#and charles whos been with ferrari for years started off as an intern whos loved by the team | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stvrmhondss · 9 months

Text

it was breaking down (it was falling in love) snippet

max/charles 3.1k words

this is from a wip that is currently in development. we're in 2025, charles and max are fighting each other for the championship for the first time since 2022. max, as always, in red bull. charles, by the grace of god, still in ferrari. it gets complicated.

The party after the last race before summer break isn’t a tradition officially, but somehow there’s always been one; a simple text in the drivers’ group chat letting them know that xyz and I are getting drinks later, you’re all welcome to join and when the rest of them show up to the address provided, there’s somehow always an entire house rented and seemingly bottomless drinks. It’s one of those mysteries of F1 that Charles thinks he’ll never crack.

For the past few years the summer break kickoff has been an opportunity for him to celebrate, not in a let’s raise a glass to a good first half of the season way, but more of a thank god that’s over kind of way. It had always consisted of systematically knocking back glass after glass until he’d been drunk enough to let whatever girlfriend he’d had at the time drag him onto the dancefloor, if he’d had one at the time.

(He always did.)

(Except this year)

For the first time in his F1 career, Charles is leading the championship at the start of the summer break and instead of forcing every driver and his own mechanics to have a drink with him, he’s making himself as small and invisible as possible in a corner, right beside a potted palm tree that straddles the line between looking extremely well cared for and extremely fake. He’s been nursing the same cocktail for almost an hour and has avoided every driver, staffer or intern who wanted to drink to his championship charge. He’s not in the mood. He’s even managed to chase away Alex and Lily to the bar, if just temporarily, his teammate vowing to get him another round to pull him out his funk.

Instead he’s been letting his gaze roam over the open floor, taking note of the people there and pretending he isn’t looking for Max. It’s going semi-well. Charles hadn’t seen him when he’d entered the house with Alex and he hasn’t spotted him since. He’s also been too much of a coward to just grab someone, another driver or a stray Red Bull intern, and ask them whether they’d seen him, whether he’s even here at all. Maybe, it’s for the best – he wouldn’t know what to say to Max anyway. Have you tried a simple ‘I’m sorry’? The voice in his head sounds suspiciously like Pierre and it has him take a long sip from his glass.

The horrible thing is, Pierre is right. He should really apologise, but it’s been so long since their fight in Monaco and the silence between them has gotten so loud, he wouldn’t know where to start. He’s also not entirely sure Max wouldn’t just walk away from him if he were to approach him now. Hence his hiding in the corner.

After emptying his glass, he looks around the room again. He spots Lewis on the dance floor, chatting up a model he knows for a fact is too young for him. A little ways off to the side he sees Lando hanging off of his Max’s shoulders and Charles tries valiantly to ignore the ugly twisting of his insides. It reminds him of Imola, just a few short months ago – how Max had told him to let go for once and had stood vigil as he’d gotten drunk and celebrated his first win on Italian soil since 2019, how Max had let him cling to him when he hadn’t been able to stand upright on his own anymore and then had called them both a taxi and had gotten him home. Funny how he’d managed to ruin it all with a single sentence.

Charles is pulled out of his thoughts by wild waving in his periphery and when he turns his head he spots Pierre over by a window with his new girlfriend, whose name Charles had forgotten the minute he’d been introduced to her, obviously trying to get his attention. Confused, he shakes his head and mouths a What? in his direction, to which Pierre starts pointing in the direction of the door in response, an insistent look on his face. Charles turns his head just in time to see Daniel Ricciardo enter the party and he’d wonder about seeing him here when he’d given up his AlphaTauri seat last year in favour of a go in Indycar, if following right behind him wasn’t—

Max.

Charles watches as they’re stopped by multiple people on their way in – there’s plenty of hugs for Daniel and claps on the shoulder for Max – and make a beeline for the impromptu bar. Daniel sees him about halfway there and Charles fights and consequently loses against the urge to shrink in on himself when the instinctive smile he throws at everyone turns into a scowl at the sight of him. So, Max had told him then. Charles doesn’t know what else he’d expected.

(Not this. He hadn’t even known they were still close.)

Max doesn’t look at him once.

He should stop staring, knows it very well won’t help his case in any way, but his eyes stay glued to Max’s form, taking him in – blonde hair, blue eyes, standard white t-shirt and jeans. All viewed from afar, as has become standard over the past few weeks. Charles wants to kick himself. He wonders what would happen if he were to throw aside his pride and cowardice and go over to him now, if he asked to speak to him, to explain. Would Max even spare him a glance? Would he frown and grumble and tell him to fuck off? Would Daniel’s scowl become more severe and would he tell him to get lost?

He doesn’t plan on finding out.

So he watches. Watches as Daniel leans exaggeratedly over the bar to order some drinks and then back to whisper something in Max’s ear that has him laugh in that full-body way of his – head thrown back and hands clasped together, then bending forward, eyes crinkled at the corners and nose scrunched up. Full of delight, full of life. When Max seems to have calmed down a little he moves closer to Daniel, a mischievous look on his face, no doubt saying something just as cheeky in return, and Charles sees Daniel break out in one of his honking laughs before throwing an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in. Just for a moment, Max rests his head on his shoulder and Daniel turns his face into his hair. Just for a moment. Blink and you miss it.

And Charles? Well, Charles wants to die.

Alex and his tray full of drinks are a godsend, Lily clearing the way for him as they come back to join him in his miserable corner, and Charles grabs a glass and knocks it back before Alex even has a chance to put the tray down. When he puts the glass back down, Lily lets out a hoot, slapping the table, while Alex scoffs at him goodnaturedly.

“Were you raised in a barn, mate?” He’s chuckling, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “Where I’m from, you wait until everyone has a glass and then you drink like your life depends on it.” Next to him, Lily cackles, pressing the next drink into his hand and then grabbing one for herself.

“Sorry,” he’s not, really, only tangentially in the way that Alex has been a good sport ever since his fight with Max, letting him be miserable and not making him explain why, and Charles feels bad for making him put up with his bad mood when it’s his first season in the team and he should be having fun instead of babysitting him. But then again, misery and Ferrari go hand in hand and Alex should probably learn to live and work with that, if he wants to survive in the team.

Charles’ fingers itch for another drink.

“Oh, who cares?” Lily raises her glass and waits for them to mirror her. “Let’s fucking party!”

Right before he knocks back his drink, Charles spares another glance over to Max and Daniel, just to see, just because he’s feeling curious and maybe a little masochistic, pressing a finger into an open wound. What he sees makes him down half of the contents of his tall glass all at once – Max is fully pressed into Daniel’s side, Daniel’s arm around his waist, fingers on that tantalising dip of it that Charles had found himself staring at more than once, and Daniel’s once again leaning in, whispering something into his ear that makes him smile. Charles wants to throw up.

He loses track of how much he drinks after that.

One, two, ten hours later, he looks up from his fourth – twelfth? – glass and sees Max making his way over to and up a stairwell that he vaguely remembers leads to a balcony. He’s alone, Daniel nowhere in sight. Without a second thought, he excuses himself from the table and stumbles over to follow him before Alex and Lily can protest. The way up the stairs is perilous and he has to cling to the bannister to hold himself upright, hoping he’s not making so much noise he gives himself away.

When he finally reaches the balcony, he finds it miraculously empty, except for Max, standing at the railing and looking out into the night. A few lanterns bathe him in soft, warm light and Charles’ heart squeezes painfully in his chest. He’s so beautiful, always has been in his own way, the charmingly gangly, awkward teenage limbs turned strong and broad, handsome. Growing up alongside Max had been complicated and a little painful – at 15 years old, how do you know you hate the guy you’re competing against because of his dirty tricks and raw talent and not because his eyes are as blue as a summer sky? How do you know your palms are sweaty because of the adrenaline of a good fight on track and not because he smirked at you right before he put his helmet on? They’re questions Charles has never quite managed to answer and is keenly reminded of now at 27 years old, standing on a balcony somewhere in Belgium with his heart beating out of his chest at the mere sight of Max. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have a clear answer.

His drunken lean to the side has him knock over a decorative cat figurine with a loud clang, startling Max in front of him like a deer hearing a sudden noise in what it had assumed to be an empty clearing. He whips around and when he sees Charles trying to right himself, an unhappy scowl settles on his pretty lips.

“What do you want, Charles?”

I want to go back in time and smack myself for what I said to you. I want you to smile at me like you used to, like you smiled at Daniel and I don’t know what that means. I want us to be okay. I want to win and I want you by my side when I do. I want us to be alright.

“Nothing, I just—,” he’s pretty sure he’s slurring, which seems to not be helping his case as Max’s expression doesn’t lighten. In fact, it does the opposite, making Charles trail off, falling quiet as Max looks at him expectantly. He doesn’t remember what he’d originally wanted to say, so instead he throws out the first thing that comes to his mind after Your eyes have the colour of a storm I once saw while out at sea.

“You haven’t talked to me since Monaco,” it’s meant as an explanation, but once the words leave his mouth, they sound like an accusation. Max’s frown deepens, his eyebrows furrowing and the corners of his mouth pulling further down. A little more and he’d be pouting. It’s one of the things that’s never changed about him, Charles ponders idly. That stormy, unhappy frown. The only difference between a 27 year old and a 13 year old Max Verstappen frowning at him is a missing, involuntary flush to his cheeks and the lack of acne. The other boys had always made fun of him for it back then – how easily he’d flush, how quickly he’d get irritated. Charles had never minded either; he’d thought it made Max seem more alive.

Now, Max looks alive in a primordial sense, the way the earth itself is – burning, blazing, vengeful.

“Well, I wonder why,” his voice is venomous, face twisted in an ugly sneer, “I wonder why I would not be speaking to you after Monaco.”

Charles feels helpless, like a fumbling child. “No, no, that’s not what I meant—“ But he doesn’t know how to actually express what he wants to say, his mind foggy and slow. He wants to curse Alex for bringing that entire tray of drinks to the table.

He continues to stutter, without saying anything of worth, and he can see Max is losing what little patience he’d had to begin with and – yes, there’s that angry, red flush that’s been missing in his cheeks before.

“Do you actually have anything to say to me,” Max’s shoulders are heaving, his breath heavy, “or do you just want to waste my time and stand here, staring at me like a drunk idiot?”

It’s meant to cut him and it does; Charles flinches from the impact, sure that if he were to raise his fingers to his cheek, they’d come away bloody. The thing is, he has so much to say, so many things that have been long overdue, that he should’ve said months, maybe years ago, but now that he has Max in front of him, in all his furious beauty, his brain can’t put the words in order, can’t form the sentences he needs to say to salvage whatever he had, could’ve had, with Max. The alcohol isn’t helping either.

In his drunken stupidity, he says the worst thing he could possibly say in this moment.

“I saw you with Daniel, earlier.”

It’s horrible, it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever said. It does nothing to convey what he actually wants Max to hear, instead he manages to make it sound like an accusation again when all he’d wanted to say was I saw you with Daniel earlier and you looked happy, happier than you have over the past few weeks and I wanted to kick myself for being the source of your sadness, when I only want to see you smile and laugh and be joyful.

Max’s face is wrathful, his breath quickening and Charles isn’t quite sure whether he’s just imagining the thunder he hears in the distance.

“You can’t be fucking serious,” his voice is tight, controlled and shaking with white hot rage. Charles resists the urge to flinch. He deserves Max’s anger and he’ll take it. He’ll take anything Max is still willing to give him.

“I haven’t heard from you in weeks, and yet you complain about me not talking to you when you haven't even tried to speak with me. I thought you needed time to cool off, so I gave you space, of course, but you keep insisting on this childish grudge over nothing. You ignore me, give me the cold shoulder, and say to the press that we’re not friends when I did nothing you wouldn’t have done if you’d been in my place. Mind you, I didn’t even say anything to the media when I damn well should’ve, but of course, you still find something to complain about.”

Max is panting and the toll this entire conversation is having on him is evident in the pinched corners of his mouth, however, he doesn’t seem to be done just yet.

