Poll: Russian Grand Prix 2017, Sochi - Race 4/20

Rate the 2017 Russian Grand Prix


  • Total voters
    66
  • Poll closed .
Man of Honour
Joined
12 Jul 2005
Posts
20,531
Location
Aberlour, NE Scotland
Well that was yet another boring race and I have a bad feeling they are all going to be similar this year. Did anybody actually overtake anyone once the racing got under way? If they did I must have nodded off and missed it.

How much longer is Alonso going to put up with this nonsense? I can see him walking before long. This is way past embarrassing now and Sauber must be mad to opt for Honda engines next year.
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Jun 2012
Posts
5,293
Really happy for Bottas. He handled the last 10 laps beautifully - massive pressure from Vettel and with a flat spot no less.

I agree though - not a great race overall.

EJ is a bit of an idiot sometimes.

Kimi has to be the most boring interviewee in F1, completely at odds with his driving ability and team radio chat :p He always sounds like he has just smoked a joint.

Well deserved win for Bottas, hoping to see him on the podium a lot more. But would also like to see Kimi take a few wins too.

Im disappointed with the Red Bulls so far. Would have preferred to have 3 teams in contention, particularly with the exciting driving style of max and danny.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2010
Posts
3,051
Location
ireland
Even sky struggled to say anything exciting happened during the race when I was reading the summary on the app.

F1 needs changes fast, I used to love watching races but I dont even bother watching any races anymore as it's just terrible
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2005
Posts
8,644
Location
Southampton
Today's dull dishawater was mostly live streaming of audio from C4's site while I surfed the interweb on other tabs! Pleased for Bottas, Lewis has lost a bit more ground to Vettel, turning into another one of those uphill task years for him if he is going to win a fourth title this year.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
29 Jun 2004
Posts
21,520
Location
Oxfordshire
This season has been absolutely terrible so far. You'd have thought two teams battling it out would make it exciting, but the "racing" is just terrible. You know it's bad when even Sky fail to make it sound exciting, usually they can lie or exaggerate to make it sound like it was a good race but I think even they gave up on that today. "Tense" was about as much as they could muster
 
Caporegime
Joined
28 Jan 2003
Posts
39,875
Location
England
This season has been absolutely terrible so far. You'd have thought two teams battling it out would make it exciting, but the "racing" is just terrible. You know it's bad when even Sky fail to make it sound exciting, usually they can lie or exaggerate to make it sound like it was a good race but I think even they gave up on that today. "Tense" was about as much as they could muster

They did the whole, you have the feeling this is building to something great in the last few laps only for nothinngto actually happen.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Nov 2003
Posts
5,461
Just finished watching. Wow.. That was awful! (Despite the Sky commentary team trying to get excited about seemingly nothing constantly...) I don't remember a single overtake on track after the first few laps. We appear to have gone back to the old days where a car will literally speed up to the one in front and then get stuck there until a mistake or a pit stop.

It's worrying as I can't see them introducing new aero/engine/whatever rules to change it up until 2018/19 at the earliest. Renault need to up their game though. We need another team at the front to mix it up further. I would say Honda aswell but I'm not sure they will stick about that long..
 
Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,077
trouble is it sounded dumb.
international stage lets talk about how full the hotels are. Rather than the race or anything else.

What did you expect from Putin? He doesn't give a toss about F1, it's just a big PR stunt to him so he can turn up and show the world how great he and Russia are. He's a totally self-absorbed muppet. What other national premier bothers to show up at an F1 race, let alone talk to the drivers afterward and present the trophy?
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Nov 2003
Posts
5,461
Had to laugh at Teds notebook. McLaren Honda had privacy screens up in front of their garage I guess to stop other teams taking photos etc. Wishful thinking I guess? :D

Driver of the day has to be the Chopper pilot too. He was chucking it about like nobodies business. Lol!

I feel sorry for Palmer too. Must be costing Renault a fortune in parts and really isn't helping him show off his skills..
 
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Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,077
Driver of the day has to be the Chopper pilot too. He was chucking it about like nobodies business. Lol!

The nutcase was flying so low he was weaving between poles and towers and stuff!

Putin probably had his family held hostage and threatended to kill them unless he provided the best aerial coverage ever.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
11 Mar 2004
Posts
76,634
What on earth was massa doing? Great showing by bottas, what a start! Mercedes don't seem to have an issue starting anymore.
yep, even ham had a great start then got squeezed.
only 4 races but id this continues its looking great for vet, merc fighting it out between them and kimi is a number 2, mostly by his own speed.
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
33,188
I know I'm not the only one who has noticed this in 2017, but Race TV Direction is seriously starting to become a problem this year. I don't recall the exact instances, but I know they have missed a ton of overtakes and incidents in the previous 3 races and today it seriously made me wanna turn off my TV at times.

While I don't often find races boring, I have to admit today was seriously quite boring, with 0 overtakes after the first lap. You'd think that would mean that Race TV Direction would show a hundred replays of every little incident, but the exact opposite was the case.

Just to sum up a few of the things they missed:

  • 3 messages from the Stewards were shown about the Hülkenberg/Stroll incident. Apart from one onboard with Stroll - which didn't show what happened with Hülkenberg - there was no replay.

  • Two drivers were given penalties for the turn 2 incident. No replay of this was shown, even after they aired Magnussen's complaints.

  • After 40 laps of nothing happening besides pit stops, Massa get's a puncture that costs him P6. Nothing is shown by race direction, not even a replay or the pit stop. This to me was just ridiculous, as I could even see something happened just by looking at the standings on the left of the screen...

  • In the final lap, Massa holds up Vettel, which seals the race for Bottas. No replay is shown (while nothing happens for the rest of the lap).

Someone posted this as a thread on reddit. Thought I'd post it here rather than type out similar from me. The camerawork and direction was god awful in Australia, it was marginally less bad in China, Bahrain missed a bunch of stuff again and today, with so little actually happening the lack of replays or catching the few things that did happen is downright embarrassing.

I don't really agree with the last one, too late to show a replay as Bottas/Vettel are coming in for the final turns but, could have been shown after.

The only positive thing anyone liked was the sector times being added so they immediately took them away. I can actually understand a reason for doing it, a lot of people said they were watching the green/grey/purple bars rather than the cars and pretty easily seeing who was going to get pole. In that sense it was almost too much information. Though they got rid of that while Brawn is saying F1 should make teams share a huge amount of data so fans can watch everything live. Again fans said they loved that idea while I actually thought it would be terrible because races are already pretty predictable after the first few laps, having more data takes out the guesswork. If we know driver B is gaining on driver A, but we can see the exact tire temps of Driver B and know he's at 98% engine power while driver a has cool temps, is coasting along at 92% power and has a lot more fuel so can fend off any attack easily, well, that kind of wrecks any and all excitement.

Even worse is if driver B's team is second and they can see how much driver A is coasting rather than attempting to close the gap they'll see it's not worth it and back off to save the engine. Too much data being shared could make F1 races so transparent there is nearly no excitement left and it would definitely lead to teams knowing far too much and knowing when fighting to close a gap is worthless.

But regardless of that, the directors need to be replaced asap, because they are turning already boring races into downright unwatchable races at the moment.
 
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