Monaco Grand Prix

We were having that same discussion - who gets to drive the pace car? And he was working it through the chicane. Janel loves it, her biggest complaint is that you can't hear that big bellowing engine over the race cars most of the time.

F1 needs to stop dinking with the tires to try to force 'racing'. Maybe they should treat it like fuel - you have to finish the race on the tires you started on, or you get one stop. No special dispensation for flats, no special spec tires. Then tire management is important, but you can choose to run hard at the beginning and hope your tires last, or save some for the end. You'll also see the tire manufacturers making a tire that will be friendly as it degrades.

Well, I see it a bit different.

F1 is about the team and cars. It is NOT about the drivers. The Drivers championship doesn't even mean anything. You get 0 dollars for it.

The rapid and severe tire deg means that the cars that are set-up the best (fastest with lowest tire wear rates) are going to win. This IS exciting to some of us. I love the strategy!

The times you see the cars fighting and battling it out is due to the tires. It is usually because the person behind is on newer tires and or a slightly different strategy and MUST pass the slower car. The entire race depends on it so the battles are harder fought.

I like it how it is right now!

Rob R.

Bernd Maylander is the pace car driver.

Ferrari says Massa's crash in the race was caused by suspension failure:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/28/sport/motorsport/massa-ferrari-f1-crash-monaco/

It's good to hear that Massa is ok. The shots of him on the wall with the neck brace and everyone around him rather than shots of him walking to the pits made you worry.

Keith Tanner wrote: There's a difference between "making a move" and essentially forcing people off the track. Imagine if that chicane was more substantial than low painted berms. If there had been a barrier in the middle, Sergio would have put at least three people into it. Sergio wasn't leaving room in his attempts, and it ended with him going into the wall and getting taken out of the race. As it should have. It's just a real shame that Kimi also took damage in that. Sutil was the example of how to drive aggressively without being a dick in this race - he pulled some nice moves and nobody got taken out. In NASCAR, there isn't constant talk about how the tires are short-lived and failing. You have to follow F1 fairly closely to know that Pirelli is making crap tires because they're ordered to and not because they can't do any better. For the casual viewer, it's bad PR.

Keith Tanner wrote: Man, good for Kimi for finally saying "berkeley you" to Perez. He'd been driving like an idiot, forcing people off track and getting rewarded for it by the stewards. Too bad it knocked Kimi so far back, though. I wish I knew how he made up three places in the last lap. "Asked if the drivers would talk to Perez, Raikkonen said: "That won't help. Maybe someone should punch him in the face.""

K.R. Is by far my favorite driver. His personality is simply awesomely hilarous and the guy is one heck of a driver. Guy's a machine. I think he got boned pretty hard this race.

Sutil and Rosberg really won the race though. Seeing Nico win there was pretty awesome, and Sutil pulled off some heroic passes.

Still trying to grasp what's the big deal with the tires, I have a little bit of a handle on it, but it's not that big of a deal to me... yet.

beans wrote: Still trying to grasp what's the big deal with the tires, I have a little bit of a handle on it, but it's not that big of a deal to me... yet.

After watching 90 minutes of people do 1:21 laps, Vettel runs a 1:16 on the last lap as if to say "berkeley you" to the circumstances that required him to run 5 seconds a lap slower than he was capable of for an entire race. Actually, scratch that, because qualifying laps were in the 1:13 to 1:15 range, so everyone was running 6-8 seconds slower than they were otherwise capable of. Kimi ran in the 1:17+ range for the last few laps on fresh tires and was able to move from 16th to 10th.

I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that you can put on fresh rubber and pass 6 people in 8 laps. On the one hand, I'm really bummed nobody thought to televise any of that, because it would have been awesome to watch. On the other hand, if everyone had been driving balls out, that wouldn't have been possible.

Compare that to, say, 2007, when the fastest lap of the race (1:15.2) was actually faster than any of the qualifying laps. And it happened on lap 44, meaning this wasn't some end of race sprint.

The tires are making it so these guys are just peddling the cars around the track. I'm not sure how that's supposed to make things good.

nderwater wrote: Here's an ingenious idea - if these are the best drivers in the world, how about letting them run at the limit for as much as the race as possible?

They used to do just that...(yes, I know, see "How Old Are You?" thread...) there used to be no pit stops/tire changes except in case of mishap up till the ...I dunno... early '80s?

Maybe NASCAR could (egad!) even try a couple 100 mile (is that possible on one fuel load?) races? (besides the All Star show?)

I'll admit I'm not a big F1 fan. That said I watched the Monaco G.P, as it's such a pomp and circumstance deal. It was also on T.V. when I turned it on.

The spectacle was pretty amazing.....

This is one of those F1 races where the qualifying is probably more entertaining than the race itself---- at least for an outsider. Unless you were a die-hard F1 fan, the race itself wasn't very thrilling. Was there any passing in the top 4 cars? There never seemed any doubt as to who would win, or finish second....although there was kind of a battle for third....sort of.

I don't mean to flame F1, but for a casual fan, which would be the best F1 race to watch. (one with passing // maybe a chance of a underdog winning?)

You're totally right - qualifying was much more exciting than the race itself turned out to be.

Keith Tanner wrote: We were having that same discussion - who gets to drive the pace car? And he was working it through the chicane. Janel loves it, her biggest complaint is that you can't hear that big bellowing engine over the race cars most of the time.

I went to the F1 race in Canada about ten years ago and even back then, the Mercedes pace and safety cars made a huge impression. Without the F1 cars out there, they seemed insanely quick and the sound was incredible.