The 2018 Season

[Chrill]

That is clever. It is akin to my football coach strategy: Get the ball into the goal.

[Penfold]

Sage advice.

The fans complain of too many grid penalties for engine/gearbox failures, the FIA responds with two fingers raised in a V: http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/09/21/power-unit-components-will-last-half-season-2018/

"From next year the maximum number of engine components each driver may use without penalty will drop from four to just two for some parts of the power unit.  Drivers will be limited to two examples each of their MGU-Ks, energy stores and control electronics. Of the remaining power unit elements – the internal combustion engines (ICE), turbochargers and MGU-Hs – drivers will be limited to three examples of each."

Merde.

[Chrill]

Sacre bleu!

För helvete!

OK then. So basically, the FIA is just showing Liberty who is boss. That's fun.

[Penfold]

Fun for the boys at the FIA, but then I'm fairly certain they don't actually watch F1 races.

[Chrill]

Red Bull Racing will officially be known by the following from the 2018 season onwards:

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing

Oh boi. Still Renault engines, remains to be seen whether they get rebadged or not.
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/09/25/aston-martin-becomes-red-bull-title-sponsor-2018/

[Matt]

Alonso will be running the 24 Hours of Daytona: http://www.racer.com/imsa/item/145227-alonso-to-contest-rolex-24-with-united-autosports

In other news, I stopped waiting and purchased my ticket and camping for the 24 Hours of Daytona.

[Penfold]

And with McLaren protege Chuck Norris along for the ride.  Also I see it's mentioned the door is open for Alonso to run Le Mans next year, should Toyota come knocking.

[Penfold]

Mercedes evaluating a Red Bull-esque high-rake design philosophy for 2018: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/133044/mercedes-may-emulate-red-bull-concept-for-18

[Penfold]

Seven dry-weather compounds for 2018: https://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/11/23/pirelli-names-new-tyre-2018-hypersoft/

Super hard
Hard
Medium
Soft
Supersoft
Ultrasoft
Hypersoft
Intermediate
Wet

[Chrill]

Oh yes baby. Super hard. Can you even say that on TV? Hmm.

Radical idea: Bring three compounds for every race, always call them Soft, Medium, and Hard although use different compounds.

For example, in Monaco the soft would be hypersoft, the medium would be ultrasoft, the hard would be supersoft. We need not know, the teams will know, and we could just keep track of the same 3 tyre colours:

Soft - purple/red
Medium - white
Hard - orange

The Pirelli press releases ahead of every weekend could just look like this:
"For Canada, Pirelli is bringing compounds 2 to 4 (which we super cool fans know to be ultrasoft to soft)" or "For Bahrain, Pirelli is bringing compounds 5-7 (medium to super hard)".

[Penfold]

Don't try to inject common sense into the matter, remember this is F1 we're talking about.

Alonso has already done over 50 laps with the super hard on, can he keep this up right to the chequered flag?

[Chrill]

No.

[Matt]

I'm guessing that they print the colors on them when they're manufactured, so they wouldn't be able to change the colors depending on which three they bring.

[Chrill]

New Alfa Romeo-Sauber livery applied to the 2012 Sauber car

[Penfold]

Looks fairly snazzy; will look slightly less so with the halo bolted on but so will they all.