Formula One - 2017

Great pole, Valteri!!!

And the Mercedes are showing some dominance.

Alonso's MGU-H failure is puzxling Honda. Slowest engine by far and least reliable, by far. No wonder Alonso will drive the 500. At least he has a chance at finishing the race. Honda really is blowing it!! They could have had solid points by now, likely 2 7th places, probably, with Alonso. Well above where they should be running. Just disgusting. Now he starts from the back. I know he loves F1 but the best driver in F1 with no points. Rediculous.

I don't know about mbz dominating. I did see Hamilton completely blow the right hander in the second sector on his flyer.

How can Honda, who has a great engine reputation, be soooooo bad on reliability. They have excuses but McLaren needs to buy the Manor Mercedes engines.

bentwrench wrote: I don't know about mbz dominating. I did see Hamilton completely blow the right hander in the second sector on his flyer.

And that time was pretty clear from Ferrari.

Well, that was fun. Hamilton in third place on fresh tires and in full psycho hammer mode was excellent. I think his pit lane penalty was unwarranted as it didn't result in an advantage, but so it goes. Man, that was exciting.

I thought the early predictions for a big Ferrari/Mercedes battle after the first race were wishful thinking, but I may have been wrong.

Anyone else see Vettel take a drink of the rose water then spit it out again?

We ended up watching the race on the Spanish station. No commercial breaks and no David Hobbs going "whooooo", just very excitable latins. Much more fun.

I'm no strategist, but does Mercedes really know what they are doing? Hammy seems to have to compete against other teams plus his own team every race... Why bring in both cars at the same time? Also, why not give the driver the tires he wants?( suppersofts, softs) I know sometimes you have to save a driver from himself but given the decisions that that team has made before, I'm more likely to trust the driver. It was a good race but would have been better if there was no penalty, obviously. How happy would Vettel have been then? One last thing, how much longer before Alonso tells His team to stuff it and goes Indycar racing full time? :P

Iusedtobefast wrote: I'm no strategist, but does Mercedes really know what they are doing? Hammy seems to have to compete against other teams plus his own team every race... Why bring in both cars at the same time? Also, why not give the driver the tires he wants?( suppersofts, softs) I know sometimes you have to save a driver from himself but given the decisions that that team has made before, I'm more likely to trust the driver.

It was a safety car, you have to stack the pit stops. If they'd left Hamilton out then he'd have had to do a slow lap behind the safety car while everyone who'd just pitted caught up behind him, then when he pits on the next lap he'll be in 17th or something like that. This is just luck -- if a safety car comes out when someone is close behind his teammate on track, he gets screwed by it.

As for tires, the team has the data and can extrapolate the degradation given the car weight at that point in the race, etc. The supersofts are faster at the start of the stint, the softs at the end, and you need to integrate the area under the curve to know which one is going to result in a faster overall time. That's not something you can do in your head while you're out on track.

We practiced stacked pit stops in our enduro team for this very reason I felt bad for Ricciardo as soon as Hamilton got past - everyone else just piled on. It's like he left the handbrake on.

In reply to Iusedtobefast:

It's not that Merc has bad strategists, they've just been on vacation the past 3 years. Gotta knock the rust off now that there's actual competition this season.

Part of it might be that Ferrari has gotten much better at strategy. Their strategists lost Alonso at least one WDC (maybe 2). Finally their game is on. That, and they have the best car, right now.

It was great watching Hamilton push to try and claw back Vettel but unless Vettel had a stumble over traffic, (which he does off and on) there was nothing for Vettel to worry about.

Bottas must be crushed. I wonder why he has had bad pitstops in the last two races?!? He should have beaten Vettel out of his pitstop to retain first behind the safety car.

Honda will figure it out. Just need some time. Then Alonso can show his stuff.

3 races in and we have no idea who will win the WDC, that's a good sign. I like the non-DRS passing that is happening. It's all about quality, not quantity

I like the fact that DRS appears to be fairly ineffective and the tire degradation is fairly minor. Passes are being set up different ways now, we're seeing real racing instead of the magic front straight passes or bad tires.

Advan046 wrote: Bottas must be crushed. I wonder why he has had bad pitstops in the last two races?!? He should have beaten Vettel out of his pitstop to retain first behind the safety car.

I think they had to hold him due to the traffic on the pit lane. Although the placement of the car in the box can make a difference on pit stops, there was some discussion about that a couple of years ago when two teammates had the same discrepancy in stop times.

Ironically, I'm pretty sure Bottas' slow pit stop during the safety car was due to Lewis balking Riciardo on pit in, so Merc had to let him clear before they could release, which meant that Lewis was held up and Seb got by.

Had the sound off..what was Max V's race ending drama...no pedal? Cuz before that he was up Hammy's arse....woulda loved to see way more of that Oh pink race carz

The way Max's race ended was weird.

He said brake failure. The front tires were locked up the entire way to the wall.

Did he just misjudge the grip on fresh tires? He had just left the pits that lap.

In reply to wvumtnbkr:

At least the rears are brake by wire. He may have had some braking but not full capacity.

In an interview after the race he said he lost rear brakes.

Keith Tanner wrote: In an interview after the race he said he lost rear brakes.

Yeah I have heard other single seater racers say that unlike road cars the front brakes aren't nearly as strong on their cars. So without rear brakes the fronts can only knock some speed off.

Strong relative to the rears.

Makes sense. Lots of static rear weight bias, low CoG so very little weight transfer and all the tire. The rears obviously work hard. Plus I'm pretty sure these guys don't leave a whole lot of margin, so losing even 10% of their braking power is a big problem.

Makes sense. I wasn't really thinking of the electronic side of things....

No comments on Sainz torpedoing Lance Stroll? One of the dumber moves I've seen in a while in F1.

Tom_Spangler wrote: No comments on Sainz torpedoing Lance Stroll? One of the dumber moves I've seen in a while in F1.

It was a lot more dramatic in 2014!

Advan046 wrote: Honda will figure it out. Just need some time. Then Alonso can show his stuff.

No, they won't. They boomed FOUR power units in Alonso's car just this race and still got a DNF. They have used, IIRC, 5 units in pre-season testing, as well. They are almost out of units for the whole season.

In fact, numerous outlets are reporting that McLaren is now actively talking with Mercedes about the leftover Manor engines for the rest of 2017...