“And now, for the first time in what feels like ages, I’m having a fun night and you decide to pester me and complain about me spending it with Daniel, when it’s none of your business? When you and I, as you’ve insisted, are nothing?”

Charles reels back from the impact as if Max had physically slapped him across the face. You and I are nothing. He sees champagne showers in Australia. You and I are nothing. Breaking into the Circuit de Monaco at night. You and I are nothing. Max scaring everyone into packing their phones away when Charles had been drunk and without inhibitions in Imola. You and I are nothing. Dancing in the streets of Miami at night.

You and I are nothing.

It’s terrible.

He deserves it.

Max prepares to breeze past him back inside and Charles instinctively grabs onto his arm to make him stay, to make him not leave him. His movements are slow and his grip as weak as a kitten, Max could shake him off easily, but he doesn’t. He glares at him, a fire raging in his eyes, and opens his mouth to undoubtedly berate him again. Deliriously, Charles remembers that the hottest flames burn blue.

Before he can think better of it, his lips fit themselves over Max’s, quelling any upcoming rant. Any rational or coherent thought dies out in his mind and when he tries to think of any reasons why this is the worst thing he could do, he gets as far as Max’s lips are soft before he loses the thread and closes his eyes.

Horribly, Charles feels a startled hum against his lips and then Max is leaning in, letting him carefully cradle his face with his free hand. He’s even allowed to deepen the kiss, sneaking his tongue past Max’s lips and sliding his hand in his hair, and for an exhilarating moment he has Max in the palms of his hands, warm and lovely, and he wants to keep him like this for as long as he’s allowed to.

When Max recoils from his touch, it’s with enough force to send him stumbling backwards. The look on his face is devastating when Charles opens his eyes again. There’s a storm brewing in his eyes – anger, disappointment, fear, pain. Charles feels monstrous. His mouth opens and closes several times, but no words make it out alive.

To Charles’ horror, there’s tears pooling at the corners of Max’s eyes. Regret is a bitter, nasty thing to swallow and he knows his face must be doing something complicated and sad. He finds his voice in the most inopportune of moments.

“Max, I—,” he sounds scratchy and choked up, even to his own ears, and Max doesn’t let him get any further, storming past him through the open balcony doors and back inside, knocking their shoulders together in his desperation to get away from him and sending Charles careening into a potted plant. As he picks his way out of the leaves, he hears a door slam inside.

Charles looks up at the stars and wishes that just for once, he wouldn’t ruin everything he loves.

#lestappen #lestappen fic #charles leclerc #max verstappen #f1 #f1 fic #f1 rpf #my stuff #my fic #hi i'm not dead #just chugging along and never actually finishing a fic #still love me pleek

206 notes · View notes

singsweetmelodies · 8 months

Text

i won't be able to watch the race today but i'm already dreading the result, SO i decided to make this table of predictions to prepare myself for every eventuality*

*that i could think of

i'm only predicting the wins (+ more or less how they came about to be) otherwise i'm going to be here all morning and be late for my event. i might still be late for my event, but... here goes!

SINGAPORE GP 2023: POSSIBLE WIN SCENARIOS

feat. (completely unbiased of course) commentary by katie singsweetmelodies

carlos and george take each other out at the start. charles leclerc wins the singapore gp 2023! 🎆🥰❤️

if this one comes true, i will never shut up about it and will literally be dancing on the rooftops. DREAM SCENARIO BABY!!! (yeah, sorry georgie, i am SO willing to sacrifice you for a charles win.) we want that win #6... we want it SO MUCH 🥹

george russell passes sainz on the start and proceeds to win the singapore gp 2023! 🩵

if this one comes true, i will still be very happy (and not just because it means sainz DIDN'T win.) i love george. a second win for him would be very nice indeed <3

carlos sainz keeps it together and somehow wins the singapore gp 2023 😐

if he actually does this, i may - through gritted teeth - finally utter the words "fine, carlos sainz is a good driver." (i will however also mutter something under my breath about how 2023 is the year of ugly people, and charles is too beautiful and too good to have his name on the list with the likes of the fucking red bull duo anyway. good RIDDANCE that it's sainz who's the only non-RB winner in such a hideous year.)

we have a repeat of singapore 2017, with the top 4 all taking each other out & lewis hamilton proceeding to win the singapore gp 2023! 🎆💜

if this one comes true, my ferrari heart will be in bits BUT i will simultaneously be fucking ecstatic for lewis. i WILL yell "get in there lewis" an inordinate amount of times, and celebrate that 104 with everything in me.

lando somehow wins from p4 (🤔) and gets his first win in spectacular but chaotic style. lando norris wins the singapore gp 2023! 🧡

if this one comes true, i will be... baffled, first and foremost. but then also pretty happy. i have no idea how this one could reasonably come true, but it would be low-key iconic if it did, tbh.

the chaos at turn 1 is even more chaotic than in singapore 2017, which means that fernando alonso from (wherever he qualified, i forgot lmao oops) wins the singapore gp 2023! 🥶

if this happens, i... will celebrate that it's not a red bull? i'll celebrate it for exactly 14 seconds and then turn off the tv. i'm not an alonso fan. to me, he's barely a step up from another rbr win. yes, it IS a step up. but like, the step is 1cm high.

*dutch national anthem starts playing in the background* AND MAX VERSTAPPEN WINS THE SINGAPORE GP 2023! the eleventh fucking race in a row, hoo-fucking-ray.

if this one comes true, i will shake my fist at the fia and insist that it's all their fucking fault for not GIVING MAX A FUCKING GRID DROP, like, you know, the PRECEDENT SAYS THEY SHOULD HAVE. he should have gotten six places at least, in my opinion. nine would've been apt, too. but nooooooo. the great white hope is above all precedent and penalty, apparently. (anyway yeah if verstappen wins i will have no celebrations whatsoever. except maybe a tiny, petty internal one that at least it wasn't sainz. but yeah, nah. if verstappen wins, i won't be very surprised, but i will NOT be amused.)

in a move that shocks genuinely EVERYONE, sergio pérez wins the singapore gp 2023! 🇲🇽

i have no idea how this one could reasonably come to pass, tbh. maybe verstappen's engine dies??? and the ferraris and mercs.... either take each other out, or are WAY slower than yesterday. maybe the red bull was sandbagging???? very drastically??? nah. this one won't happen, let's just be real. but if it somehow does, my enthusiasm will be one fraction of a percentage higher than it would've been for a verstappen win. that is all.

liam lawson wins the singapore gp 2023! 😱👏

yeah no this isn't going to happen - i just wanted to say it. liam lawson, you are my HERO for knocking max verstappen out in q2. you will be p1 of my heart no matter who wins this weekend <333 (except if it's charles or lewis. or pierre, somehow. because, you know. priorities. xD)

RIGHT, well. now at least i feel like i'm mentally prepared to open my f1 app tomorrow evening and see pretty much any result. 👍. let's do this thing

#singapore gp 2023 #race prediction #this isn't REALLY a race prediction; tbf. it's more just me psyching myself up/mentally preparing for what i might see #when i open the f1 app this evening #obviously these reactions are incredibly biased 🤣🤣 and i'm sure i'm going to have some VERY offended anons in my inbox when i get back #but *i* thought this was rather funny xD #and hey! at least i'll have a prepared notes app reaction for (pretty much) any race result #🗒🫡

9 notes · View notes

leqclerc · 2 years

Note

i literally don't know how Charles does it. Like getting pole week after week and then things going wrong but not because of him. Like that has to suck but he is still trying and trying and never saying a bad a thing about his team. I so admire his attitude and strength at this point. And like ngl I never understood how ferrari is so bad at strategy (this more monaco and not this race) like even before charles they were bad at it and you'd think that they'd somehow get better😔 anyways, ferrari better get their act together or it's on sight for me...

I agree 100%!

The heartbreaking thing is Charles was willing to accept his past DNFs, even if they hurt, even if they robbed of him of potential wins or podiums, because the team kept promising him that his time will come. They worked on this car for the better part of last year, they put pretty much all their eggs in the F1-75 basket and openly said they aim to return and fight for the title. Charles isn’t someone who overhypes himself or his chances — on the contrary, he usually is very good at managing expectations (both his own and also gently reminding fans to do the same, especially when the result is an outlier, like, say, the Baku pole last year.) So when he starts talking about winning — and winning not only individual races but the championship — that’s when you know he seriously, genuinely believes they’re in a place to do that.

So, they promised him to have their shit together by 2022, kept reiterating that he’ll have a fighting chance and though it started off well, they hit a snag around Miami or so and haven’t really recovered. After winter testing they were hailed as the team that brought one of the most reliable cars; they tested their PU and were happy with its performance and reliability. Only…that was apparently only applicable to PU1. Ever since they upgraded the engine to the PU2 spec it’s been giving them issues. Alfa has similarly been plagued by engine issues all season so far, and we saw how the Ferrari powered cars started dropping like flies in Baku. Between their strategic fumbles, bizarre public statements (B*notto especially) and now reliability issues they seemingly have no explanation for (they said they’d look over the PU thoroughly after Barcelona; they proceeded to fit some of the elements from PU2 in the car for this race and we got an engine blowout) it’s not looking good.

And it must be frustrating for Charles when he is constantly reminded of his past mistakes by media of all kinds (it was obviously the worst in Monaco but also in the run up to Baku we kept hearing about his past castle section crash and one of the F1TV presenters even joked about how the circuit has all these corners “Charles Leclerc can crash into”) and posts and Tweets are being made about his “poor pole to win conversion rate” without the necessary context. He’s done a near flawless job this year, he’s driving pretty much the best we’ve ever seen him drive. He’s doing everything necessary, and when he doesn’t, he owns up to his mistakes and does everything in his power to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So for the team to have the ball in their court and essentially throw away deserved wins for a variety of reasons… it’s bad. And they got lucky this year! Everything lined up for them! They can’t really afford to abandon the effort this year, shrug their shoulders and say “well, there’s always next year!” because next year you’re looking at Merc potentially being back in the game for real. If they can’t even go toe to toe with Red Bull, then what chance do they have against RB and one or both of the Mercs? So yeah. Disappointment and anger. 😠

Charles loves this team, and like you said, always tries to see the best in them and highlight the good. So when even he is getting frustrated with them…That’s when you know they’ve fucked up. He’s incredibly nice and kind and gracious so I’m sure they’ll discuss everything internally and he’ll come back with his head held high ready to give it his all again come Montreal. The question is, will the team be able to do the same?

#replies #anonymous #discussions and predictions #.longpost #seriously so disappointed right now #it’s hard to go into races with no trust and instead a lingering feeling of dread especially when charles is leading #because you’ve been kind of conditioned to think it’s too good to be true and something can and probably will go wrong 🙃🔪

34 notes · View notes

thatsnotcanonpodcasts · 4 years

Text

Robin Hood, Bohemia Interactive, ESRB & Mathematically perfect steak

Welcome back. We've been expecting you.

We have a bit of a longer episode than usual this week because we just had so many interesting people to talk about, including a liar who looks like Hugh Jackman, and one of the most prolific Astronomers to ever live.

But, first up, the Nerds discuss the rumoured Disney Robin Hood remake. In live action. With photorealistic CGI. This sounds terrifying. This is a terrible idea. This will haunt your nightmares forever.

One of Professor's favourite game studios has had a great year, and Professor wants to talk about their future. Bohemia Interactive has some great projects in the works that are well worth checking out, so we've got a summary for you.

Dev-i-Boy has brought us the ESRB's disappointing attempt to resolve the Lootbox debate. He and Professor agree that this is a poor response. Maybe one day there will be a solution, but not today.

Dev-i has also found the algorithm for creating the perfect steak. It involves dozens of factors and complicated equations. But don't pull this paper out next time you go to a barbecue, or everyone will go home before you start cooking.

As usual, we bring you the games of the week. Professor and his girlfriend are finding out why they shouldn't have kids in Think of the Children. DJ and Professor are still playing Generation Zero. Professor is better at surviving the robot apocalypse than he is at raising kids. Dev-i is playing VR chat again. We wish him luck in his quest to become an anime girl.

