Nah the driver academy is actually fine. The problem is they’ve over-indexed on Max’s feedback and painted themselves into a corner. It’s a car design problem.
I should have been more clear, but yeah absolutely agree with you on that. I think Yuki should have been the one in that car, and maybe he still will be, Marko has had a lot to do with Liam being in that car this year, and we're not even three races in and he might not even be in the car anymore. Not saying that Yuki would be able to drive it either though. But yeah, if the car had been designed differently, we wouldn't even be discussing this. Anyway, just feel bad for the guy. Liam, not Marko
I think Albon is loving his Williams and I don’t think he wants to go anywhere.
Fuck it, promote Tsunoda to Red Bull and call up Abby Pulling and give her a shot at Racing Bulls. Couldn’t do worse than Liam or Checo at this point. That’d be a hell of an 8-ball of chaos move.
Fuck it, promote Tsunoda to Red Bull and call up Abby Pulling and give her a shot at Racing Bulls. Couldn’t do worse than Liam or Checo at this point. That’d be a hell of an 8-ball of chaos move.
The problem is that the RB2 seat destroys driver confidence and careers, and it's hard to think of a driver I hate enough to put in it. Except maybe Max.
That would require Helmut to not be a racist, misogynist fuck tho.
Yeah, but just think, at the end of the race he could go laugh at all the other teams because they lost to a girl! The horror!
I’m very curious to see what improvements Mercedes bring this year. The car looks surprisingly balanced after two races - something I wasn’t really expecting. Granted, we’re starting the year with three very different circuits, so I wonder if we’ll have to wait and see where teams are at in Bahrain after Suzuka to really have an idea of what the grid looks like.
Could you imagine?! That would be absolutely insane, and I support it 100%!!
Finally able to comment.
Woohoo! That's more like it. Monster drive from Oscar, and I'm kinda happy Lando's brake pedal started misbehaving; I'd like to put off the inevitable Hamilton/Rosberg moment for as long as I can. If they can trade off wins and not crash each other out I'd appreciate it.
Speaking of...
Someone check Lewis for whiplash; going from a win to a DQ in the same weekend has to be ... disorienting.
Awesome result for Haas, good result for Williams.
And the Red Bull is now officially a shitbox. It doesn't matter who's in the #2 seat, they will be a back marker. If Dark Helmet or Horner approach Yuki he should laugh in their faces.
Woohoo! That's more like it. Monster drive from Oscar, and I'm kinda happy Lando's brake pedal started misbehaving; I'd like to put off the inevitable Hamilton/Rosberg moment for as long as I can. If they can trade off wins and not crash each other out I'd appreciate it.
Speaking of...
Someone check Lewis for whiplash; going from a win to a DQ in the same weekend has to be ... disorienting.
Awesome result for Haas, good result for Williams.
And the Red Bull is now officially a shitbox. It doesn't matter who's in the #2 seat, they will be a back marker. If Dark Helmet or Horner approach Yuki he should laugh in their faces.
Lawson is a hot-headed, over-confident, still-a-teenager. Don't get me wrong, these ingredients can absolutely be assets in the world of F1 where the budgets are big and the personalities bigger, but I'm yet to see him do anything in an F1 car that justifies him keeping his seat. Will he lost it before Suzuka? Unlikely, that seems like a whole bunch of media hype. But whether it's just a maturity thing, or a simply raw-talent issue, he's not ready for F1. It's all exacerbated by a Red Bull car that seems to have a random number generator determining how it's going to perform on any given weekend, but I don't think his failings are a result of the vehicle.
Well, you'd be asking Yuki to choose between Red Bull handling and Racing Bull strategy & durability... What to do, what to do?
Uh, maybe you should do that somewhere private
Wow, this is kind of nuts. Y’all know how they were playing the radio messages from Charles and Lewis around trying to setup the car swap, and it sounded a bit… testy? Yeaaaaaah that was pre-empted by a bit of conversation that we DIDN’T hear that would have changed the complexion of the situation in its entirety.
Emphasis mine:
Ferrari are, as you would have guessed, not exactly pleased with big F1 for how they framed the entire issue.
From The Race:
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/a-joke-ferrari-angered-f1-radio-hamilton-leclerc-swap-chinese-gp/
Emphasis mine:
Ferrari are, as you would have guessed, not exactly pleased with big F1 for how they framed the entire issue.
From The Race:
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/a-joke-ferrari-angered-f1-radio-hamilton-leclerc-swap-chinese-gp/
After some consideration, I think that if Lawson gets demoted, then the seat should go to Hulkenberg. Not that I hate Hulkenberg, at all, but there are indications he's a really good driver who just hasn't gotten a shot in a competitive car.
That said, I'm not sure the RB2 is a competitive car. But it's surely competitiver than Sauber or Haas.
When watching the race, I didn't really get any tension from Hamilton about the swap. I think it was because I think it was presented well by the Sky sports guys. I think it was Brundle that prefaced the whole interaction with "Hamilton has called for a swap" even though they never showed it on the F1 feed. So In my mind the only tension about the situation was Hamilton bristling about them telling him when and how he should let him pass.
