Formula One world championship

[driftking]

This is shaping up to be a great race.
Its good to actually see so many teams struggling a little and finally see a more even playing field. I hope redbull can find something tomorrow and pick up the pace a bit and really hang with the williams and mercs. Great to see williams locking out pole, its awesome to see those two drivers both get up there they definitely deserve it. More stoked for Massa its sort of a little nudge at Ferrari I guess, they treated him so poorly than ditched him.

good to see dan still got it over vettel, it should be interesting with Hamilton starting in 9th with his speed. should make for an interesting first stint.

bring it on.

Also what is everyone thinking about the stop starts for 2015 instead of rolling now? I think its a horrid idea but I can also see it providing some interesting starts.

 

[pistonbroke]

Did you see the Ferrari staffer congratulate Massa's wife? And Alonso was the first to congratulate Massa. There can't be any bad blood there.

Race stoppages are a terrible idea. Why would you want to do that?

I'm not sure it will be a great though. It looks like a tough track to pass on. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[PINT of Stella. mate!]

The restart idea is a classic gobshite distraction. They're going on about cost-cutting yet suggest something that's going to lead to more crashes and mechanical failures than an entire grid full of Pastor Maldonados driving Alfa Romeos.

Aye. right!

It makes me wonder what shenanigans the FIA are actually trying to get past without people noticing...

 

[Pastavore]

Looking forward to the race tonight, should be a cracker. Love the track, a little bit of elevation change makes things interesting.

 

[Xavo.au]

The restart idea is a classic gobshite distraction. They're going on about cost-cutting yet suggest something that's going to lead to more crashes and mechanical failures than an entire grid full of Pastor Maldonados driving Alfa Romeos.

Aye. right!

It makes me wonder what shenanigans the FIA are actually trying to get past without people noticing...

Not to mention fuel wastage - races are short enough as is!

 

[driftking]

Did you see the Ferrari staffer congratulate Massa's wife? And Alonso was the first to congratulate Massa. There can't be any bad blood there.

Race stoppages are a terrible idea. Why would you want to do that?

I'm not sure it will be a great though. It looks like a tough track to pass on. I hope I'm wrong.

yeah i really don't think there is bad blood between massa an ferrari, but playing second fiddle to alonso still would have been a nice little personal victory as number one driver now. Good to see the Ferrari guys having the sportsman ship across the teams.

The restart idea is a classic gobshite distraction. They're going on about cost-cutting yet suggest something that's going to lead to more crashes and mechanical failures than an entire grid full of Pastor Maldonados driving Alfa Romeos.

Aye. right!

It makes me wonder what shenanigans the FIA are actually trying to get past without people noticing...

I'm with you the restart idea definitely has rocked up a at nice time to take the heat off their other BS. Its the worst idea. starts always throw up an interesting first lap and make for close dangerous driving so that will be good for viewing I guess, but its going to be ridiculously if a driver works all the way to the front than stuffs up his start and all those laps are lost. Or if a car stalls out. Its going to just kill race flow and be a pain in the ass.

From what I have seen the reason is to provide better viewing and make it more interesting off after the caution.
If they want more excitement slacked the regulations and let the engineering have more of a input like they used to. Rule evidently need to be controlled to prevent cars becoming too dangerous but they are too tight. I like the racing but I also like the engineering aspect of who brings the best car with different innovations and new tech.
Wasn't the concept of the new fuel to move toward a way that match road cars so the advancements in f1 can trickle down to production cars? Bit hypocritical to still have such tight regulations.

On the track I was disappointed not to see a few more corners in there I would have liked some sweeping corners or a bit of a change and some more of the old track like this.
Current track

1.

2. pretty much the same as the current track with with some high speed curves

My amateur track design skill.

Also I remember a while ago we were talking about safety car and why the lapped cars cant just drop to the back of the pack. I was meaning to reply back than but never got around to it. I'm pretty sure they need to do the laps because of the strict fuel regulations and weight. If they don't do the laps they might have actually carried less fuel than needed along with the reliability, they need to make sure the car does the lap to keep it on even playing. Although I agree if they are going to allow that they need to remove the time restriction on the lap.

 

[Big AC]

The standing restarts after a safety car seems to be an attempt to create some action. However, how long will it take them to get it organised during the race? Are they going to essentially stoop the race for a few minutes while everyone gets organised in the right order? The stuffing around with releasing lapped cars whilst the pace car is out already takes too long.

Watching Hamilton come through the pack should be good to watch and if I remember correctly from when the track was last in the championship it wasn’t too bad for overtaking, the three straights in a row (2 with DRS).should help.

Back to watching the Nurburgring 24 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBoZu0dWycw

 

[PINT of Stella. mate!]

Actually I think this could be a brilliant idea if we restrict it to just one race per year and you know which race I'm talking about, dont ya.

