Topic: Push Square Formula 1 thread - F1

@themightyant Yeah, Red Bull don't really hold back when it comes to mid-season driver changes. I feel like one happens every two or three years at this point.

Agree with you regarding Tsunoda. I don't really think he's set the world alight — albeit that's quite tough to do in that Alpha Tauri. It'll be interesting to see who gets the RB seat next.

Russell / Mercedes will be kicking themselves about Russell not making Q2 but Lewis on P1 was a monster lap and Max didn’t quite put the final lap together. Still expect him to lose out to Max on race pace unless Norris can considerably hold him up, he’s often quick out the blocks… but a bit more interesting potentially!

Perez in P9 also has to be seen as yet another failure. Piastri P4 and Zhou P5 put in a top laps, P13 for Danny Ric pretty strong in that car first time almost beating his team mate by a second in the current worst car on the grid. Exciting qualifying.

@themightyant Agree with everything. Max is in what's considered the poor side of the grid so lets hope he has a stinker of a start again to keep it interesting for as long as possible.

I haven't chipped in on Perez/Ric situation but you've both summed it up, If Perez doesn't improve soon and Danny has an impressive few races I wouldn't be surprised if RB does a summer break swap though.

I certainly feel like the last few races have been getting better and the teams are creeping up on RB. Hopefully the good racing we've seen behind Max will start to mingle with him more as the season goes on. Super happy McLaren's improvement seems to be continuing at Hungary when they thought it might not.
🤞for a Lewis/Norris 1/2 tomorrow, in either order.

”GET IN THERE LEWIS!”

Absolutely stonking lap from Lewis. I do think Max didn’t have his all strung together so I do reckon he may have found another few tenths. I’m sure the steam will be coming out of Jos’ ears tonight. The race tomorrow will be a different story.

I also thought the new tyre restricted qualifying format wasn’t too bad, however I think it’s difficult to judge only after one session. I’d like to maybe see them continue that for the next few races or potentially even for the rest of the season.

@BearsEatBeets agree other teams are creeping up on RBR but I’m a little worried this is because they know, barring a god tier event, they have both titles virtually wrapped up and are instead focusing on their 2024 car. 💀

While that may mean they don’t win every race this season it might mean they are off to the races again next year and neatly sidestepping both the wind time / CFD penalties for winning and breaking financial rules.

@themightyant Makes you wonder, doesn't it? You just know RBR are putting all their R&D into the 2024 car now. The work's been done already this season.

Great recovery drives from Perez and Russell so far. We’ll see where they end up.

Outside chance Russell could take Sainz and best Leclerc due to 5 sec penalty to end P6.

Perez pushing, can he get P2?

Can Lewis catch and pass Piastri for P4?

Mostly a story of recovery drives and a few records.

Perez held on there but great recovery drive for him P3.

Russell P6 a humongous 12 place recovery, driver of the day for me, didn’t get much mention on TV.

Danny Ric had a good recovery from dead last after the first lap and 2 early pit stops around 30secs behind to finish P13. Impressive all things considered.

Max made it 12 in a row for the first time for a constructor. He could now finish P3 in every race and even if Sergio won them all he’d still win the drivers title.

Second podium in a row for the first time for Lando. Great job at the end.

That’ll be another price increase for McLaren meaning my chances of owning them are now even slimmer than they were before this weekend.

Boring race at the front, as per usual. Few good moments and recoveries throughout but ultimately just the same old story. Can’t wait for the season to be over.

@KAIRU It's a bore-fest of the highest order now, sadly. Unfortunately, next season could be the same or shudder even worse.

I stopped watching a few races ago after thirty years of never missing a single one, and now just look for the result online, and may even stop bothering with that if it's the same next year.

@Gamer_Guy I think there is still some excitement and good racing. Sadly it’s just not up at the front.

But this weekend was a sobering one for anyone thinking they were catching Red Bull. It’s clear their car was set up more for the race than for qualification and yet Max only missed out on qualifying P1 by 0.003 of a second because he didn’t put a final lap together. Meanwhile in order to even compete Lewis had to get almost everything out of his car, it’s that hard to compete with them.

This was the first race in a while with no safety car and Red Bull won by the largest margin all season, over 33 seconds. Worse if you want proof they are sandbagging his fastest lap was 1’20.5 when at the time the fastest lap was over 1.6 seconds slower Russell at 1’22.1, by the race end the next closest was over a second behind (Hamilton). Worryingly it seems clear they could go faster if pushed.

