I think he just wants to retire on his own term, you can kind of tell he was mentally done

F1 News: McLaren says Vettel was never a choice for 2021

Ouch LOL

there's basically nowhere to go for Vettel except the weak Renault, and I doubt Vettel will like to race in midfield...

the only other place, which is Mercedes... in case Hamilton is not renewing the contract... that is.. unless Hamilton doesn't want a 7th title...

So you think that Hamilton and Ferrari would still be talking after Sainz was hired by the Scuderia? I believe that window was shut very quickly.

Doubt that Hamilton's move in the off season was more than a bargaining position against Mercedes. They weren't likely to call his bluff - that relationship works both ways.

Hamilton is surely not going to Ferrari, why would I think there's still stalk between Ferrari and Hamilton?

What I said is about Vettel, there's only two slot right now, one at Renault, and one at Mercedes.

But Mercedes most likely will renew with Hamilton.

https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/36...-week-assessed

The crazy week analyzed.

Proposed calendar of (first?) 8 races

https://www.formula1.com/content/dam...9col/image.jpg

https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id...ce-chase-carey

A driver testing positive for the coronavirus would not automatically see a race cancelled once Formula One gets back underway next month, the sport's CEO, Chase Carey, said.

Just a little less than a month to go. Now we just need to see what happens between now and then. Just look forward to seeing some racing. :tup:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/14...nen--alfa-boss

Charles Leclerc's ex-Formula 1 team manager says the Ferrari driver has a mix of characteristics from world champions Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen.

Leclerc made his F1 debut with Sauber in 2018 before being promoted into a race seat with Ferrari after just one year.

The Monegasque youngster starred throughout last year, winning two races and finishing fourth in the drivers' standings ahead of four-time world champion team-mate Sebastian Vettel.

Leclerc was rewarded with a new long-term contract at Ferrari, keeping him at the team until the end of 2024.

Long-serving Sauber team manager Beat Zehnder worked with Leclerc through the 2018 season and immediately felt aware he was dealing with a special talent.

"It was a very good season, it was a very interesting season working again with a young kid," Zehnder told Autosport in an interview for a series celebrating 50 years of Sauber in motorsport.

"We've done this before, but for the first time in a long time, we had a newcomer, a very special driver with a very special attitude.

"I've never seen a driver like Charles before, and it was again very rewarding for all the work we had, for all the difficult times we had, to work with a kid again.

"I've always said that for me, from his speed, he's Kimi Raikkonen, and from his working attitude, he's probably Michael [Schumacher].

"Give him a good car, and he's going to be world champion, definitely."

Zehnder has been part of Sauber's motorsport programme since 1987, working with Schumacher in the early part of his career when he raced sports cars before making his F1 debut.

Zehnder and Raikkonen first met in 2000 when the young Finn was preparing for his rookie F1 season with Sauber in 2001, before linking back up in 2019 upon Raikkonen's return to Hinwil, with the team rebranded as Alfa Romeo Racing.

Leclerc's potential was also recognised by experienced Sauber team-mate Marcus Ericsson, who was not surprised to see the 22-year-old fare so well against Vettel at Ferrari.

"I could tell straightaway that this guy is special, this is a special talent," Ericsson told Autosport.

"When I saw him joining Ferrari and going up against Vettel, I knew he was going to be super-competitive - but maybe not that he was going to be as good as he was, only in his first year with Ferrari.

"I could tell that he is a very, very special driver and talent. He's definitely helped me to show what kind of driver I am.

"I think especially when he went on and the way he drove last year with Ferrari, [that] has also helped me I think in a way."

Saw this earlier this morning. :tup: The first race is going to be interesting to say the least.

Been raining for several days straight in the English midlands. McLaren ran their test laps in the very wet today.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/15...says-ricciardo

Renault's Daniel Ricciardo expects "driver egos" to come to the fore when Formula 1 racing resumes in Austria next month.

The Australian, who has the advantage of having conducted a test day at the Red Bull Ring with a two-year-old car this week, says the drivers will all be trying to show who has returned in the best form at the opener in Austria on 5 July.

Although the test was a useful boost Ricciardo, he expects rivals who have not had the chance to drive during the break to catch up by race day.

