I love the smell of burning oil in the morning - The Formula 1 2022 season

SocrManiac

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So… Ovah?

Max would probably like to celebrate a title that doesn’t have any FIA baggage. Not saying I disagree with Leclerc’s penalty or about the points being awarded, but learning that you won after the race can’t bring the pure joy of crossing the line and knowing there’s nothing else to discuss.
 

OurF'ingCity

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That was kind of a travesty of a race, IMO. Gasly getting close to a truck in a scary almost-mirror of the Bianchi crash, a really exciting run from Alonso to pass Russell and lose out to Vettel by hundredths of a second that apparently no cameraman bothered to record (it’s one thing not to show it live but we don’t even have replays other than helmet cams), and the anti-climax of LeClerc’s penalty leading to confusion about whether Max had won or not (Max giving an interview saying he’s excited to get the championship next race while “World Champion” flashes on the screen behind him).

Add in the looming controversy over the cost cap and I’d say this is a weekend to forget.
 

SocrManiac

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I haven’t gotten the sense that anybody other than Daniel Ricciardo wants to be there today.

Also, no flyover during the anthem? Anybody can do fireworks, only ‘Murica can do Raptors.
 

cgori

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Lewis pretty clearly wanted to be there.

The hours-later 30-second penalty on Alonso is ~peak FIA.
 

SocrManiac

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The timing of it is absurd, but the whole thing is peak FIA. What’s the difference between Perez’s endplate and those that got Magnussen the orange and black flag earlier this year? Perez’s finally did fly off (a serious potential hazard). Regardless of the integrity of the rest of the wing, how is that allowed to stand?

And, of course, the nearest comp to Alonso (Suzuka 2019) wasn’t penalized.

So, take precedent, throw it out the window, and apply random penalties. Perfect.

Steiner can justifiably blow his top on this one.
 

Nick Kaufman

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The timing of it is absurd, but the whole thing is peak FIA. What’s the difference between Perez’s endplate and those that got Magnussen the orange and black flag earlier this year? Perez’s finally did fly off (a serious potential hazard). Regardless of the integrity of the rest of the wing, how is that allowed to stand?

And, of course, the nearest comp to Alonso (Suzuka 2019) wasn’t penalized.

So, take precedent, throw it out the window, and apply random penalties. Perfect.

Steiner can justifiably blow his top on this one.
It's not the FIA, it's the local stewards. The absurdity is that Russel took a 5 sec penalty, while Alonso who wasn't warned or told to go the pit got a 30 second penalty because he got hit by Stroll who like a bonehead tried to stop him in vein.
 

Average Reds

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It's not the FIA, it's the local stewards. The absurdity is that Russel took a 5 sec penalty, while Alonso who wasn't warned or told to go the pit got a 30 second penalty because he got hit by Stroll who like a bonehead tried to stop him in vein.
I have no beef with the relatively small penalty for Russell, as it was really a racing incident. Sainz had a terrible start and took a huge risk diving across the track at the first corner.

Alonzo had no business being penalized after the race. Especially considering that Perez received no penalty for the exact same infraction.

The inconsistency is mind blowing.
 

SocrManiac

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Footy fans often complain (with reason) at the state of the game’s officiating, especially since the tool to fix the problems has exacerbated them (thanks, VAR!). F1 is the most utterly randomized dice roll of any sport I have ever followed. If they made the same call ten times in a row you still can’t be sure of the eleventh. It’s gotta be infuriating for the drivers.
 

cgori

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This article had the most context that I found. None of it really makes me feel better.

-The 30-second penalty is a post-race conversion of what would have been an in-race 10-second stop/go (the in-race penalty seems a bit harsh/arbitrary)
-Haas complained about Alonzo's mirror twice during the race, but nothing was communicated to Alpine (bad!)
-Somehow what happened in Suzuka in 2019 where a loose mirror was ignored was not considered precedent (what?)
-Haas also complained about Perez's front-wing and this was rejected, in-race the RB team sent a picture of the wing that apparently was enough to allow to them to continue (cue conspiracy theories)
-Haas thinks all of this is BS because KMag was black-and-orange'd 3 times previously this season for similar things - I'd have to go look at exactly how bad the damage was in each one, but I feel like one of them was awfully similar to Perez's situation here
 

OurF'ingCity

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I get why it emerged this way, but I just think they need to do away with the whole concept of penalties assessed after the race is over (unless something happens on the last lap, say).

This idea of “we need more time to consider the issue and hear everyone’s side” is anathema to sports. Imagine if F1 procedures were applied to, say, the NBA - you could have a foul not called in game, only for the refs to take a later look, hear a protest from the other side, decide there actually was a foul (it’s fairly common for the last two minute report to identify errors from the on-court officials), and then deduct 2 points or whatever from the other team. Which would be insane but that’s exactly what the FIA does routinely.
 

rbeaud

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This article had the most context that I found. None of it really makes me feel better.

