Grand Prix thread Not606 2016 Hungarian Grand Prix Chat and Predictions

What a dire race....... and calling it a race maybe going a bit too far.

 

Not best two races of late.

Can't see Hockenheim being much of one either- Merc will walk it and people like Williams/Force India will make it difficult for Red Bull.

Track might suit Ferrari better but you'd have to say Vettel is playing for 3rd at best?

 

Weak, meek, championship looking bleak. At least he's signed up for another 2 years, who wants a competitive sport anyway?

 

Driver of the weekend for me. So good to see. Enjoyed his comments after the race too. First class weekend from him.

 

Really really poor race today. Mercedes were just managing their pace and must have been some team orders at play - or maybe Rosberg is actually that rubbish?

Verstappen very lucky to get away with that - stewards are having a mare of a season tbh in my opinion. He reminds me alot of when Hamilton burst on the scene - definitely a star in the making!

On another note It's a real shame that mercedes have signed up their blue eyed German (questionable) for another couple of years. It's disappointing that because he looks good in his Hugo Boss suits he's seen as good to keep for Mercedes because of his marketing potential. I'd love someone as good or better than Hamilton in the sister car - mercedes are really spoiling what could be a spectacular bit of competition.

 

We desperately need Honda to make that radical step up. It would give us the extra dimension.

 

Need anyone to step up and take the fight to Merc. It's just incredibly dull. And that's putting it mildly. I put the race on in bed this morning and went back to sleep. Best decision I've made all day.

 

Last 3 years has been the worse in the history of F1. 2017 rule changes hopefully make it better, can't be any worse then the 2014 rule changes.

 

This season and the previous three have been utter cac.

I've enjoyed the results of the past two seasons, but the viewing has been mostly utterly dire. I've personally had way much more enjoyment from the Indy series, and this season of Indy hasn't had too much to write home about. Still better though.

 

“Really, I lost the win in the first corner when I dropped down two positions, so I’m disappointed as I wanted to win the race and was confident I had a strong possibility to do so,” said Rosberg. “It wasn’t the best start from me, so it was good to catch Daniel directly in T1 and get P2 back.

“But behind Lewis it was impossible to overtake on this track. I had great pace in the race, which is very positive – but unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the most of it.”


Rosberg will never be confident of beating Hamilton if he keeps thinking like this. Last race he said unfortunately some of the other drivers (Lewis) are not having as many car problems as early in the season so this was why he isn't having the success like the opening races. Well if Rosberg believes he has to be in front to win he better hope that the other drivers don't get pole or he is in trouble. Even though he believes that there is no where to overtake at Hungary you can still make things happen in the pit stops but you have to pressure the person you are challenging by making up time in the inlap and outlap. Also he shouldn't be implying that his early success was as a result of others having car problems, as he said a few days ago....and we know he was referring to Hamilton. Rosberg needs to be more positive in what he says...you can't win races by saying I really wanted to win today. You have to believe it and make it happen or you are beaten before you start.

 

To be fair... on this track it's not to hard to really make it near impossible for somebody with the same machinery to pass. Once the two Mercs went 1-2 the race was all but done.

 

If all things are equal Lewis beats Nico every time. Only person that can beat Lewis is Lewis.

 

I'm going to begin this by venturing that I may be out of sync with popular opinion.
Perhaps I'm too involved to retain the objectivity I need in order to understand – or even properly empathise with – the feedback I've read in various places.

This year's visit to Mogyoród did not provide the greatest race. It was not even up there as a contender for best race of 2016. Indeed, it may well have been one of the poorest this season. But I'm beginning to wonder if some appetites may be rather too expectant.

I enjoyed the race. Despite its outcome. Despite its relative (and predictable) lack of overtaking. Despite Jean Todt's stubborn inability to find proper, workable, reasonable solutions, rather than complicating an already overly complicated mess. Despite its weather. Despite its wonderful food, superb hospitality and local enthusiasm – which are of course, irrelevant to the race itself.

