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wood

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by wood

  1. I thought about this, too, after seeing the lack of any apparent reasonable logic in the application of penalties in China. He's not wrong. Why risk it?

    'Better not to race' in Sprints – Alonso https://racer.com/2024/04/23/better-not-to-race-in-sprints-alonso/

    Quote

     

    Fernando Alonso says the Sprint format is showing it is “better not to race” on a Saturday due to the impact on tire usage and the penalty points he received at the Chinese Grand Prix.

    The stewards gave Alonso a retrospective 10-second time penalty and three penalty points for causing a collision with Carlos Sainz when fighting for a top three position in China’s Sprint, leaving him halfway to a race ban. The penalty points appeared particularly harsh despite the pair making contact, and with Alonso then forced into an unusual strategy on Sunday where he made an extra pit stop due to a lack of hard tires, he says sitting out the Sprint would have been a better option.

    “I think getting more tires will be good because in FP1 it is a game of who can run less and who uses less sets of tires, so it is a shame for the fans,” Alonso said. “And then, the Sprint, if they want it for the show and for overtaking and you don’t let them race, it is better not to race.

    “We didn’t have any more hard tires (on Sunday). We had one soft and one medium and 35 laps in front of us, which, in our calculations, it was not possible to make it to the end. Obviously, there were a lot of safety car laps to remove the Sauber and once the safety car came in – more safety car laps because they crashed.

    “The best thing is not to do the Sprint, probably, on Saturday, to keep a set of tires for Sunday. There are few points on the table for us if you are not winning the race and you risk penalty points and things like that, so it is better maybe not to race.”

     

     

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  2. 5 hours ago, MR David said:

    Fernando’s performance was indeed remarkable, showcasing his exceptional skill. The decision not to switch back to medium tires might have been a strategic call, but his ability to handle the car at high speeds, especially during that save, was pure talent.

    Yeah I thought at the time it was a bad call to go to softs, but since then I've been told they did it because they didn't have any hards left for him and didn't think they'd make it to the end on mediums. So they put soft tires on to take advantage of the field being bunched up for the restart. Makes sense, but I could have sworn some of the others went with mediums to the end. I could be wrong though and haven't bothered to go back and check. That second incident happening so quickly really screwed their strategy on the softs.

    What's most striking to me about that save, as mentioned above, is the reflexes it takes to do that. Especially at his age, and especially for a guy who many have said for years is too old to do this at a high level. Not only is he doing it, he's still doing it at an elite level, even among F1 drivers.

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  3. So ...

    - Alonso gets it wrong and bumps wheels with Sainz in the Sprint, with no consequences to Sainz, and ending his own race. He gets 10s and 3 points on his license, for something we've frequently seen not even get investigated or go unpenalized in GPs. 

    - Sainz completely ignores the apex en route to causing a collision with his teammate. No penalty.

    - Stroll drives into the back of RIC in the GP because he wasn't paying attention, ending RIC's race and damaging another car. 10s and only 2 points.  

    - KMag literally drives all the way across the track and ends Yuki's race when he had all the room in the world. In the GP. 10s and 2 points.

    How does any of that make any sense?

    Oh, and KMag is just bad. That collision late was particularly terrible. People talk about taking seats from guys like Fernando or Lewis to make room for young new drivers, lol. I would suggest they're looking at the wrong end of the grid.

    Then you have Sargeant getting to the safety car line a millisecond after Hulkenberg but passing him on pit exit. Penalty: 10s and 2 points. The fact that he got the same penalty as Magnussen and Stroll for something that wasn't his fault (no way he would have seen it, the team needed to tell him) is a joke.

    What a shitshow.

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  4. 1 hour ago, deft said:


    It was wild that he controlled that much of the sprint for so long and then boxed by the end. And for that matter, any time we talk about drs trains, it involves him. Is that good or bad?

    There have been loads of DRS trains for years that haven't involved him. It's just a couple recently. DRS trains aren't usually really the fault of the guy in front though. They're a symptom of having DRS. I.E. everyone has DRS, so they can't get by each other. If the 2nd guy (who has DRS) can't get past the guy in front who doesn't have it, then that's not on the guy in front. And the guy leading the train, who can't keep up with the car in front, is usually in that position because his car is too slow in race pace and he qualified it higher than it would normally be positioned, for one reason or another. But in the GP today I don't think he really caused a DRS train. For example as soon as Checo started putting pressure on him, he just moved over and let him past because his race really wasn't with Checo anyway.

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  5. In other news, man, Aston Martin should have put Fernando back on medium tires during that SC, but his run on mediums at the end was absolutely epic and almost covered that mistake. He was a rocket, and the save on the front straight ... just wow.  Should have been a Code Brown moment, but Fernando didn’t miss a beat. Immediately pressed the DRS button and got after Lewis.

  6. 15 minutes ago, Levi said:

    Has he ever been this vocal about stuff like this? 

