Yeah cult sounds better, any guy here would be f**king chuffed to get within touching distance of an F1 driver. Unlike football fans who would love nothing more to punch a rival footballer I would scream like a girl if Lewis or Alonso came up right past me and hope he would ask why I don't follow him instead.
I think your point Silver about "until Vettel retires" is perhaps the key to all this. Once he does, perhaps ten years down the line, how do you fill that gap? I was a huge fan of Hakkinen and DC at Mclaren, but once Hakkinen left and DC faded back into the midfield, there was nobody obvious to support. I dabbled with being a Kimi fan, a Hamilton fan, a Kovalainen fan, but it gets to the point where you're like "What's the point? I'm not watching this just for Driver X, I'm just enjoying the sport." Now I might have slight preferences for some drivers over others, but there's not a lot in it. I just want to see close racing, a close championship, and some decent moves.
I think I understand *now* why I always picked the enemy driver against the British ones after a few years studying Psychology I understand my actions better than just going about doing it. For example my fanboy rating went from 11/10 down to about 6/10, because I now understand why but that's a personal matter from my childhood which I wont talk about here but know I have found my reasons why I did it. If I was German and had the same life experience I would very likely not have supported Schumacher or Vettel.
Some hope for Mercedes rivals? At F1technical: "according to AMuS-Magazin, Mercedes got it slightly wrong with their gearing, third and fourth are too short and the higher gears are too long."
Would seem strange if they have done that, with all the technology and simulations they would have used to set the ratios.
Possibly but they cant risk a mistake in which will cost them a joker gear change for the whole season.
My mistake, again! Magnussen had slipped under my radar a bit during the winter, even though the one vote for him in the poll is from me. Managed to predict last year's winner correctly, so who knows? Does this bring me back on topic?
Will Tyson ‏@theWPTformula 23h Mercedes' rumoured new nose possibly evident in a W05 promo video: shorter and even higher up. Camera pods remain. pic.twitter.com/4z94ndBSdO please log in to view this image
The current one is one of the nicest, that starting to look pretty stubby. Hopefully its just rubbish cgi.
I don't really buy that. Rosberg has already shown that he's a match for Hamilton and he's certainly not disliked or ridiculed around these parts by Hamilton fans. I expect Rosberg to have the measure of Hamilton this season... It could be close but I think he might just nick it as far as the inter-team battle goes. Mercedes could possibly suffer by having their points to spread between two top drivers, just like McLaren have in the past... Unless they somehow manage to do a 1988. The only way that it could really kick-off fan-wise is if there is a relationship breakdown between the two. Anyway, we're really not going to know much until we get a handful of races under our belt, then we might see where some of the season rivalries come from. If anything, I'd imagine Alonso/Kimi being the one partnership that has potential for fireworks.
nah, Rosberg didn't have the measure of Hamilton last season, and Hamilton was the new boy in a slightly modified version of the car Rosberg had been driving for years, so I can't see Rosberg being much of a challenger, unless it goes silverstone 2013 for him all season. I don't particularly rate him tbh, his double DRS got him his first win and the super qualifying merc pole, therefore the win, at Yawnaco, and other peoples tyres blowing up got him his other one, far enough he saw them through to win, but I stick to my original thoughts on him, he looks good on an empty track.