But seriously folks, this is F1 !!!

Despite what may be perceived as over-regulation and an effort to artificially govern differences in performance, it is not some tame, dumbed-down anti-formula with reverse grids or 'success ballast' (weight penalties according to inherent performance) or with all cars being the same (despite appearances!). It is still as real as it gets, even if Charlie Whiting's concerns about Health and Safety are beginning to get the better of him when it's wet.

The inevitable outcome of 'real' in this context is that there will be differences in performance and some outcomes will be relatively predictable, according to the recent past where norms have been set and are likely to be continued until the next major shake-up which will shuffle the pack but almost certainly increase the differences between front and back of the grid with a greater inequality until teams fall into line with a new norm – complete with the new version of inevitable inequalities in performance!

I scarcely know what to say about the race itself. Unfortunately, there would seem little point…

 

But what it is, is a sport that's painted itself in to a corner with a overly restrictive technical regs and lack of real in-season testing and development that has been put in place to save the teams the money the sport is robbing from them. Now we're patiently waiting for the next reg shakeup that will inevitably see somebody else shuffle to the top and dominate in a similar fashion.

Sorry for being so pessimistic, but the problems with the sport aren't being addressed.

 

Boring and Interesting race all in one...
Yes, there were close battles but nothing worthy of getting up out of your seat.. well apart from Max's double/triple moves in the breaking zone...
Once Hamilton came out of the first corner in the lead, it was game over, assuming there was no car issues, which there weren't.
Did mention this earlier in this thread, but Hamilton has "grown" up a bit, he nursed his tyres and engine and kept his main rivals at arms length, when they got close, he was able to respond, he did an Alain Prost on them, won going as slow as he could get away with, doing so, he's not hurt his engine, gearbox.

Then again, also think had Rosberg got out first, he'd have won too, given how close most of these cars are now, there was just no way of getting by, only way to do so was when the tires were fresh and even then that was proving hard..
Given the long straight at the German GP, don't think overtaking will be as hard.

I do like the improvements McHonda are making, they have a decent car, with a bit more power they could quite easily outscore the likes of Williams and Force India for the rest of the year... could be worth watch coming the start of 2017...

All in all, a very a decent race just not one that had the pulse racing!

 

I somewhat see where Cosi is coming from, in that not every race can be a classic in the same way that other sports will serve up dry affairs from time to time. What I think he is unable/unwilling to see is that, as far as I can tell for the first (or maybe second) time the "sport" has become on occassion somewhat pointless and for the first time that stagnation spreads through the whole grid and has spread from season to season.

We've seen complete domination before, but to some extent it has always been part of a wider narrative. In the last thirty years for example: Prost vs Senna, redemption for Mansell after so much bad luck, the return to form of Ferrari and the "perfection/optimisation" of competition in F1 (which did begin to drag in the end) and even in the RedBull years the challenge of whether they could overcome the regulatory hurdles the FIA kept throwing their way. Increasing reliability and improved simulation has reduced it, but to some extent there has always been something of interest further back too.

This era of F1 brings little new to the table. To win the championship, you need to better than Rosberg and in a Mercedes, which isn't particularly impressive or exciting. The FIA has no interest in pegging back the advantage that Mercedes have, due to their priority to push the new engine Regs and reward those that invested into them. The driver has become such a small part of the performance equation that no team seems to want to rock the boat, by promoting a talent in the hope of stealing an advantage. There is a ennui to the whole, because there is nothing dynamic about the sport from race to race or season to season.

So what is the story of these years? The engines are impressive, but not exciting to the average punter; the championships are a foregone conclusion, and are at best decribed as "man beats average F1 driver" and "team maintains status quo"; the McLarenHonda "story" has been stuck in the foreword for two years so at best we are witnessing the coming of Verstappen and Riccardo, i.e. the introduction to a new story.

