Formula 1

I’ve downloaded and opened. My apple tv is now buffering though :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

No quali today because of the rain. It’s not entirely clear what will happen but probably they’ll try to get it done tomorrow morning.

Quali is 10:30 tomorrow, race has been moved to 15:30.

Just enough time for Ted to dry his shirt and buy an umbrella.

Why is uncle Ted like this?

This race is 100% getting cancelled. To many crashes already.

Wow the championship implications if it did get cancelled with Lando in P1 and Max out of the points.

An hour and a half into quali and we’re still not done…

Edit: Although I guess this situation would only be half points, hmm…

Came back from red flag for 1 minute and Albon crashed. It’s insane how bad the conditions are.

Annoyingly with all the schedule changes none of the driver onboards are available on Now, they’re all still scheduled to start at 4:55pm. Not sure if it’s the same for Sky’s other apps.

Also Lance Stroll?!?! Sure benefit of the doubt for the spin, but why drive into the gravel!

Starting again at 15:47

Total reset, this F1 isn’t the one!

What an absolute mess with the regs :joy:

This race should be cancelled so many destroyed cars

I honestly think this is one of the silliest things I’ve ever seen an F1 driver do.

The spin was fair enough, it’s wet, it’s slippery, the tyres are cold. But driving directly into the gravel where you would obviously get stuck?! Come on!

Also spare a thought for his mechanics who would have worked super hard in those 3 hours to get the car repaired after his morning crash, only to see their hard work go to waste before the race had even begun.

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If he keeps that seat his father is wasting 50% of whatever he’s paying Newey.

There’s no way he’d have kept the seat in any other team.

What are people’s thoughts on the penalties for Mercedes (tyre-pressure-gate) and Lando et al (setting-off-instead-of-staying-still-and-waiting-gate)?

Both lucky I think but also slightly unusual circumstances.

Notes this in the decision over the pressures:

The gate to access the grid was not immediately opened. The FIA accepted that given this short notice it was extremely difficult if not impossible for the teams to follow the procedure prescribed in the technical directive.

Given the unusual circumstances surrounding the compressed time table, aborted start, the grid access logistics and given the stipulation from the Technical Delegate that the tyre pressures were within the correct parameters, the Stewards determine that a fine for a breach of procedure is appropriate in this case.

With the whole thing being a bit chaotic it would have been excessive to disqualify them like I’ve seen some people calling for. They wouldn’t have been in that situation if Stroll hadn’t chosen to drive into a gravel trap.

Similar with the aborted start, the Sky team didn’t seem too sure on what should have happened either. Another one of those more awkward and unusual situations that probably hasn’t happened before, they usually do just do another formation lap. Karun was saying it was unprecedented and I can’t off the top of my head remember another fully aborted start, only additional formation laps. So think it’s reasonable to be lenient given the circumstances but tell teams to brush up on procedures. Let’s be honest, F1 haven’t always followed their own procedures themselves sometimes.

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I think I agree re: the Lando penalty because there seemed to be a lot of confusion and in all the years I’ve been watching F1 I don’t remember a start being abandoned (although I’m sure it’s happened). It’s nearly always an extra formation lap.

I might have a different opinion if Verstappen had set off from pole tho :see_no_evil:

What I don’t understand though, and I’m a big LH fan, is why other teams were able to remove the wheels off the cars, but Mercedes weren’t and were given a free pass for it.

I am generally very on-the-fence about things and the more I think about it the less certain I am :joy:

I mean on one had it was aborted with no additional formation lap because of where Stroll was. Usually extra formation laps are for if a car got stuck on the grid or some other procedural issue happened. So it could be argued it was a potential safety issue if another car spun off (albeit more slowly than Stroll did) while he was being recovered. And could also be fairly argued that Lando should know the procedures and what the lights mean.

However, I don’t tend to like harsh, race-altering penalties for genuine mistakes or misunderstandings or for very obscure issues. I can’t quite think what it was but I’m sure there was another incident within the past few years where there was a penalty where the Sky team and half the grid didn’t seem totally sure on what the rule was. So I do think Lando was very lucky as he should have known better and there was a beached car, but I don’t like seeing penalties for things where the offender wasn’t even acutely aware they’d done something wrong. But if he had got a harsher penalty, I wouldn’t feel it was unwarranted.

Interesting re only Mercedes not removing the wheels, I saw on the broadcast McLaren had done it correctly so that’s a fair point.

Seen a lot of comments about British bias this week, so lenient penalties for 3 British drivers doesn’t play well into that. I can’t stand the toxic online F1 community these days as it is.

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Lando - totally fair. His actions, though wrong, had no impact on the race. Like max and Charles swearing, it’s against the rules, you get a penalty, but not one that changes the result of the race.

Mercedes - I’m not sure. If there was any suggestion of them gaining a racing advantage by having a better setup, then a time penalty or disqualification would seem reasonable. I haven’t read up on exactly what they did wrong or why they got the penalty they did.

I think that’s a good way to rationalise it. If it was a jump start or being outside his starting box (like Checo in Mexico who then thought he’d had a great start :man_facepalming:t2:) then sure. I think also the problem in this instance is how far down the grid do you give a penalty to? Just him as he went first? Was said in commentary that saying “i just followed Lando” wouldn’t excuse other drivers, so they could have had to punish a lot of drivers if it was strictly by the book.

They changed the tyre pressures from what they’re set to in the garage to what they’re set to for the race, but for some reason the regulations say the wheels have to be removed to do this, and theirs were fitted to the car. Would assume there’s some technical reason for that, but the pressures they set were legal. It seems bizarre to me that if they had just taken the wheels off and set the same pressures it would have been fine, but :man_shrugging:t2:

I’m also not sure why anything would need doing to the tyres in the first place. Did all card have another new set put on after the first formation lap or something?

Max Verstappen has been crowned the world champion of 2024!

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