In the sprint race, there seemed to be a few testy comments from Hamilton that were of the "I have won a bunch of WDCs, leave me alone, I know what I am doing" vibe. I took the whole swap thing the same way....as in "leave me alone, he's not close enough, I'm not going to compromise my position to let him through where you want me to"
@Doomlord_uk I think they changed Hamilton to a two stop strategy because he was struggling and Max was going to pass him within a lap or two. He had enough gap behind him that he could pit only losing the spot to Max (that he would have lost anyways), with the hopes that he could find magic on new tires and hunt Max back down....but that obviously didn't work.
In the sprint race, there seemed to be a few testy comments from Hamilton that were of the "I have won a bunch of WDCs, leave me alone, I know what I am doing" vibe. I took the whole swap thing the same way....as in "leave me alone, he's not close enough, I'm not going to compromise my position to let him through where you want me to"
@Doomlord_uk I think they changed Hamilton to a two stop strategy because he was struggling and Max was going to pass him within a lap or two. He had enough gap behind him that he could pit only losing the spot to Max (that he would have lost anyways), with the hopes that he could find magic on new tires and hunt Max back down....but that obviously didn't work.
I was watching the race at work while also putting out metaphorical (should this instead be 'figurative'?) fires, and I never heard this part of the broadcast. I did, however, get to hear most of the Hamilton/Leclerc radio messages about the swap later.
Would be an amazing opportunity for Hulkenberg. But given that he's been contracted by Audi to be their main guy I simply can't see it happening. Unless he has an out-clause that says if one of the big teams comes knocking...
Albon has disclosed in interviews that he had been asked by Red Bull at least twice if he was willing to return to RB. He also very politely said that his answer was that they could go fuck themselves.
At this point it's basically a pattern and it started with the switch to the turbo hybrid V6 engines in 2014. They lucked into a successful run because they hired what is probably one of the top Formula One racing drivers of all time but everyone else struggled to extract the most out of their car and powertrain.
Vettel left Red Bull because the car's performance characteristics didn't mesh well with his driving style among other reasons. Ricciardo was OK at first then got worse. They then had a string of "second driver is performing worse and worse in the car and only Max Verstappen handles it well" from basically 2015 onwards. Kvyat, Ricciardo, Gasly, Albon, Perez and now Lawson.
Max is carrying this team because he is a generational talent and even he has a harder and harder time to mask the awfulness of the car from year to year. Everyone else was mediocre or outright awful in the second seat and everyone except the golden boy Verstappen was also treated poorly or with outright contempt.
This is now a 10 year streak that has ruined half a dozen driver careers and led to a situation where no one wants to touch the second driver seat at Red Bull. That's why they go to greater and greater lengths with their driver search. Rumors claim that red Bull basically asked most of the current grid if they wanted the second seat at RB and everyone declined, even Sainz. The only one who showed interest in the seat (Tsunoda) was declined.
Point of order: Max took Kvyat’s seat in 2016. Daniel Ricciardo was the primary driver.
The rest of your post makes a certain amount of sense, though.
Because Kvyat was underperforming in the car. My whole point is that they have been doing this since 2025 and the only reason why they are successful is that they lucked into having Max Verstappen at their disposal.
Their "we fire a driver we treat badly and who underperforms in our not very well designed car" worked exactly one time for them (well twice if you count Vettel) when they fired Danii and replaced him with Verstappen. Everything since then has been a comedy of errors and trashing their own drivers in the press.
It was misrepresented in a lot of the reporting though because the broadcast didn't show the first radio transmission where Lewis requested the change and so it got turned into drama.
Martin was very sure to mention it more than once, and at won't point said it was the team that asked for the switch, then he came back a few minutes later after listening to the messages and clarified that it was Lewis that called for the switch. I'm guessing it was after the race that Ferrari felt things weren't presented accurately.
So, I obviously didn’t catch that. You know, like I said. Part of the danger of watching at work.
Now that I think on it, I’m pretty sure it’s because I could read the radio messages from across the room, as opposed to only hearing the commentary when I was much closer to the TV.
They've been doing their goddamnedest to manufacture drama in the McLaren garage, about how Oscar was "enraged" over team orders in Melbourne, how Lando was throwing it all away by not challenging by lap 20, etc. etc. etc. It's one thing for Jacques to do that, but Coulthard and Palmer should know better.
So we finally watched DtS season 7 this weekend and I am seriously disappointed and if this is what they'll have for the coming seasons then I'm not going to bother watching anymore.
I dont actually give many fucks about team principals and even less about manufactured, pseudo scripted, stories that didnt happen as portrayed, I had the feeling I saw less of F1, the drivers and the actual teams than ever before and some teams and pretty major events such as Newey leaving RBR and joining AMR werent even mentioned.
I dont actually give many fucks about team principals and even less about manufactured, pseudo scripted, stories that didnt happen as portrayed, I had the feeling I saw less of F1, the drivers and the actual teams than ever before and some teams and pretty major events such as Newey leaving RBR and joining AMR werent even mentioned.
DTS has gotten me curious about F1, but the only thing I'd really want is a non-live version of the races and access to analysis/commentary.
DTS is also how I got interested in F1.
Honestly, what you're looking for is exactly what F1TV is, and in my opinion, it's an insane deal to get it for $85/year.
I am a DtS to F1TV pipeline convert, too.
I enjoyed season 7 for what it was. But now that I’m watching most races and following along, the manufactured drama goes in one ear and out the other. I watched most of it on a plane, and I couldn’t tell you what any of the episodes were about.
I do like the idea of DtS ultimately being about the downfall of RIC. What a long, downward story arc.