Monaco

Just imagine it. The green lights go, we have a smash on the first corner, then a restart, then another smash, more than likely at the same corner. then another restart, then another smash and so on and so on until the grid is whittled down Hunger Games style.

'Racing incidents' should not be punished in this round, instead encouraged! Debris should not be cleaned up either and handheld weapons (axes, crossbows, spears etc) could be dangled over the track by fishing rods for drivers to grab and utilise in the next restart.

 

[akashra]

Standing starts make sense for red flag restarts, but not for yellow flags. The logistical problems of getting everyone in order is going to be much more difficult than you might think working on the fly.

 

[driftking]

Standing starts make sense for red flag restarts, but not for yellow flags. The logistical problems of getting everyone in order is going to be much more difficult than you might think working on the fly.

it only happens after the cars are allowed to un lap themselves.
So it would also increase the time it takes for the SC period too.

 

[Dozer]

I really enjoyed seeing the Austrian circuit again, the cars were really pushing the boundaries there. It was also great to see a big crowd on hand too.
Red Bull and Renault are having a bad time in Vettel's car, he's been nowhere this season. It must be a bloody bad feeling for Seb to go so well for so long then bam, it all goes pooh brown.
I'm pretty sure Bottas said more words on the podium than every Finnish driver has do collectively over the years. Good on him, great clean drive for him last night.

 

[driftking]

missed the last 20laps, fell asleep.

What I did see was Williams making some odd decisions. I understand if they ran their own race because merc are not a constructive competition for them but they were only pitting 1 lap too late than they needed, they really should have just pitted bottas immediately after Hamilton (ie same lap rosberg pitted), it hopefully would have kept him in between the two cars and maybe gave him a challenge for a higher place. That said given I have no idea how the two teams drove at the end I cant be sure that would happen. Vettel, I'm really surprised how calm he is about all this, his no doubt annoyed but we haven't really seen him on the radio raging.

Anyway where does everyone watch the replays online?

 

[Pastavore]

http://tenplay.com.au/sport/formula-1/catch-up



Far less interesting race than I was anticipating.

 

[Dozer]

Hottest podium girls ever. That was worth watching the entire race just to get a gawk at those hotties.

 

[PINT of Stella. mate!]

Good race but afterhaving read some of the comments on Sky Sports news page I can only despair.
Fuck me, the Hamilton fuckwit numpty conspiracy theorists are even worse than Webber's fuckwit-numpty conspiracy theorists.

How on earth do a team orchestrate a 1.9sec pit-stop difference so that it is exactly the same margin as the gap at the end of the race? Why would they even do so when they went to so much trouble to poach Hamilton from Mclaren in the first place? From what I can gather they are giving Lewis a much larger 'gaudy diamond earring' allowance than they are Rosberg, so why would they sabotage his chances?

I realise tht nobody on here has been daft enough to vent such nonsence so it's a mute point but just in case, I thought I'd better nip that shit in the bud...

 

[driftking]

Hottest podium girls ever. That was worth watching the entire race just to get a gawk at those hotties.

Tenplay is such dodgy quality but even in blurry footage they were hot.
If only they were the refugees coming by boat.

Good race but afterhaving read some of the comments on Sky Sports news page I can only despair.
Fuck me, the Hamilton fuckwit numpty conspiracy theorists are even worse than Webber's fuckwit-numpty conspiracy theorists.

How on earth do a team orchestrate a 1.9sec pit-stop difference so that it is exactly the same margin as the gap at the end of the race? Why would they even do so when they went to so much trouble to poach Hamilton from Mclaren in the first place? From what I can gather they are giving Lewis a much larger 'gaudy diamond earring' allowance than they are Rosberg, so why would they sabotage his chances?

I realise tht nobody on here has been daft enough to vent such nonsence so it's a mute point but just in case, I thought I'd better nip that shit in the bud...

Where did that conspiracy come from? That is insane, especially for a team that has been free to race all season and have had some killer battles.

As for my previous comment about williams pit strategy, they still could have pitted that one lap earlier and maybe seen if they coudl play with the mercs for a bit who knows but I think the safe move and the smart move was made so all in all a good point haul for williams. Redbull had a shocker not only race wise but both torro's out and vettel.

 

[richie_gt]

Was great to see Webber conducting the post race interviews!

 

[Dozer]

Was great to see Webber conducting the post race interviews!

I agree mate, he was perfect for that role and asked the right questions. Hope he gets another turn one day. Would have been funny if Seb and Dan podiumed.........and Dan won.

 

[PINT of Stella. mate!]

One thing that tickled me was as the drivers stepped up to the podium the announcer informed everyone we'd be hearing the German and Austrian national anthems.

I take it he must have been reading from a very optimistic script prepared by the track owners...

 

[akashra]

Hottest podium girls ever. That was worth watching the entire race just to get a gawk at those hotties.

Allow me to share this gallery of Austrian Grand Prix photos for you.

http://imgur.com/a/HxAYH