"We're going to get plenty of practice, so the race weekend will go as normal," he said in an F1 podcast. "We're going to get plenty of seat time before race day.

"But the lights are going to go out and for sure we're all going to be showing everyone, 'I trained harder in my quarantine,' or 'I'm less rusty than you are.' I'm sure some driver egos will get in the way.

"Or everyone will be really cautious, 'this feels foreign!' I think it's going to be pretty exciting. We don't really know how many races we're going to get this year, so you're probably going to get the mentality of let's make this one count."

Ricciardo, who announced his move to McLaren for 2021 during the delays to the current season, says the test with the RS18 was useful, especially in terms of getting his body used to driving after a break of over three months.

Drivers that I am excited to watch and hope win:

- Daniel Ricciardo
- Carlos Sainz
- Charles Leclerc
- Lando Norris

Driver drama that I have been craving:

- Max Verstappen vs. Everybody

Well, Charles Leclerc, anyway. ;-)

I agree - lots of great talent, young and old, on the grid. And Max VerCrashin' makes it interesting...

He would have won Bahrain had his car not let him down (MGU-K, I think) last year. But if you've never seen him in F2, this masterclass of passing is worth the next 5-1/2 minutes of your life to check out (sorry, I cannot embed as the video is property of Formula 1 and they don't allow that option).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh2wAbEJ7c4

:tiphat:

I like the comment that says you know you're good when your F2 race is showing on the Formula One channel lol

I expect fully Vettel will stick his nose and attitude where it doesnt belong. Ferrari have a nice potential management problem soon lol :)

Via SKY F1 -

Mercedes hope for car updates for Austria
The Silver Arrows head into the new season as favourites, and technical director James Allison says the team are aiming to provide Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas with an upgraded car in Austria, compared to what looked to be fastest at pre-season testing back in February.

"We haven't yet had a single race but actually quite a lot of time has passed since we launched this car," Allison said in a Petronas social media video. "If you imagine where the launch car was and the car that would have gone to Australia, that was frozen around about Christmas. So there was the whole of January, February, March, all making the car quicker in the wind tunnel and also the design compartments.

"And so we've got quite a lot of ideas about how to make it quicker, and quite a lot of those ideas were already in train and through the design office before we shut down nine weeks ago.

"So our challenge now is to ensure that quarter of a year of development can get off the drawing boards and onto the car as swiftly as possible. We hope to have a chunk of that for the first race in Austria, and the season that follows will of course take as much as the development as fast as we can get it onto the car in turn."

Haha I was definitely not paying attention there!

But yes, looking forward to watching the young phenom on the track. :rofl2:

Zoltar says.......

[IMG]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...3986223e_h.jpgMartini by Raf, on Flickr[/IMG]

Aside from no $$$ backing them up, they lost their way and were just poorly run. I hope they pick themselves up......it won't be this year.

Hakkinen: Ferrari aren’t on Mercedes/Red Bull level

https://www.planetf1.com/news/mika-h...m=talk_of_town

The best performance earlier this year in testing was Mercedes and Red Bull,” he told Laureus.

“They were really cool, really quick. So those teams will be there. Is Ferrari going to be there, strong? I’m sure it’s going to be there too, but is it going to be the same level as Red Bull and Mercedes? I don’t think so.”

The Finn made it clear that there will be no margin for error in a shortened season, and that every member of the teams will be pushed hard.

“If your car, engine, gearbox, aerodynamics don’t work straight away for the first Grand Prix, it’s very difficult to come back from there for sure,” he explained.

“The package has to be right, from the beginning. And if the team’s having any kind of issues, technical problems with the materials or the cars, it’s going to be a nightmare.

If that's the case, it'll be between Mercedes and RB. Of the top 3, these are the 2 that makes little mistakes, especially Mercedes. Yes?

Question - how many replacement components will each car be allowed in a shortened season? Anyone hear?

I think that Mclaren are in worse shape. Sounds like they may be forced into receivership before the end of July unless a white knight comes along. This relates to the entire Mclaren auto group, not just the F1 team, as I understand it, but may result in the F1 team being sold off in order to help keep the road car division afloat.

