2024 Formula 1 Season. It’s Lights Out and Away We Go!

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Man, if the rumors are true that Danny Ric will get Perez’s spot that is kind of a “fuck you” to Tsunoda who has been proving himself much more. I am not a big Tsunoda fan by any means, but I will recognize he has been doing well since even last season. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

28 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Man, if the rumors are true that Danny Ric will get Perez’s spot that is kind of a “fuck you” to Tsunoda who has been proving himself much more. I am not a big Tsunoda fan by any means, but I will recognize he has been doing well since even last season. 

What is the source of those rumours?

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Not sure where they started, but some imply that Red Bull themselves. Marko making comments that the RBR second driver seat isn’t set in stone. He and Horner’s seeming more fondness of Danny over Tsunoda. They both seem to hate giving new drivers a chance so much that at this point I think they’d put Logan in the Red Bull before they would put Lawson in there just because Logan has more than a year in an F1 car. But the longer RBR wait to make a decision to remove Perez the more it looks like they really do not care about the WCC. 
 

Perez definitely not silencing his critics any time soon either. Slamming into the wall in Q1. Some may have wondered why his car didn’t get any upgrades, and my thought was he has better odds to destroy the car than he does to put the upgrades to good use. And sure enough it would have just been a waste of money. 
 

Tsunoda was shocking too. He made some comments recently that he was ready for the bump to Red Bell over the likes of Lawson, but then lost the car so hard there. Not a good showing at all. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I think if Max doesn’t take the lead in the first few laps he doesn’t win tomorrow. He will need to build an early lead, because that McLaren is so much faster than the RB when light on fuel. So I think this race is McLaren’s to lose. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

McLaren needs to sort out their pit wall and strategy. That was absolute shit. To me it all comes down to the awful decision to give preferential pit strategy to Norris, which gave him the undercut over Piastri. It’s one thing if Norris has a better final stint and takes the lead from Piastri in a clean race. It’s completely different if the team gives it to him as if choosing favoritism over Piastri. 
 

It’s not a driver’s nature to want to slow up and give another driver a position, even their own teammate. I don’t blame or fault Lando. It’s bullshit any time it happens, and even more so because the only reason they were in the position to make team orders was because of the team fucked him over first. I was wanting Oscar to win, but this taints the win and it robbed us of seeing possibly a good fair teammate battle at the end of the race. Norris may still very well have beat Piastri. Piastri is very skilled, but still prone to the occasional mistake. Who’s to say if the same tyre dip in the gravel would have happened if Piastri wasn’t worried about making up lost track position. 
 

…but Max, oof, what a bad race from him. I don’t know if it was because it is Hamilton or what, but twice he made some out of form errors trying to pass him and the last one cost him dearly. As of yet I don’t know if a decision was made on whether he is getting a post race penalty for causing a collision with Lewis.  
 

otherwise a pretty boring race. Not as bad Monaco by any means, but far from the bangers we’ve had recently. If only there had been rain today during parts of the race. 

[TUFKAK]

Max bro. Lololol

 

We all were thinking what your engineer said. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

They need to sit Perez.  I don't see him racing at Zandvoort unless  a miracle happens at Spa.

 

McLaren need to get their head on straight.  The F1 feed commentators predicted the strategy problems they would have BEFORE it happened.  With the lead they had, they needed to let the two of them race.  They were so far ahead of 3rd it's ludicrous for them to argue they were "covering off someone".  F1 racing shouldn't be about who is ahead after the first corner.  I really don't believe that Hamilton/Shumacher/Vettel/Alonso would have ceded that position.

 

I'd love to see the data the stewards did on the Verstappen/Hamilton crash.  To me, it looked like Verstappen braked at his normal time, and Hamilton turned in early/moved under braking.  If they really want to clean up the driving in F1, they need to start handing out penalty points much more frequently [and adopting many of the rules used in other forms of racing].

[TwinIon]

This was a terribly boring race, but F1 continues to be exciting.

 

McLaren really found a way to take all the joy out of a young drivers' first win. I'm kind of torn on the whole thing. I think pitting Lando first was overly cautious, but they were in a position to be overly cautious, so may as well cover all your bases and get that 1-2. Obviously giving the preferential stop to the driver behind is iffy and they promised Piastri they'd swap positions. Still, Lando was on pole and faster in the final stint. He arguably earned that win as much as Piastri did. Also, Lando is in second place in the championship. Yeah, Max would need to have a real disaster of a season from here on out for Lando to have a chance, but there is a chance. I think there's a good argument that McLaren should have just told Oscar "hey man, sorry about this one, but we need you to take one for the team." Instead they embarrassed themselves for 30 laps and soured the biggest win they've had in years.

