I have to admit falling asleep on the last ten laps. I woke up knowing I didn't miss anything.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

_________________

Alonso was in no-man's land running 3rd 14 seconds down from Red Bull and 8 seconds up on Mercedes and was watching the race on the big screens...

Some people want Monaco taken of schedule because the cars are too big now. Any track they replaced it with would be even more boring. At least with Monaco the qual session is good. It was a pretty normal race but that changed quickly when rain came. Overall a pretty good race. The Red Bull is just too strong. Pirelli are really doing a bad job with the tires. The medium didn't fall off at all so there was no advantage later with hard tires.

Not really the type of race track that allows a lot of changing places outside of restarts and a very small DRS zone as well. First time I had watched this one but with all the pomp and everything around it, still kind of fun. Not very fun racing overall when Max is out front and no one can catch him.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

it was nice to see the russian oligarchs likely fucking 15yo girls in their yachts in the harbor

_________________
the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

The first F1 race there was in 1950 and the cars were half the size. The circuit hasn't changed much since then. Its not like there is a good track that is waiting for a slot on schedule. They haven't built a decent circuit in decades. Like you said its a nice one-off with the scenery and everything surrounding the race. At least the qualifying session is good because its a lot more important.

The hybrid-era has pretty much been a disaster. Mercedes dominated with their engine to point the races were boring and now Red Bull has done the same with their aero/suspension. There have been dominant cars in past but they were pushing the cars a lot more so there would be more retirements which would mix things up. Often the best didn't win. Now they don't push the cars much at all so mechanical issues are rare.

Fun track last week but Verstappen is tough to beat when in front. Nice showing by Mercedes. Canadian track appears to have a lot of straightaways so should be another fun one to watch with quite a bit of speed.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Yeah Barcelona is a proper circuit. They ruined it in 2007 when they put a crappy chicane before the last corner. It only took them 16 years to realize it was a mistake and they finally removed it. They still haven't done anything with turn 1 though its stupid to have a 90 degree corner there. If they opened it up 2 cars could go thru side by side and continue their battle into next section. Tsunoda lost a hard earned top 10 because of a penalty when Zhou was outside of him and had to go to escape road. Its amazing how stupid F1 is. They complain about lack of overtakes but they never look at their circuits which are a big part of the problem.

Montreal is another proper circuit. Its a 2 way circuit which are the best kind because they can go high downforce for the technical sections or low downforce for the straights so some setup strategy is involved.

Aston is coming with a big update hopefully it works like they think it will. I don't know though...its starting to look like they're more lucky than good and don't really understand why their car was so quick we'll see.

Horner made a point to say Mercedes must have spent all their cap already with all the updates they've made. They basically have a B-spec with the new side pods. Mercedes are shady as hell they bring major updates to every race but somehow manage to stay under the cap. It looks like he wants the media to start asking some questions.

Not a great race today but not too bad. There could of been more overtakes but it looked like the "DRS trains" were making things difficult. Perez couldn't even move up thru the field with the Red Bull. At least we got to see a pretty good battle with Alonso and Hamilton. The end got pretty interesting when Alonso was having issues with fuel system and brakes.

It looks like Aston Martin know what they're doing as their updates to car seemed to work as intended. It looked like Mercedes had jumped them with their last update in Spain but now it looks like Aston have moved back ahead. That's part of what makes F1 interesting is what happens away from track with the developments. We don't really see that in any other series.

Pretty good race over all. Some good back and forth racing between a few guys. Wonder if rain would have bunched people up more.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

They had rain during qual and it mixed things up. A Williams finished P1 in 2nd stage when they went out on slicks right away and everyone else went out on rain tires. They managed to complete a lap without spinning off then more rain came and nobody could match them.

If this was the 80s-2000s Verstappen would already have a couple DNF's and things would be more interesting. They used to push the cars a lot more back then the engines were revving 22,000 rpms now its around 14,000. They don't consider these things when they come up with their stupid rules.

One of the main problems now are the trains that form up when cars get close together. If there are 3 or more cars bunched together the train forms when the 2nd car in line can't overtake the 1st car. The cars behind the 2nd car just have to sit there because the 2nd car has DRS off the 1st car so he's too fast to overtake on the straight. Some cars like Williams are very fast on straights but not very fast overall because they have less downforce so cars stack up behind them.

His first move should be getting them to change the name back to Renault. People in Europe don't even know what in the hell an Alpine is...

Even though its on Disney+ it might be good as it doesn't seem like they had any input in the making. Its a great story so should be hard to mess up.

Its strange how the classic tracks provide the best racing while the Tilke tracks always disappoint. Good to see Aston Martin have recovered and should be competitive in Vegas.

