distance (At the end).

The safety car did mix it up, but the red flags had a bigger impact. (Max's turn to get some good luck)

There was a big accident, and we had three race starts.

Current feelings, I have no idea who I want to win next weekend. Any chance Mercedes and RedBull can be DQ from this years championship? Can we give it to Leclerc or Lando instead?

The fact the stewards feel Max was more to blame for the contact than Lewis, feels harsh, but these cars don't have brake lights, and Max knows where Lewis was, and what was going to happen. Lewis could of got past, he did not need to be that close to Max but both drivers were trying to manage the DRS zone, and it was Max who caused the contact. My initial reaction was racing incident, but the fact he applied additional brakes when Lewis was behind is silly and dangerous. It makes me question the Monza incident, and alter my view of what was going through his head as well.

I dont know the answer. F1 is not like other 1v1 sports where you can stop the match, figure out what happened, and then makes a decision and apply a penalty if required. Maybe a rule needs to be introduced that clearly states when you give a position back, you can not overtake for 25%/50% of the track to try and stop what happened. You need a solution which avoids penalties being applied after the race, or do you? I think in race penalties are fairer for all, but so difficult to manage, and it is what Masi seemed to be struggling with today. The offer to RedBull to put Max on second place on the grid, only for that to be changed to third place as he meant behind Lewis is a bad look for the sport. Maybe it needs to be up to the stewards to do that, not the race director. In F2, the drivers got no chance to hand the place back, just want straight to a penalty. As for the order these messages take place, that does not make any difference, Lewis and Max both knew what they were trying to do.

On one hand I enjoy watching Max race, because he has those extra few tenths to challenge the Mercedes. He is exciting and he is on the edge of the limit. His Q3 lap was just mental, its a shame he had the lock up at the last corner. According to telemetry, he braked 6 meters earlier, but was travelling 10kph faster which is why he locked up. On the other hand, he does go over the limit, he is really aggressive and does not care about the other drivers. He got punished each time he passed Lewis and went off today, and I don't mind that (That is what we want to see, two drivers going at it, and if its over the limits giving up the place), but braking when Lewis was behind is not acceptable. You take that side/part of him away though, and he would not be as quick as he is, and Lewis would of wrapped up the world title several races ago. These incidents leave a bad taste in my mouth as someone who has been hoping Max would win, hence my statement above. Its a shame really, as Max has so much speed and talent in the car, but maybe that speed comes from being a bit of an idiot sometimes. I really really hope they don't crash next week. I hope Max learns from today, I wish I could see what Red Bull do behind closed door, do they tell him that it was not okay.

As much as I want them just to race, there has to be rules and they need to be followed, and Max needs to learn that. The inconsistent applying of the rules does not help, what was different about Brazil where he pushed Lewis off, and today at T1. I am probably back tracking a little bit, but the stewards got in wrong in Brazil, but Max uses that as an example for what he did this week. Interesting Lewis got shown a black and white flag for his overtake on Max, which I thought was Max just letting Lewis past if I am being honest. It all seemed to get very messy at the end with penalties and stuff.

This last paragraph has been really hard to type. I don't know who I want to win, I am not a fan of Mercedes or Lewis, and while I like RedBull and Max, Max has being over the line, which I can not support. I try to justify Max being over the limit only because his car has less performance than the Mercedes, which would be fine if it was just the aggressive overtaking or defending, but the incident today may of been one to many for me. I still think Lewis is going to win it on pace, and I think I am fine with that. Both drivers have given us a fantastic season, both drivers have been on another level compared to their team mates and other drivers.
 
My views in yesterday

Max acted like a spoilt brat and has done many times before. Quite simply Hamilton had more pace.

For as good as Lewis is - I hope 2022 spices things up
 
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What a crazy race!

Must admit, I am getting fed up with Verstappen believing he is the second coming of christ and can do no wrong on a race track. He seems to think that it is totally fine to carry too much speed in to corner, run well wide, and either gain or hold a position. Thankfully he did not get away with it yesterday.