 

Also, Lando really needs to work out his starts. If he's going to actually challenge for a championship, he needs to be able to win from pole.

 

The Sky broadcasters seemed pretty eager to blame Max's outbursts on his sim racing, but I think that's silly. Max has never responded well to radio challenging him, he obviously wasn't enjoying the car, and there's the obvious issue in that he wasn't winning the race. I won't defend his outbursts, but I don't think you can just say he wouldn't have been so combative if he'd gotten more sleep. Regardless, I really enjoyed the racing between Max and Lewis this race, especially since it was the majority of competitive racing we got on Sunday.

 

While I agree that Perez should probably be canned, I don't think this race is a great piece of evidence. He started 13 places behind Max and finished 2 place behind him. That's the kind of recovery drive he should be making. Of course, he shouldn't be starting 16th. I'd like to see Perez get fired now while there are still seats available and maybe he can find a second life in F1 a-la Bottas.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Yeah I too thought Perez did well to recover. I see people online saying he should have finished 4th, but Max was around there and started 3rd, not 16th. And this RB doesn’t have the ability to win from 10th like it could last season. I think Perez isn’t what RB needs, but his performance in the race wasn’t an issue. His performance in qualifying was. 
 

yeah the commentary narrative if Max is angy because he was up too late playing video games felt like “ok boomer” level stuff. lol. 
 

Another issue with the switch back too was they didn’t tell Lando and Piastri before Lando pitted. Otherwise Lando could have let Piastri by while Piastri was on his outlap. I do think Lando knew the call might happen though, which was why he was willing to cook his tires to build as much of a gap as he could. He wanted to team to see a big gap and just decide it isn’t worth risking Lando slowing up enough to switch positions. Though the person they were trying to “cover” in 3rd was like 13 seconds behind Piastri. lol so I mean, putting in that much pace was obviously Lando trying to make a statement that he should get to keep the position. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Antonelli offers honest assessment over F1 promotion chances

WWW.FORMULA1.COM

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Kimi Antonelli has moved to cool expectations regarding a potential promotion to F1 in the near future, saying he is “still learning a lot” in F2 after a rapid rise up the junior motorsport ranks.

 

2 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Another issue with the switch back too was they didn’t tell Lando and Piastri before Lando pitted. Otherwise Lando could have let Piastri by while Piastri was on his outlap. I do think Lando knew the call might happen though, which was why he was willing to cook his tires to build as much of a gap as he could. He wanted to team to see a big gap and just decide it isn’t worth risking Lando slowing up enough to switch positions. Though the person they were trying to “cover” in 3rd was like 13 seconds behind Piastri. lol so I mean, putting in that much pace was obviously Lando trying to make a statement that he should get to keep the position. 

I am not 100% convinced that Lando was originally going to give back the position even though he did in the end.  The commentary on the F1 feed (Jacques/Palmer/Coulthard) seemed to suggest that they thought he probably shouldn't -- particularly Coulthard.  Originally he needed to build a gap big enough to be able to stop and stay ahead of Verstappen/Hamilton after a safety car.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

14 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Originally he needed to build a gap big enough to be able to stop and stay ahead of Verstappen/Hamilton after a safety car.

Yeah I doubt that’s why he was building a gap, just so he could stop for a third time if a safety car happened. I’m sure he’d have said so if that was the case. If Max and Lewis stop they better hope enough cars behind then also pit otherwise they lose so much track position and track position is more important than tyres. It’s not Monaco bad, but it’s close. I bet the only people who pit are those in the back with little to lose

[AbsolutSurgen]

Just now, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Yeah I doubt that’s why he was building a gap, just so he could stop for a third time if a safety car happened. I’m sure he’d have said so if that was the case. If Max and Lewis stop they better hope enough cars behind then also pit otherwise they lose so much track position and track position is more important than tyres. It’s not Monaco bad, but it’s close. I bet the only people who pit are those in the back with little to lose

The team told him when he had that gap on the radio.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

That sounded like they were just trying to head off a possible excuse. They had already been asking him to slow down through like half the corners on the track. They wanted to make a swap before a possible safety car too is something they said more than once. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I get him not wanting to give the position up. Especially when he believed he’d just take it off Piastri anyways, so the undercut was just a way to do it cleanly and quietly. He threw both those things at the team. That he would have undercut him anyways and they should have pitted him first then. So I don’t believe for a second he was thinking of anything other than protecting himself from piastri and the team with a gap. 
 