-The 30-second penalty is a post-race conversion of what would have been an in-race 10-second stop/go (the in-race penalty seems a bit harsh/arbitrary)
-Haas complained about Alonzo's mirror twice during the race, but nothing was communicated to Alpine (bad!)
-Somehow what happened in Suzuka in 2019 where a loose mirror was ignored was not considered precedent (what?)
-Haas also complained about Perez's front-wing and this was rejected, in-race the RB team sent a picture of the wing that apparently was enough to allow to them to continue (cue conspiracy theories)
-Haas thinks all of this is BS because KMag was black-and-orange'd 3 times previously this season for similar things - I'd have to go look at exactly how bad the damage was in each one, but I feel like one of them was awfully similar to Perez's situation here
What I recalled of KMag issues was the length of time he drove around damaged, several many laps. In one he spewed CF all over the track grinding the wobbly end plate down. So perhaps Checo gets a pass because it quickly “resolved” itself?

To me it is all weird because FIA failed to act properly. I’m curious why they are so averse to Red Flags. The Stroll crash begged for one, no?

Shall we prepare for an over reaction where every car has to be scrutinized after touching on course?
 

reggiecleveland

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I love watching Lewis Hamilton try to be a good sport. He alway begins with what I assume his publicicst wants to him to say, great team effort, great fans, pandering comment to he fans then seems to consider walking away then gets into the bad strategy of his team and that he doesn't have the car to compete.
 

cgori

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I mean, Toto came on the radio on the cooldown lap and basically said the hard tyres were the wrong call, no? So I don't think Lewis was saying anything we didn't already know (about the strategy). I also think it's pretty well understood that the Red Bull is just a faster car, though I think Merc thought with thin air this was a shot for them to be very close.

The Peter Windsor recap was interesting, he said Merc was surprised that RB was able to make soft/med work as a 1-stop, Merc assumed that going med/hard as a 1-stop would give them a decent shot at a race win over a soft/med/med (or soft/med/soft, dunno if that was available) 2-stop strategy and Max/Checo were able to stretch the softs a ton more than expected. Once Red Bull was able to make a 1-stop work, Merc had few options, they could have tried med/soft (a la Danny Ric) which probably was the right call in retrospect, or taken the cheap pitstop under VSC to go med/hard/soft, which seemed to be what George wanted. But I think their strategy team was pretty locked into their plan and couldn't see a way (or a reason?) to change it. The deg advantage of the hard ended up being minimal compared to the mediums on the Red Bull, and that was really their only hope.

Mercedes still absolutely destroyed Ferrari. All those shots of Charles (and Carlos) sliding over that kerb were showing how skittish their car was, going all the way back to FP1 I think.
 
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SocrManiac

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It’s hard not to think of Ferrari as a meme this year. If this was the second or third race of the season, then sure- setup will be a major unknown. How do they not have enough data on their own car at this point to at least get a basic setup dialed in?
 

Nick Kaufman

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I mean, Toto came on the radio on the cooldown lap and basically said the hard tyres were the wrong call, no? So I don't think Lewis was saying anything we didn't already know (about the strategy). I also think it's pretty well understood that the Red Bull is just a faster car, though I think Merc thought with thin air this was a shot for them to be very close.

The Peter Windsor recap was interesting, he said Merc was surprised that RB was able to make soft/med work as a 1-stop, Merc assumed that going med/hard as a 1-stop would give them a decent shot at a race win over a soft/med/med (or soft/med/soft, dunno if that was available) 2-stop strategy and Max/Checo were able to stretch the softs a ton more than expected. Once Red Bull was able to make a 1-stop work, Merc had few options, they could have tried med/soft (a la Danny Ric) which probably was the right call in retrospect, or taken the cheap pitstop under VSC to go med/hard/soft, which seemed to be what George wanted. But I think their strategy team was pretty locked into their plan and couldn't see a way (or a reason?) to change it. The deg advantage of the hard ended up being minimal compared to the mediums on the Red Bull, and that was really their only hope.

Mercedes still absolutely destroyed Ferrari. All those shots of Charles (and Carlos) sliding over that kerb were showing how skittish their car was, going all the way back to FP1 I think.
I just saw a video that said that the thin air made it harder to cool down cars and Ferrari deliberately chose a slower setup in order to increase reliability. I believe it because I saw Sainz say after the race that the performance wasn't there but the good news is they knew why.

Widsor also interestingly said in an earlier video that Mercedes benefited from the thin air because it ameliorated all the problems they had with their chassis sticking too close to the ground and creating purpoising.

