Motorsports thread. Discuss any motorsports here

Just 10 years ago seemed like every suburban dad in America had a driver number sticker on the family SUV, came to the races when they were close by, wore their favorite driver's shirts and watched every week. How the mighty have fallen
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rikibobby said:
I think Carl quit because he is very pissed with how he got wrecked on a BS restart (caution was bogus) where he was in the lead and looked to be heading for the win and championship. The same happened to Kenseth the weak prior and took him out of the championship. Way too many manufactured cautions to give the illusion of excitement. The new rules are so crazy that some wildcard can swoop in and win the cup basically. I mean Newman almost won the championship a few years ago with no wins, when the new system is trying to avoid exactly that (see Kenseth's championship in 2003).

The guys that are dominating are unlikable (Keselowski, Logano, Johnson etc.). There is no personality to the "new breed drivers either (Stenhouse, Bayne, Larson etc.).
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This new crop comes off as whiny and entitled brats or have the charisma of a cardboard box in the rain. I can't find a one to root for. Keselowski and Logano are unlikeable but not in an entertaining unlikeable way like Smoke was most of his career, just plain ol "that guy seems like a dick" unlikeable. Don't even get me started on JJ. Congratulations Brian France. You got your corporate friendly, mild mannered, well spoken winning champion top guy and he killed your sport.
 
Ferrari front row for tomorrows race in Sochi. Mercedes Bottas less than a tenth behind Vettel in 3rd and Hamilton nearly 6 tenths behind Vettel in 4th.
 
wow, didn't even make it to turn 2 at Phoenix before a huge crash involving several cars including series leader
Bourdais.
Aleshin on cold tires, slick track loses it, causing pileup.
Shame
 
Bottas jumps both Ferrari on the start and pulls away.
 
Ferrari keeps Vettel out for several laps after Bottas pits. Bottas turning faster laps on his tires and might even be saving a little knowing Vettel has to pit.
 
Bottas wins. Putin was on the podium and the drivers were afraid to crack the Champagne until he was gone. I didn't realize Vladimir Putin was a 5 foot 6 inch manlet. No wonder he's got that chip on his shoulder.
 
Great race from Bottas. Seems to be a good season with Mercedes and Ferrari on one level.
Hamilton seems to be struggling setting up his car without the data available from Rosberg's car.
He wasn't able to match the first 3 cars speed at all wondering if that was a one-time thing.

That was actually a factor Mercedes was worried about with Rosberg retiring out of the blue.
He did most of the setup work and put in the hours with the engineers compared to Hamilton who relies a lot on his talent alone.
This might be an interesting season.
 
They were discussing the tire situation in Formula One. The softest tires were supposed to be designed to be the fastest and last about 15 laps then start losing speed. They are lasting over 25. The mid compound tire was supposed to last about 20 laps and they are holding speed well into 30 laps. The hardest should start losing speed after about 25 laps and nobody is even using them.

The purpose behind this was to give slower cars a chance to use strategy. Cars have to start the race on the same compound that they used in the second round of qualifying. Teams who didn't make it to the second round could start on any compound they wanted to. Since cars should be fastest on the softest tires, most teams run Q2 on the softest tires. In the race, if they have to change tires after 15 laps and the hardest tires only last 25 they would have to change tires twice in a 50+ lap race. Someone that started on the hardest 25 lap tires would only have to stop once to change tires to cover the 50 laps.

Pirelli didn't have the 2017 cars to test tires on. The current tires last longer on the 2017 cars than they did on the 2016 cars they were tested on. Some speculate that they could run the entire race on one set of the hard compound tires but regulations require using 2 different compounds.

In the past, teams have used 3 or 4 sets of tires per race. This season has been mostly two sets per race as a set of the softest and a set of the medium compound will cover the race distance in most cases.

Teams are allowed a set number of tires but are given a choice of how many of each compound. F1 would like to see more difference in speed and durability of the tire compounds but it won't happen during the season. Part of it is certainly because of having wider tires.
 
snakedafunky said:
Great race from Bottas. Seems to be a good season with Mercedes and Ferrari on one level.
Hamilton seems to be struggling setting up his car without the data available from Rosberg's car.
He wasn't able to match the first 3 cars speed at all wondering if that was a one-time thing.

That was actually a factor Mercedes was worried about with Rosberg retiring out of the blue.
He did most of the setup work and put in the hours with the engineers compared to Hamilton who relies a lot on his talent alone.
This might be an interesting season.
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Actually it was the other way around. Hamilton usually ran more laps than Rosberg. It was one of the reasons Mercedes was giving for Hamilton having power plant problems last season.

I don't know what the difference in the Mercedes cars is this season. Bottas lost pace in one race and Hamilton lost it in this one. I assume Mercedes is trying different combinations in each car. Both Mercedes launched well today but Hamilton backed off in the corner like he was expecting to get bumped. Then he was able to hold pace for a while then slowing before half way with a heating problem.
 
ralphc1 said:
Actually it was the other way around. Hamilton usually ran more laps than Rosberg. It was one of the reasons Mercedes was giving for Hamilton having power plant problems last season.