I do not like the team asking that of Norris after they pitted him. They probably should have just told Piastri it was about helping Lando catch Max on points. It won’t seem fair, but it is what championship winning teams do. And it would have been the most believable lie to cover their fuck up. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 hour ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

That sounded like they were just trying to head off a possible excuse. They had already been asking him to slow down through like half the corners on the track. They wanted to make a swap before a possible safety car too is something they said more than once. 

It was specifically explained in the commentary by Ruth Buscombe during the feed -- that Piastri didn't have that gap yet and Lando was "safe", and that is probably why they asked Piastri to catch up to Lando.  Given she has held the role of "Head of Race Strategy" at an F1 team, I will defer to her.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

19 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

It was specifically explained in the commentary by Ruth Buscombe during the feed -- that Piastri didn't have that gap yet and Lando was "safe", and that is probably why they asked Piastri to catch up to Lando.  Given she has held the role of "Head of Race Strategy" at an F1 team, I will defer to her.

you can defer to her, but she wasn’t the one talking to Lando on the radio. She’s just giving her opinion. 
 

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 hour ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

you can defer to her, but she wasn’t the one talking to Lando on the radio. She’s just giving her opinion. 
 

 

You don't need to watch a Youtube video that doesn't have the context of the race, just select the in-car driver on the right of the screen.  It has all the radio communication as it happens.

Listen to Piastri's radio.  They told Piastri on lap 51 they would swap him when he caught up, because they didn't want Lando to lose too much time.

It wasn't until Lap 63 (when it was obvious that Piastri couldn't keep up, despite being told several times to go for maximum pace) that they asked Lando to slow down significantly.

The risk of a safety car preventing the swap was brought up once to Lando, on lap 67 - he swapped shortly thereafter.

3 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Yeah I doubt that’s why he was building a gap, just so he could stop for a third time if a safety car happened. I’m sure he’d have said so if that was the case. If Max and Lewis stop they better hope enough cars behind then also pit otherwise they lose so much track position and track position is more important than tyres. It’s not Monaco bad, but it’s close. I bet the only people who pit are those in the back with little to lose

Again, listen to the radio communication on the feed.  With 13 to go they asked Piastri if he would pit during a safety car, and that it would cost a position, he said yes (they closed that window on lap 65).   They asked Lando the same question at around the same time, but without the caveat, and he also said yes.

They were going to get fresh tires in the case of a safety car before lap 65.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I don’t know if I am happy for Perez or annoyed. He’s finally near where he should be in qualifying. But even with today’s qualifying performance the issue is consistency. And this performance is more out of the norm. If he keeps that seat and falls right off again I will be very irritated. 
 

Q2 was a lot of fun. Rainy conditions sure make everything more interesting. The lack moves where the edge is. The driver should be able to shine through even more. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Yeah these cars had quire different pace from wet to dry. Differing tyre and pitting strategy playing a massive role to shaking things up. We had 3-4 drivers in contention for the lead and they weren’t exactly safe from the cars behind. Kind of crazy we didn’t get a safety car. 
 

The only part of Perez’s drive that surprised me was his bad start where he just got beat off the line by Hamilton. I figured he would fall backwards as the race went on, but thought he might be able to take first on lap one and hold the pack up enough for Max to charge up the field. But RB clearly doesn’t have the speed advantages they once did, so one big DRS train would not have been to Max’s favor. Perez didn’t have a great race as the only positive was he didn’t hold Max up for very long. Checo follows team orders well, but he is too slow to be a #2 of a top team. 
 

Tsunoda had quite the drive after a 60 place grid penalty to finish 17th. That’s what, making up 43 places. GOAT.  But in all seriousness the Daniel looked like he might get points, but sadly it didn’t happen. They looked to be racing better than their finishing results would indicate. 

For a bit there I was pulling for Piastri to make a charge at Mercedes and take them both to get an unblemished win. 

I don’t know that I’d say the race was exciting, but it was very interesting. nothing about this race was a foregone conclusion. Even George winning didn’t seem like a sure thing until after the first chicane on the final lap. 
 

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Oh. Ouch. That explains why the “race results” page F1 website went down. Yikes. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Now official. Lewis wins. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I wonder what the variance was. Like was it enough that without it Russell could not have made the 1 stop work? 
 

turns out it was 1.5kg was the delta being under weight. 
 

this also means Perez is back to being 7th in the driver’s championship. With the original finishing order Perez had fallen to 8th behind Russell. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Sergio Pérez's F1 future on agenda as Red Bull chiefs meet - ESPN

WWW.ESPN.CO.UK

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Sergio Pérez's future at Red Bull will be on the agenda as team principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko meet on Monday to discuss the team's faltering 2024 season.

