Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Pretty dull race to finish the season with. Not a fan of the track. DRS passes only. Max drove off. Bottas couldn’t follow and Lewis wasn’t really at the the races all weekend. Still not feeling well
The race for third in the championship was not that exciting either. It was pretty standard.
Albon done enough for that seat? Not sure. I’d love to see Perez get the drive. But I can’t see Max wanting that.
 
The Mercedes were hobbled by their MGU-K units, which had to be de-tuned to make race distance. Still, surprised Lewis could not catch Bottas.

I think Albon will stay with RBR despite Gasley's performance at AT. I do expect Kvyat will be out at AT, which does open a seat, but AT is meant to support the Red Bull Junior Driver Program so I don't see Perez getting that seat (also they don't need a Pay Driver).

That being said, who would get Kvyat's seat? I am guessing it would be Jüri Vips since he has been AT's Reserve Driver and he does have his FIA Super License and he will be doing another F1 test. However Vips is supposed to do F2 again in 2021 and this would be his first full year in F2. I do not think any other RBJDP drivers have their Super License so maybe RBR Reserve Driver Sébastien Buemi gets to come back for a year until Vips is ready in 2022?

Unfortunately, I think Perez is out for 2021 so maybe he will go to IRL or WEC.
 
Last edited:
And we have to have a DEFINITE winner. lol

And we have to have that BIG GAME TO DECIDE EVERYTHING.

A lot, too many, of our sports look to the NFL as a role model.

NASCAR's first race of the season, their self proclaimed "super bowl, The Daytona 500 is in February.

Then they have a season long race to the championship which is in November. They have a over contrived points system which then turns into a race by race "playoff" for the last 12 races.


INDYCAR is pretty much the same. Idiotic points given out and "the BIG ONE", the INDY 500 is in May about 3 months into the season and with only about 5 months left to race...

The NFL is looked up to because it's a hugely successful league, the largest in the world by revenue, dwarfing F1 by at least 5x.

The Indy 500 has been held in late May since 1911, predating Le Mans, the Monaco Grand Prix, and certainly the "modern" era of F1, which started in 1950.

It's an event unto itself, with a series built around it, and would likely endure even if the series were to end, so it's not the tail, it's the dog. As the WEC can attest, its winter calendar, with the LM24 as the finale, didn't work so well, and has been abandoned. I will give you that Daytona's purported stature, and place in the calendar is kind of stupid, but it doesn't carry outside the sport.
 
The Mercedes were hobbled by their MGU-K units, which had to be de-tuned to make race distance. Still, surprised Lewis could not catch Bottas.

I think Albon will stay with RBR despite Gasley's performance at AT. I do expect Kvyat will be out at AT, which does open a seat, but AT is meant to support the Red Bull Junior Driver Program so I don't see Perez getting that seat (also they don't need a Pay Driver).

That being said, who would get Kvyat's seat? I am guessing it would be Jüri Vips since he has been AT's Reserve Driver and he does have his FIA Super License and he will be doing another F1 test. However Vips is supposed to do F2 again in 2021 and this would be his first full year in F2. I do not think any other RBJDP drivers have their Super License so maybe RBR Reserve Driver Sébastien Buemi gets to come back for a year until Vips is ready in 2022?

Unfortunately, I think Perez is out for 2021 so maybe he will go to IRL or WEC.
I would not be surprised to find that the Mercedes team were driving under orders. Remember the 2nd place in the drivers championship was still up for grabs. Bottas could have lost it if he finished out of the points and max won
 
The NFL is looked up to because it's a hugely successful league, the largest in the world by revenue, dwarfing F1 by at least 5x.*

The Indy 500 has been held in late May since 1911, predating Le Mans, the Monaco Grand Prix, and certainly the "modern" era of F1, which started in 1950.

It's an event unto itself, with a series built around it, and would likely endure even if the series were to end, so it's not the tail, it's the dog. As the WEC can attest, its winter calendar, with the LM24 as the finale, didn't work so well, and has been abandoned. I will give you that Daytona's purported stature, and place in the calendar is kind of stupid, but it doesn't carry outside the sport.
Nobody is arguing that. But that doesn't mean you have to copy them!

I'm not even sure what your point is...?

My point is NASCAR, The MLS, Indycar are manufacturing, contriving drama, that usually happens on it's own without any outside influence. Thus ruining their perspective sports, IMHO. I hope that isn't what happens with F1.

Were you simply filling in the holes for people who already know about the Indy 500?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue

Also: The Dallas Cowboys, according to Forbes, are the most valuable sports franchise in the world with an estimated worth of $4.8 billion. That number is up 14 percent from 2017, tied for the largest jump amongst the top-50 most valuable teams. Much of the revenue for the NFL is generated by its TV contracts...

wow.
 