Live action Robin Hood movie starring animals

-https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/robin-hood-remake-works-at-disney-blindspotting-director-1289702

Bohemia Interactive sales reaching 68 million USD

-https://www.bohemia.net/blog/bohemia-interactive-sales-reaching-68-milion-usd-in-2019

ESRB’s new measures to combat loot boxes

- https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/13/21219192/esrb-new-label-loot-boxes-gacha-game

The mathematically perfect steak

-https://www.sciencenews.org/article/math-equations-cooking-perfect-steak-beef-meat-simulation

- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepjp%2Fs13360-020-00311-0

Games Played

Professor

– Think of the Children - https://store.steampowered.com/app/573600/Think_of_the_Children/

Rating: 4.5/5

– Generation Zero - https://store.steampowered.com/app/704270/Generation_Zero/

Rating: 4.5/5

Dev-i-Boy

– VRChat - https://store.steampowered.com/app/438100/VRChat/

Rating: 4/5

Other topics discussed

Cats movie butthole cut coming soon

- https://www.polygon.com/2020/4/6/21207710/cats-release-the-butthole-cut

ARMA 3 (open-world, realism-based, military tactical shooter video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_3

DayZ (DayZ is a survival video game developed and published by Bohemia Interactive.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DayZ_(video_game)

ARMA 3 APEX : Old man

- https://arma3.com/news/arma-3-apex-old-man-is-now-available

ARMA 3 developers arrested in Greece

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_3#Espionage_arrests

ARMA 3 banned in Iran

- https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/9/19/3357600/arma-3-banned-in-iran

Vigor (Free-to-play online action game by Bohemia Interactive for the Xbox One.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigor_(video_game)

Minecraft Hunger Games

- https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/technology-blog/minecraft-hunger-games-exists-just-amazing-imagining-165117705.html

Star Wars Battlefront II (action shooter video game based on the Star Wars film franchise.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Battlefront_II_(2017_video_game)

Heston Blumenthal's perfect steak

- https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/heston-blumenthals-perfect-steak

Perfect steak journal article

- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.10787.pdf

Flory-Huggin’s theory (Flory–Huggins solution theory is a lattice model of the thermodynamics of polymer solutions which takes account of the great dissimilarity in molecular sizes in adapting the usual expression for the entropy of mixing.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flory%E2%80%93Huggins_solution_theory

Incredible dads save kids compilation

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RIhUUt88ZM

Oculus Quest (Oculus Quest is our first all-in-one gaming system for virtual reality.)

- https://www.oculus.com/quest/?locale=en_US

Ugandan Knuckles (Ugandan Knuckles is the nickname given to a depiction of the character Knuckles from the Sonic franchise created by YouTuber Gregzilla, which is often used as an avatar by players in the multiplayer game VRChat who repeat phrases like "do you know the way" and memes associated with the country Uganda, most notably the film Who Killed Captain Alex? and Zulul.)

- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ugandan-knuckles

Simp (Simp, often interpreted as an acronym for Sucker Idolizing Mediocre Pussy or a portmanteau of "sissy" and "pimp," is a slang expression used to ridicule males who are perceived as being overly invested in a woman and acting submissive to that person.)

- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/simp

Amiga 500 (The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end Commodore Amiga 16/32-bitmultimedia home/personal computer.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500

Conway’s Game Of Life (The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematicianJohn Horton Conway in 1970.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life

- https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life

The Avengers (British espionage television programme created in 1961.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(TV_series)

The Avengers (1998 American action spy film adaptation of the British television series of the same name directed by Jeremiah Chechik.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(1998_film)

Brown note (a infrasonic frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note

Ted Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist, anarchist, and former mathematics professor.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

Ken Kesey (American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kesey

That’s not COVID (TNC podcast)

- https://thatsnotcanon.com/thatsnotcovidpodcast

Shout Outs

11 April 2020 – John Conway, a renowned mathematician who created one of the first computer games passes away - https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/us/john-conway-death-obit-trnd/index.html

John Conway, English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory,number theory,combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. A Google search for "Conway's Game of Life" prompts the search engine to automatically start playing the game. It is now commonly used as an introductory exercise in computing classes. Conway used his love of games to connect with children, spending time at math camps across the country. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 82 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

12 April 2020 – Sir Stirling Moss, F1 driver known as one of the best behind the wheel, passes away - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/stirling-moss-f1-driver-known-as-one-of-the-best-behind-the-wheel-dies-at-90/2020/04/12/91f03b9c-7cd3-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html

Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, a British Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship". Mr. Moss was known in his sport as “Mr. Motor Racing.” Long after his retirement, he was also considered a British national treasure — a dashing gentleman racer who was chivalrous and always sportsmanlike to his competitors despite the cut and thrust of motor racing. He was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the queen, in 2000. Mr. Moss’s sportsmanship was perhaps most evident in 1958, when he could have won the world championship after taking the Portuguese Grand Prix in Porto in his British-made Vanwall racecar. His archrival, Mike Hawthorn, finished second, giving him a key six points, which would have clinched the world title. But Hawthorn, a fellow Englishman, was threatened with disqualification for pushing his stalled Ferrari back onto the track after a spin. His disqualification would have put Mr. Moss in the driver’s seat for the world title. But Mr. Moss told race officials that Hawthorn had pushed his Ferrari only on an off-the-track area and should not be disqualified. His intervention swayed the officials, who awarded Hawthorn second place, eventually enabling him to win the F1 world championship by a single point over Mr. Moss. He passed away from a long illness at the age of 90 in Mayfair, London.

12 April 2020 – Tim Brooke Taylor, best known for his work on The Goodies and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue passes away - https://www.etonline.com/tim-brooke-taylor-the-goodies-star-dies-at-79-of-coronavirus-complications-144654

Timothy Julian Brooke-Taylor, English comedian and actor. He was best known as a member of The Goodies, starring in the television series throughout the 1970s and picking up international recognition in Australia and New Zealand. He also appeared as an actor in various sitcoms, and was a panellist on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue for almost 50 years. In 2008, Brooke-Taylor was heard in the Doctor Who audio story The Zygon Who Fell To Earth, made by Big Finish Productions. Paul McGann played the Eighth Doctor, and Brooke-Taylor played the part of Mims, a Zygon taking the shape of a human. In 2011, Brooke-Taylor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) during Queen Elizabeth II's Birthday Honors, for his services to entertainment. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 79 in the United Kingdom.

13 April 2020 – Rick May, who voiced Star Fox 64 and Team Fortress II passed away - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8216159/Rick-voiced-Star-Fox-64-Team-Fortress-II-characters-dies-79-coronavirus.html

Rick May, American voice actor and theatrical performer, director, and teacher from Seattle, Washington. He began voice acting in video games in the late 1990s, including roles as Peppy Hare and Andross in Star Fox 64, Peppy Hare might not be one of gaming's most famous characters, but May’s line in 1997's Star Fox 64 where he played Fox McCloud’s mentor is one of the most iconic lines in gaming history - so much so that even Google got in on the beloved meme. Go ahead, Google "Do a barrel roll". His other various campaign characters, include Genghis Khan, in Age of Empires II'; and Soldier in Team Fortress 2. He passed away from complications from COVID-19 at the age of 79 in Seattle,Washington.

14 April 2020 – Pip Baker, one half of the Dr Who writing duo known as Pip and Jane Baker passes away - http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2020/04/pip-baker-died-2020.html

Pip Baker, along with his wife and writing partner Jane, was one of the best-known writers from the mid 80's era of Doctor Who, writing eleven episodes for the series. Together they created the Rani, a female Time Lord scientist who was brought to life so vividly by the late Kate O'Mara, as well a creating the companion Mel. The Bakers scripted or contributed to four serials for the programme in the 1980s: The Mark of the Rani, The Trial of a Time Lord, Parts 9–12 and 14 (also known as Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe); and Time and the Rani. They have also written novelisations of these stories, as well as a Make Your Own Adventure With Doctor Who (Find Your Fate With Doctor Who in the United States) gamebook titled Race Against Time. Pip and Jane's audio story The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind featured the return of the Rani and was released in 2000. He passed away from complication from a fall at the age of 91 in the United Kingdom.

Remembrances

5 April 2020 – Honor Blackman - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Blackman

English actress, widely known for the roles of Cathy Gale in The Avengers, Bond girlPussy Galore in Goldfinger, Julia Daggett in Shalako and Hera in Jason and the Argonauts. She is also known for her role as Laura West in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand. At 38, she was one of the oldest actresses to play a Bond girl, and was five years older than the star Sean Connery. Albert R. Broccoli said Blackman was cast opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond films based on her success in the British television series The Avengers. He knew that most American audiences would not have seen the programme. Broccoli said, "The Brits would love her because they knew her as Mrs. Gale, the Yanks would like her because she was so good, it was a perfect combination." She died from natural causes at the age of 94 in Lewes, Sussex.

13 April 1938 – Grey Owl - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Owl

Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, commonly known as Grey Owl, was a British-born conservationist, fur trapper, and writer who pretended to be a First Nations person. While he achieved fame as a conservationist during his life, after his death the revelation that he was not Indigenous, along with other autobiographical fabrications, negatively affected his reputation. Belaney rose to prominence as a notable author and lecturer, primarily on environmental issues. In working with the National Parks Branch, Grey Owl became the subject of many films, and was established as the "'caretaker of park animals' at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba" in 1931. Together with his numerous articles, books, films and lectures, his views on conservation reached audiences beyond the borders of Canada. His conservation views largely focused on humans' negative impact on nature through their commodification of nature's resources for profits, and a need for humans to develop a respect for the natural world. Recognition of Belaney has included biographies, a historic plaque at his birthplace, and a 1999 biopic about his life by the director Richard Attenborough. He died from pneumonia at the age of 49 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

13 April 1941 – Annie Jump Cannon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon

American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures and spectral types. She was nearly deaf throughout her career. She was a suffragist and a member of the National Women's Party. Cannon manually classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else, with a total of around 350,000 stars. She discovered 300 variable stars, five novas, and one spectroscopic binary, creating a bibliography that included about 200,000 references. She discovered her first star in 1898, though she was not able to confirm it until 1905. When she first started cataloging the stars, she was able to classify 1,000 stars in three years, but by 1913, she was able to work on 200 stars an hour. Cannon could classify three stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns and, if using a magnifying glass, could classify stars down to the ninth magnitude, around 16 times fainter than the human eye can see. Her work was also highly accurate. In 1925 she became the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Oxford University. In 1935, she created the Annie J. Cannon Prize for "the woman of any country, whose contributions to the science of astronomy are the most distinguished." She died from congestive heart failure at the age of 77 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

13 April 1944 - Cécile Chaminade - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cile_Chaminade

French composer and pianist. In 1913, she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur, a first for a female composer. Ambroise Thomas said, "This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman." In 1908 she visited the United States, where she was accorded a hearty welcome. Her compositions were tremendous favorites with the American public, and such pieces as the Scarf Dance or the Ballet No. 1 were to be found in the music libraries of many lovers of piano music of the time. She composed a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, the ballet music to Callirhoé and other orchestral works. Her songs, such as The Silver Ring and Ritournelle, were also great favorites. In London in November 1901, she made gramophone recordings of seven of her compositions for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company; these are among the most sought-after piano recordings by collectors, though they have been reissued on compact disk. Chaminade was relegated to obscurity for the second half of the 20th century, her piano pieces and songs mostly forgotten, with the Flute Concertino in D major, Op. 107, composed for the 1902 Paris Conservatoire Concours, her most popular piece today. Chaminade's music has been described as tuneful, highly accessible and mildly chromatic, and it may be regarded as bearing the typical characteristics of late-Romantic French music. She died at the age of 86 in Monte Carlo.

Famous Birthdays

13 April 1570 – Guy Fawkes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

Also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for mainland Europe, where he fought for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years' War against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries. He travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England. Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords; Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder which they stockpiled there. The authorities were prompted by an anonymous letter to search Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and they found Fawkes guarding the explosives. He was questioned and tortured over the next few days and confessed to wanting to blow up the House of Lords. He became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Night since 5 November 1605, when his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by fireworks. He was born in Stonegate, York.

