2017 Formula 1 - The next generation

Good race. Hamilton showed why he’s leading the championship, Hartley put in a solid if perhaps not dazzling performance, and Verstappen was done out of a good place.

Did others gain a place by leaving the track?

I think that’s the key point, as most drivers seemed to leave the track at some point, though they weren’t overtaking at the time…

There were several passes at the same place by going off the track. The places gained just weren’t for the podium.
Lack of consistency, yet again.

Either way it’s a big pile of pants, and ruined the end of the race, which was quite good on the whole :-).

Fairy muff then…

Bottas, turn 1

Its the consistency thats the issue, as Oz says. Seen in isolation, max’s pass was cheeky at best (=illegal IMHO) but when every fecker’s at it then its beyond harsh to penalise that move at that stage of the race

God, i thought he was a bit bobbins, TBH: I was wishing him well, but he was light years off Kyvat’s pace

Sainz on the other hand - :metal::metal::metal::metal::metal::metal::metal::metal:

Thought it deserved a five second penalty at the point of viewing. Have not re-seen it, but why not?

OK, been to youtube now and I’m gonna change my mind a wee bit.

It’s beyond any doubt deserving of a penalty, I hadn’t appreciated just how much he cut the corner to get past.

While there were plenty of people going wide to keep position / avoid nerfing, nobody else AFAIK cut a corner like Max, though Oz says they did.

A huge shame for him as he drove so well, but he could probably have nabbed Kimi at the next corner in hindsight

Who?

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Without reviewing the entire race, I wouldn’t be able to say. I however was paraphrasing DC and the other comments after the race.

Shameful, I know :relaxed:

No shame in cribbing D.C. Just so long as it’s not Eddie Jordan

[quote=“Craig, post:727, topic:267”]

God, i thought he was a bit bobbins, TBH: I was wishing him well, but he was light years off Kyvat’s pace[/quote]

First race, didn’t crash, didn’t cause a crash, didn’t break the car, made up a few places, and turned in 8th fastest lap of the race.

Did better’n I would have. :wink:

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Some Kiwi perspective on Hartley in F1.

Here’s comething else you’ll enjoy then :slight_smile:

Not for the first time, I oot it dead wrong :sunglasses: I’ll pay much closer attention in Mexico

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Hadn’t seen that.
My first thought was “Mark Hughes is a fan” but without dissecting the rest of the race in the same way it’s tough tell whether that is the case, or if Hartley was genuinely performing in his first race close to the sort of level we’ve (almost) become used to seeing Verstappen at.

I’ll stick with ‘solid performance’ rather than rave about how good he was. For now… Mexico will certainly be interesting.

Mark Hughes analysis is very selective.

Whilst I like Brendon and want him to do well, he was lapping slower than Marcus Ericsson, who was driving a slower car for much of the race. In the end because of a good call to pit and then overtaking with fresh Ultrasofts on his car vs degrading softs on Marcus’ car, Brendon got ahead of Marcus.

He will need to build on that performance in Mexico and be much closer to the midfield if he wants to improve his chances of staying in F1.

I think Mark kind-of acknowledges that he’s extrapolating from sparse data, but makes some good, if selective, points, suggesting the potential is there.

Marcus is in his third season of F1 - Brendon has (effectively) had one race with little time to prepare. Mexico will still be early days, but the ‘new boy’ aspect will quickly be forgotten.

The (very) few times I noticed Brendan’s pace on the timing screen, he was lapping a good second slower than Kyvat despite being on the ‘better’ tyre, hence my original thought that he was off the pace. I didn’t pay attention to traffic / intervals though. Either way, Hughes’s data seemed to contradict what I saw,

Out of interest, Ian and everyone else: how many of the now-in-their-mid-20s driver who never quite made it (I always fancied Vergne) or never even got a crack (Hartley?) do you think would have been a top level driver? How many real-deals fall through the cracks in the woodwork ?

In F1 specifically? Many dozens. It’s not entirely a case of ‘right place, right time’ although there’s no doubt that helps, and having significant financial backing may buy a seat, but it certainly doesn’t buy success!
A combination of contacts, money, campaigning, and luck (and a pinch of driver skill :wink: )appear to be the major contributors. It’s getting ‘that’ opportunity which will make the difference - some people are just better at that than others.

More generally? 10s of thousands. There are some truly astonishing club racers around, and while club racing doesn’t necessarily translate on to the ‘big scene’, these drivers will never get the opportunity to show what they might be able to do.

Of course, that’s the same in many sports, and other areas of life.

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Hi Craig, I am not good at spotting the special drivers and so have no idea of anyone that was missed. One of the things that I want to do is to develop a process to identify these special drivers. But I need to get the basics sorted first! Ian

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