I would not be surprised to find that the Mercedes team were driving under orders. Remember the 2nd place in the drivers championship was still up for grabs. Bottas could have lost it if he finished out of the points and max won
In the recent hybrid era how many times did a Mercedes finish outside the points excluding DNF’s?
 
So...I've been working on something for the motorsport fans of the world.

1608151862885.png
 
Time to see how good VER has become , this is a great benchmark for him , Checo will get around 4-5 races before being judged , you could see Leclerc beating Vettel right off the bat in Bahrain in his second race , if Checo is going to be competitive he has a full winter to prepare and hopefully we can finally see Max being pushed again as in the Ric days , I also hope that Carlos can give Charles a run for his money !!!

Too bad we couldnt get Russel instead of Bottas , that wouldve been great to watch as well , but alas you cant always get what you want!

Hoping for a better 2021 season at the top , but overall i enjoyed this season immensely even as a Ferrai fan (CL16 for the win!!) as this was a welcome distraction from what was an abysmal 2020.
 
Perez in for Albon at Red Bull

While I am happy to see Perez land a seat, I am surprised that this happened as it runs contrary to RBR's strategy of promoting their own Junior Driver Program drivers.

The above being said, that this is a one-year contract for Perez makes me think that there are no JDP drivers ready to be promoted. Jüri Vips is the only real option, but he has only had a couple of races in F2 and I expect they want to see a full F2 season from him in 2021 before they consider putting him at RBR or AT.

I think they are also hoping that Perez can help Max pressure the AMG Mercedes to improve the chance for wins and podiums in 2021.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pachyderm
As an F1 fan ever since I was a kid (long time ago). I learned over the years this is a sport for engineers: find ways to work around or within a set of rules to produce the fastest car. Then prove it on track you can beat all others and win races/championships. This is also why you'd always have a team dominating for a while and even many of the driver championships being a race between the drivers of the same team.

As the sport grew over the years under Bernie's lead a few things happened:
- focus on overtaking and other minor sensation
- Tilke tracks (they suck, are boring and have no personality, moreover the races are tame)
- focus on more safety (and thus removal of major sensation) [good: they don't need to die either, but it] also causes far less risk of drivers having to quit due to getting stuck in grind based traps, catch netting, or even hitting a wall. Now they even start to electronically detect leaving the track and that bring us to the next one:
- penalty system that's simply ridiculous: let them race.
- aerodynamics of the cars that make following another car next to impossible, all because they banned the more efficient and less turbulence option that was in use. This as they wanted to slow down the cars!
- focus on general masses with putting the driver as the more important component, while he's not - the car is in a large part (sure driver needs to be *very* fit etc.).
- teams being overcome by drivers playing politics inside a team (Alonso is by far the worst offender here - I pity anybody working for Renault/Alpine next year)
- The press and the fans forgetting the cars of a team are by far not identical - not even comparable in many instances.
Esp. if one of the drivers is playing heavy political games in the team, the other driver is going to seem to suck in comparison.
Even if the cars are identical one driver might have it to his liking while the other driver might hate how it behaves. Resulting in the team's design choices affecting the driver's relative performance significantly.
- removal of refueling stops, leading to less options for differing strategies and making the other teams guess less about fuel load in the other cars. Forcing a tire stop due to the rules instead of due to the need to run the car faster that way.
- Switch to single vendor parts like the electronics (all ECUs are all from Mclearen), and worst of all tires with "fake" properties that would never have been chosen by tire makers competing to get the best tires out there. Yes: I'd rather have a single race with 6 michelin equipped cars only over one where they all have two use 2 different tire specs from a single vendor every boring race. Let them compete, learn and improve.
- A switch from free over the air broadcasts everywhere to a very limited, heavily ad supported free version only. Or a paid option where you can't even pick which commentators you get (the local ones: I hate them)
- The commentators on the free options I still can access (RTBF and German RTL) are decent on RTL but RTL is in 480p only where I live and they have very long commercial breaks in their coverage while te race goes on. The HD version on the RTBF has a commentator that can't shut up for a single second and they too have commercial breaks that all to often happen at the same time as they happen in Germany. I much prefer comments from e.g. Sky Sports but Sky isn't selling their product out here at all.

Having the engineers compete is great for all of us: technology being developed for our cars costs a lot of money, but it helps to let those with higher budgets think up new stuff and be creative about it (and reap the profit in race wins from it) before it become more mainstream. That knowledge is forever for all of us.

The 2022 rules are going to ruin it completely I'm afraid. And I might quit watching altogether as watching nearly identical cars go around the track is not what got me into F1, nor am I going to be a fan of a driver.
I did like the engineering that got into it, the active aspiration, the 6 wheeled ones, the side skirts, the turbos, ABS breaking, traction control, ... having one of those new things in there was much more fun.
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.