13 April 1892 - Robert Watson-Watt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson-Watt

Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt, Scottish pioneer of radio direction finding and radar technology. Watt began his career in radio physics with a job at the Met Office, where he began looking for accurate ways to track thunderstorms using the radio signals given off by lightning. This led to the 1920s development of a system later known as huff-duff. Huff-duff allowed operators to determine the location of an enemy radio in seconds and it became a major part of the network of systems that helped defeat the U-boat threat. It is estimated that huff-duff was used in about a quarter of all attacks on U-boats. In 1935 Watt was asked to comment on reports of a German death ray based on radio. Watt and his assistant Arnold Frederic Wilkins quickly determined it was not possible, but Wilkins suggested using radio signals to locate aircraft at long distances. This led to a February 1935 demonstration where signals from a BBC short-wave transmitter were bounced off a Handley Page Heyford aircraft. Watt led the development of a practical version of this device, which entered service in 1938 under the code name Chain Home. Watson-Watt justified his choice of a non-optimal frequency for his radar, with his often-quoted “cult of the imperfect,” which he stated as “Give them the third-best to go on with; the second-best comes too late, [and] the best never comes.” He was born in Brechin,Angus.

13 April 1899 - Alfred Mosher Butts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Mosher_Butts

American architect, famous for inventing the board gameScrabble in 1938. In the early 1930s after working as an architect but now unemployed, Butts set out to design a board game. He studied existing games and found that games fell into three categories: number games such as dice and bingo; move games such as chess and checkers; and word games such as anagrams. Butts decided to create a game that utilized both chance and skill by combining elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles, a popular pastime of the 1920s. Players would draw seven lettered tiles from a pool and then attempt to form words from their seven letters. A key to the game was Butts' analysis of the English language. Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter's frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. He included only four "S" tiles so that the ability to make words plural would not make the game too easy. Butts initially called the game "Lexiko", but later changed the name to "Criss Cross Words", after considering "It", and began to look for a buyer. The game makers he originally contacted rejected the idea, but Butts was tenacious. Eventually, he sold the rights to entrepreneur and game-lover James Brunot, who made a few minor adjustments to the design and renamed the game "Scrabble." To memorialize Butts's importance to the invention of the game, there is a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street in Jackson Heights that is stylized using letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript. He was born in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Events of Interest

13 April 1953 – Project MKUltra begins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra), also called the CIA mind control program, is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, some of which were illegal. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control. The project's intentionally obscure CIA cryptonym is made up of the digraph MK, meaning that the project was sponsored by the agency's Technical Services Staff, followed by the word Ultra which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of World War II intelligence. Other related cryptonyms include Project MKNAOMI and Project MKDELTA. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories. Code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke. The program engaged in many illegal activities, including the use of U.S. and Canadian citizens as its unwitting test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions. Techniques included the covert administration of high doses ofpsychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, electroshocks, hypnosis,sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of torture. In December 2018, declassified documents included a letter to an unidentified doctor discussing work on six dogs made to run, turn and stop via remote control and brain implants.

13 April 1970 - Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/apollo-13-oxygen-tank-explodes

On April 13, 1970, disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive. Mission commander Lovell reported to mission control on Earth: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water had been disrupted. The landing mission was aborted, and the astronauts and controllers on Earth scrambled to come up with emergency procedures. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon, circled it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth. The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its air supply and providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13‘s course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, with the world anxiously watching, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

13 April 2017 - The US drops the largest ever non-nuclear weapon on Nangarhar Province,Afghanistan.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_MOAB

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Nangarhar_airstrike

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (commonly known as "Mother of All Bombs") is a large-yield bomb, developed for the United States military by Albert L. Weimorts, Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory. At the time of development, it was said to be the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. The basic principle resembles that of the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter, which was used to clear heavily wooded areas in the Vietnam War. Pentagon officials suggested MOAB might be used as an anti-personnel weapon, as part of the "shock and awe" strategy integral to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The MOAB is not a penetrator weapon and is primarily intended for soft to medium surface targets covering extended areas and targets in a contained environment such as a deep canyon or within a cave system. The MOAB was first dropped in combat in the 13 April 2017 airstrike against an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIS) tunnel complex in Achin District, Afghanistan. Casualty figures were initially reported as 36 but increased over the following days as reconnaissance units investigated the site. On 18 April 2017, one senior Afghan security official said the bomb killed 96 Islamic State militants, among them 13 major commanders. Stars and Stripes reported that General Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said that since the strike, the offensive operation in the area was resumed. An Afghan officer also said that trees 100 metres from the impact point had remained standing.

Facebook

- Page - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/

- Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/440485136816406/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamated

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrS

iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094

RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/nerds_amalgamated/

General Enquiries

Email - [email protected]

Rate & Review us on Podchaser - https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/nerds-amalgamated-623195

3 notes · View notes

crystalracing · 6 years

Text

My thoughts on the F1 Hybrid era 2014-present and a timeline of being a Kimi Raikkonen fanatic since 2002

My love-hate relationship with Formula 1 is very much at the Hate spectrum and it no longer feels fun. Those who read my social media accounts could easily mistake me for having the worldview of a 47 year old man, when in fact I’m 3 years short of 30. I see new school fans who only remember Raikkonen’s struggles and care little for his McLaren years, where even then misfortune lurked around the corner. There was one difference back then, however: Kimi was the new kid on the block. On any given Sunday, even after an average qualifying performance, the talismanic Finn could dazzle fans the world over. The vivid sound of a cacophonous V10 would scream in a global audience’s ears and a baby faced Finnish boy wonder from an impoverished Espoo countryside upbringing would leave a smile on millions of faces. F1 was in the midst of what seemed a never-ending Michael Schumacher/Ferrari led domination. Despite near-misses in 2003 and 2005, where the Finn took nine wins and two runners-up for the Woking-based squad in between numerous boozy nights and the beginning of a marriage to Jenni Dahlman, later doomed by the pair’s lack of commitment, bounty of love affairs and lack of mutual interests, the fans sang his praises. Fellow drivers such as Ralf Schumacher were left bemused by Kimi’s taciturn, carefree and single-minded demeanour, but the corporate sponsors found a sweet spot for the Finn: his apolitical attitude melded well to act as a figure of universal popularity- the shyness of a geek, the lackadaisical social standing of a class clown and the heart of a world class athlete. And I just couldn’t help but champion him.

The current hybrid engine formula for F1 is a mess: huge wings creating ridiculous amounts of dirty air, fat tyres, three DRS zones on a regular basis at most circuits, the fuel-saving and Pirelli’s SEVEN compounds of tyres- two of which will be not used meaningfully at all this year (Hard & SuperHard). In 2009, the teams followed a new formula with skinny wings, slick tyres and a banning of bodywork elements on the sidepods and places you wouldn’t expect an aerodynamic piece to hang off. Max Mosley also proposed a budget cap, which encourged Litespeed (Lotus/Caterham), Manor (Virgin/Marussia) and Campos (HRT) to join in 2010. Of course, in true F1 fashion, the FIA failed to follow up on such proposals to enforce budget caps and it’s only now with Liberty Media that an argument to enact a plan for cost cutting has been brought back. Sadly, the three 2010 teams were all gone by the end of 2012, 2014 and 2016 respectively. However, drivers moaned about the lack of driving challenge enforced and the subsequent bigger cars (followed by 2019 regs) begs the question:

Does F1 have an identity anymore? Is it willing to stand up for a set of sporting and technical values? Because Jean Todt et al at FIA seem sidetracked and manipulated by the corporate bosses at FIAT, Daimler, OICA & Honda.

In the decade of 2010s, only 11 drivers (Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso, Raikkonen, Bottas, Ricciardo, Verstappen, Maldonado, Webber, Rosberg & Button) have won a race despite 169 Grands Prix having taken place in this decade alone. That’s how truly uncompetitive the Pirelli era of F1 has been, especially compared to the 2000s, which had 17 different winners in 174 races. In fact, here’s a list of the past decades:

1950s- 24 different winners (87 races)/ 15 (77)* 1960s- 21 (100)/ 20 (99)* 1970s- 29 (144) 1980s- 21 (156) 1990s- 17 (162) 2000s- 17 (174) 2010s- 11 (169) (with 18 months still left to go!!!)**

*without Indianapolis 500

During 2014-16, Mercedes won 51 out of the 59 races. 2011-13 saw Red Bull win 32 out of 58 races.

From 2010-18 (as of Belgium): Red Bull win 52 (out of 169 races). Mercedes win 72 (out of 169 races). Ferrari win 24 (out of 169 races). McLaren win 18 (out of 169 races). Lotus [now Renault] win 2 (out of 169 races). Williams win 1 (out of 169 races).

******

Now I find myself amongst insecure Sebastian Vettel fans, who I do feel genuinely sorry for: if Vettel wins with Kimi suffering issues, rival fans will point at possible favourable treatment. If Kimi gets close and threatens to beat Vettel, then rival fans will point at Vettel’s tendency to be just above-average in favourable conditions. After all, none of Sebastian’s 52 wins have never been won from outside the top 3 starting spots; whilst as recently as Hockenheim, title rival Hamilton finished on the top step of the rostrum from a P14 start. Much has been made of Vettel’s awful 2014 season, where his apparent inability to adjust to a car lacking rear-end downforce enforced by the new regulations (accompanied by the now-scorned new hybrids) was worsened by new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo outracing and outqualifying him. Once seen as invincible, despite Alonso’s best attempts in a clearly inferior Ferrari to interrupt his quadruple title-winning streak, Vettel had been well and truly humbled. Whilst he possesses a chirpy, charming personality, those nagging concerns over his tendency to crash out at crucial moments linger (2017 Singapore, 2018 France, 2018 Germany), whilst rival Lewis Hamilton (despite moaning more than Nick Kyrios in a tennis match) remains impervious under relentless pressure, having only lost in 2016 to his eternal rival Nico Rosberg (mostly thanks to struggling with a dodgy clutch biting point for race starts and that engine failure in Malaysia). Additionally, Kimi’s presence has reaffirmed a belief amongst rival fans that Vettel needs an obedient, passive number 2 alongside him, whilst Hamilton at the very least went head-to-head with two reigning world champs in Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button at McLaren and Rosberg, where equal number one status was mandated by Mercedes. Only twice Rosberg gave way to Hamilton: 2016 Monaco (partly due to brake issues, but possibly to atone for their first lap collision in the previous race in Spain) and 2013 Malaysia when Rosberg was told to hold station and let Hamilton take 3rd. However, it is arguable Mercedes’s sheer dominance between 2014-16 allowed them to enforce an equal driver policy with no serious threats from the opposition for either championships.

To further my claim, more bad news will come for Vettel fans when popular rookie Charles LeClerc joins Ferrari as his long-awaited team-mate: if Charles beats Seb, his time in F1 is likely to over before he turns 35 and his reputation smashed, whilst if Seb beats LeClerc, accusations of team-favoritism will re-emerge as quickly as they disappeared with Kimi’s retirement. It’s a lose-lose situation for Vettel fans, especially when you consider Fernando Alonso’s demise enforced by his own internal politics and poor career choices and Lewis Hamilton’s ability to exact the maximum out of a recalcitrant Mercedes, which has been de-crowned as F1′s fastest and best all-round chassis and engine package. To worsen matters, Kimi fans (including me) feel zero sympathy for anything that ever goes wrong for the German. Unfortunately, it does turn into hate and resentment, but only because we know what our Finnish man is capable of even in his declining years: fastest in FP1 and FP2 and fastest in Q1 and Q2 at Belgium 2018 with a record-breaking time of 1:41.501. Add to claims by Lewis Hamilton himself that Vettel has never beaten a team-mate in their “prime”: after outpacing journeymen Vitantonio Liuzzi and Sebastien Bourdais with ease, Mark Webber’s weight issues, advancing age, subsequent injuries and struggles with Pirellis handed the impetus to the Weltmeister. Followed by an infamous 2014 with the Honey Badger and a lengthy spell with a passive Raikkonen, it’s no wonder Vettel fans will easily attempt to deflect Ferrari's questionable treatment of Raikkonen to that of Mercedes’, Red Bull’s and even Toro Rosso’s treatment of Valtteri Bottas, Renault-bound Daniel Ricciardo and Brendon Hartley.