Pretty interesting track last week and that fight at the end was good as shared above. Not much drama when Verstappen is winning by so much. Cold temps, night race, new track and Vegas should make it a very interesting last race in North America. We will record it and watch Sunday morning. This was our first year watching a season and I have found it pretty interesting but am starting to tire of it. My wife has become a fanatic and is totally into it. Never would have guessed.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Yeah it depends what your expectations are for the race. It helps if you have a favorite driver/team. Verstappen disappeared but I enjoyed Alonso's battle with Hamilton and then Perez. I like to see Mclaren do well as they have an American CEO who brought the team back from the brink. I imagine next season the rest of the cars will close the gap with Red Bull. Mercedes announced their engine will have more power after scrapping their terrible sidepod design that made cooling difficult. This will help Mercedes, Mclaren, and Aston Martin who all use Mercedes engines.

One thing that makes it more interesting is watching the teams develop the cars thru the season. Mclaren are the 2nd best car now and at start of season they were close to the worst. Aston Martin started season as 2nd best car then had a stretch where they were awful and rebounded in Brazil.

What does your wife like about it? Does she watch the Netflix show?

The Netflix show is what got us into it. She also watches the qualifying and sprint races as well as other short videos and interviews on YouTube. Her favorites are LeClerc and Russell, not sure exactly why she likes it so much but something about the technical nature and strategy of it must be a big part of it.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

She must of really enjoyed that race then with LeClerc not even making it thru the reconnaissance lap and then Russell dropping out because of oil temp.
Understanding the strategy makes it a lot more interesting when you realize cars that are half a minute apart are still fighting hammer and tongs because of the pit delta or tire strategy. A race that might seem boring to someone who doesn't understand it might actually be pretty interesting.

I watched a video of Alonso in car and he knew Perez would be closing and the communications with his engineer and how he drove every lap perfectly. He was even one step ahead of the engineer most of the time. So it was basically 20 perfect laps to finish 50 thousandths of a second ahead of a much faster car.

Not a good start for the return to Vegas. I'd say it's actually pretty damn embarassing for them adding injury to insult with the less than stellar ticket sales.

https://www.cbssports.com/motor-sports/ ... icked-out/

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Welding that thing down could have saved 15 million

I was down at the Miami race. Ticket prices were through the roof. $1200 and up. I thought the weekend was going to be amazing and ehh, not so amazing. Kind of a pain in the ass, frankly.

Starting a race at midnight CST should do great numbers.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

By all accounts the Vegas F1 experience went well after the SNAFU during early practice. I don't find the track particularly interesting but there were a few drivers that made some in-roads and it was relatively close at the end.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

I've been to a lot of races...Monaco, Monza, Spa, Silverstone, Le Mans, Montreal...and that was one of the best races I've ever been to. I knew it would be a great race from the circuit map because Tilke couldn't screw it up too bad even though he did try. As far as I'm concerned they can bulldoze COTA and kill Miami. Keep the Las Vegas race.

I'll address the criticism which is total bullshit. The UK are triggered because they think we're trying to steal their F1. I tell my Euro friends nobody here cares about F1 they can have it we don't want it but there is a narrative in Europe that F1 is blowing up here when its not. 330 million people and they get maybe 2 million watching their races and that's with a Mexican in the fastest car. Plus ratings are down this year so its going in the wrong direction. For months leading up to race the UK media has been running their bullshit about what a disaster the race will be...it won't be ready etc. What a bunch of dickheads doubting we could build a circuit on time. If it was their lazy asses then yes it would have taken years but we still know how to build things here especially in Las Vegas. There are always issues at street circuits that come up. The drain cover is nothing new its happened before. There are issues with bumps that need to be ground or cut out and repaved or corners that need to be re-profiled. Losing FP1 was not a big deal even though it sucked for me because I like watching all the sessions. That was the only bump in the road everything afterwards was near perfect.

After a great race (as expected by people who understand racing) the UK media can't admit defeat and are still trying to act like it was a disaster ignoring the race and talking about the "lead up" which was losing a damn FP1 which they're trying to eliminate anyway (I think it would be a huge mistake). They're complaining about the prices and the late start time. MFers if you're going to Las Vegas and planning on being in bed by 9pm you're doing it wrong. If you're broke don't come!

The constant bitching is wearing me out because it comes from the UK media who think we want to take F1 like we did their soccer clubs. They hate that we have 3 races and they only have 1. If we gave them 2 of our dates they'd still be f**cked because they only have 1 track that can hold an F1 race in their entire country. The US media doesn't know anything about motorsport so when they saw the UK media bitching they just followed along.

It was a great event and we had a great time. I literally had my Euro friends texting me during the race talking about how great the race is and how amazing it looks on tv. The change I do feel they need to make though is moving race to late Sept. or early Oct. At the very least they should swap dates with COTA.

Looks like the success of Las Vegas is leading to more street races. They pull Barcelona from schedule right after they fixed it and made the racing good again lol. They totally missed the point of why Vegas was so great. Cars wheel to wheel going 235mph and so many overtakes the director couldn't keep up with them all. This layout looks terrible.