It is really too close to call next weekend. I just hope they both finish the race, and don't take each other out. A win is a win but surely Verstappen will want to win it with more points.
 
Rob said:
What a crazy race!

Must admit, I am getting fed up with Verstappen believing he is the second coming of christ and can do no wrong on a race track. He seems to think that it is totally fine to carry too much speed in to corner, run well wide, and either gain or hold a position. Thankfully he did not get away with it yesterday.

It is really too close to call next weekend. I just hope they both finish the race, and don't take each other out. A win is a win but surely Verstappen will want to win it with more points.
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Im trying to look at this without my British bias - but I half expect Max to take Lewis out even if it ends his own race. Max is, in my opinion naturally faster than Lewis. However, he is reckless with it and almost has a win at all costs attitude. The FIA need to clamp down on him sooner rather than later. I don’t feel the 10 second penalty was enough given he had already been penalised for another infringement. I think he should have been demoted five places.

The only reason they didn’t is to avoid the ramifications int he title race. If this was earlier in the season a harsher penalty would have been given.
 
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Great to see Enzo and Theo recovering, horrible accident at the start of the F2 race. Hopefully they will both be back in the car soon. Did not want to post anything earlier, but both have not posted relatively positive tweets about their recovery.

I think the reason Max gets away with just a ten second penalty, is that Lewis had the chance to go past, but was playing games as much as Max was. When Max applied the extra pressure to the brake, that put him predominantly to blame. So like at Silverstone and Monza, they are saying both drivers played a role, but this was caused more by Max than Lewis.

I really hope the Christian Horner defending his driver on TV, is different to the Christian Horner behind closed doors, as I really would like to think that the team are giving him as much as a telling off as anyone. There is so much data available now, there is no where to hide if you do something deliberate. If there is any steering angle towards the other driver, the stewards will know about it. If Max tries one of his aggressive overtakes, and it results in both drivers being taken out, its going to be really messy. If the Silverstone or Monza incident had been at the last race, and meant that they had won the World Championship, should a different penalty apply? And the other sets of fans are always going to call it deliberate one way or another. Both sets of fans were accusing FIA of favouring the other team, who would want to be a Ref.

It is going to be a really anti-climax to the season if Lewis just drives off in to the distance, and takes an easy win, but at the same time, I think I would preferer that to there been contact with both drivers. Would love to see both drivers shake hands and congratulate each other after the race, but I am not sure that will happen either, which makes me a little sad.

Lando was also really not happy after the race yesterday, and I get that. Another difficult one, as a fan, you want to see as many cars in the race as possible, so you don't want them to limit fixing the cars to get them back out. Sometimes it will favour you, and other times it will work against you. Maybe tweak the rules slightly, you can change to the same compound of tyres with no penalty, sensible since you don't want to punish someone with a puncture, or a risk due to potential damage they have run other. Yes, you can still put a fresh set on, which may benefit you but luck has always been part of F1. If you fix the car, or want to change the tyres, then some sort of penalty (5 Seconds for next pit stop or drop 3 positions?) so that you carry on racing, but you still take a little bit of pain. I do really enjoy the Race Starts after a red flag, and I wish this was an option for Safety Car restarts as well (Maybe that is just to much of a punishment for the cars in front though, as there is no option to put a nice sticky pair of fresh tyres on after losing all of your advantage).

I think Bottas got very lucky, at the end, and with the first safety car, backing the field up. I can only assume he was not going slow enough to trigger any warnings, but he built himself up a nice gap to pit under. I wonder if that was half the reason RedBull stayed out? Mercedes certainly are some of the worst cars of leaving big gaps to the cars in front at the start of races or on the re-starts. For the re-starts there is apparently no limit on what size gap you can leave, which sound like a gap in the rules to me.
 