Which is not to say they’re wrong, but their defensiveness is compounded by Ferrari’s historic preference for a hierarchal driver system (Schumacher & Barrichello at Austria 2002 & Alonso & Massa at Germany 2010 widely publicised), followed by recent events at Germany again this year (albeit with Jock Clear tentatively trying to make Kimi guess his cryptic message) is telling: they know Vettel has a peripheral place amongst the true greats of F1 thanks to years of Adrian Newey’s double diffuser Red Bull chassis and Renault’s V8 engine mapping system enabling Seb to play the role of the “Opening two laps” merchant. What I mean by that is his ability to create a gap of over one second within the first two laps in a standard 2010-13 race to stop the car in 2nd place from exploiting the DRS detection range against him, from which he then subsequently exploiting his car’s technical advantage to predictable perfection. Plus when you consider Lewis Hamilton’s misfortunes with McLaren, his existential crisis and a troubled relationship with ex Nicole Scherzinger and Raikkonen disappearing for two years to do WRC (and Kimi’s father slowly dying of alcoholism-related illness), it almost seemed 2010-13 was game, set and match for Seb despite occasional gremlins striking in 2010 and 2012.

I see F1 social media figures dismissing the suffering of Raikkonen fans, bemused at how thousands could be enchanted by an aloof old-school Finn, who regards journalists as vultures to be treated with well-justified caution. New school fans belittle Kimi fans, viewing them as holding a monotonous review of Raikkonen’s misfortunes and characterizing them as incapable of leaving the blame at the aging 2007 world champion’s feet, despite repeated strategy failures of a scarlet team saddled with an one-car team mentality. Bahrain saw Ferrari pit Vettel on a dangerous one stop strategy, where had it not been for a cautious Bottas, Vettel could’ve easily come 2nd, whilst Raikkonen would suffer the brunt of vicious social media abuse for stomping off to allow paramedics to tend to injured mechanic Francisco Cigarini after Ferrari failed to solve a crossthreaded wheelnut issue shared by sister team Haas; China saw Ferrari pit Vettel too late and resorting to exploiting Kimi as a road block; Baku saw the Scuderia bizarrely ignore Kimi’s dreadful pace on yellow soft compounds (yes, Kimi had indeed wrecked his last red supersofts in Q2), but then proceeded to place Vettel on the same yellow softs, which saw the German lose time to Bottas and forced Ferrari to resort to changing both cars to ultrasofts during an impromptu safety car period kicked off by the Red Bulls; whilst Hockenheim saw Ferrari absurdly miscalculate Kimi’s pace and end up with the Finn leading ahead of Vettel, followed by an awkward set of radio messages where the impatient Iceman forced the team to directly order him to let Vettel past. Subsequently, Ferrari’s shock at Vettel’s stadium crash and slowness to pit Kimi for new tyres (one lap too late!) during the SC period saw them lose a race they still could win with their “second” car, seemingly disheartened by Vettel’s blunder. Their gamble to split the strategy in Q3 for Belgium, leaving Kimi with less fuel than Vettel in the hope of quickly refuelling Kimi in the case of the rain easing (which it did) and you get the picture of a 38 year old left forlorn by a recalcitrant team hellbent on guessing their chess moves for car #7, but frightened into placing all their eggs in one basket for car #5. In a monotonous hybrid era filled with Pirelli control tyres, countless DRS zones that permit the top cars to overpower the midfielders and mindnumbing fuel saving, both Ferrari and Mercedes have isolated their Finnish wingmen to mere sideshows.

In this social media age, I see a culture of outrage galore amongst the F1 community. With the fan base no longer proliferated over internet forums, instead it is centralised amongst Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, all of which provide more accessible platforms with user-friendly interfaces implemented, the need to find issues that don’t even exist is prevalent. The agonisingly rapid decline of F1′s spectacle has left fans increasingly tribalistic, with winning amongst those supporters of drivers in front-running cars the only source of satisfaction remaining. Unfortunately, I am now more Kimi-focused than I was in the mid-2000s: back then it wasn’t close to feeling like life and death if Kimi struggled (and boy, he had his bad moments then). I could easily applaud other drivers such as Jenson Button and Mark Webber when success came their way. I even supported Felipe Massa in his bid to win the 2008 World Championship, despite being at Kimi’s expense. But now seeing fans stirring up bile and provocation to humiliate reviled drivers leaves me feeling hollow. It makes me lust for the days when social media was not a thing; just myself sitting in the front of the couch watching ITV or BBC. But thanks to Sky and internet streaming, I find myself drawn to my laptop to avoid the increasingly jingoistic F1 TV presenters on Channel 4. The days of Jim Rosenthal, Tony Jardine, Steve Rider, the linguistically discombobulated Mark Blundell and Louise Goodman feel like another lifetime ago; the days before such partisan nonsense emerged with Lewis Hamilton.

The trivialities have surpassed the main racing events, where transfer gossip and who-said-what is more entertaining. Salacious news about drivers’ private lives now seep through the paddock; asking drivers to sing silly songs and journalists wanting to be friends with the drivers and team personnel where everyone becomes too familiar. The loss of mystique and luster of a Grand Prix environment, where fans become too emotionally involved in events where they possess little power to truly influence and instead whine and cry when things inevitably fail. In the past, with no social media or mobile phones, you had to actively find local neighbours and tour race tracks to find your motor racing pals; now a “friend” is merely a follow button away on a major social media platform.

We now live in the era of “Trial by Social Media” where a truly overemotional or defamatory comment can be validated by a high number of likes, reposts, retweets and reactions.

To make matters worse, not only are tribal lines drawn along with teams and drivers, but debates such as Grid Girls and the Halo. Frankly, there are idiots on both sides of the debates for both issues, who believe they hold the moral high ground and act like they are holier than thou against those who disagree with them. So now only are the drivers, sponsors and teams competing against each other on the track, the press room and the pits, but the fans and journalists are competing against each other for social media brownie points! Strawman anyone with any ridiculous quote and you’ll win! (Of course Kimi Raikkonen fans too are susceptible to nonsense comments. Social media unleashes your emotional rambling at any given moment). But in lieu, one thing about Charles LeClerc’s accident at Belgium stuck out and that was the journalists going on rambling lectures about how the Halo certainly saved his life, despite a lack of any scientific research concluded to prove the Halo actually stopped the McLaren of Fernando Alonso even making the slightest contact with LeClerc’s helmet. The extreme moralistic beating dished out to the viewing audience over the Halo and Grid Girls is jarring. Plus constant gimmicky sideshow jokes from WTF1 and their obnoxious jokes of “That’s Radillon, actually,” which carry no punchline and have already been brow-beaten to death by its strange following. (I know, not entirely related, but I needed to fit a bit about that dogshite WTF1).

F1, along with other motorsport series, has banged about attracting millennials and Gen Zs, but honestly at this point it is literally about as far from cool or hip as you can get.

In addition, I fell out with one truly moronic member of Lewis’ fans: a man with the most conflicting and contradictory political views I’ve ever seen (he reacts to political events and what celebrities say on a whim) and an inability to judge drivers properly at all. A man who was distraught at the idiotic outrage at Lewis Hamilton’s “Boys Don’t Wear Dresses” joke, which was clearly showing Hamilton mocking old conservatives who would demand strict gender roles at all costs. I openly wrote a tweet defending Lewis and comforted his fan via a reply to one of their tweets. But when Raikkonen stormed off after his Bahrain pit stop debacle, this same Lewis fan joined in the outrage mob when everyone called Kimi something around the lines of being a crap human being. I had to block/unblock him simply to avoid verbally abusing him and having my account suspended, as he used his reasoning of excusing of Logan Paul (a bell-end who misused the Japanese’s accommodating nature to insult their culture and deliberately walk into a suicide forest for his own attention seeking sick nonsense and despite having a prejudicial view of East Asians, now has a Hapa girlfriend in Chloe Bennet) to justify roasting Kimi. I’m sorry, but just because you failed to understand the lack of morality in one certain vile human, so you then pick on a softer target who never intended to provoke controversy, is the act of a weak, cowardly and dumb individual.

It must be remembered how badly Kimi was treated in 2008, where Massa gained the upperhand for Ferrari in this article:

Why Kimi was not on top of his game in 2008 by wrcva

https://f1bias.com/2012/04/05/truth-about-kimi-ferrari-santander-2008/

But enough of that, I want to talk the glorious past in my rose-tinted glasses: how I began my life as a bonafide Formula 1 fan.

I started watching the sport in 2002 with a wide-eyed approach due to being 11 years old. Whilst it was in the midst of a Michael Schumacher/Ferrari dominated time span, I had hope his monopoly of victories and championships would end. Mika Hakkinen had retired and in his place came a fellow Finn, Kimi Raikkonen. I was unable to articulate what attracted me to become a Kimi fan, as I initially chose to support Ralf Schumacher, Giancarlo Fisichella & Alex Yoong (!). Whilst I came to cease my backing of Ralf and the hopeless Yoong, I struck by curiosity to the Iceman when I witnessed the 22 year old firmly plant his foot flat through the Kemmel Straight in Spa-Francorchamps, blinded by a heavy plume emitted by Olivier Panis’ stricken BAR-Honda (some things never change!) Through reading a 2002 ITV F1 Guide book, which now lies battered and almost shredded, its description was one of a rebel and a selfish Espoo native, who had lucked his way into the McLaren #4 seat at the expense of his supposedly more deserving Sauber team-mate Nick Heidfeld. That initally turned me against Kimi, believing he had a silver spoon in a figurative sense, but an astonishing drive to P2 in 2002 Belgian GP qualifying, followed by an outrageous rear end save on Sunday began to sway my stubbornness. It proved his storming drive in France to P2 (which he lost the lead in the later stages thanks to running on Allan McNish’s Toyota engine oil) earlier that year was no fluke in a season blighted by major reliability issues, which saw the Finn retire from 11 out of the 17 races held in 2002. That year saw Kimi pick up his maiden podium and fastest lap in Australia and four podiums, plus Raikkonen outqualified elder team-mate David Coulthard an impressive 10-7. Sadly, the mechanical failures would prove a harbinger of what overshadow Kimi’s time at Woking.

2003 would see Macca continue its MP4-17 chassis in a D specification, with plans to introduce the MP4-18 in Canada. A rapid change in FIA sporting regulations (plus a promised abandonment of traction control from Silverstone onwards) was enacted, as the sport’s owners unanimously agreed that F1′s appeal would fade if a certain scarlet team’s monotonous accumulation of wins was not at least curbed in the slightest. Melbourne qualifying, in its new one-lap shootout format with two sessions split between Friday and Saturday, ended with a predictable Ferrari one-two of Schumacher followed by obedient no.2 Rubens Barrichello (or Bwoahrrichello). The new qualifying regulations stipulated cars to carry the race fuel and tyres they’d start with throughout their Saturday qualifying single-lap run, which left the heavily fueled McLarens of DC & Kimi in P11 and P15. On race day, the heavens opened and the track was damp at the start. Raikkonen pitted for dries on the formation lap, so he had to encounter the early laps with caution as the field eventually copied the Finn’s switch to grooved tyres (remember those?) during the early laps of the race. Lap 17 saw the Iceman grab the lead, which he would hold until lap 32, where a drive-thru penalty was administered to the Finn for speeding in the pits. Later a wheel-to-wheel encounter between Schumacher and Raikkonen saw the German lose his bargeboards and Juan Pablo Montoya threw away an improbable 2nd career win on lap 48 with an inexplicable spin. Coulthard flew past for what would be a 13th & final career victory; Montoya took 2nd and Kimi clinched 3rd ahead of a frustrated Schumacher limping in 4th. The race craft was present in the Espoo native’s driving, but the consistency and legendary race pace would appear in the next race in Malaysia. Sepang saw Kimi start an average 7th, but drama at the start delivered the Finn a lucky break. Schumacher lunged at Jarno Trulli’s Renault in a mistimed maneuver and the Italian’s young team-mate Fernando Alonso led, albeit held up the field after taking a fortuitous pole in a Renault qualifying 1-2 abetted by a light fuel strategy. It was all the impressive as the Spaniard was carrying the flu, but after Raikkonen made light work of Heidfeld to grab second, McLaren’s tyre durability and heavy fuel strategy allowed the Finn to overtake Alonso in the pit stops and beat Barrichello’s 2002 all-conquering Ferrari by 39 seconds. Many participants had melted in the sweltering southeastern Asian humidity, but the Iceman had arrived and an impressionable 12 year old had found a new hero.

