Agreed.
So many of the races are processional. It's only exceptional events that make them good.
Yet there are so many great tracks available. Just not to f1 standards.
Yet without fixing this, regulations won' m much difference
Poll: Spanish Grand Prix 2018, Barcelona - Race 5/21
- Thread starter Shimmy
- Start date
Agreed.
So many of the races are processional. It's only exceptional events that make them good.
Yet there are so many great tracks available. Just not to f1 standards.
Yet without fixing this, regulations won' m much difference
Man of Honour
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I was quite shocked at how poorly the cars can follow. Have never seen it this bad. They couldn't even get into DRS range.
Soldato
Pretty dull, probably the worst race of the year? That said Aus wasn't great either. There was a bit more action than some previous Barcelona races I guess? Shame the rain never turned up to spice things up.
Man of Honour
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What ever happened to the 70-80% chance of rain?
Soldato
Grosjean is returning to his old form from his Lotus days.
Caporegime
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I mean there are several we've lost that are to F1 standards, Malaysia being one of them, not sure about Turkey and not sure that I'd want them to go there now for political reasons. Just a shame that new tracks have been mostly poorly designed and some tracks everyone seems desperate to hang on to despite actually sucking just because 'history' is apparently more meaningful than being a good track.
Bottas was in DRS zone for a while, after passing Magnussen finally (different tire strategy and much much faster both car and tire) he caught Vettel at 1.2 seconds on one lap(no traffic for Vettel). The problem was he spent 3-4 laps around about a second, definitely at times being within 1 second... but you just can't pass. The straight is just too short to get pass people on a similar tire strategy and car pace.
Once you know you can't overtake and once you know the only way you might gain places is tire life, going long or pitting early, doing one less pitstop, etc, then the better strategy is to immediately drop back 2-3 seconds to help tire life over the stint.
It's not that cars can't be within one second, it's that without being able to pass even if within 1 second, the hotter air effecting tire and engine life simply has no upside.
Alonso I believe stayed within DRS of a few cars for multiple laps and Ocon I think stayed in range of Alonso but after a while both backed off for the reasons above. Again we've seen all these guys stay within 1 second of cars in other tracks already and for lap after lap without much issue. Dirty air isn't somehow worse in Barcelona, it's just that without being able to actually make the move, there is no reason to take the downsides of being in that dirty air.
Again we've seen this in numerous races over the past decade, when you can't make the move you back off to help with car cooling.
Man of Honour
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How on earth has he only been given a 3 place grid penalty for the next race? The FIA aren't helping the situation.
Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
Poll added 
Caporegime
Not the best race but at least up on the snore fest in Australia. It looked like tyre strategy might add interest for a while but didn't really pan out. Pity the rain didn't come.
Great drives from Lewis, Alonso, and Leclerc. Max hit someone again but at least didn't wreck anyone's race this time, and outraced his oddly anonymous teammate. Vettel didn't have his best weekend but mostly lost to tyre wear or possibly Ferrari over-caution.
Great drives from Lewis, Alonso, and Leclerc. Max hit someone again but at least didn't wreck anyone's race this time, and outraced his oddly anonymous teammate. Vettel didn't have his best weekend but mostly lost to tyre wear or possibly Ferrari over-caution.
Soldato
1/10 should be 0/10 worst race so far, Pirelli Mercedes need to go or have two tyre manufactures
Man of Honour
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Pirelli Ferrari has a better ring to it since they are both Italian.
Caporegime
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Max 'hit' Stroll, that was 100% Stroll's fault, he both failed completely to accelerate as normal out of a corner, which even under VSC he should have been doing but the VSC was literally ending basically the same second Max accelerated, there was no reason not to accelerate as you the checking of times going to end. Stroll was slow out of the corner for VSC and insanely slow out of the corner considering VSC was ending. Max was ready to go, Stroll wasn't.
In racing if someone fails to accelerate when they should the accident is their fault. Failing to accelerate out of a corner is the same as braking suddenly mid-corner. It was entirely about Stroll failing to speed up both out of the corner and because the VSC was ending.
Soldato
Bridgestone Ferrari is better
Caporegime
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It's just so funny because if Pirelli kept the tires that overheated even more, then Ferrari wouldn't have even managed to do a good lap on the softs and they'd have had to three stop the race and been even slower and worse..... Ferrari who push their tires harder and hotter than Mercedes were apparently the most hamstrung by tires that don't overheat as badly on this track as multiple teams reported in winter testing in colder conditions.
Simple fact is, with the standard tires Vettel would have finished much worse than he did.
Soldato
ok but they have super hard and hard tyres for a reason right? or I'm i missing something?
Caporegime
Hmm. Maybe. I've not seen replays but watching at the time it seemed like clear cut clumsiness from Max.
Soldato
Pretty uninspiring. Vettel was disappointing, Hamilton capitalised. Nothing much else to say.
Soldato
Dull race, but before thinking about binning off Barcelona there are other tracks that need to be culled. Mainly Monaco. But they won't be, as more than every before, F1 under Liberty doesn't even hide the fact that it is entertainment for the TV / online viewers. People at the circuit can be appeased with some more free events during the weekend.
Why the hell was Grosjean doing, relying on the 'if I just push the throttle harder then I can get out of this' method. To think that he was a future possibility for Ferrari two years ago.
lol strategy from Ferrari. Anonymous driving from Ricciardo.
I'd say it was more about Stroll completely dozing. He seemed to have no clue that the VSC had ended.
Why the hell was Grosjean doing, relying on the 'if I just push the throttle harder then I can get out of this' method. To think that he was a future possibility for Ferrari two years ago.
lol strategy from Ferrari. Anonymous driving from Ricciardo.
I'd say it was more about Stroll completely dozing. He seemed to have no clue that the VSC had ended.
Caporegime
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DIfferent tires work on different tracks, Ferrari's softs, mediums and supersofts overheated more than Mercedes or RBR, so why wouldn't hards overheated well? They work tires harder, full stop. What you seem to be saying is, changing tires so three types don't overheat for most people is cheating, but picking poor choice tires so Ferrari (in theory) don't have overheating problems is the correct choice? Fact is the hards and superhards are going to be used almost nowhere because they are slow as hell tires and actually I'd bet that here the lack of abrasiveness would have worked very very poorly on the hard/superhard.
Let's try not to forget that Vettel on the mediums is at least saying they had to pit a second time because the rears were wearing out already while others pushed hard for over 2/3rds of the race on mediums and with only 16 laps to go and wanting to push hard, Vettel put on another set of mediums.
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