Mr Sexy showing the youngsters how it's done (hope that doesn't sound wrong) please log in to view this image
Not strictly F1-related, but it caught my eye so I thought I'd post it here: if you thought Crashgate was blatant... Tl;dr, NASCAR driver crashes to help his team-mate in hilariously blatant fashion, it's under investigation. Flavio Briatore was unavailable for comment.
We already know that Alonso would prefer to keep Massa. With that said, I thought this was quite amusing: Also does anyone this comment below is a jab at Raikkonen?
Hanibal sounds a bit defensive on the subject. Massa is a husk of his 2006 self, might be the reason why he was kept so long to hopefully one day see that performance come back but nothing cam of it after 4 years. Kimi will give a better fight than Massa mk 2 and the mind games by his friends are showing they're worried already
This basically just confirms the removal of the Singapore Sling chicane: http://www.formula1.com/races/in_detail/singapore_906/
For me it ties with the Barcelona chicane, so yeah, pretty bad. While on the subject of making adjustments to the Singapore track, if you really wanted to increase overtaking there, you could do a lot to the entire last sector. Get rid of Turns 15 and 16 for a start (completely unnecessary) and just go completely straight through there, and then cut out Turns 18, 19, 20, and 21 (although I do like going under the grandstand, cheesy as it is) and just make it a massive straight there. So it would be flat-out from T14 to the current T17, maybe a slight lift through the kink, and then a massive straight through to T22.
Hate that too, ruined a great last couple of corners! With regards to the track changes, if its possible, I agree, the final sector is way too fiddly, Turns 14, a little kink that is 15 and then straight to turn 20, but a more open (faster) chicane (not a Monza turn one chicane) leading into turns 21 and 22. The grand stand section is a Safety Car incident waiting to happen!
I think Singapore is one of the best tracks for use of DRS. It makes the cars unstable for the kink and its always pretty fun seeing them racing into Memorial corner where theres a nasty kerb with small amounts of run off. The pit straight DRS is useless though.
Yeah the entire track is too fiddly to me, you could apply these ways of thinking to other parts of just to open it up a bit more and not have so many mickey-mouse (as Brundle likes to call them) sections. And your idea's pretty good, maybe a sort of Monaco "swimming pool" chicane or Melbourne Turn 11/12. For a street circuit, I think it may have potential to be a lot faster, but not necessarily dangerous.
Yeah DRS is pretty well balanced through there, but that turn one I agree is useless. Building on what we're talking about, simple solution: there's a mile of runoff after turn one, get rid of it and extend the straight and make the whole T1/2/3 section a wide open hairpin. DRS has more effect and it's easier to outbrake someone there.
Bonus.. Double checking the old travel plans for the family holiday in Oct/Nov, it appears (believe me, total fluke, not planned at all), I'll be in Dubai between 2nd and 5th November, with the Abu Dhabi GP on the 3rd, I may try and pop over and try and catch the race with the boy... Now, just need to find "cheap" tickets!
Anyone think Fernando is making an issue of Massa leaving? Labouring the point slightly? After all, you could argue that Massa's below par performances in the last few years may have cost Alonso a title as he was never able to take points off Alonso's rivals, which at least Webber was able to do to Alonso/Hamilton etc to help out Vettel (regardless of whether he intended to or not!) I think we'll see an even more moodier Alonso from now on, praising Massa to the point of being sycophantic and making it clear he would rather Kimi were not in the team in 2014.