Motorsport Off Topic Thread

reef · 2025-01-13T16:04:44+0000

weta said:
Is it me or is Alpine run by a bunch of muppets, they seem to make endless mistakes when it comes to drivers?
Hopefully they'll give Doohan a proper opportunity to prove himself.

There were rumours that Doohan is only on a contract for 6-8 races. Either way it sounds like he's doomed before he's even started the season. Colapinto comes with quite a lot of sponsorship aswell.

He'll have to hit the ground running to stand any chance. Unfortunately for him, with limited testing it looks unlikely.

weta · 2025-01-13T16:11:01+0000

reef said:
There were rumours that Doohan is only on a contract for 6-8 races. Either way it sounds like he's doomed before he's even started the season. Colapinto comes with quite a lot of sponsorship aswell.

He'll have to hit the ground running to stand any chance. Unfortunately for him, with limited testing it looks unlikely.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out for the Australian, he'll need some standout performances to retain his seat, 6-8 races isn't really enough nowadays.

t2na · 2025-01-13T16:29:56+0000

reef said:
Unfortunately for him, with limited testing it looks unlikely.

For most drivers I agree but Doohan has been able to have a decent amount of testing. It's also why it was a little surprising that he finished second to last at the Abu Dhabi GP (only ahead of KMag who stopped for softs/fastest lap) and probably gave Alpine enough of a nudge to have a second thought.

Doohan did the young driver test at Abu Dhabi in 2022 and 2023, and also did Free Practice 1 at Abu Dhabi in both 2022 and 2023. He was also the Alpine driver for the TPC tests in 2024 at Abu Dhabi too. He had something like over 1500km testing at Abu Dhabi alone so he wasn't going into that race without any preparation.

The whole decision making with Alpine is just all over the shop, why did they rush to announce Doohan so quickly?

Mr Jack · 2025-01-14T10:54:45+0000

Interesting bit of data on the ages of the drivers from Racefans. I had not clocked that Sainz will be the 4th oldest driver on the grid, followed by Gasly in 5th. I still think of both as being pretty young drivers.

englishpremier · 2025-01-14T11:52:30+0000

I think people on this forum have stopped being concerned about age in the light of Alonso's comeback and button setting a world record reaction times. Previously they'd often be posts, on how xx is too old and reactions are slower etc..

GravyMonster · 2025-01-14T11:59:15+0000

Not so sure on that one. There's still question marks for me over age-related performance drop off of Alonso and Hamilton. You can't say that Alonso disproves that as his only benchmark is Stroll.

Does he still have the ability to consistently deliver decent race performances? Clearly, yes.
Does he have the ability to extract 100% over a qualifying lap, or fight for a tightly contested championship? Jury's still out.

Mr Jack · 2025-01-14T12:54:58+0000

englishpremier said:
I think people on this forum have stopped being concerned about age in the light of Alonso's comeback and button setting a world record reaction times. Previously they'd often be posts, on how xx is too old and reactions are slower etc..

Age will come for Alonso eventually. Arguably it's already taking the edge off. This is one of the reasons that Hamilton vs Leclerc is going to be so very interesting. What's striking about next year's grid is more youth than age. There will only be two drivers in their 30s, and two in their 40s, the rest are in their 20s or even younger with two teenagers joining the grid. The old guard are mostly gone.