Being so far ahead means they can focus primarily on next year so I don’t see much change till the next rules change in 2025 & 2026. Perhaps others will get close the gap but it hasn’t really shrunk as it seemed.

Reality is we have seen long periods of dominance before (Williams, McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes) and while they have tried to change the rules to help prevent this, but it just hasn’t worked as intended.

Full credit to Red Bull for making an impressively dominant machine and Max for an imperious and scarily consistent drive but it’s not exactly entertaining!

@Gamer_Guy Yeah, it's a shame really - especially considering there has been some decent racing this season, like @themightyant says, but it just isn't at the front. I genuinely see MV winning every remaining race this season unless reliability concerns start creeping into that Red Bull machine he's cruising in.

I also want to mention that that was a cracking drive from Perez. There were shades of Sakhir 2020 in some of those overtakes. That's more like the Checo we've seen in the past and I'm sure he'll be looking to, at the very least, win a few races in the last half of the season.

Glad to see the McLarens with some pace as well. Hopefully more of the same at Spa.

@KAIRU As @themightyant mentions, the chance of unreliability is much reduced because they don't even have to have the package running near the limits to win by this amount. It's truly depressing, and such an unlikeable team was my final straw - what's the point of me spending hours watching that. It's like playing a game you don't enjoy just because you liked previous games from that company. Not something I'm going to do.

@Gamer_Guy Aye, that is a fair point. It does suck the enjoyment out of it a little when you know who's going to win every race. I get that we've had dominance before but I don't think we've ever seen a car that has been this superior — at least recently.

Read this morning that all F1 teams are entering a team into the F1 Academy series. The cars will supposedly have their own liveries as well so I wonder if they'll maybe have a few different sponsors, as well as some decent coverage.

Not that I have massive interest in it anyway but if it has more battling at the front then maybe that'll change.

Verstappen is 6th at Spa due to a penalty for new parts on the car. We all know that left to his own devices, in that car, he'll win easily.

So, to give us all an actual race and help save F1, can one of the other drivers around him please take out this See You Next Tuesday somewhere in the first few corners? Pretty please, with sugar on top guys.

I doubt it will happen, but hope springs eternal.

@Gamer_Guy It would be nice if he'd go visit Barry R, wouldn't it? Wasn't it last year that he went from 14th to 1st in the space of a few laps? I'm expecting more of the same on Sunday. He'll be two seconds ahead after the first lap of the sprint tomorrow as well probably given the pace of that rocket ship he's driving. It really is like the rest of the grid are driving F2-spec cars. It's mental.

Also, what's the deal with Otmar Szafnauer and Alan Permane announcing they're leaving Alpine after this weekend? It seems quite unusual that they'd do it slap-bang in the middle of a race weekend. Something must've gone on behind the scenes.

I do think Alpine have been a bit unlucky as of late. The DNF's must be costing them a fair bit and with McLaren's upturn of form that's probably another kick in the teeth for them. They have a strong driver pairing so you wouldn't have thought things would have started to get out of control.

@KAIRU I deliberately haven't watched or read anything from the almost equally unlikeable Christian Horner this year....I can imagine he's more smug than Smuggy McSmug from the planet Smug. 😔

@Gamer_Guy Aye, there are quite a few individuals in that Red Bull team that I just cannot stand listening to or looking at - Whiney Spice being one of them.

On the topic of the Sprint — once it actually got going — that was genuinely pretty exciting! Until Verstappen got past Piastri, that is. Perez having another proper crap weekend. And that incident with Hamilton, in my opinion, was all that was: a racing incident. The five-second penalty Lewis got handed was a load of toss but it is what it is.

I swear, my enjoyment of this sport is dwindling day by day.

@KAIRU I can see the penalty both ways. I thought it was a racing incident and considering the conditions should have had a little more leeway.

But at the same time Lewis understeered right into him and Perez’s race was ruined from there.

Personally a racing incident but I can see why it was given. Tight call. He’s been a little unlucky this weekend, looked hot in qualifying before George leapfrogged him in the last corner in the panic to get over the line and get another fast lap. Then George went wide and didn’t yield, I think Lewis could have been on the front row with Max’s penalty.

I’m not usually a fan of the sprint but that was pretty good. I’m slightly amazed no one hit each other in the pitlane with half the field pitting on lap one.