The 2003 saw Kimi miraculously remain active in a title fight in a two-year old chassis, which was never replaced due to the MP4-18′s dreadful manufacturing structure. Ferrari’s new F2003-GA was revealed in Barcelona, the fifth round of the championship, but Schu would only beat the Spanish local hero Alonso by 5.7 seconds. The youthful zest of Kimi saw him over-commit in turn 7 on his Saturday Q lap, sending him to the back of the grid. Pizzonia stalled on the grid for the start on raceday and Raikkonen hit him unsighted. Along with another spin in Canada Q2 and a subsequent puncture in the race, Kimi toiled to P6 and lost the championship lead to the mighty Red Baron, a lead he would never recover. The following Grand Prix saw Kimi, though, take his maiden pole position in Q2; despite not taking an overall fastest sector time on the Nurburgring circuit, the 23 year old Finn clocked a 1:31.523 with race fuel aboard; his Friday Q1 lap was a dazzling 1:29.989, just 0.08 slower than Montoya’s 2002 pole lap. Race day saw the Finn storm into a nine-second cushion over Ralf and everything went as planned in his scheduled pit stop on lap 16. In spite of having regained the lead, lap 25 disaster struck: a Mercedes-Benz engine failure. The sound of the V10s rang around the historic Rhineland venue from all cars but one: car no #6. For the first time in my twelve years, a sudden rage of anger engulfed me.

The rest of season saw Raikkonen accumulate 2nd places regularly, but the aging MP4-17 and adequate Mercedes power unit lacking the potency Kimi required to challenge the emerging Williams-BMW FW25s, followed by a resurgent Schumacher, whose Ferrari had been limited by a batch of Bridgestone tyres which struggled mid-summer, as its French counterpart Michelin found a upper hand for the first time since its return to F1 in 2003. Hungary saw Michael humiliated as a gallant Alonso took pole and lapped the five-time world champion around the tight confines of a circuit colloquially referred to as “Monaco without the barriers”. After being stuck behind Mark Webber’s Jaguar before the initial pit stops, Raikkonen took a steady 2nd albeit 17 seconds behind Spain’s debut F1 race victor. 13 races down with 3 races left saw the championship reading Schumacher 1st with 72 points, Montoya 71 points and the young Kimster 70 points, somehow punching above his car’s weight despite losing further points in a first lap collision in Hockenheim in the previous round. Team-mate Coulthard, meanwhile, was floundering in 7th place with just 45 points in a season where many British commentators had declared 2003 as make-or-break for the Scotsman. But the scheming Maranello boys were working overtime to study the rulebook, where they found Michelin’s front tyres had expanded to 283mm rather than the stipulated 270mm. Whatever performance loss Michelin had suffered in remolding their compounds remains unknown to this day, but Monza came and McLaren had capitulated in their battle to get the MP4-18 into race trim. Schumacher won for the first time in front the raucous Tifosi since Canada, Montoya took 2nd and Barrichelllo nipped into 3rd. Kimi took 4th with a MP4-17D that was at the end of its development cycle. Despite heading to Indianapolis with a seven point deficit, Raikkonen took a valiant pole and took a solid lead until the rain came. Fellow championship contender Montoya screwed up massively by turfing Barrichello into the gravel trap at Turn 2 on lap 3 and his subsequent drive-through penalty brought his driver’s championship challenge prematurely. The Michelin wet compounds were no match for Ferrari’s Bridgestone wets, which had a decisive advantage, leaving Raikkonen struggling in fourth when the track dried and mathematically out of title contention.

Thankfully the Indy circuit dried swiftly when the downpour seized and Kimi stormed past Jenson Button’s BAR, which had been leading for 15 laps (!) and elder statesman Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who was driving his penultimate race for the fabled Sauber squad. 2nd was the end result for the Iceman, who headed to Suzuka on a nine-point deficit to a prospective sextuple world champion. Only a win for the McLaren driver and a failure to finish in the top 8 for the Red Baron would suffice in making Kimi what would have been then F1′s youngest world champion, just five days short of his 24th birthday. A late downpour left Schumacher down in 14th in Q2, whilst Raikkonen took a mediocre P8 with Coulthard alongside him. Race day saw Montoya (whose Williams team still had a chance for the constructors’ title) and Alonso launch into an early 1-2, only to retire as quickly as they had surged into those positions. Barrichello controlled the Japanese GP as if he had been Ferrari’s team leader, whilst Maranello’s contracted lead driver carved his way through midfield like he’d been staggering through a hangover after having drank a crate of beer, with collisions with brother Ralf et al. Dutiful team-mate Coulthard fell behind in the pit stops to allow Kimi to run in 2nd in the hopes of an unlikely mechanical failure to Rubens and Michael to stutter, but neither happened. Schumacher, frantically wiping his heavily oiled helmet and clearly unaccustomed to tackling midfield cars for position, somehow fought into P8 and won his record-breaking 6th world championship in the most uncharacteristically clumsy manner.

Raikkonen lost the championship by just two points (91 to Michael’s 93), but the new points system of 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 for the top 8 (instead of the top 6) proposed by guileless Irishman Eddie Jordan had aided the Finn’s unlikely challenge. Under the former 10-6-4-3-2-1 system, Schumacher would have won the title at Indy with a round to spare and Jordan would have take 5th in the constructors’ largely thanks to Fisichella’s unexpected win at Interlagos (where only the intermediate compound was taken due an idiotic new rule to limit teams to one wet weather tyre choice), but Eddie’s boys were left in 9th out of 10th. 2003 was a step towards the changing of the guard, although whilst the grandmaster held onto his crown by the tip of his tongue, the likes of BAR (later Honda, Brawn & now the mighty Mercedes), Renault, Jaguar (now Red Bull) & Toyota had taken major leaps forward and BMW impressed with their engine’s driveability and outright top end power, but let down by the Williams’ poor strategic planning and a mercurial driving duo of Ralf and JPM. Jordan, having won two races and finished 3rd in the constructors’ in 1999 and challenged for the drivers’ title with the now-retired Frentzen and a dynamite Mugen-Honda power unit, had slipped down 6 places the F1′s pecking order in just four years thanks to a lack of investment, as F1′s emerging manufacturer era was in a full swing.

2004 saw Schumacher and Ferrari regain their full-time dominance of F1. Mercedes’ reliability was tragic; Raikkonen retired from 5 of the first 7 races with engine maladies thanks to F1′s new engine rules which mandated power units lasted for an entire race weekend or force drivers to take a ten-grid place penalty, something the Finn became familiar with. Schumacher equaled Mansell’s record of 5 wins from the opening 5 races of a season, whilst Jenson Button emerged as a genuine contender, having taken his maiden podium at Sepang where he held off Barrichello in the closing laps. Elsewhere, Jarno Trulli was beating Fernando Alonso, who seemed rather erratic and possibly complacent after his promising 2003 season (sounds a lot like a young Dutchman in 2018, whose father drove his last season with the lowly Minardi team in a damp whimper). Trulli broke Schumi’s winning run with his sole career win at Monte Carlo, where Alonso crashed after running wide trying to pass Ralf’s misfiring Williams and the infamous collision between embittered enemies Schumacher and Montoya, both incidents occurring in the Tunnel section. However, Trulli’s Renault honeymoon would eruptively hit freefall, culminating in his embarrassing concession of the final podium spot at Magny-Cours where Alonso had taken pole and looked a likely victor until Ross Brawn’s ingenuous four-stop strategy for Schu’s car scuppered a second career win for the Spaniard. Michael proceeded to win 12 of 2004′s first 13 Grands Prix, whilst McLaren built a new B chassis. Then came Spa and the start of the King of Spa legend.

Raikkonen qualified an unimpressive P10 in mixed conditions. The two Renaults took 1-3 split by Schumacher, who was looking to take his 7th drivers’ crown. Race day arrived and despite Trulli/Alonso leading the first quarter of the race, engine troubles for Fernando and an early pit stop paved the way for Kimi to gain control of the race, after surviving the first lap carnage from the backmarkers. Daily Express editor Bob McKenzie, who had pledged that he would run naked around Silverstone if McLaren won a race in 2004, honoured his deed at the following year’s British GP in front of cackling Raikkonen and a smug Ron Dennis.

Jarno Trulli would later become the first of a long list of team-mates mysteriously screwed over by having Fernando Alonso as his driving partner (Fisichella, Piquet Jr, Massa, Raikkonen, Vandoorne spring to mind anyone?), whilst McLaren announced the arrival of Colombian firecracker Montoya to join icecool Kimbo for 2005. An early tennis (!) accident sidelined Monty and early setup issues meant the potential of the MP4-20 had been withheld in the flyaway openers, but Imola saw Kimi sprinting out of the gates. A dominant pole pointed towards to an emphatic Kimi win, but race day saw his CV joint fail after just 8 laps. Wins at Barcelona and Monaco brought the Iceman into title contention, but he lagged 22 points behind fast starting Alonso. Then Nurburgring came, the scene of heartbreak just a couple of years prior. Raikkonen, having come off a run of leading 160+ consecutive laps, look set for a third straight win but he flatspotted his tyre whilst lapping Jacques Villeneuve and a subsequent vibration saw the McLaren’s suspension explode on the very final lap. Alonso, driving at 70% his car’s potential clinched an easy win ahead of Nick Heidfeld (who would never win a F1 race), increased his lead to 32 points. Point blank no. 3 for Mr. Raikkonen of 2005, who was now 32 points down on the 23 year old Spaniard. With the engine regs tightened to a power unit life of two full weekends, predictably Mercedes would suffer issues in the practice sessions in France, Britain and Italy, the last of which Kimi astonishing set the fastest qualifying lap but was forced to start 10 places lower. Raikkonen took 19 points in those three weekends combined, whilst Alonso grabbed 26. Add in Montoya’s lack of concentration whilst lapping backmarkers (Monteiro in Turkey and Pizzonia in Belgium) and another mechanical failure at the Hockenheimring, it meant Kimi never could truly chip away at Alonso’s advantage, which remained sub-30 points. It set the Spaniard up to become F1′s then-youngest champion in Brazil, where McLaren didn’t even bother asking Montoya to concede the race lead to Raikkonen as it was so obvious Alonso would keep hold the 3rd place he required to be crowned in Interlagos.

