bad news: hamilton fastest, bottas 2nd fastest in first practice
lol news: mclaren broke down with some kinda problem
great news: off & on rain expected thru qualifying and race

MAX #3

RB/Ferrari gonna be good

sadly Mercedes prob gonna win Constructors easy again

promising times from Mclaren before breakdown tho

In. Think I'm going to go to Montreal for the GP this year. LFG

Alonso still not even the best Spaniard. How many weeks until he starts complaining about the car and the engineers?

der markt thinks that quali session was a bad sign for ferrari

apparently melbourne is an engine dependent track, and the fact that the red bulls were so close means RB probably have a chassis advantage that will be decisive on many other circuits

haas seems to be best of the rest

Here we go! Oh ****, I missed Pit Lane Live.

TSN coverage in Canada seems to be the same as last year. It’s SKY F1, I was wondering if they would give us the USA intros and exits.

They usually do a picture in picture commercial during the races and full commercials before and after. I wish they would do overlay commercials like they have on some soccer broadcasts.

ESPN's coverage already failing with "technical difficulties".

edit: working now, looks like we're getting the Sky pre-race as well as race coverage

gg Max

Vettel takes the lead...during a commercial.

Pit crews seem a bit rusty

ESPN making this unwatchable with commercials every 5 minutes

watched a full replay

impossible to overtake. unspeakably bad. bottas in 15th and with a car which was more than 2 seconds/lap quicker than everyone around him in qualifying couldn't overtake anyone. unbelievable. this isn't monaco

poor kimi. i thought ferrari HQ turning his car off for 3 seconds in canada last year so seb could overtake him was peak shenanigans, but getting their junior haas team in on the plotting is genius. a whole new layer of duplicity

dont know how they are going to address this overtaking problem. max's spin early was clearly because he just wouldn't accept the fact that you cannot put sustained pressure on the bloke in front cos your **** overheats and the car becomes undrivable. current formula punishes hard aggressive driving. depressing

the v6 engines in these things spit out about 850hp, which is inferior to the v10s of the mid 2000s and massively inferior to the v12s of the late 1980s, and yet lap times have never been quicker. lewis' pole lap this year was five and a half seconds quicker than his pole lap in 2008. all of that five and a half seconds is down to advances in aero performance, plus more because of the horsepower deficit from now to then. and when you drive behind an f1 car which is belching hot air into your front wing, most of that aero advantage gets ****ed up. this is why it's ****ing impossible to overtake, and getting harder each year cos all the development is towards aero

the two solutions i can see are 1) entirely new design philosophy such that aero becomes much less important, not gonna happen any time soon cos you either make the cars really slow (not happening), or you go back to massive engines (no good according to merc/renault/ferrari because the huge engine technology has no road car application blah blah). 2) stop making tyres which degrade on purpose, just give them **** which lasts forever and never overheats. still got the aero problem but at least they would be able to push on the tyres. this removes tyre strategy tho which causes a whole host of other problems. probably got to go back to refuelling days. wont happen cos safety

slightly depressing. but anyway i'm still enthused for the next race

btw stream the uk broadcast if you can, no adverts

WOW SEB

Haven't watched in a while and that was the first thing I noticed. How can they even see with that smack in the middle of their vision? I guess ducking out the sides more, wonder how the driver's feel about it.

Despite the Halo I thought the cars looked much better than they have the past few years. Maybe it was my TV but they looked wider.

An onboard lap with Hulkenberg from the driver’s perspective with the halo.

It seems ok, except at about 1:26, when it is right where you want to look. And I wouldn’t want to be standing on the pit straight.

https://www.formula1.com/en/video/20...Barcelona.html

Agree, was very disappointed. Good track - bad race, fast cars stuck behind slow ones, winner decided by luckbox.

Halo doesn't look so bad when it's exterior views of cars on track. The on-board camera is a horrendous eyesore however. Should probably move it to the front of the halo or something so it doesn't need to be seen.

Even more depressing to hear of even more "cost saving measures" and now it's only 3 engines per year and even less of some components. A lot of problems may be fixed if it didn't matter if they thrashed the balls of the cars in any given race.

Other things they could try:

Increase DRS detection from the current 1 second to 2-3 or something. It's obvious a car can't keep within 1 second even for any length of time without great sacrifices to the tires and engine heat.

Extend DRS hugely and allow "fully active aero" or other such active components, suspension etc. Currently a car's aero balance is destroyed by not having "clean air" - if it could reconfigure it's wing angles etc by driver input to enable "follow close mode" or some such various settings depending on the current state of air the car has to travel in.

maybe just give whoever is in last place some blue shells every 15 laps

must say that altho the halo is objectively lol looking, i didnt really notice it much during the race

This should be the F1 marketing slogan.

in to sub

lewis gonna take a 5 place grid penalty cos had to change his gearbox after australia. still 2nd fav to win behind seb

markt doesn't like the red bulls

I think i'm no on the fence of just giving up on F1 altogether.

Lets have multi tyre manufactures and see who makes the best ones. Bring back refuelling too, surely they can do it in a controlled and safe manor now.

Did anything serious even ever happen while refueling?

I seem to remember multiple Ferrari cars being set on fire and sometimes the refueler's clothes, but never any serious injuries.

max's dad had a bad one,



i think the real objection was that it was v costly

verstappen's put his nose in the wall in q1. just lost the car

ferraris look strong