I had to leave to run a half marathon, so have absolutely no idea what happened past 90 minutes. I got up early to watch the bloody thing and it was kind of a mess the first hour.
Was demoralising how quickly Max powered off into the distance once they had the hard tyres on. They might not be totally out of reach in quali, but the race pace is staggering.
I remember back in the CART days how those cars went so fast around Texas speedway, that drivers were at risk of blacking out during the race. I think they were running in the 230's for MPH (today's cars top 220mph here)
Been a bit checked out of F1 this year. Watched highlights more than anything. Max and RB being miles ahead is a bummer. Plus with McLaren being rubbish it’s a bit gutting. On the plus side, AM being so good has been great to see. And I can cheer on Alex knowing he actually has a chance of points in more than 3/4 races.
F1 has been a fairly boring sport for a long time, which is why I try to keep directing others towards sportscar racing, which is so much more fun and interesting to watch. But F1 is THE racing series out there right now, that everyone knows about, so is what gets talked about. I still watch it for the spectacle, but from a pure racing standpoint, it's near the bottom in excitement
I mean, it’s been the biggest motorsport for about 40 years, but i do agree. I watch F1 as I have done so since 1998 (i am old) and obviously have other reasons in the past. The drama differs and atm it’s a low point sadly, and really it’s cause the rules resets always stretch the field out. plus, the cars are too big and heavy. Tried to dip my toe into Formula E and Indy recently and I enjoy them, but FE is too gimicky and I have absolutely no interest in the oval races of Indy.
Formula E is a total gimmick; if they want any respect, they need to race on dedicated race tracks. But even so, without any engine noise, there's simply no excitement. And IndyCar racing on road courses is top level stuff; them keeping everything so analog really helps keep the driver in the equation
I'm kind of OK with it. I prefer the sprint result not impacting the race grid, as it means that if someone has a brilliant (or terrible) qualifying, the sprint can't be used to normalise the result. It might also give some drivers a bit more freedom to take chances in the sprint, as they don't stand to lose out too badly, so long as they don't bin the car. I'm not so sure how I feel about the sprint quali though. We'll have already had full quali on Friday and then we have this baby quali session on Saturday morning. We've already seen who's fastest at that point... Would have liked them to do something a little bolder with the order for the sprint race. Reverse grid would be fun to see if some of the back teams could grimly cling on to the points whilst the faster cars are battling each other and trying to move forward. In theory, a sprint at Baku should be decent at least. Well, assuming it's not all red flag...
Yeah, the big issue is that the spring race feels totally pointless for anyone who qualifies below about 10th. Might as well not bother.
Quite looking forward to the race today; Baku is a track that can produce a lot of unknowns and random situations, and I love a super long main straight, so it should be a more interesting watch than previous races. The IndyCar race at Barber in Alabama should be good too; Grosjean is on pole, which he can hopefully turn into his first IndyCar race win.
This didn't age at all well on the F1 front. Extremely bland race in the end, aside of the great drive by Perez, there wasn't a lot of excitement, apart from some photographers wanting to become one with an Alpine. Apparently they shortened one of the DRS zones this time around, which may have been a mistake. Also, I think we got done over by it being one of those races where a one stop just about works and a two stop won't gain you back the time, so half the race the drivers were cruising to make the tyres last the distance. My recollection of Baku is that it's often very dull in the middle stint and then gets interesting at the end as people sprint for the finish.
Grosjean has been so good this season. What a move. indycar is consistently so great to watch lately.