 

Quote

Asked after the race if he was disappointed with Pérez's performance, Horner simply said: "I think based on his starting position, we didn't envisage finishing eighth from second on the grid."

Racing advisor Marko was more blunt about Pérez's performance.

"Sergio had the opportunity to take a good result from second place," he said. "Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Especially in the last stint, he completely collapsed."

....

He referenced the decision facing him on Sunday evening after the race at Spa-Francorchamps, even though it still appears to be an outcome he wants to avoid.

"Nobody wants to make that decision," Horner said. "Obviously you guys talk about it every day. But in the team, we want to get [Pérez] going, we want to understand, give him a car, you see glimpses, his race pace last weekend was strong.

"He had the fourth-best race pace in Budapest, but he had a difficult Saturday with a crash in qualy, he did a good job yesterday. To be five-hundredths off Charles [Leclerc] on a scrubbed set of tires, and put it on the front row was a tremendous effort. Today, his race faded.

"Of course, you take so many things into consideration, but it's been a great partnership between the two of them. Checo, he's a great team player, he's a massive team player, and that's why he was selected, that's why we took him at the end of 2020 to put alongside Max.

"He's won what, six, seven races for us, second in the world championship last year, goodness knows how many podiums. It's been the most successful combination we've ever had as a driver pairing. What's frustrating for everybody is Checo struggling, because nobody wants to see him struggle. Everybody wants to see him succeed.

"The team has been and is right behind him, everybody wants to see him succeed, because it hurts seeing him in the situation that is."

I really don't have any insight into the politics inside RBR.  But there is no doubt that they are a big deal.

But, with regards to moving on from Perez.

 

20 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I wonder what the variance was. Like was it enough that without it Russell could not have made the 1 stop work? 

Why Russell was disqualified and stripped of his win in Spa

WWW.FORMULA1.COM

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George Russell looked to have pulled off the most sensational of victories with a drive so good, his boss Toto Wolff called him the “Tyre Whisperer”. However, the stewards stripped him of the win after the race. Why did they do that? What rule was broken? And what was the reaction?

Quote

The team need time to investigate it all, but it is possible Russell’s one-stop strategy – he was the only frontrunner to not do two stops – could be the culprit.

“We don’t yet understand why the car was underweight following the race but will investigate thoroughly to find the explanation,” said trackside chief Andrew Shovlin.

“We expect that the loss of rubber from the one stop was a contributing factor – and we’ll work to understand how it happened.”

It’s not an exact science – but a set of four tyres can lose around one kilogram across a stint. Teams would take this into account, though, in pre-race calculations.

Equally, they would also know that as Spa is such a long lap, there is no slow down lap after the chequered flag. Instead the cars turn back into the pit lane at the exit of Turn 1.

This means that there is no opportunity for drivers to run offline and pick up marbles – shavings of rubber that fly off the tyres during the race.

Shovlin added: “We won’t be making any excuses though. It is clearly not good enough and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

I suspect they were being abnormally aggressive to try and turn things around.

The fact that it was weighed once and passed, and scrutineering took out more fuel and re-weighed suggests to me that there may have also been some borderline cheating going on behind the scenes.

[AbsolutSurgen]

ERROR: The request could not be satisfied

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Carlos Sainz will race for Williams in Formula 1 next year in what the team has described as a deal that goes into the championship's new rules era in 2026.

After learning he would leave his current Ferrari team at the start of this year with Lewis Hamilton being signed to race for the Scuderia alongside Charles Leclerc, Sainz has deliberated over his next move.

Williams had thought its chance of signing Sainz had disappeared with Alpine's surprise offer to the Spaniard around the time of his home race at Barcelona last month, but, after team boss James Vowles suggested over the Belgian GP last weekend that he was confident of securing Sainz's services after all, the deal has finally been done.

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

52 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Sergio Pérez's F1 future on agenda as Red Bull chiefs meet - ESPN

WWW.ESPN.CO.UK

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Sergio Pérez's future at Red Bull will be on the agenda as team principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko meet on Monday to discuss the team's faltering 2024 season.

 

I really don't have any insight into the politics inside RBR.  But there is no doubt that they are a big deal.

But, with regards to moving on from Perez.

 

Why Russell was disqualified and stripped of his win in Spa

WWW.FORMULA1.COM

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George Russell looked to have pulled off the most sensational of victories with a drive so good, his boss Toto Wolff called him the “Tyre Whisperer”. However, the stewards stripped him of the win after the race. Why did they do that? What rule was broken? And what was the...

I suspect they were being abnormally aggressive to try and turn things around.