Suzuka 2005. Kimi’s greatest race. Started P17 after a washed-out qualifying. It was astonishing race in a season where only one compound of tyre was permitted for all drivers, culminating in the Indy-gate farce where all Michelin-shod cars withdrew due to safety fears of tyre exploding around the oval section at turn 13. However, despite Alonso and Schumacher joining the Finn near the back, there was still a constructor’s championship to be won for McLaren thanks to nine race wins thus far. The quality of overtakes was pure as there could be: Alonso’s ace manoeuvre on aging Schumacher at 130R is still highly-regarded by his own fans, but his victory chances was wrecked by race control ordering him to drop 13 seconds to let Christien Klien’s Red Bull after an illegal overtake under yellow flags. Montoya crashed out on lap one after a ludicrous entanglement with another aging fart, this time Jacques Villeneuve in an underfunded Sauber. Giancarlo Fisichella led the race comfortably after Ralf Schumacher pitted absurdly early for fuel in a blatant publicity stunt by Toyota to grab headlines of a home pole position for media value. However, despite a 20 second gap having been built him and Raikkonen, the Finn relentlessly decimated the midfield runners with no DRS or gizmo nonsense (traction control aside) and with five laps to go, Kimi peered into Fisi’s mirrors. On every approach to the Casino chicane in the final lap, the beleaguered Renault driver kept resorting to holding a tight line, leaving his exit compromised and gradually more vulnerable to Raikkonen closing up on him to size up a move into Turn 1. This was possible despite Kimi having to ease off the throttle in 130R due to oppressive dirty air turbulence of the mid-2000s chassis; but yet come the penultimate lap, the impossible had become the inevitable. Fisichella inexplicably, possibly wilting due to an inability to pump consistently fast lap times which were became sadly more common in his later decline, again took a tight inside line into Casino Sqaure chicane despite being a tough spot for cars in behind to lunge forwards to make an overtake. His Renault squirmed with his tyres burning out from his overly-defensive driving and Kimi pounced. Giancarlo wiggled to the inside line across the start-finish straight (and almost touched the pit wall!), but was powerless to stop Kimi overtaking around the outside of Turn 1 on the final lap.

2006 was Kimi’s final year at McLaren. With Schumacher revitalised in his hunt for title no.8, BMW having taken ownership of Sauber, Williams now an independent team, Red Bull very much a thing, Jordan having become a second-hand shed for billionaire investors to pump-and-dump at whim until Vijay Mallya saved them at the end of 2007 and BAR fully sold into the Honda’s shares thanks to the European Union banning of tobacco sponsorship- something which has starved racing teams and youngsters of much-needed funding- F1 was changing again. Michael Schumacher was now 37 and Felipe Massa had replaced Rubens Barrichello as his right-hand man. Raikkonen had now grown tired and appeared increasingly soporific with McLaren’s reliability being worse than any other down the pitlane. With the joint worst retirement and reliability record with equally luckless Mark Webber, Maranello had seen a wonderful opportunity to snap a disgruntled Finn, who had been declared “Ferrari’s next world champion” in a F1 Racing Magazine in 2001. Luca di Montezemelo laid an ultimatum with Schumacher: the German would have to drive alongside Kimi Raikkonen as Ferrari team-mate in 2007 or retire. Michael chose the latter option in an emotional post-race reception at Monza and the rest they say is history.

*****

Despite of all this, seeing Kimi’s heartbreak in the hybrid era and his changed attitude as a father-of-two has endeared me to him far more than I ever did in my teenage years. I can see he is more focused than ever and he’s a better man than he was ten years ago. If I saw lose then, I wasn’t as bothered as much then as I am now (and yes, the passion of being a hardcore Kimi fan boy is burning me out).

#f1 #Formula 1 #Formula One #fernando alonso #lewis hamilton #sebastian vettel #Kimi Raikkonen #raikkonen #vettel #Scuderia Ferrari #ferrari #mercedes #mclaren #red bull #Max Verstappen #daniel ricciardo #ricciardo #verstappen

8 notes · View notes

mhsn033 · 4 years

Text

Spanish Grand Prix: Even Mercedes think Verstappen will win

The Spanish Broad Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Are residing from 13: 00 BST on Sunday

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas enjoy their archaic positions on the entrance row of the grid for the Spanish Broad Prix – nonetheless their crew boss Toto Wolff believes the particular person that starts third is favourite to grasp the flee.

Crimson Bull driver Max Verstappen arrived on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this weekend to be greeted by the an identical high temperatures that were partly to blame for making his victory at Silverstone last Sunday doubtless.

Verstappen lagged on the support of Mercedes over one lap on Saturday afternoon in Spain nonetheless on flee lope it has regarded a undeniable myth.

And after tyre complications introduced Verstappen into play at Silverstone, both Wolff and Hamilton are extremely wary of the possibility he poses on Sunday.

“The handiest similarity between Silverstone and Barcelona this week is the ambient and note temperatures,” Wolff acknowledged on Saturday evening. “The note is terribly varied so we don’t request the an identical blistering considerations nonetheless more degradation and more overheating. And I factor in Crimson Bull masters those stipulations thoroughly.

“However, I factor within the work that is been carried out all the absolute most life like draw thru the week and from the previous day to on the unique time became correct. We’ve improved and that is most necessary and I hope we can present him a inch for his money. But undoubtedly Max needs to seen as the favourite in accordance with the previous day’s long runs.”

Hamilton on pole in Spain – corpulent memoir

How qualifying for the Spanish GP unfolded Wolff brooding about future as Mercedes crew boss

Hamilton’s pole became the 92nd of his profession and this could occasionally be his 150th entrance-row start, however it brings no ensures of an 88th victory that can per chance build him internal three of Michael Schumacher’s all-time memoir.

“It could in fact laborious,” Hamilton acknowledged. “The Crimson Bulls I include are quite bit faster than us in flee trim. It be unfamiliar how we’re quick in qualifying nonetheless then within the flee they shut the gap massively and the tables flip quite bit. But we’re ahead of them so confidently we can aloof practice the stress and salvage plan.

“I do no longer know what’s going to happen on these tyres on the long term, whether or no longer blistering will happen or no longer. But it’ll be bodily so traumatic; it be so hot. But I will doubtless be ready.”

Verstappen’s Silverstone grasp – the first time a Mercedes has been denied victory this year – moved him into 2nd plan within the championship ahead of Bottas, a measure of his the high celebrated of his performances this season. And whereas he is 30 facets on the support of Hamilton, it be value remembering that Verstappen retired from the opening flee of the season whereas working 2nd.

The impression, then, of a season of total Mercedes domination is most certainly no longer as correct because it would possibly per chance appear, as a minimal no longer in relation to the races.

“If I correct salvage using on the support of them within the distance it be no longer going to happen,” Verstappen acknowledged. “If I hang the opportunity to be there, you would possibly per chance need got to push it. The day gone by [on the race runs in practice] I felt correct. Let’s hope it be going to be the an identical day after nowadays to come and I hope we now hang a lovely flee on the tip of the day.”

Will Wolff discontinuance or hump?

Wolff is the ideal crew major who has won more than five consecutive double world championships

Wolff has this weekend been start about the fact that he takes into account his future with Mercedes past the tip of this season.

His contract as F1 crew major and Mercedes motorsport boss is up on the tip of the year, and his plan with the firm is traumatic by the fact that he’s a 30% shareholder.

Wolff has made it sure that he’s weighing up the strains of the characteristic, his longevity in it – he has held it since 2013 – its affect on his internal most life, with a necessary other who is additionally a crew boss in Formulation E, and the fact he continues to expertise its challenges.

No selections had been taken. But it would possibly per chance successfully be that, although he concludes he doesn’t are attempting to be crew major and support each flee from now on, he stays the most senior particular person within the crew and its boss.

Wolff acknowledged on Saturday: “It’s to salvage the bright dedication for the crew, which is my absolute most life like precedence. I expertise the camaraderie and the usaand downs. I couldn’t wish for a greater community of oldsters. And clearly I’m discussing each millimetre with [Daimler boss] Ola Kallenius and Susie [Wolff, his wife].

“Confidently I will doubtless be within the an identical plan subsequent year and discussing with you and if no longer I will doubtless be staying shut to the crew.”

No matter occurs, Hamilton acknowledged it would possibly per chance no longer hang an affect on his dedication over his unique contract, which is additionally aloof to be concluded.

“You’ve gotten to take into account it’s a crew,” acknowledged Hamilton, who joined Mercedes on the an identical time as Wolff. “There are practically 2,000 folk within the crew. It be no longer correct correct down to at least one individual. That doesn’t resolve whether or no longer or no longer I discontinuance.

“I had been a phase of rising with this crew and the strength is there and it be no longer correct one individual.

“Each person has to attain what’s most efficient for them and their profession and happiness. And all people needs to salvage a moment and compare what they are looking out to attain bright forwards, whether or no longer it suits them and their households and their future objectives.

“We’ve carried out so a lot already together. But I hope he stays because it be fun working with him and negotiating with him and having the usaand downs. Basically grateful to Toto. But I will doubtless be supportive in no matter he decides to attain.”

A shrimp step forward for Vettel

Vettel did no longer present it out of Q2 for the 2nd weekend in a row

The last two races at Silverstone were critically sobering experiences for Sebastian Vettel, a particular person that after bestrode F1 a lot as Hamilton does now, nonetheless who has regarded a pale shadow of his old self for some time.

Vettel became draw off the lope of crew-mate Charles Leclerc within the UK, and made one other of his unforced errors within the 2nd flee, too.

The regularity with which these errors are exhibiting, by the formula, will doubtless be judged by the fact that Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo described his hang error at Silverstone as a “Seb dawdle”. Ouch.

Vettel admitted to being flummoxed as to why he became struggling so at Silverstone, so when Ferrari offered they’d stumbled on a crack in his chassis and were giving him a novel one for Spain, it seemed a probable explanation.

Vettel acknowledged on Thursday, although, that he did no longer “request miracles” and so it has modified into out.

He has been nearer to Leclerc this weekend, nonetheless became aloof 0.215 seconds off in qualifying, and aloof did no longer present it into the stay 10 shootout, whereas Leclerc did.

Now, to be 0.215secs off a particular person that it’s already sure will doubtless be one of many stars of the subsequent decade and more is rarely any shame.

On reasonable over your total races, Vettel became correct over 0.1secs slower in qualifying than Leclerc in 2019. So it’s far from very unlikely that 0.2secs will doubtless be a usual and anticipated margin between the 2 this year, with Leclerc now in his 2nd season with Ferrari, and very a lot designated as their future focus, and Vettel entering this season having been told he could be leaving on the tip of it.

But Vettel is a proud man and his highly spectacular profession statistics imply so a lot to him. And he’ll very a lot no longer note this as a order of affairs he’ll hang to accept for the leisure of the year, no longer least alongside with his future aloof up within the air.

Vettel complained after qualifying of a anxious rear on his vehicle – precisely the different of feedback from Leclerc, who acknowledged his “correct did no longer hang sufficient entrance stay to rotate the vehicle and we misplaced pretty quite of time thanks to this. It’s something we often hang with this vehicle, struggling with the entrance in mid-nook”.

Two drivers reporting precisely the different disclose with their cars, and both more than a 2nd slower than the Mercedes. Right here is going to be a protracted and traumatic year for Vettel and Ferrari.

It stays to be seen whether or no longer Vettel will aloof be in F1 subsequent year – he doesn’t precisely hang so a lot of alternatives.

But he can as a minimal console himself with some supportive words from his extinct crew boss at Crimson Bull.

“Sebastian is a mountainous driver,” Christian Horner acknowledged in an interview with 5 Are residing Sport this weekend, “the third most a success driver on the earth and aloof holds pretty about a files and it be unhappy to hang a study him struggling as he is for the time being.

“No matter he chooses to attain will doubtless be his different. If he decides to salvage a year out, he’ll aloof be pretty to groups in a year’s time. He’s one of many few drivers who could give you the money for to salvage a year out.

“It be all about the surroundings you is most certainly in and that is the explanation something he’s clearly finding no longer easy for the time being.”

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2E7WEJb via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

torentialtribute · 5 years

Text

Formula One 2019 season preview – is this Lewis Hamilton’s toughest Mercedes title defence yet?

Lewis Hamilton will be looking at six of the best as he prepares to defend his drivers championship ahead of the new Formula One season.

The five-time world champion is again favorite to leave his rivals for dust over the 21-race campaign that starts at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix and ends at the Abu Dhabi desert in December

But there are stories all over the 10-team, 20-driver grid and ahead of another season Sportsmail's reporters look at the key questions.

Lewis Hamilton won his fifth world championship at the Mexican Grand Prix in 2018

Will Hamilton facing his toughest fight yet at Mercedes to defend his title?

