Motorsport Off Topic Thread

Hadjar was overheard talking to Kimi about it on a flight from Australia to China last week. From what was supposed to have been said, there won't be any replacement races.
 
Just mentioned on the news on the wireless that the Bahrain and Saudi races are going to be cancelled with an official announcement expected 'soon'.

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To the surprise of no one. I am however surprised they haven’t used a backup track, at least to have one race.

Apparently Imola, Portimao and Istanbul all said they could step up, however F1 and the FIA were worried they couldn't stump up the extortionate hosting fees in time and were also worried about poor ticket sales in the time period.

I bet any one of them could have filled the stands in all honesty with the right priced tickets.
 
Basically we could organize replacement races but we wont earn aload of money for it so we cant be bothered. Just shows you where the focus is. Now we have a gaping hole in schedule
 
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Basically we could organize replacement races but we wont earn aload of money for it so we cant be bothered. Just shows you where the focus is. Now we have a gaping hole in schedule

Could be worse. 1967 - 1st race South Africa on 2nd January, 2nd race Monaco on 7th May. 1968 - South Africa 1st Jan, Spain 12th May.
 
So, the impending Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cancellations is probably bad news for Mercedes and potentially good news for everyone else. With the mid-season engine changes, it gives me hope we might see some tighter racing.

Had Bahrain and Saudi Arabia stayed in the calendar, Mercedes could have an unassailable lead by the time we get to 1 June. Here's hoping anyway...
 
So, the impending Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cancellations is probably bad news for Mercedes and potentially good news for everyone else. With the mid-season engine changes, it gives me hope we might see some tighter racing.

Had Bahrain and Saudi Arabia stayed in the calendar, Mercedes could have an unassailable lead by the time we get to 1 June. Here's hoping anyway...

I think people are too hung up on these engine changes. The merc is faster on every single corner type and the straight, some of which by a sizeable margin. Not a chance it’s just the engine and that’s assuming they have to change the engine at all and won’t just pass the test. We’re also assuming no other engine will lose performance. It’s like when people would get hung up on one aspect of the RB, only for nothing to change.

If reports are to be believed, Ferrari are still working on their own engine with a higher compression ratio than ‘allowed’.
 
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Looks like they didn't want host at a backup track because they won't secure a sizeable fee.

I think their argument is that they haven't time to arrange, market it and sell tickets, etc - they would have got a decent fee from Portugal or Imola (albeit probably not as much as Saudi or Bahrain).
 
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Not particularly sad to lose either track, but a shame to get a sizeable hole in the calendar so soon after racing is back. I imagine the teams on the back foot are going to benefit most from the break giving them time to work on improvements without having to rush stuff to races. FOM clearly deciding the money wasn't good enough to arrange replacement races. Pity, I'd have liked seeing how these cars go at one of those old European tracks.
 
Doesn't make much difference to F1, which still gets a comfortable 22 races for the season, but it's more of a hit to F2 and F3 who are losing 2 of 14 and 2 of 11 races respectively. I wonder whether they'll bring them in as support races to some of the F1 races that are still going ahead?
 
Yeah a shame we couldn't get at least one race organised to replace.

Merc would have likely breezed both the April grand prix events adding to a sizeable lead but this will prevent that.
Agree though that it's not something teams will claw back easily even with the June changes. Merc have a great car. The Ferrari's warm the tyres up quicker so are quicker in the early phases of each stint, but the Mercs win out over the course of a grand prix being less hard on the tyres.
 
Don't recall reading about BMW's April Fools last year, but this M3 Touring 24H looks absolute bad ass :cool:

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Shame NLS1 was cancelled this weekend
 
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