The fact that it was weighed once and passed, and scrutineering took out more fuel and re-weighed suggests to me that there may have also been some borderline cheating going on behind the scenes.

Personally I felt the time to replace perez was several races ago. This barely seems like the same Red Bull that even through last year seemed so quick to fire or demote drivers. With Perez they have been so gun-shy to pull the trigger. You’d think Perez’s dad owned the team. 
 

yeah I saw/read the bit that there was a complaint or report that the car wasn’t fully drained post race. Which makes me wonder if they knowing cheated earlier or tried to cover up a mistake. I don’t know what the process looks like to drain a car of fuel, so I don’t know if it could have been a mistake. 
 

If a driver really can pick up enough marbles to make an underweight car legal after the checkered flag this, like the plank issue last season calls into question the level of enforcement of the rules. I can’t believe the tyres are even a factor post race. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

2 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

ERROR: The request could not be satisfied

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Im glad Sainz finally picked a team. Good sign for Williams. A definite upgrade for them. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

10 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

If a driver really can pick up enough marbles to make an underweight car legal after the checkered flag this, like the plank issue last season calls into question the level of enforcement of the rules. I can’t believe the tyres are even a factor post race. 

The marbles all came from the tires as part of the wear process.

The weight of the car includes the tires -- so if your tires weigh less, so does the car for the rule process.

My initial impression would be that tire wear couldn't possibly be 1.5kg of variance -- but I don't know enough to speak much about it.

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The marbles all came from the tires as part of the wear process.

The weight of the car includes the tires -- so if your tires weigh less, so does the car for the rule process.

My initial impression would be that tire wear couldn't possibly be 1.5kg of variance -- but I don't know enough to speak much about it.

 

yeah that does seem like a lot of marbles. Maybe it is my ignorance of the metric system. It is apparently 3.3lbs. So maybe if you get enough marbles on the tyres. 
 

I googled how much f1 tyres weigh and it came back with a set weighing 42kg(minus rims) and can lose as much as 3kg in wear during a long stint. So if true this makes me think the missing 1.5kg isn’t all tyre. Because if it is the team never should have allowed a 1 stop. It just wasn’t possible to stay within the weight requirement. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

ERROR: The request could not be satisfied

WWW.MOTORSPORT.COM

Quote

Sergio Perez will remain Max Verstappen's Red Bull Formula 1 team-mate after the summer break, Motorsport.com understands.

The Mexican's future was one of the topics discussed on Monday in a meeting of the team's management, including team principal Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko.

But while there has been no official outcome of its team meeting, Motorsport.com understands Horner has addressed the team's staff at its Milton Keynes factory saying Perez will be in the car when the 2024 season resumes with the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August.

Alongside team-mate Verstappen, who scored seven grand prix wins so far, Perez has found it much harder to wring performance out of Red Bull's RB20.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

RBR really doesn’t care. They don’t care if the team can win the WCC or if the team can help Max win his fourth WDC. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Mercedes explain George Russell Belgian Grand Prix disqualification

WWW.BBC.COM

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Mercedes say George Russell was disqualified from the Belgian Grand Prix because the car’s tyres, underfloor ‘plank’ and Russell himself lost more weight than expected.

Quote

Russell lost the win because his car was found to be 1.5kg underweight after the race, with team-mate Lewis Hamilton elevated to first in his place.

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said the car’s tyres, underfloor ‘plank’ and Russell himself all affected the car’s final weight.

Shovlin said: “The car can lose quite a lot of weight during the race. You get tyre wear, plank wear, brake wear, oil consumption.

“The driver themselves can lose a lot, and in this particular race George lost quite a bit of weight.

"George's car was the only one that had the problem, and it is because things like the tyre wear was much higher. It looks like we lost more material on the plank.

“We will collect all that data though, look at how we can refine our processes because, clearly, we do not want that to happen in the future.”

All Formula 1 drivers lose weight during a race - sometimes as much as 3kg - because of fluid loss from sweating. In Belgium, Russell lost more than he expected to.

In addition, the decision by team and driver to switch to a one-stop strategy, when they had been planning to do two, meant that his tyres had done around double the amount of laps expected, so had lost more rubber.

The underbody ‘plank’ is a device aimed at stopping the cars running too low, and they are measured by officials to ensure they do not wear too much.

Russell’s still complied with the rules but it had eroded more than expected.

 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I thought the car weight didn’t include the drivers, which is why they weigh the drivers after the race. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

12 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I thought the car weight didn’t include the drivers, which is why they weigh the drivers after the race. 

The weight does include the drivers.  That's why they weigh them.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Why weigh them separately then? Very weird.