Sorry, Canada is all out of gazillionaires willing to buy teams to put their sons in seats. Somebody else's turn!

EDIT - never mind - I guess the Bank of Bahrain put up 150million pounds earlier today!

I was gonna say, wait for it.......some Middle Eastern money going through Western Union money order paid to McLaren.

Kind of the opposite to the usual scam, you mean? LOL

Bahraini interests already own a majority share in McLaren, followed by Saudi and Canadian businessmen. I suspect that sheik whasisname provided a personal guarantee on the loan, or put up one of his smaller yachts as collateral.

They should reach out for help from a Nigerian Prince in the guise of some inherited wealth transaction scam :twocents:

https://www.planetf1.com/news/martin...team-politics/

This will be interesting !

:iagree::iagree:

Meh, headline grabbing click bait.
These guys are all well paid professionals and will run their contracts for this year.
Maybe the last race will get interesting, when some vendettas get repaid without consequence, but I'd rather that the racing be the big story. Not covid, liveries, fire suits, schoolboy feuds, or controversy surrounding things like DAS.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/53240762

Verstappen has won the past two Austrian Grands Prix, and Red Bull's car has always been competitive in Hungary. So the Dutchman has what would appear to be a very strong chance of taking the fight to Hamilton as the year gets under way, even if the lack of fans at races means he won't be serenaded by his army of orange-clad fans this time.

Red Bull's competitiveness at their own circuit is partly caused by the fact that the track is located at an altitude of 800m, which appears to favour the Honda engine compared with the Mercedes.

This, engine boffins at the teams say, is down to how each manufacturer has chosen to design and run its turbo. Mercedes is believed to run its turbo and compressor at the regulation maximum 125,000rpm limit more often than Honda. This gives optimum efficiency most of the time.

Report:
But at altitude the turbo and compressor have to work harder to compensate for the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere if the engine is to produce the same power.

If the turbo is already running usually at maximum revs, there is no headroom to increase its speed to compensate for altitude, and the engine becomes what is known as 'saturated'. By contrast, an engine that is optimised to run less often at maximum turbo revs can speed up its turbo and compressor to compensate, reducing the performance differential between the two.

This effect is most pronounced in Mexico City, where the track is at 2,000m, but also applies in Austria and Brazil - all three are races where the Honda and Renault engines have appeared in the past few seasons to take a step forward in competitiveness compared with Mercedes.

Nevertheless, it would be a bold move to predict that Mercedes will struggle for competitiveness in Austria.

For one thing, that was 2018 and 2019 - it is not known whether the design of the respective engines has changed in this respect over the winter.

Secondly, Mercedes' struggles in Austria in the past two seasons have had two very specific causes.

In 2018, Hamilton and team-mate Valtteri Bottas were running one-two before both retired with hydraulic system failures.

And in 2019, the team had made a mistake on its cooling package at the design stage, which could not be sufficiently fixed during the season. This meant the car ran too hot when the ambient temperature was above a certain level. Race day in Austria was over 30C, so the engine had to be run detuned.

There is no reason to believe that either of these handicaps will apply in 2020.

Good News, Bad News. First the Good News, We have Formula 1 Racing!!!!:excited::excited: Now the Bad News, We still have Martin Brundle as one of the commentators. :icon14::icon14:

I have met and conversed with Martin on several occasions in the paddock and outside of it at races. He is very knowledgable and very easy to talk with. He knows the sport and was a driver. If you were to meet him and engage in conversation your opinion would most likely change.

He is also a true fan and will speak his mind like the rest of us and is keen to tell you he does not have all the answers as teams dont even tell him all the secrets lol :)

A good review of todays practice events - https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id...etitor-austria

Formula 1: US & Brazil races unlikely to happen - Toto Wolff

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/53278310

This is the first article for this season, in this series the BBC F1 started last year. The gent writing works for a team in aerodynamics design. He knows his stuff and these are worth reading if you are interested.

Formula 1 2020: The secret aerodynamicist - are capes the key?

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/51739796

By The Secret Aerodynamicist BBC Sport

Glad to see Racing India do well today. Don't care if its a Mercedes clone.

DLSTR, being here in Austin and the way things are going, It's not going to happen for the US Grand Prix.