F1 is the one tradition sport I’m interested in. I love it. I watch every practice session, quali session and race. I study stats upon stats upon stats. I simply can’t get enough of it.
Todays race was a real treat. So much action. We’ve had some quiet races lately but today was a banger.
Anyone else into it?
More of a casual viewer for F1 but I share that type of obsession with Moto GP, except I dropped the ball this past year cause they switched networks and now it’s on a channel I don’t get but I’m thinking of just going to their website and paying what i have to pay to catch up. 
I am. I started because of the Netflix show and now my wife and I are hooked.
Hell of a race today. Sucks for Max.
Can’t believe Lewis got fastest lap on hard tires with 32 laps on them, incredible.
That Netflix series was pretty good. Some of the banter between Cyril Abiteboul and Christian Horner was classic bants.
That Seb and Max crash was nuts. I think Seb is done, Charles is the future of Ferrari. Seb can’t handle the pressure anymore
F1 in the UK is Sky tv (which is expensive) or Channel 4 (which is free). Channel 4 has awful commentators so I have to pay £15 a race to get the good experience.
I’ve never been into Moto GP though. I loved British Superbikes, but never could get into Moto GP
I did trackside entertainment in Abu Dhabi a couple of years ago. I love F1 too
I want to hear what Gunter Steiner said to those two clowns he has driving for him lol
yoyoing for F1 drivers? That sounds amazing
I want him to fire the 2 clowns he has driving for him
I follow F1, but I rarely watch a race. I just can’t get excited about a series with so little side by side racing. If I wanted to watch amazing drivers not passing each other, I’d watch WRC. Doesn’t help that F1 is in the middle of a staggering run of dominance by a single manufacturer (and driver). There are far too few teams capable of getting to the podium in any given week.
The technology is amazing, the drivers are some of the best in the world, but the on-track product needs some work as far as entertainment in my book. That said, with Ecclestone finally (more or less) put out to pasture, perhaps we’ll see some improvement.
Isn’t electric F1 changing the sport radically? I guess “Formula E”?
Hard to believe, but before this year, drivers had to change to a new car halfway through each 45-minute race. This year each team will use a standardized 385-kilogram lithium-ion battery developed by Williams Advanced Engineering Ltd. With twice the energy storage, it offers twice the range—enough to cover the full distance of each course.
F1 and FE are different sports. Different cars, drivers, tracks ect. I can’t get behind FE, not into the sound as I like the drama of a screaming F1 engine and most of the drivers are F1 ‘rejects’.
It looks like the electric cars are going to be faster though… not sure how many people will continue to be down with gas if it’s not the fastest thing out there. I mean the point of racing cars is speed, yes?
We can’t tell what the future will bring. The Hill Climb at goodwood isn’t the best gauge of these things since it’s a friendly contest and F1 cars are worth a hell of a lot more than production prototypes are. Binning a £10m F1 car could do a lot more damage to an F1 team than VW binning a £1m prototype. That means drivers back off. Electric so far seems to be fantastic for low end acceleration but they suck at top end speeds. FE cars can’t hit 150mph but F1 cars are blasting past 200 on almost every straight on the calendar. There’s also a lot to be said for the increased weight that those batteries demand, even if you’re putting them low to the ground.
You can hear the top aero guys always saying they could design a car that’d go way faster if they were allowed to use all the technologies that were previously banned by F1. Double decker diffusers, fric suspension, traction control, even something as basic as flat foot shifting which you can get in a Prius. These showy production prototypes always feature things like this but it’s rare they make it to a race car because they get banned.
Adrian Newey, perhaps the greatest race car designer of all time, designed a car that would blitz everything ever made around any race track. It’s called the RBX and it’s only ever appeared in video games. Theoretically, it could go around most tracks in almost half the time of an F1 could with the correct driver. If F1 teams were allowed to make cars that go that fast, they’d be going that fast.
Porsche did something fun with their LMP1 Endurance series car where they took off everything that limited the car due to regulation restrictions and sent it around the Nurburgring. It beat any predictions of what an F1 car could do, but that’s because F1 cars are also bound by regulation restrictions.
What I’m saying is, it’s complicated. Traditionally, the Nurburgring lap record is the one to watch as that’s the one every manufacturer is going after.
Edit- Sorry for the wall of text, hope it doesn’t come off aggressive, just trying to drop a knowledge bomb lol
Ah yeah true, I forgot they already limit a bunch of stuff for kinda arbitrary reasons.
What’s lame is that they limit so much stuff and STILL don’t really have a competitive field. I mean, I realize that some limits are safety issues. But if you are going to say “Okay, our fastest in the world cars are going to be slower than they could be” shouldn’t you at least get some more passing and side by side racing out of it?
The big problem with all aero dependent motorsport is the wake of dirty air they leave behind. You can’t design cars based on what you think the dirty air will look like, you have to design them with clean air in mind. This means when the number 2 car is following the number 1 car, the number 2 car loses traction and cornering grip so it’s harder to get close and pass. Ecclestone spent forever trying to fix it and failed. Liberty think they’ve cracked it for 2021 but every outlet is predicting no change because they’re still aero dependent. You could fix it by removing all aero but then the cars get so slow and all the drivers go to do other series and people stop watching.
I hope the nay sayers to the Liberty plan are wrong. I hope it works out. We’ll see.
I still very much enjoy it though.
Big fan of F1. I think Europe really has the US outdone in the motorsports department IMO with F1 beaing near the top for me.
There’s an interesting debate though. Do people watch motorsports because the cars go super fast? Or to see good racing/driving? Obviously it’s some of both. But I’d argue that the racing/driving is the most important.
If that were true, WTCC and V8 Supercars would be the most watched series. Part of me thinks they should be