First thing I am going to do is slap an Alpha Tauri skin on the car, but this is going to be fun to drive :) Now hurry up and go to sleep kids :)
 
Good new for those who do not have Sky but want to watch the race on Sunday live - Sky are sharing rights with Channel 4. I think this is Sky coverage on Channel 4 rather than Channel 4 producing their own show.

Annoyingly the Leicester match on Sunday kicks off at the same time as the race start, so it will be a case of phone off and hoping there are not passing comments on it at the football!
 
Rob said:
Good new for those who do not have Sky but want to watch the race on Sunday live - Sky are sharing rights with Channel 4. I think this is Sky coverage on Channel 4 rather than Channel 4 producing their own show.

Annoyingly the Leicester match on Sunday kicks off at the same time as the race start, so it will be a case of phone off and hoping there are not passing comments on it at the football!
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From what I read last night, Channel 4 will be doing their own pre-race and post-race coverage, with the commentary being provided by Sky. Which I guess is a fair compromise, even though C4 will likely have their own commentary teams there anyway.
 
pluk said:
https://www.racefans.net/2021/12/09...test-penalty-and-claims-hes-treated-unfairly/

Verstappen is on another planet, isn't he? He clearly isn't learning from his mistakes. He's a damn quick driver so doesn't really need to behave like this.
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He's a nutter. A top top driver but for some reason he believes that he can do no wrong. Doesn't help that he is no doubt being advised by another nutter in Helmut Marko.

How can he think it is unfair that he gets a penalty for keeping a position by running too deep and cutting the corner!?
 
As much as I want Verstappen to win this year, he has a long, long way to go from a maturity perspective. Give him another five years and perhaps a championship or two under his belt and hopefully, he will have humbled from this; ala Vettel.

He is clearly a very talented driver doing his best to tackle the pressure, especially when the championship is so close in his grasp if he puts his mind to it.

The pettiness down to the wire from both Red Bull and Mercedes, and then Max and Lewis has become borderline tiring this season. It would be far more exciting to see them racing for the championship on the track, rather than trying to score points off the track and justify their mistakes. Learn, accept, move on.

I'm sure Netflix will be milking it to the extreme, even if we only do get the one driver's view on the matter come March.
 
As a casual news follower and very occasional watcher of F1 over many years I can't decide who I want to win it to be honest. I'm not a fan of Hamilton mainly due to some of his comments from several years ago when trying to defend how he avoided paying some of his taxes to the UK. I also think he's a bit of a virtue signaller amongst other things. On the other hand, this Verstappen chap seems a bit crazy and dangerous on the track.

Saying that, it should make for a decent race in places as they obviously both have big ego's and neither will want to back down easily. Surely that will lead to racing at it's best in one way or another. Maybe it will lead to an early end to one of the racer's? Who knows?

I'm sure myself and many other very occasional viewers will make a special effort to watch this one though, so expect massive viewing figures :)
 
@BarryZola, will you turn it off if they crash out at Turn 1?

Just try and enjoy the race, lots of other talented drivers to cheer on through out the field. Just remember, they all try and dodge paying tax as much as each other :p

And don't be surprised if the result at the end of the race is not the result two hours later :)
 
To answer your first question, it will all depend on how exciting the racing is compared to any footy that's on around the same time. If there's any competition left in the F1 I'll be sticking with it, no doubt. And with regards to your other comments, yes I know that everyone tries to dodge tax as much as possible, but some people's excuses are more credible than others ;)
 
Double post, sorry.

Is there anything stopping Verstappen winning the title if he causes a crash with Hamilton and neither finish the race?
 
Couldn't it lead to some sort of protracted appeal or court of arbitration for sport action or something though if there was a crash and he was docked championship points? Has there been a precedent this season for a driver being docked points for having a crash? I have heard of losing places on the starting grid in following races and similar stuff, but are they just making up new rules for themselves as they go along now? Different punishments for different races? That could surely be challenged, could it not?
 
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