JONATHAN McEVOY: From outside the team, yes, but there will be no repeat of the internal battle with Nico Rosberg that needled him so much. Ferrari seem strong and Red Bull will develop well under design guru Adrian Newey’s hand. It should be a good fight.

JOE DOWNES: Yes, because for the first time his best may not be good enough. Ferrari have the quicker car again, but will have learned from last year's strategy and development blunders and appear more united under Mattia Binotto.

DAN RIPLEY: The last couple or seasons have seen Ferrari and the Mercedes front row monopoly, and now they may have the edge. Hamilton is in his toughest campaign since his first season at Mercedes but he will still be at the front.

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes appeared to be slightly off the pace of Ferrari in winter testing

MATTHEW SMITH: Every winter we suggest the rest of the field are catching up with Mercedes, and every season the German steamroller carries on regardless. Hamilton has his ruthless eye on history and, as much as the fan in me wants to see a tight title battle, championship No. 6 looks to be on the cards.

NATHAN SALT: I don't think so. While Ferrari have been smart in recruiting Charles Leclerc, he lacks experience competing at the front of the grid. Sebastian Vettel remains his biggest threat but errors appear to be creeping into German's drives if last season is anything to go by.

How under threat is Bottas at Mercedes given how much of a team player is he?

JM: Bottas should not be there now. He clearly failed last year. But he suits Lewis and makes for an easy life. Just allowing for that I think he needs to buck up if he is to survive the cut again.

JD: He insists he can beat Lewis. He can't. One-year rolling deal proves he's simply keeping the second seat warm and they're queuing up to take it. Esteban Ocon is first in line.

Valtteri Bottles went the whole of the 2018 season without a win for title winners Mercedes

F1 2019 CALENDAR

Mar 17: Australia (Melbourne)

Mar 31: Bahrain (Sakhir)

Apr 14: China (Shanghai)

Apr 28: Azerbaijan (Baku)

May 12: Spain (Catalunya)

May 26: Monaco (Monte Carlo)

Jun 9: Canada (Montreal)

Jun 23: France (Paul Ricard)

Jun 30: Austria (Spielberg)

Jul 14: Great Britain (Silverstone)

Jul 28: Germany ( Hockenheim)

Aug 4: Hungary (Budapest)

Sep 1: Belgium (Spa)

Sep 8: Italy (Monza)

Sep 22: Singapore (Marina Bay)

Sep 29: Russia (Sochi)

Oct 13 : Japan (Suzuka)

Oct 27: Mexico (Mexico City)

Nov 3: United States (Texas)

Nov 17: Brazil (Sao Paulo)

Dec 1: Abu Dhabi (Yas Marina)

DR: Strangely I consider his role close to perfect. Quick enough to bag points but passive enough to never rock the boat and hurt Hamilton's season the way Nico Rosberg used to. Why would Mercedes risk losing that dynamic by drafting in Ocon for instance, who loves a squabble with a fellow driver (ask Perez or Verstappen)?

MS: Bottas is in an odd situation – he's in this race seat for what he brings to his team mate, rather than what he can provide as a driver in his own right. I feel Mercedes wants to bring Esteban Ocon into the No 2 seat next season, unless the Finn produces a marked improvement on last season.

NS: In short: not much. Hamilton must love having a "wingman" like Bottas with him at Mercedes. The Finn took issue with Toto Wolff's use of that in Hungary last season but it is true. Unlike predecessor Nico Rosberg, Hamilton can rest easy knowing Bottas will never put himself above the team. Bring back Nico.

How much of a 'plague could Charles Leclerc be to Sebastian Vettel's title challenge?

JM: Vettel has been given a public indication he is No 1. It remains to be seen how Leclerc operates in the more rarefied air of Ferrari – a different proposition from Sauber. I think Vettel, refreshed, will win the internal battle.

JD: This will determine the championship. Ferrari have their stall out early, insisting they will favor Vettel. The early races suit Ferrari and so, if Leclerc makes the better start, Binotto will have an almighty headache. The 21-year-old is a future world champion and subservience does not make a champion. Just ask Seb.

DR: I'm convinced he has brought in to replace Vettel and not Raikkonen, with the German instead of taking Kimi's No 2 spot in the long run. Not that Ferrari will admit that. To me, Ferrari lost faith with Vettel and his endless mistakes last term and have already made their move to start building the team around the Monegasque.

Sebastian Vettel (left) has a new Ferrari team mate in Charles Leclerc (second right)

MS: I think this could be the story of the season. Leclerc was electrifying at times in a poor Sauber car last season. If he hits the ground running, I can't see how Ferrari can force him to play second fiddle to Vettel, especially if the German does not pick up from his 2018 slump. Don't rule out a Leclerc title bid.

NS: A real plague. You would be hard pressed to find an F1 fan who was not impressed why Leclerc's rookie season with Sauber. He regularly exceeded expectations in qualifying and with a far more competitive car at his disposal this season.

Will Max Verstappen finally have the machinery to launch a bid for the title?

JM : We'll soon find out. But from testing they look third-quickest. The Honda engine is three per cent down on the Mercedes. No.

JD: He's better placed without Ricciardo and Renault but, while Honda power should see them close the gap, boss Christian Horner admits reliability is a big unknown in the first year of their partnership. Like last year, expect the odd win and the odd blow up (from car and driver).

DR: Status quo I'm afraid for Max. Another great Red Bull chassis which just lacks the power unit punch behind it to trouble Mercedes and Ferrari on a regular basis. Still, it's good to see Honda looking like they've caught up a bit. F1 needs them to succeed.

Max Verstappen may be restricted to another year of trying to pick up just a few race wins

MS: If engine suppliers Honda go from their embarrassment with McLaren to title winners at Red Bull, that would be among the greatest turnarounds in F1 history. Verstappen seems to finally have his attitude in the right place (the Ocon confrontation was the exception rather than the rule). He is ready but are Red Bull?

NS: Getting away on record last August pinpointing 2020 as his best chance of a maiden world title but he is not a character happy to watch his rivals coast to the world championship. He's managed to weed out some silly errors from his drives and I just hope he's provided with a competitive – and ultimately reliable – car.

What chance do McLaren have a five-year stage drought ending?

JM: McLaren may luck in a stage but that's their only chance, I fear. They will be better than last season but that's not saying much.

JD: Unless there's another crazy race in Baku, no chance. They're finally turning the corner, but just scoring points is tough given how tightly packed the midfield is.

DR: McLaren are heading in the right direction at long last but they look only capable of marginal gains this term. They could benefit from a Wacky Races type GP to land a stage but they should focus more on beating Renault for now.

McLaren enjoyed a productive winter testing program but still lay behind the front teams

MS: Unless they've been holding back in testing, regular top-down 10 finishes are more likely to be the goal unless they get a lucky break in a one-off race. Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz are both quick, but making the top three is a huge ask.

NS: Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull possess such an advantage over their rivals it looks increasingly difficult for McLaren to bridge the gap after such a poor season. I expect a much-improved season but it is too soon for an end to the stage drought.

Which new Briton on the block is the best set for his rookie year?

JM : George Russell – a bit older and wiser than Lando Norris, perhaps.

JD: Norris has the best car and will score most points, but George Russell will emerge with most credit. So terrible is his Williams that, to a large extent, the pressure is off. Expect him to outperform teammate Robert Kubica.

DR: Norris could end up getting a beat by Sainz and still have the possibility of claiming a productive first year. For Russell, hey, has no measure. Beat Kubica, or even thrash him, and he's only seen off a severely hampered team mate. No-win situation really for George, and that's before we mention the mess Williams are in!

Lando Norris (left) and George Russell make their F1 debuts after impressing in F2

MS: George Russell beat Lando Norris to the F2 title last year and is just as talented as the more heralded 18-year-old, perhaps because he is a more reserved character. However he may be down by being in a poor Williams. I'd be back Norris as the more likely at this stage.

NS: I just cannot bring myself to go on record and put Williams as the best in anything right now – apologies George Russell. The only way appears to be up for McLaren and Norris has shown his qualities in F2 – he's ready to make the step up.

Whose 'make or break' year is bigger at Renault – Ricciardo or Hulkenberg?

JM: Both are mid-tablers. Neither, for their commendable talents, is in demand by a top team. I think Ricciardo will see out his Renault contract and then walk away. He is building a property portfolio in America and that may grow into a preoccupation.

JD: Ricciardo. Must pounce whenever the big three teams fail and finish best of the rest – seventh – in drivers' standings to prove Renault's project is on track and his move from Red Bull was shrewd not stupid.

DR: This is it now for Hulkenberg. The chance to prove he can take on the big names in F1 – and maybe, just maybe land that overdue stage and finally catch the eye of a big team. Ricciardo has at least two years to get it right at Renault but time is running out for Nico.

Nico Hulkenberg (left) and Daniel Ricciardo will battle each other as Renault team-mates

MS: Ricciardo. The risk the Australian has tasks is career defining. If he can drag Renault onto the stage then the deserves to be seen as one of the great drivers of the 21st century. If not, then he is set for obscurity.

NS: I am not convinced F1 fans are expecting much more from Hulkenberg. He's legally competent and has out-qualified both Jolyon Palmer and Carlos Sainz in his last two seasons. Ricciardo was in a conversation for a Ferrari or Mercedes spot at one time and he will be expected to carve himself out as the side's undisputed No. 1.

How does Kubica make a success of his comeback at a struggling Williams?

JM: Just being on the grid is a victory. What a fabulous recovery. Beating his Williams team-mate Russell would do.

JD: Needs a miracle, but that's his business. Beating Russell and a double-figure points haul would represent a stellar comeback season. Don't think he will do either.

DR: I just want Kubica to be competitive, and that means keeping Russell honest and bagging a few points over the season. I'm not expecting much given he has effectively driven one handed.

Many Robert One fans will be hoping Robert Kubica can make a success of his comeback after a serious hand injury saw him drop out of the sport in 2011

MS: Growing up, Kubica was my favorite driver. I loved his attacking skill, his bravery, the underdog edge that came with driving for BMW rather than a more fashionable team. But the numbers don't lie – he is well off the pace. He needs time, reliability and consistency – and in a troubled team, I really fear this could turn into a nightmare.

NS: Much depends on the car he is provided with. Williams have bone dismal at best recently and have bone certainties to prop up the grid. Out performing rookie team mate George Russell wants to be the minimum he will expect of himself.

What are you tipping for a big surprise this season?

JM: I don't know what it will be but it may come this weekend in Melbourne. This place can throw up strange results.

JD: Alfa Romeo. Closer partnership with Ferrari, aggressive car design which looked quick through the corners in testing and the Kimi factor. A dangerous unknown quantity – how very Alfa.

Veteran Kimi Raikkonen has joined Alfa Romeo for 2019 following five seasons with Ferrari

DR: It's been rubbish for far too many years now, but we are long overdue a decent Monaco Grand Prix. Whether it comes in the form of a sprinkling or rain of some tire-related shenanigans I don't know but it would certainly be a surprise wouldn't it?

MS: Leclerc will finish above Vettel in the overall drivers points, Raikkonen will earn at least one podium for Alfa Romeo, and Alexander Albon – effectively an emergency choice for Toro Rosso – will be in and around the top 10 on a regular basis.

NS: I will go with Pierre Gasly. This one could come back to bite me but I expect Red Bull to make a real go of it this year and Gasly showed enough in spells in the Toro Rosso last year to suggest he can rise to the challenge.

Where are the championships heading?

JM: Drivers title: Hamilton. Constructors: Ferrari.

JD: I'm sold. Vettel and Ferrari.

Hamilton once again goes into the season as a favorite to win the world championship

DR: Hamilton to win the drivers crown in a final race Abu Dhabi showdown but Ferrari to pinch the constructors' title.

MS: Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton. Where else?

NS: Mercedes. Hamilton is still the man and if I was a betting man that is where my money would go. As a pairing I prefer the Ferrari pair – Bottas unselfishness infuriates me – but I fully expect Mercedes to be another double.

Source link

#Formula One 2019 season preview – is this Lewis Hamilton’s toughest Mercedes title defence yet?"

0 notes