IMO, Mercedes also was lucky to not get the same backlash as Ferrari in Hungary even though they made a very similar mistake, because they were enjoying lower expectations they were exceeding and because they have the rep of a competent team that makes proper strategy calls -which to be fair isn't an unfounded rep either.

All in all, it was a boring race and my interest in the sport is starting to wane again. The big issue is that it's tough for the sport to be exciting for a multitudue of reasons. In random order:

1. To a great extent victory or defeat is determined at the factories and wind tunnels away from the track.

2. We like to celebrate the drivers, but the truth of the matter is that the speed of the car determines success.

3. The techical details that determine success and failure are obscure to the casual fan. Like, last year a big part of performance derived from the sticky bits on the upper side of the floor board; those sticky bits had random shapes that were probably worked out on the wind tunnel. This year, a big part of success depends on the underside of the car, but most of us haven't seen it and if we had, we couldn't be able to tell why one is working better than the other.

4. The watchability of a sport depends to a large extent to unpredictability and a certain back and forth. In F1, all things being equal, the fastest car will start first and only go on to increase their time margin from the car behind. Formula 1 to her credit is trying to fight this by introducing the cost cap, which will probably help over the next few years. It's also trying to inject variance to racing. That partly happens from using different track layouts that favor one or the other team from one weekend to the next -though this doesn't make the racing more exciting necessarily- but also by using things such as mandatory pit stops in order to use at least two different sets of tires. The different sets of tires is an effort to inject variance on its own. However, these strategies also have limits. In the old days, pitstops introduced far more variance than today. When I was watching F1 as a kid, pitstops lasted 10 seconds and they were very often botched. It was even worse before my time during the 50s and the 60s when pitstops took a minute to complete. As time goes by however, teams gradually solve these problems and today's pitstops are probably as efficient as they can possibly be. Moreover, the introduction of different sets of tires has led to some perverse incentives, as drivers have realized that it makes less sense to go balls to the wall trying to go as fast as possible and instead focusing on so-called tire management - which is a euphemism for going slower in order to conserve tire life. A big reason Verstappen won yesterday was that his tire management was great and he exceeded the expectations of the default strategy.

I really don't know how you can sole those issues. Like I said, the cost cap will help. But let's also not forget that this isn't just a pure sport, it's a vehicle for automotive development and a big part of the reason many car manufacturers enter the sport; this is why for example we aren't seeing the best/fastest racing cars that can be produced today, but we are focusing on using alternative fuels and batteries.

5. Personally, I would watch a reality show that followed each team at the factory throughout the season as they tried to eke more performance. I would also welcome the introduction of a parallel driver's championship in which instead of having sprint races, we have an extra race during the weekend in which all the drivers compete using the same chassis and engine. I can already hear the objection that this isn't F1, F1 isn't supposed to be like the Indycar series and it's not a baseless criticism. I would also be concerned that if you had two championships running in parallel each weekend, you would cannibalizing or weakening the one form of racing that garnered more interest.

But even so, it maybe worth trying so we can finally get a more honest assessment of each driver's ability. I am obviously not holding my breath that this is going to be happening soon.
 

allstonite

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Magnussen lucked into his first pole today (although as the announcers said 8 of the 10 completed a fast lap before the red flag and heavy rain and he was still on top). Very cool moment to see the Alpine pit go nuts and celebrate
 

swiftaw

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Magnussen lucked into his first pole today (although as the announcers said 8 of the 10 completed a fast lap before the red flag and heavy rain and he was still on top). Very cool moment to see the Alpine pit go nuts and celebrate
Do you mean the Haas pit?
 

SocrManiac

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Nice to see George top the podium. We’ll deserved.

Do folks feel the penalty was correct in the latest Max vs. Lewis clash?
 

Silverdude2167

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Nice to see George top the podium. We’ll deserved.

Do folks feel the penalty was correct in the latest Max vs. Lewis clash?
Lol, ridiculous decision that it's Max's fault and a 5 second penalty. In front at the previous corner and Hamilton gives no space at the next turn, even Hamiltons radio is clear "that was just a racing incident" and from a guy who complains about everything. it was probably a decision of it doesn't matter anymore for Max so let's give him the penalty.

Now Max not giving up the place to Perez is more interesting, but Perez has to be better in general.
 

kfoss99

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Interlagos might be my favorite track. Just always seems to result in really fun races.
The old tracks all seem great. Suzuka, Spa, Monza, and Silverstone all have great races.

Happy for Russell. I latched on to him as my favorite driver when he was with Williams and drove the hell out of that back marker.

Pretty big mistake by Red Bull having Perez on mediums for the last sprint.

Sad that Magnussen won poll and didn't even finish one lap in the race. Riccardo's been terrible this year.
 