I understand there are many things wrong with the way modern F1 is run, but that has often been the case and the reality is that if you were to take away Mercedes we'd be loving this year. Ferrari early pace vs RedBull development curve and whether Vettel can overcome the challenge of his reliability woes. Ferrari's lead driver vs. a battle for supremacy at RB and whether RB will eventually have to back one man, with the corresponding fallout on the other side of the garage. These are stories we could get into and events we would look forward to see unfold. The outcome would be unpredictable and that encourages you to watch, even if you know what will happen in a given dull race and to come back to the next one in the expectation of something different next time.

This is an F1 forum, and so we reflect the opinions of some of the most engaged fans and on here we regularly have people, not getting up, going back to bed, happy to have missed races, watching out of habit etc.

I don't know what you do associated to F1 Cosi, but you may be right, you may be too involved in the detail to see the big picture, or it may be that because the big picture isn't very interesting right now, so you just overlooked it.


Bl***dy jet lag. Sorry for the rambling....

 

F1 is struggling as it doesn't know what it wants to be, and seems wholly incapable of marketing itself positively. I can only assume there's dodgy deals going on to make F1 cheap to buy because the other option is plain and simple stupidity from those at the top.

The engines have been a hot topic obviously yet no one seems to want to be positive about them. F1 used to be the pinnacle, the most advanced. Now the sport seems to pine for Vauxhal Corsas with big exhausts rather than a Porsche 918s.

Yes the domination is bad, no one really minds a domination if it's just a year, that is just seen as a brilliant car. When it goes on, well that's obviously boring. But what can you do? Either peg back Mercedes which sends out the wrong message, or open up development, which costs money. You could give out money more fairly so the competition is more equally matched, but that's an insane idea.

People call the drivers robots with no personality, no hero status. Yet if Hamilton dares to have a life he's slated for not being committed to F1. Vestappen has the audacity to act his age, slate him. Alonso doesn't like being at the back of the field, he moans about it, lets slate him for it. We want drivers who are people, yet we lay into them for standing out in any way.

We want tyres that degrate, but not too much, unless they degrade to slow, then we want more, but only at certain tracks, at others we want..... Oh and you can't test these tyres, well maybe you can, but only on old cars. And we'll moan about it, until you get it right, which will be never obviously.

Basically it's all screwed.

 

The season would be much more exciting without Merc, but it's not Mercs fault that we are where we are at. If we keep going through cycles of creating new tightly controlled parameter to design a car within, then strictly limit development testing, then we're always likely to get one team come out on top and the rest infinitely scrambling to close the gap until new parameters for building a car are layed out, and somebody else shuffles to the top.

In an ideal world I'd like to see F1 cars evolve naturally and let the sport innovate again rather than being forced in to a box. The technical regs have to be more fluid.

F1 was once an arms race, and from it some truly innovative and iconic race cars were born. For many many years now they've been inhibited and the sport is suffering because of it.

That's how I see it at least.

 

I think it is Mercs fault to a certain degree, there is noway the customer engines are anywhere near theirs! It ha effectively ruined Williams.

 

It's almost like engineers now have so much understanding of how aero, suspension, brakes, PU etc work with the advanced computing power there is very very little creative engineering solutions that a team can use as the rules are so restrictive. So they just spend, spend, spend to try and create the 'best' car.

So how does F1 reduce costs and increase creative engineering? Well the rules need opening up, things like active suspension, active aero, full auto gearboxes, traction control, abs, more freedom in aero, BUT, and it is a big BUT, limits need to be put on monetary spending that can be enforced.
Maybe at the end of the season all FIA approved drawings that the teams have submitted (as required by a new rule) are released to all other teams (IP and patents protected but other teams allowed free use of them for F1). That way teams should not be too dominant for too long.

Creativity needs to be encouraged, push existing boundaries but to enable teams with smaller budgets to compete there needs to be budgetary restrictions that are enforced. If there are no budget caps the big teams will dominate and the smaller teams will just disappear until there are 3 or 4 teams left.