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Hockenheim 2002 comes to my mind "let Nick pass, immediately!!"

hahaha, well reminded! Oh my god.....Massa is definetly World Champion on receiving team orders!

"Felipe, Jacques is faste..."

Nah.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

I thought the ethics used by Williams today were not very high standard.
Better to just say it straight then, like "Felipe, you have to let Bottas go through if we want to have both cars finish higher up".

The stewards were really keen to try out their new penalties today ... really didn't think Kevin needed one, nor Ricciardo. The Bianchi one was justified as he came from a long way back, up the inside of two other cars out of control.

EDIT: Didn't realise he had a puncture, Spanish TV didn't relay this.

Would be more confusing if they ever have to run Massa and Nasr.

"Felipe, Felipe is faster than you, let Felipe by please Felipe. Do you understand this message?"

"Do YOU understand the message??"

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

The only thing to keep this championship alive is that Red Bull take the fight to Mercedes and if they can score 2nd and 3rd in 2 races with an unreliable car, there is still much we can expect from them while Mercedes already seemed to reach its top level and already thinking about the title and letting Rosberg and Lewis to decide who wins the driver's title. If Rosberg doesn't have a Brawnesque car like Button had in 2009 he's not championship material and Lewis will likely get distracted from his off-track activities, losing his focus and getting pissed stepping into the car after another break-up for 2 weeks with his lovely Nicole we all enjoy so much and carry in our hearts every time she graces us with her dazzling smile in the pits...

Ferrari must be thrilled battling with Force India btw, you can imagine the delight of Nando passing Hulk for 4th place right at the end.

The sooner everybody realises how much of a waste of time and money these new regulations are, the better. Yes, the sound is a part of the show. It's what brings the public to the grandstands. A couple of years ago I went to a race with people who never saw F1 and at the end of the day all they could talk about was "Wow, what a noise, unbelievable, what a rush, absolutely thrilling !" We used to wear earplugs, now we need hearing-aids. F1 has gotten ugly and silent when it used to be a thing of beauty with an earthshaking sound you could feel in your guts. And it's not one of those "deal with it, get used to it"-things. If you wanna hear tyre squeeling in a corner, go watch touring cars and WTCC, this is Formula 1 ! I hardly recognize the sport I started watching 15 years ago.

That, or more likely fans will get used to the changes, teams will get on top of the new package and close the gap to Mercedes, drivers will get more comfortable pushing to make a pass, and things will continue happily enough until we all get up in arms because they're changing to electric engines or something.

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15 years ago, so... 1999?

- Drivers, teams and press complaining about new regs (Four grooves all round, widely predicted to be the death of F1 as we knew it)
- One team having clearly the fastest car pre-season, with the only hope being either reliability issues or another team catching up

That's two things straight away. '99 looked pretty poor at first, but it ended up being probably one of the best seasons in the 90s. I really don't understand why people are writing 2014 off, two races into such a long season.

Because bitching and moaning is the new norm these days on the internet. The glass is always half empty and it either sucks or blows.

I notice the same attitude at a forum for my local professional football club (soccer for you USA boys). Nothing is good and the club probably has gone bankrupt 14 times last month alone according to some members.

a huge dissappointment this race.

Drivers are like robots... please leave the gap to 2 seconds... we've turned up the engine for a few laps so please drive a bit faster to open the gap to 4 seconds... turn the engine down, look after your tyres, do this, to that... keep a gap, do not attack, stay behind, let him through, box box box

F1 used to be a sprint race where drivers, cars and engines were driven to the max for the whole distance. And if the engine went kaboom, so be it. Now with all these rules and max number of engines it seems like a 'mini Le Mans way of racing', whereas the famous 24 hours race I have a feeling it seems to be more and more like a real sprint race between the stints of the drivers.

I don't want to sound like an arse here, but Red Bull didn't ask Dan to leave a 2 second gap for safety - he was asked because it's the best for the car and tyres. If they've decided they aren't going to risk attacking each other early on, or Dan has said he can't pass for whatever reason, then the optimum gap to leave is 2 seconds.

You avoid almost all dirty air that way, thus saving the tyres. It leaves a gap should Seb get tangled with a backmarker, than Dan will not be damaged. And it helps the car running in colder, cleaner air. Which is an issue given Red Bull and Renaults issues. I don't think it's too big a deal to suggest a sensible gap to leave which is optimum for your performance.



F1 also used to be considerably cheaper to run in. So if we go back to the old way, there will be no teams to run in it.

A question about ERS:
Why isnt there a display when the driver is using it? (Onboard channel)
Or ERS is always on everytime driver is on accelerator??
Or they still use a button/pedal like prev. years to activate the boost?

well, if they got a bigger piece of the pie, they are mainly responsible for making, it could become more affordable for them....

ERS is built into the power unit, so it's automatic upon acceleration at different points. The drivers select certain maps which have been set up for best ERS deployment. So one map might have 15% exiting the back straight and another might have 25% for example.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

This might change as the teams get a better handle on fuel usage and can start really using it as part of the strategy - at the moment they're still working on getting to the end without problems. Agreed that it's a good graphic though ...

I did like Dan's comment on the radio that if anything happened between Seb and Nico he wanted to be a part of it. Made me smile and just like him that little but more.

Oh without a doubt, I did like that comment from Dan. But I think Red Bulls attitude was more a case of, if you're not going to pass him, then 2 seconds behind will be optimum for the car and tyres due to clean, fresh air. Given Red Bulls issues, I don't think that's an unreasonable request. And since RBR gave him preference in the pit stops, it doesn't appear to be real team orders.

On the subject of Massa, there's a simple solution.

Let Bottas through to have a go at Button.
If he passes Button, great, more points for the team..
If he can't, let Felipe back through on the final corner.

The result probably stays the same, and Massa comes across as a good team player. Instead, he makes himself look like a bit of a dick.

It's not like the team were asking Massa to move over because Bottas is their hope for the title and they want him to have the maximum points. It's nothing like the Alonso incident, where they were battling for a win with no other cars ahead of them. It was the logical thing to ask at that point of the race, and I'm sure Felipe would have been given the same treatment if he was the one catching Bottas and Button. (I think the team even told Bottas not to challenge Felipe at one point during the race? Hardly being biased are they?)

And a 10 place penalty for an unsafe release? I hate this penalty culture in F1. The team messed up. Dan realised and stopped. It cost them massively in the race. Why slap another penalty on top of that?

These little things are going to happen during the pressure of a pit stop. Giving stupid penalties won't stop tyres falling off and people getting hurt in the pits. It's a dangerous place.