The struggle I have, is that I have always walked my own path. I have walked away from shitty jobs, moved from one side of the world to t’other, made sacrifices, and wound up as a 62 year old with little talent, wearing earings and piercings, and still thinking that I have an “edge” . I get it.
This guy has preternatural talent. No denying the facts. Fine.
He has piercings. Fine.
The rules state that you can’t wear them while racing (exactly the same rules that I raced under). Fine.
But then he does this…
“Finger Boy” has stepped up. He has become the sensible voice, in a sea of ego.
The most successful “boy” in F1 is becoming an over influential caricature.
"Max Verstappen criticised his Red Bull team’s reliability struggles after qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix, saying that they were harming their hopes of defending his world championship.
The Dutchman lost out on pole position at the Florida city’s inaugural race after an error on his final qualifying lap - which he blamed on his lack of knowledge of the car on this track caused by a messy Friday on which he managed very few laps."
So… He has the same opportunity as everyone else (Friday notwithstanding), but his error is his team’s fault?
A thread of F1 fans and not a single comment after yesterday’s race, has a malaise set in? I for one dislike the Americanisation of the sport and did wonder later why I got up earlier this morning to watch the race.
is Merc on the turn with their latest upgrades and with the valuable data they would have gathered over the weekend?
I watched it live but didn’t post anything in case some people were watching on catchup (although the BBC are still sulking and put the result on every website page available)
I watched the pit walk shite before the race and it was a fucking joke, was every yank told to shout “america is the greatest country on earth” at Brundle
What made it hilarious was that he must have had my dad in his earpiece as he got pretty much every famous persons name wrong (not that I recognised them either)
Oh yeah and the race, quite dull and boring bar a few easy overtakes but on the upside it’s only contracted for 10 years
Brundle’s grid walk was funny, talks to someone, asks what their name is, says you’re not who I thought you were, walks off.
Race might’ve been more exciting if the safety car had come out more but the “mistake makers” turned out to not create many mistakes once practice was done. Felt a bit sorry for Mick and Seb after their collision.
The American fans were just embarrassing acting like deranged attention whores whenever a camera was near.
Good drive from Verstappen, both the initial overtake and the later defence of his position were handled very well.
Perez was a bit unlucky with his engine issue, he might have given Sainz a few problems especially with the staright line speed of the RBR.
Merc seem to have cemented their position as third ranked team providing no threat to the top two
Some decent racing further down the field, the new track seemed OK, it provided overtaking opportunities and was a technical test for the drivers.
As to the hoopla around the race, it seems that Netflix has done more for F1 in the US in the last couple of years than F1 has done in the last 50.
Thank God Norris binned it otherwise it’d have been drab beyond belief
Barcelona will probably be equally dull, as usual, but it’ll be interesting to see what Ferrari bring for the car - the RB is serioulsy quick in a straight line
I’m gonna go out on a limb here, but despite the race being a bit of a yawn-fest I kinda liked the American theatre & pizazz attached to the event. Don’t see how it can be bad for f1 in general?
It was noticeable how well the f1 drivers adapted to the new track so much better than the lesser categories, W Series in particular. However you look at it the new regs have made for much more exciting & closer racing, and I for one am looking forward to the rest of the season.
I didn’t have any issues with the racing. Some unforced errors, a little stupidity, a safety car, and lot of “relatively” close racing, all makes for a reasonable couple of hours entertainment.
Those “fans” tho !?!
Were they recruited from the local padded cell hotel ?
Too much Flakka ?
I don’t know if this is true for everybody but a discussion with a reasonably senior engineer from one of the teams left me a bit amazed by the lack of a broad understanding.
Back when I was a Toyota there was a project to calculate a deflected shape of bodywork and test it.
It looked good to the dimmer members of the engineering group who didn’t seem to be able to understand that extrapolating data from that shape to other ride heights and speeds was invalid, stupid in fact.
This engineer in question said it was difficult to “give up” the extra downforce given by floor flex so he hadn’t understood at all either. I was shocked and explained why.
Too much steady state calculation/ testing being taken as completely valid for a dynamic situation.
IME you can get away with using aeroelasticity to back off a front flap to move aero balance back to make the car less pointy in fast corners and also on rear wings to reduce drag but to increase downforce just gives more load when not needed, less when needed and makes the car unstable.
I would have thought it would have been blindingly obvious to an engineer used to working with racing cars, but apparently not
He reminds me of the kid at my school who had a massive sulk when spotted wearing cherry red shoes and was told to wear the proper school uniform like everybody else.
.