I don't know what the difference in the Mercedes cars is this season. Bottas lost pace in one race and Hamilton lost it in this one. I assume Mercedes is trying different combinations in each car. Both Mercedes launched well today but Hamilton backed off in the corner like he was expecting to get bumped. Then he was able to hold pace for a while then slowing before half way with a heating problem.
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Yeah, I mean Hamilton is not the kind of driver like Schumacher, Prost or Vettel. Were its nothing unusual to still be at the factory at 11 pm on a Saturday night trying to make the car better. Analyzing data, working with the engineers using the simulator etc.
I am just wondering how he can be 0.5 second of in qualifying and 30+ seconds behind in the race. That's a lot, considering the other 3 were able to go the around the same speed. And he was outside the window to catch Raikkonen in case he made a mistake.
Surprising also in the qualifying. Looks to me like the setup was off.
But could just be a one-time thing. Let's see what happens in the next races.
 
snakedafunky said:
Yeah, I mean Hamilton is not the kind of driver like Schumacher, Prost or Vettel. Were its nothing unusual to still be at the factory at 11 pm on a Saturday night trying to make the car better. Analyzing data, working with the engineers using the simulator etc.
I am just wondering how he can be 0.5 second of in qualifying and 30+ seconds behind in the race. That's a lot, considering the other 3 were able to go the around the same speed. And he was outside the window to catch Raikkonen in case he made a mistake.
Surprising also in the qualifying. Looks to me like the setup was off.
But could just be a one-time thing. Let's see what happens in the next races.
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Hamilton was catching Kimi multi times before he had overheating issues. The said he was on the limit of safety for his car a couple times. They probably decided for him to get the 4th place points and not break the car and dnf.
 
mercedes gets the win but ferrari gets more points (2nd and 3rd) to add to their constructors total.

and wtf grosjean? palmer had the corner clearly.
 
RerouteToRemain said:
Hamilton was catching Kimi multi times before he had overheating issues. The said he was on the limit of safety for his car a couple times. They probably decided for him to get the 4th place points and not break the car and dnf.
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Yes, it's possible it was just a car issue. Just seems odd that he loses two qualifyings in a row to the number two guy.
And this time with a 0.5 difference.
Just my guess but I think he has issues finding the best setup. And he can't use the same setup Bottas uses. The last couple of years he could always use Rosberg's setup when he had issues in practice. Which transferred better to his driving style. He said something about Bottas and him having the same setup but it wasn't working for him after the qualifying.
But too early to tell. That is just my hunch he might be back winning next race.
 
Pretty good race overall. That ending was great- Vettel made the young guy earn it.

Good to see everyone giving Bottas well earned praise. Real humble guy.

I expected Vettel to bitch about Massa so it was awesome to hear him dismiss the question and give props to Bottas.
 
he may have bitched about it in private, but showing class by blowing if off publicly.
it's racing.

awkwardness with Putin and the podium racers backstage. Putin is tiny, but still bigger than Bottas, lol
I didn't know Finnish ppl were so small
 
snakedafunky said:
Yeah, I mean Hamilton is not the kind of driver like Schumacher, Prost or Vettel. Were its nothing unusual to still be at the factory at 11 pm on a Saturday night trying to make the car better. Analyzing data, working with the engineers using the simulator etc.
I am just wondering how he can be 0.5 second of in qualifying and 30+ seconds behind in the race. That's a lot, considering the other 3 were able to go the around the same speed. And he was outside the window to catch Raikkonen in case he made a mistake.
Surprising also in the qualifying. Looks to me like the setup was off.
But could just be a one-time thing. Let's see what happens in the next races.
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It was Bottas' car that was off last time at Bahrain. Bottas won the pole but had trouble in the race finishing 14 seconds behind Hamilton. This makes me think they are trying different things on the cars. Of course a car that isn't going as well in practice will spend more time in the garage as they make adjustments.
 
ralphc1 said:
It was Bottas' car that was off last time at Bahrain. Bottas won the pole but had trouble in the race finishing 14 seconds behind Hamilton. This makes me think they are trying different things on the cars. Of course a car that isn't going as well in practice will spend more time in the garage as they make adjustments.
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One interesting thing this season will be to see how the Mercedes teams handles itself under real pressure.
The last couple of years they had a lot of room for error while still winning the race just based on the car.
A slightly wrong setup or a small tactical error didn't really matter one of the cars would usually still win.

Personally, I think they will struggle this season. We already saw that when they didn't take in Hamilton at the right time in Australia.
Basically costing him the win. And now trying to find the right set up.
They didn't have those issues last season. But this year a small mistake like this will cost them the race.
 
when you consider the top few cars are separated by tenths of a second, the margin for error becomes very small.
 
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