The Motorsport Thread 2014

Any updates on Bianchi?

Well, I'm not a Piquet fan and Brundle was off racing for Jaguar in Group C at the time. I'd say Alesi as he made his debut, spectacularly, in 89 but I was a fan of his in the late 90's/early 2000's anyway, and that just leaves less well known drivers like de Cesaris, Nannini, Patrese, Pier Luigi-Martini etc. I've never been that much of a Senna fan anyway, I never liked that he would vigorously block, force drivers hard towards the pitwall or even deliberately crash into them, but at the same time Prost was very political and knew how to use the idiot-in-chief himself, Jean-Marie Ballestre, for his own gain. It's a shame Gilles Viellneuve died in 82, he would have dominated the 80's and I reckon he was faster than Senna.

I don't think we'll get any real updates on Bianchi until next week, I think they've said that's when they're going to ease back on the anesthetic and hope he wakes up, I'm just glade the term "sever" hasn't been used in describing the DAI he suffered, for the reasons you mentioned JJ.  

Oh, and here's the proposed layout for the 2016 GP in Baku, Azerbaijan, that was released today. The only thing that annoys me about this is that it's being called the European GP, despite being 300 miles east of Baghdad and north of Iran on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea.

 


Edited by sleeper - October 08 2014 at 16:03

Hell no, the excessive use of pace cars is the worst part of American racing for me. However, there are definite instances where it does need to be used and I think after Sutil's crash is one of them. Dunlop is a very fast, uphill, off camber left hander and is notoriously dangerous in the wet, as such a safety car should have been used. But this is typical Charlie Whiting, keep the SC out on track at a wet start for several laps longer than it was remotely needed, then use every excuse possible not to deploy it again.

As to the question, in the dry it's not remotely a problem and drivers going off  at that point end up with hefty bans for being reckless and stupid (just ask Maldonado, he did that at Monaco years ago in Renault World Series and was banned for half the season), but in the wet where grip levels are so much lower and can be changing by the lap I think the procedure may need to be revised depending on where they are, such as Dunlop.


Edited by sleeper - October 08 2014 at 19:54

sleeper wrote: Hell no, the excessive use of pace cars is the worst part of American racing for me. However, there are definite instances where it does need to be used and I think after Sutil's crash is one of them. Dunlop is a very fast, uphill, off camber left hander and is notoriously dangerous in the wet, as such a safety car should have been used. But this is typical Charlie Whiting, keep the SC out on track at a wet start for several laps longer than it was remotely needed, then use every excuse possible not to deploy it again.As to the question, in the dry it's not remotely a problem and drivers going off  at that point end up with hefty bans for being reckless and stupid (just ask Maldonado, he did that at Monaco years ago in Renault World Series and was banned for half the season), but in the wet where grip levels are so much lower and can be changing by the lap I think the procedure may need to be revised depending on where they are, such as Dunlop.

Ditto everything you said.

Overreaction would be awful here.

Marussia didn't actually make the decision about whether they would run both cars until this morning, but had to register the second car regardless on Thursday in case they did decide to race it. Looks like Rossi will get his debut in Austin. FP2 times, Hamilton way ahead but Mercedes split the set up work between the two cars and found that the set up use on Hamiltons was much better, so expect Nico to be a lot closer tomorrow. McLaren looking very good this weekend, Button reckons they'll be a serious podium threat fighting with Williams and Alonso, Red Bull seem to be struggling and Kvyat looks the best of the RB cars.

Pos	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1m39.630s	-	27
2	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren/Mercedes	1m40.494s	0.864s	32
3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m40.504s	0.874s	32
4	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m40.542s	0.912s	30
5	Valtteri Bottas	Williams/Mercedes	1m40.573s	0.943s	33
6	Jenson Button	McLaren/Mercedes	1m40.718s	1.088s	32
7	Felipe Massa	Williams/Mercedes	1m40.731s	1.101s	30
8	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m41.108s	1.478s	32
9	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull/Renault	1m41.396s	1.766s	30
10	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m41.531s	1.901s	33
11	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1m41.630s	2.000s	24
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India/Mercedes	1m41.677s	2.047s	27
13	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull/Renault	1m42.061s	2.431s	25
14	Sergio Perez	Force India/Mercedes	1m42.090s	2.460s	29
15	Adrian Sutil	Sauber/Ferrari	1m42.233s	2.603s	31
16	Romain Grosjean	Lotus/Renault	1m42.892s	3.262s	30
17	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus/Renault	1m42.905s	3.275s	33
18	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber/Ferrari	1m43.055s	3.425s	33
19	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham/Renault	1m44.135s	4.505s	22
20	Max Chilton	Marussia/Ferrari	1m44.530s	4.900s	29
21	Kamui Kobayashi	Caterham/Renault	1m44.952s	5.322s	27

European GP, in Azerbajian? That is even more of a stretch than Turkey being in Europe! 

NASCAR's new bad boy Brad Keslowski is at it again, (it must be good to make national sports news) apparently pissing off 3 drivers in a few laps, causing Tony Stewart to back into his car on pit road, and usually cool Matt Kenseth to literally run to him and start punching the dude. Sheeeesh.

Bit of a dull race in Sochi, give them tyres that last forever and the grid just strings out. Unsurprisingly, Rosberg gets it wrong whilst trying to go wheel to wheel with Lewis, as long as unreliability doesn't come into it thats going to decide the title in Lewis favour.

What did Brad do?

MillsLayne wrote: I know, it's crazy to see Kenseth react the way he did.  Everyone is finally fed up BK's antics, it seems. And it looks like Jr., Jimmie and Brad are all in potential trouble of not making the next round, save for a win, next week at Talladega.  I'm just happy that both Gordon and Kyle Busch seem fairly safe right now.