Nick Kaufman

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Max not giving up the place is inexcusable for me.
Inexcusable and inexplicable. The theory is he's holding a grudge over Sergio's crash in the Monaco qualifier which he feels was deliberate. But I am under the impression Perez has helped him in a couple of races since then. It just feels petty.

Having said that, I didn't know that getting second in the championship was such a big deal that you would ask your fellow drivers to let you through like both Perez and Leclerc did. I don't remember ever this happening.

A lot of drama and action to chew on this race.
 

OurF'ingCity

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Inexcusable and inexplicable. The theory is he's holding a grudge over Sergio's crash in the Monaco qualifier which he feels was deliberate. But I am under the impression Perez has helped him in a couple of races since then. It just feels petty.

Having said that, I didn't know that getting second in the championship was such a big deal that you would ask your fellow drivers to let you through like both Perez and Leclerc did. I don't remember ever this happening.

A lot of drama and action to chew on this race.
I suppose it’s possible they have contractual provisions that give them bonuses tied to where they finish in the championship standings?

As for Verstappen, I get the sense that no one really likes him but they tolerate him because he’s so good. When your own race engineer is essentially like “hey man, what the fuck?” that’s not a great sign. Just kinda seems like a miserable person to have to work with.
 

SocrManiac

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If Mercedes really is back, Max will wish he had Perez’s yeoman support next year. Kneecapping that today could be massive.
 

TomBrunansky23

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Verstappen is a cyborg, an absolutely remorseless personality. He could give a damn whether Perez lives or dies unless he's directly aiding Max to get what he wants.

I think there's trouble afoot in Milton Keynes.
 

kfoss99

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This is a late response. Verstappen probably doesn't win the championship last year if Perez didn't do such a masterful job holding up Hamilton at Abu Dhabi. For that alone he should of let Perez through at Brazil.

I'm sure for marketing purposes and award compensation Red Bull wants their drivers 1 & 2 at the end of the year.
 

tmracht

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Glad for Sharl to hold on to P2. He was out there for a while but did enough. Stinks for Hamilton that his car finally crapped out but glad Seb got a point in his finale, got AM even with Alfa too in constructors.

Max is so damn good hopefully next year is a little more competitive. That W13 being a tractor didn't help anything this season.

The grid next year is going to be wild with so many leaving. Seb of course but also Mick, Nick and Ricc. De Vries and Hulk are whatever but will be fun to see Piastri and Sargeant.

24 races will be bonkers.
 

Nick Kaufman

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Why is De Vries whatever? :p

My big idea for F1. Abolish qualifying, introduce random draws for starting grid. Races are more fun when the pecking order is reshuffled due to penalties or inclement weather in qualifying.

Also why instate is not a word? How can things be reinstated, when they cannot be instated in the first place?
 

Chainsaw318

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I wonder if we see any real internal shakeups at Mercedes or Ferrari.

For Ferrari, it’s been years of race strategy clown shows, and it definitely cost them early this year and has been a running joke during the season, with the race engineers asking the drivers what to do, and working their way well into the alphabet with strategy plans.

At Mercedes, Hamilton and Russell can both. S a bit whiny, but it seems both were often not happy with the calls the team made. May be time for some changes there after a less-successful season.

You Have to give it to Red Bull in that the race strategy stuff is a place they don’t really make missteps on in the recent past. I think it helps to have the best car, and wonder if things even out next year.
 

Nick Kaufman

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Btw, Vettel, what a career heh? Starting off as a promising rookie out of nowhere, reaching the apex with 4 world titles and ending it looking like Tennis great Bjorn Borg!
 

cgori

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Can’t find an English link just yet, but Ferrari needs a new boss.
The reporting is mostly rumors (lots of them, semi-independently), but what I find curious is that most outlets are saying he quit with a year left on his contract, as opposed to being fired.
 

SocrManiac

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He made some comments about needing a car that could overcome strategy, which is insane for team fighting at the top. I wonder if something is rotten at Ferrari.
 

Nick Kaufman

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Mattia Binotto is leaving his position as Ferrari Formula 1 team boss and managing director of the company’s sporting division, according to reports in Italy.

After intense speculation that Ferrari was lining up to replace Binotto was emphatically rejected by the team in the build-up to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix weekend, Binotto is said to be negotiating his exit mere days after the season finale anyway.

The likelihood that his exit would be made official on Friday was first reported by Corriere della Sera, before being backed up by La Gazzetta dello Sport and Sky Sports Italy.

Ferrari will not comment on “speculation” for now and The Race understands that no official communication is planned for Friday.
https://the-race.com/formula-1/ferrari-tipped-to-announce-binotto-departure-from-f1-team/
 

Nick Kaufman

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I am sorry, Ferrari fired Binotto so that they can have Vasseur? Binotto should have had one more year and I don't think Vasseur is going to be an improvement.