Formula 1 2023 Season

Quali was awesome!

Q2 and q3 were surprising!  Awesome for Williams and haas!

Damn, sorry to see Haas and Hulk lose the P2 spot. Seems he got popped for being too fast coming back to pits after the red flags came out. Shocked Carlos didn't get more as that guy looked out of place a bunch of times.

That sucks about the hulk. E36 M3.  More of the same now.

Ugh, George.  

This looks to be an interesting ending- either Alonso has a chance to catch Max as Max wears out his medium tires, or Hamilton will threaten Fernando with his medium tires.  I'm kind of leaning toward Fred having a chance, since mediums wear out, so they need to take care of them.

My apologies to Max fans but I really want a race were Max doesn't win.

I'd love to see Fernando win (note I am a Hamilton fan).

In reply to alfadriver :

Well, that didn't turn out to mean anything... bummer.  Kinda sucked that the Aston struggled with brakes.

Well done Albon and Williams.  Moved up the grid a long way.

That was fun, ignoring the front.  Stroll did a nice recovery, and the Albon Ocon Norris Bottas Stroll train made some interesting stuff.

After Alonso overtook Hamilton, Alonso is going what like 150 mph and he's mostly just staring at his mirror waiting for Hamilton's counter, with an occasional glance forward.   

Anyone else think the stewards have it out for Haas?  Quick black flags for Kevin's wing damages last year while Checo runs around until the pieces fly off?  The same penalty for not slowing quickly enough (in variably conditions) as the people that literally blocked the track on everyone's push lap?  

I laughed at Alonzo's frantic steering wheel jerking when Lewis pulled out of his pits, then laughed even louder at the shot of Toto imitating him.

And what was the deal with the Alpine rear wing?  Ted noted it moving around on the pre race show, and by the end of the race, it was dancing.  New design, or soft mount somewhere?

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Aren't the wings subject to movement tests??

In reply to alfadriver :

They are.  The motion was not really in the plane that they test for, though.  It was moving side to side quite a lot.

Streetwiseguy said:

And what was the deal with the Alpine rear wing?  Ted noted it moving around on the pre race show, and by the end of the race, it was dancing.  New design, or soft mount somewhere?

To me it looked like an Alpine engineer decided to cut mass by finding out exactly how little material was actually required to hold the wing up for a whole race. 

After this last race I started to feel like the cost cap's biggest impact on F1 was allowing the smaller teams to attract top talent from the big teams. The big teams just can't justify some of their leadership if they are going to fit in budget with smaller staff. So Aston Martin got the biggest grab of talent starting from a couple years ago. Williams, Alpine I think also gained and oddly McLaren seemed to suffer from the shuffle as the other team moves impacted their team structure.

RedBull and their powertrain division and Ford association seem to me to create a rather cloudy understanding of if they are on the right path or not. 

MB definitely took a hit and are still evolving.

Ferrari maybe evolving like MB or suffering like McLaren. 

So all the talk about cost cap affecting parts and development to me are much less important compared to how the teams have had to evolve from a human resources standpoint. I kind of feel a few researchers could probably get some interesting information on how external industry changes can affect a collection of businesses from purely a talent acquisition strategy sense.

And returning to racing. 

Thank you Lando Norris for just being give it a go Lando into the hairpin and ANY corner. Why not!?

In reply to Advan046 :

So it's going to take a while for the cost cap to really settle, since it takes a while for people moving to have a full impact.

One cap criticism that I really don't like is it's blamed for RBR to be so dominant.  As if there hasn't been a dominant car in the past.  This domination is hardly new, last I checked, Mercedes won all of the last era team championships and it took some special interpretation to not win all of the drivers championships.  Ferrari has been dominant, McLaren has been dominant, Williams has been dominant, RBR has been dominant in the past.  It's not the cost cap.  

Anyway, I just saw that there has been a rule change for the non-F1 parts.  As I saw the interpretation from The Race, apparently if you were an aero engineer working on the hospitality team, the value of your contribution to the race team was different (lower) than if you were part of the main team.  That loophole has been closed.  Which makes the fact that the hospitality team for RBR is where they got the cost cap wrong a little more interesting.

Tom1200 said:

My apologies to Max fans but I really want a race were Max doesn't win.

I'd love to see Fernando win (note I am a Hamilton fan).

Two years ago people were saying this about Hamilton.     

Feel the same way just don't post .....

I think the cap needs more employees not counted towards the cap(no more for directors/drivers).  Otherwise good talent under the top directors/drivers is getting capped in earning no?

ztnedman1 said:

I think the cap needs more employees not counted towards the cap(no more for directors/drivers).  Otherwise good talent under the top directors/drivers is getting capped in earning no?

I read somewhere that VW buying a team based in Switzerland will incur some percentage of the cap used for salary issues of cost of living difference. Non British based teams I think are still talking about the cap needed to balance somewhat more for locality salary differences.

No talk about the Ryan Reynolds news?

racerfink said:

No talk about the Ryan Reynolds news?

Que the Deadpool attire pit crew...

like this?

Track limits kicking everybody in the arse.. Perez out in Q2, 2 flying laps deleted.  Russel out in Q2 as well.