Formula One - 2018

Remember that Kimi is a Ferrari world champ, Vettel is not. I suspect the tifosi are happy it’s him on pole. 

The last two tracks have involved attempts (and success today?) at drafting for a better time. Would F1 be better suited to a Bathurst-style shootout? Basically, Q3 turns into a one-lap battle. Each car gets one hot lap alone on the track, and that’s the only one you get. None of this hanging around the pit lane or trying to outguess the other guys, you have to deliver ot fail. Great fun to watch. 

Twenty cars on the grid.  Six hundred meters to turn one, which is a tight chicane.  Low downforce package on the cars.

How many come out the other side with all four wheels still attached?

Keith Tanner said:

Remember that Kimi is a Ferrari world champ, Vettel is not. I suspect the tifosi are happy it’s him on pole. 

The last two tracks have involved attempts (and success today?) at drafting for a better time. Would F1 be better suited to a Bathurst-style shootout? Basically, Q3 turns into a one-lap battle. Each car gets one hot lap alone on the track, and that’s the only one you get. None of this hanging around the pit lane or trying to outguess the other guys, you have to deliver ot fail. Great fun to watch. 

They tried this 15 years ago (2003 to 2006), it pretty much sucked.  Fans at the track don't get to see enough cars going by, and far too much winds up depending on whose qualifying session happened to fall during the period of time when the track was the fastest due to rubbering in, rain, temperature changes, wind changes, or whatever else happens to affect an F1 car's speed.  The current system is fair -- every driver and every team has the same opportunity.  Sure, you may get screwed by rain, but that's because you chose to go out at the wrong time, not because your rival was scheduled to go out at 1:05, you were scheduled to go out at 1:10, and it started raining at 1:08.

Also, you couldn't just replace Q3 without extending the time substantially.  Every car gets a warm up, hot, and cooldown lap, and even if you overlap the warmup of one driver with the cooldown of the previous, it still takes double a single lap time to run each car.  Monza is one of the shorter laps on the calendar, and you'd need 1:20 * 2 per driver.  That'd be almost half an hour just to do 10 drivers.

IMHO, qualy is one of relatively few things about F1 that *isn't* broken.

Interesting race.  An actual pass for the lead on track based on pace.

Sure, bottas held up Kimi for a while, but still a good scrap.

Bottas again showed why is a perfect number 2 driver carrying out his wingman duties to perfection. 

Max again acted his age, but it was funny to watch and cost himself a place. 

Hamilton is on a tear. I'm still not going to root for him, but he seems like the best driver on the grid. 

Hamilton is going to win this year and I think it all comes down to his mental strength. I want Vettel to win, but he makes dumb mistakes when he’s down on points and crumbles under the pressure. 

Spoolpigeon said:

Hamilton is going to win this year and I think it all comes down to his mental strength. I want Vettel to win, but he makes dumb mistakes when he’s down on points and crumbles under the pressure. 

Has Lewis made a mistake in the last two years?  When he was racing Nico, he did the odd thing that could be seen as a pressure induced mistake, but I can't think of a glaring error he has made since then.  Was it last year or two years ago he baled it in quali in Mexico?  Two, I think.

As I was typing, it occurs to me- Maybe the battles Lewis had with Nico gave him enough exposure to pressure that he just handles it better. 

Vettel was lucky that there was a on the opening lap- had that not happened, he would have been pretty far down the field to just catch up to the back.  And I hope he sees the replay that he just washed out his wing (again) into Hamilton- there was plenty of room for all of them there.

Max- dude- you have an interesting memory of an incident, but worse that his petulance may have cost him 4th place.  If he just accepted that early, a few laps of drafting behind Bottas may have kept a 5 second lead.  This kind of attitude is going to make it tough for him to win a WC.

That first lap after the SC was awesome!  Hamilton got a great draft on Kimi to make a clean pass, and then Kimi got a great draft off of Lewis to make a tough but clean pass of Lewis.  That was pretty awesome.

So the team plans have flipped from the early part of the season- from Ferrari making good moves and Mercedes making mistakes to Mercedes playing a great team game and Ferrari making mistakes.   They pretty much let Kimi sit right in the Mercedes trap- which killed his tires.  But that wasn't the worst mistakes- that was Ferrari not bringing enough soft tires to know how the two cars would react to them- both cars were worse over a long run on those tires than the super softs.  Huge mistake.  Especially after a few races where Ferrari was super good on their tires.

Honda vs Renault- Renault had a tough weekend, with two of their customer engines fail.  But Honda didn't exactly tear up the field.  Other than Red Bull, it's interesting to see the Mercedes and Ferrari customers are so much faster- with Haas and Force India making a nice little sub battle that replicates the top of the field.

Wait wait wait there are smart mistakes? 

These guys all have a level of self belief that makes it very difficult for them to see when they get it wrong. 

I'm a Ferrari F1 fan but we root for Hamilton. I was quite happy with the result, Hamilton won and Kimi got a Ferrari on the podium.

I do like Vettel (mostly because he's into classic Japanese motorcycles) but I suspect that as he attempted to give Hamilton as little room as possible the front end wash was a few inches more than he expected.

I love Verstapen's level of commitment but my wife and I were both laughing at his petulant fit. I thought the 5 second penalty was perfect, it gave Max the chance to be strategic or shoot himself in the foot with a Howitzer.............Howitzer it was! 

So the Haas cars were DQ's for an illegal floor.- https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/headlines/2018/9/grosjean-disqualified-from-italian-gp.html

Supplier issues, they claim.

Damn... I was really pulling for Kimi to get the win, but Hamilton earned  that one.