    Not to my knowledge. He's always had an edge that many people don't recognize though, imho.

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  7. 2 hours ago, TonyTexas said:

    Netflix just released a DTS style show for the Indy Car series. It’s startling to see how minor league it is compared to F1.  I’m not talking AAA but more A ball

    Still hasn't recovered from The Split. IndyCar was right there with F1 before that.

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  8. 11 hours ago, texas08 said:

    Max sounds bored of winning on his post race in car little comments. Haha.

    Just says whatever and fantastic job.

    Yeah I noticed that yesterday after the sprint, too. One day when he goes to WEC or whatever, he's gonna be a beast. He and Alonso are talkiong about doing WEC together on the same team. Think about that for a second. 

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  9. 3 minutes ago, RPM said:

    The joke went over your heard like Verstappen on Hamilton. Most of what I meant to convey mostly was most of the use of most for the most part.

    Ah, ok. Ain't nobody tryna win a Pullitzer up in the Surl. ;  )

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  10. JPM sounds like a Simpson's character.

    Aight. I'm out. I could watch this tonight, but then I'd be a veg tomorrow. I'll watch it with my kid tomorrow. Y'all enjoy!

  11. 53 minutes ago, RPM said:

    Most of most of it, mostly.

    It's simple. 

    Alonso's moves to Renault from Minardi, to McLaren in 2007, Ferrari, and Aston Martin have been great moves in terms of predicting who's going to be fast. Alpine wasn't awesome, but what else was available to him when he returned? Availability is a huge factor, of course, and over at least the last 15 years, the teams with the top cars weren't looking for anyone to challenge their #1 drivers. ...

    Spoiler

    Alonso's made some very good picks of fast cars, and he's been good at leaving good teams when he knew they were about to become less competitive (Renault) or weren't going to compete for championships any time soon (Ferrari). He went to Renault and immediately won 2 WDCs and then left to the best car at McLaren in 2007 - a team that would have won multiple championships if managed correctly. He went back to Renault, but was already committed to Ferrari for 2010. At Ferrari, in the first 3 years he missed out on two championships against Red Bull, by a total of 7 points. When he picked Ferrari over Red Bull, nobody but Horner was saying he should go to Red Bull. When Michael retired and Lewis's McLaren contract ended after 2012 (lucky for him), Alonso was still locked up at Ferrari and in a fast car in its own right.  He wanted to win championships, and after a while he could see that Ferrari wasn't going anywhere soon, so he gambled on McLaren and lost. When he moved to McLaren and Alpine, it wouldn't have mattered much where he went if he wasn't going to a Merc or a Red Bull - unless Honda & McLaren came through. They didn't, but he wasn't gonna win championships at Ferrari without at least staying several more years after the six he'd already spent there. He definitely read the tea leaves right and got out of Alpine at the right time, and the move to Aston Martin was very well timed given their form since he got there. If Honda comes through this time, his extension there could pay off big.

    The other guys that were in those winning cars didn't make some kind of inspired moves to get into them. Max, Vettel, and Nico were already in those teams for years before their major successes. Lewis desperately wanted out of McLaren and away from Ron Dennis, and Merc was his only landing spot. Merc needed to replace Schumi with a top driver, and Lewis was the only one available. 

    41 minutes ago, RPM said:

    AM working on the floor sitting on the grid. Can they do that? I thought it was Parc fermé.

    They can do it if it's a repair/replacement of like for like parts and they get it approved.

  12. 2 hours ago, elfenix said:

    Alonso has a great record of predicting how good a team will be in the future

    Just like most drivers. He's just been around a lot longer than most and has had a lot more options than most would have. None of them have a crystal ball. Since 2010, there have been 4 drivers sharing all of those WDCs. Vettel, who was a Red Bull junior driver and fell into a dominant car. Lewis, who was unhappy at McLaren and was looking for a way out after 2012. He had one decent alternative, and that was Mercedes, where Michael had decided to hang up his shoes. And Mercedes had just one elite driver available, and that was Lewis. Nico was already at Mercedes for four years before they got their PU advantage. Max had been at Red Bull for five years before winning. Only one of those guys made the move into a WDC-winning seat, and he had nowhere else to go. Since Alonso's been in F1 (2001), the only drivers to move to a new team and win WDCs quickly were Alonso at Renault, Kimi at Ferrari (and only because McLaren botched it), and Lewis at Merc.

     

  13. Alonso given a 10s penalty for racing, in a race he finished last in. This 'sport' is off the rails. Meanwhile, Sainz is not penalized for completely ignoring the apex en route to also causing a collision. It's just bizarre.

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  14. 1 minute ago, PittsburghTiger said:

    Well done for Perez.  That was just a beating watching them not get around Alonso. The RB, Ferraris and McLarens might have gotten much more interesting if they had gotten around Alonso earlier. Oh well.

    Yeah over on Autosport people are trashing Alonso for making it too hard for those guys to pass. WTF? I thought we were racing here, lol. 

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