re: F1 2019 Season Thread (Next race: Dec. 1 Abu Dhabi)

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He seemed confused by this in the post race interview

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Lewis hasn't always had a perfect relationship with his race engineers. For some reason many times in his career they have told him what will happen and took little input from him. Tires has come up or when he would call in with a problem he would be met with everything looks fine from here soldier on.

If Prost, Senna, Schumacher or even Vettel at RBR had been told to box for X tire and they said no I want square tires with pink sparkles their engineer would have told them to go around again and the pit crew would have been shaving the tires square and gluing on pink glitter.

Admittedly this is from the outside looking in and there have been times when there were "problems" with the car when he was losing time but it seems he never has had the respect other drivers with his bona fides seem to have received. The issues cropped up at McLaren and Mercedes both.

Not a Hammy fan so I don't get broken up by it.

LINK

Damn these edits are getting good.

I vote for one of these at every race-

While the weather at the German GP provided the chaos that gave us what we wanted—a race where you really didn't know who was going to win—the Indycar race at Mid-Ohio later that day provided the same scenario without the gimmick of variable weather and slip-slidin' shenanigans. Last year Alexander Rossi easily won the race when he did a two-stop strategy while everyone else did a three-stopper. No one thought you could do a two-stopper because you had to run both compounds, and somehow Rossi was able to drive the soft compound long enough to stop just twice. This year a lot of drivers tried the two-stop strategy, and numerous drivers, including Rossi I think, had to abandon the two-stopper because the soft compound was degrading too quickly. But in the middle of the race no one had any idea who was in the best position to win. Then it emerged that Rosenqvist (on a three-stopper) appeared to be in the best position, but after all the pit stops were done his teammate Dixon (on a two-stopper) was obviously in the best position. But Rosenqvist had more tire at the end of the race and fought hard to pass Dixon in the last lap or two of the race. It was a spectacular race and the shocker to me was that Ganassi allowed Rosenqvist to fight for the win. Dixon is in contention for the championship and needs every point he can get this late in the season, and Rosenqvist is not in contention, so I think it was not a good decision to let them race.

Pole-sitter Will Power (who did a two-stopper) had an interesting comment after the race. He said that his mistake was running the soft compound at the start of the race before the track got rubbered-in. So his softs fell off faster than the guys who ran the softs later in the race.

So my point is, for the new F1 2021 rules, if they go back to re-fueling and get the tire compounds right, they can get back to better racing without gimmicks.

Weather is not a gimmick. It’s not like the FIA used their rain machine to make it rain. Also, I appreciate strategy, but that Indycar race sounds incredibly boring.

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Also, I appreciate strategy, but that Indycar race sounds incredibly boring.

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I don't want to get off on an IndyCar tangent but that race was anything but boring. The average IndyCar race is more exciting than the average F1 race. We've actually been pretty lucky that we've had 3 entertaining F1 races in a row now.

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The dominance of Mercedes/Ferrari/Red Bull has diminished the F1 product a bit though. Wish there was more parity.

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There's no question that more parity would make the races a lot more entertaining. Going into the season, the only question was whether Ferrari or Mercedes would win the Constructors Championship. That would be like knowing in spring training that the Yankees were going to play the Dodgers in the World Series.

But in the history of F1 it's been like this more often than it hasn't. Typically one team will dominate for a while then they change up the rules and a different team dominates for a while. It's hard to have true parity when some teams can massively outspend the others.

The IndyCar race had zero yellow flags/safety cars and had two cars battling for the win literally to the finish line. The championship leader spun out on the final lap (stupidly) trying to get a podium. Not sure how that’s boring. That wasn’t even Indycar’s best race this season (even if you throw out the oval races).

F1 has had 3 good races in a row now, that felt impossible back at Paul Ricard

ETA: IndyCar race would have been a lot less dramatic if Dixon would have just gone with the Firestone blacks for his final stint, not really sure what they were thinking. On the other hand, if Rossi would have done a 3 stopper I think he would have been challenging for the win as well since he could have pushed and not have had to manage fuel. Outside of Dixon who is a wizard, the 3 stopper definitely seemed like the better call.

Not sure but I think stuff like DRS is what he was referring to as gimmicks.

Indy has push to pass isn't that a gimmick?