Hamilton is in a good place. Great driver, good car and is really seems focused and not making mistakes right now. He cracked me up with his podium entrance trolling the tifosi like that. Don't see how Vettel can beat him this year with all the errors.

So, Lando Norris next year in place of Stoffel. 

T.J. said:

So, Lando Norris next year in place of Stoffel. 

I did not expect that move. I suppose it puts Perez as the lead domino. He has lots of money behind him reportedly.

Advan046 said:

T.J. said:

So, Lando Norris next year in place of Stoffel. 

I did not expect that move. I suppose it puts Perez as the lead domino. He has lots of money behind him reportedly.

Sounds like most people expect Perez to stay with Force India, and Ocon will be finding a new ride.  

It's going to be an interesting few months to see what happens next season for the drivers.  Especially since many also expect Stroll to get into FI by the end of the season.

Been a big fan of Loouuuueeeeeessssssss since his rookie year when he missed the title because of his screw up into the pit at the Chinese GP.

I hope he can finish out the season. The only person I'd rather see win would be Kimi, or Webber (yes I know he retired years ago, but I think the favortism toward Seb made a difference, just like Max/Ric). Kimi and Webber are my favorite drivers of all time behind Senna and Gerhardt. 

I was hoping for Kimi to get the win but his tires just were not there.  I think Lewis was over 5 seconds ahead within 3 laps of the pass.

Lewis is out to prove he is one of, if not the best ever.  Not a massive fan of his off track, but he's a machine on it.  Ferrari clearly have the better car this year, and for a large part of last year, but both the team and Seb keep making stupid mistakes.  It's funny, even over on FerrariChat where LCH is viewed as the second coming of Beelzebub crossed with Osama Bin Laden with a soupçon of Hitler thrown in are admitting it was 100% Seb's fault and grudgingly giving props to LCH.  I really really wanted Kimi to pull this off, although he was a sitting duck at the end, his tires were just gone.  

Some interesting analysis here:

https://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2018/09/analysis-the-human-side-of-f1-race-strategy-that-led-ferrari-to-lose-in-monza/

He suggests that the reason for the Vettel/Hamilton collision was that Vettel was paying too much attention to trying to pass Kimi and not enough to staying ahead of Hamilton.

I think Vettel did the best he could.

First lap into the second chicane Kimi isn't the kind to dive in if he has the car behind him covered. Kimi covered the best he could and was on the brakes earlier than Vettel thought. Thus he wasn't positioned to guard against Hamilton. Thus the Merc got much further alongside Vettel than Vettel probably thought he could. Hamilton was on the racing line and turned in leaving enough room. I think Vettel just tried to stay as close as he could to Kimi and hope Hamilton would back out. He touched too much curb and slid into Hamilton.

Hindsight being what it is, Vettel should have stayed on the racing line. Hamilton may have thought twice about going inside there and even if he did Vettel would probably win the run to the first Lesmo. 

At the end of the race the main fault of the Ferrari was the soft tire long run performance. I think that made the race for Lewis. He would have passed them both regardless.

Verstappen is not developing well. He obviously just ran Bottas off the road then felt validated by continuing to be rude and uncompetitive. He is entitled to mistakes but doesn't seem to accept that he makes them. 

The power of Racing Point Force India is wonderful. Wow, already solid midpack contenders in the Constuctors title!

Hartley!!! Noooooooo! Such bad luck! 

Wait.... Ricciardo!!!! Noooooooo! Such bad luck! 

Ah man! Grosjean!!! Noooooooo! Such poor teamwork guys! What happened there?

In reply to codrus : Article had some good points and I remember reading somewhere about Kimi was suppose to pull over in the first turn and let Vettel go by, and the Leclerc rumors followed with this grand prix, after he didn't win it and l. Hamilton has a ideal situation, I think in all honesty is why the young driver program is so poor in Mercedes. Hamilton wouldn't trade a wing men like Bottas, for Ocon or any other upcoming driver.

Political move by Renault by pulling the plug on HAAS.

In reply to trigun7469 :

I've read and heard a few articles about Haas and their floor- this was not a shock to them, and the FIA denied their request a month ago to let them go another race with the wrong floor.  Explicitly telling them that not changing the floor by Monza would open them up to a protest that they would have no choice but to uphold.  Everyone new the floor was illegal.  

I am actually wondering if MB will figure it out for Singapore. Actually have a chance to win without Vettel taking everyone out the race at Turn 1.

I hope Ricciardo gets one last win for RB. 

I have a feeling that Haas or RPFI could mix it up. 

So, lots of news this week.

Vandoorne out of McLaren at the end of the year to be replaced by Lando Norris.  No big surprise there, It's been tough for Vandoorne being soundly beaten by some 37 year old dude week in week out.  Norris has dominated in all the lower ranks, although he is only sitting 2nd with one win to date in F2.  

The announcement (probably) coming today from Maranello that Kimi is being replaced by LeClerc next year.

It's getting more likely that Stroll will step up to Force Daddy and if so he'll be replaced by Kubica which will make everyone happy.  Personally I have nothing against Kubica and it would be a great click bait feel good story, but I can't help felling someone else should get a shot.

Finally people are talking about either Kvyat or Buemi coming back to Torro Rosso to replace Hartley for the rest of the season.

So assuming that all happens I see the following looking for Drives pretty soon. Kimi out of Ferrari, he'll probably leave F1.  Ocon is the most likely to loose his seat at Jordan and looking for a ride.  Hartely is pretty much guarenteed to be out of Minardi.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I think Kubica might be exactly what Williams needs, or maybe, at least, one of the many things they need.  Having a pair of teenagers developing your car can't be the best way of doing things.