F1 News Snippets

[Chrill]

With Toro Rosso basically matching McRenault, I can see Red Bull easily maintaining their position for 2019. The deal is for two years, so by the time 2021 and new engines roll around they may yet opt for Aston Martin or some other partner. Now, with Honda, Red Bull is effectively a works team once more.

[Penfold]

Although next year tyres will simply be called either 'hard', 'medium', or 'soft', we will be able to discover exactly which compounds are being used (like I care): https://www.racefans.net/2018/07/14/f1-fans-can-still-learn-real-tyre-names-under-simplified-2019-system-pirelli/

[Penfold]

In this week's episode of "A needless change requested by no one", we have a potential new points system: https://www.racefans.net/2018/07/06/f1-considering-new-points-system-to-cover-top-20-finishers/

For me it's fine as is and I don't care to see F1 award points simply for turning up to the grid, no matter how dire or short your race.

[Chrill]

Ferrari/FIAT chief Sergio Marchionne has died very suddenly following complications after surgery.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/25/news/companies/sergio-marchionne-obit/index.html

[Penfold]

Sad news for his family and friends.


McLaren poaches (but not in water) Toro Rosso's technical director, a certain Mr. James Key: https://www.racefans.net/2018/07/26/toro-rosso-technical-director-key-to-replace-morris-at-mclaren/

Got to be an improvement on the current state of affairs - for McLaren that is... obviously not so great for Toro Rosso.

[Penfold]

Sauber aiming to boost staff numbers by a third: https://racer.com/2018/08/08/sauber-plans-major-staff-expansion/

I imagine Williams will have to go the other way once their cash machine departs, so perhaps a Sauber staffer should cruise the streets of Grove and bag themselves a few strays.

[Penfold]

F1 bods could drop the rule which forces drivers who reach Q3 to start the race on tyres used in Q2: https://www.racefans.net/2018/10/04/q3-tyre-rule-under-discussion-after-claim-it-favours-top-teams/

This is quite amazing, somebody has actually noticed that the top three teams are now so much faster than everyone else that they can often run a harder compound in Q2, conferring on them an even greater performance advantage come Sunday, whilst the laggards of Q3 get picked off by those lucky chaps starting just outside the top ten.

[Chrill]

What was even the point of this rule from the start? I remember at first it applied to "whatever you run in Q3 you will start with" and people wouldn't run in Q3 because they wanted to keep options open. So then they moved that rule into Q2 which never made real sense.

Just let everyone qualify where they do, and then let them pick whatever tyre they want. That if anything would lead to bigger variety in strategy. "Hey Vettel is P2 behind Hamilton, Vettel will go softer on tyres and hope he can beat Hamilton off the line".

Also, force them to run in every session. Q2 in Russia was a farce.

[Penfold]

... as was the podium.

Reason for this tedious tyre rule, well according to that well known pillock Charlie Whiting, it was an attempt to produce varied strategies amongst the top runners - and he thinks it should be retained for that very reason (even though Merc. & Ferrari typically start on the same tyre these days).  As you say, giving them a free choice over race tyres is more likely to result in variation; they could nominate starting tyres a set time before the race and that's what they're stuck with, no way of knowing what your competitors are running until after that point.

[Penfold]

Cars to have lights on their rear wings: https://www.racefans.net/2018/10/12/f1-cars-to-use-rear-wing-lights-in-2019/

[Matt]

Prototypes have them. They look good there, but those cars also race at night and tend to have the lights on all the time.

[Chrill]

It may come in handy in heavy rain, but otherwise they'll make little to no difference.

[Penfold]

For some tedious reason that I can't be arsed to explain, F1 (Liberty Media) will not receive any hosting fees from Brazil for the next three years (and the teams will also forfeit their share of the Brazilian payments): https://www.racefans.net/2018/10/17/f1-to-hold-next-three-brazilian-grands-prix-for-free/

[Matt]

https://twitter.com/tonystewart/status/1055257820889784320?s=21

Looks like Magnussen drove a dirt winged sprint car tonight. Maybe the craziest form of racing there is.

[Chrill]

Those always were spectacular to watch on Eurosports and their segment "Watts". The show included various clips from around the sporting world of "striking, funny, shocking videos ... in the sports field."