Posts by stormybadger8

🤣

Honestly, out of the two funniest examples of team radio, this one takes the cake...

And then there’s the other one involving Hulk:
“Nico, kill the tires now, push, push like hell!”
I love it.🤣

graniteharbor502 said:I find it rather absurd how most people were so incensed by team orders that effectively prevented drivers from doing the very thing we tune in to see in Formula 1, yet those same people now turn around and condemn Sebastian Vettel for his racing maneuvers. Personally, I should much prefer it if all drivers simply ignored the regulations during a race; let them actually race, shouldn't they?

Let the mob boo and let them chant; Sebastian Vettel continues to win regardless. He has finally caught up to Fernando Alonso in total victories, hasn't he?

Personally, this is my favorite part of the whole season.😁

Do you have any idea what those fans did at Monza?😍
They practically just threw away a 50% chance of winning a title over the next decade.🙏 🤣

After this, there’s zero chance Vettel moves to Ferrari. Before Monza, he might have actually considered it... now? Not even a remote possibility.😍

They just did the biggest possible favor for Red Bull, and potentially even for Mercedes or McLaren.😁

Daniel James8 said:Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane regarding those Multi 21 statements:
Mark Weber: Vettel messed up
Christian Horner: Vettel messed up
Helmut Marko: Vettel messed up
The media: Vettel messed up
Sebastian Vettel himself: I messed up
TBF1D: Vettel actually did the right thing

A True fan on this forum—one of the good ones! 😁

Alright, enough side-tracking, time to actually get some work done... 🙂

Pure PR bullshit for the marketing gurus.☕

Daniel James8 said:Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane regarding those Multi 21 statements:
Mark Weber: Vettel messed up
Christian Horner: Vettel messed up
Helmut Marko: Vettel messed up
The media: Vettel messed up
Sebastian Vettel himself: I messed up
TBF1D: Vettel actually did the right thing

A True fan on this forum—one of the good ones! 😁

Alright, enough side-tracking, time to actually get some work done... 🙂

Time made it crystal clear.
Honestly, for Vettel, that was probably the smartest move he could have made in that situation.☕

Seriously, letting a crew treat you like a three-time world champion by ordering you not to overtake someone slower than you? It’s pure insanity.
So you're basically just handing him—and every future teammate—a free pass to screw you over.

Also, take a look at how Mark Webber is acting now that it's been quite a while since Malaysia...
Congrats on the win. And thanks for showing up for photos right after the fight... though that wasn't exactly how things went down even before that famous race in Malaysia.
No more playing nice or dancing around the issue. It finally boiled over—Webber actually stood there in front of the press and called out those Ferrari fans for messing with Vettel.🤣

Daniel James8 said:Oh, please. Your "objectivity" has become the stuff of legends at this point. Just look back at what happened in Malaysia, and you'll see exactly what I mean... 😉

Malaysia was just some random minor race☕
Real objectivity was shown during Turkey 🙂

😬

shadowtrucker said:Oh, please 😁

This belongs in a Photoshop ad...

Your premium fuel, powered by Ivo Sanders... Recommended by Fernando Alonso 👍

🤣

Jason Campbell70 said:Will we finally see a day where common sense prevails?

Probably in about a year and two months...
At the GP Brazil 2014, when someone is forced to be the No. 2 driver and actually help Kimi Räikkönen fight for the title.😍

Jason Campbell70 said:My respected colleague, why be so modest?

Well, it's Monday, which is basically the international day for being humble...
If it were Saturday or Sunday, things would be different.😁

steelmaker83 said:Of course....

Glad you're happy about it... and he's just as thrilled we're on the same page.😁

http://www1.skysports.com/formula-1/...bastian-vettel

New York Post's Jonathan McEvoy said:'On Sunday the booing for the victorious Vettel carried an intensity rare even for these parts, where they are routinely as one-eyed as Cyclops.

'Red is their colour, Ferrari is their creed, so when another German, Michael Schumacher, was strangling the life out of the sport by dint of his monotonous success, he was worshipped as a god.

Man, he clearly hasn't met any objective people around here.🤣 🤣 🤣

Jason Campbell70 said:Lewis Hamilton built a car capable of a comfortable three-tenths lead per lap; once you have that, you can pit whenever you feel like it.

I find that hard to believe. You’re being perfectly objective, aren't you?

Funny enough, it’s actually true, and I think I’m one of the more objective guys here.🤣
The only one who shows up on threads like this and stays actually objective is Jim Clark...
As for the rest? Rarely. It’s not like they don't take sides, but seeing someone stay neutral is a total rarity—and honestly, it's pretty pathetic.😁

Amanda Kelly said:They had to pit Felipe Massa before Mark Webber. It wasn't optional. Trying to pull that off on shot tires works maybe 90% of the time, if you're lucky.

I don't buy it. Just speculation.
With those fresh tires, Sebastian Vettel was over a second per lap faster than Fernando Alonso.
Felipe Massa wouldn't have lasted a single lap against him.
He managed to hang with Mark Webber, but that was on a light fuel load and with the same worn-out rubber.

I think the DRS zone was pretty useless unless you were someone with significantly fresher rubber and much higher top speed... which isn't even surprising given you could barely see the rear wing actually opening...
At the end of the day, the McLarens managed to stay right on Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Räikkönen for quite a while, and Jenson Button even held off Kimi until the finish...
And that's despite the massive gap in tire age and lap times (around 1.5 to 3 seconds difference, for instance, Lewis Hamilton was almost 3 seconds faster than the McLarens when he passed them or had clear air...)
Plus, the gap in top speed was way bigger than what we saw between Red Bull Racing and Ferrari...
Even so, they weren't just blowing past them without losing any time at all...

I seriously doubt he could just breeze past him like that...
Red Bull Racing and Ferrari looked dead even, except maybe for Red Bull Racing being slightly faster in clean air, but if they could just overtake anyone at will, they definitely weren't...
That’s exactly why Fernando Alonso's move on Mark Webber was such a gritty, impressive play, even though he ended up with a pretty banged-up car by the end...

Jason Campbell70 said:Primarily that Chelavi guy on the team.

Was Chelavi changing tires in the pits?
Did Chelavi shock Ferrari with two lightning-fast pit stops?

Oh right, I probably just missed it because I’m wearing my biased fan glasses.😁

Drew Bennett68 said:I honestly think they were trying to pull some kind of strategic stunt because Alonso was looking pretty secure against Webber; they just couldn't afford to let that second-place spot slip away. Their whole gamble seemed to be banking on Alonso having a few extra laps on fresher rubber, just in case Vettel started struggling with his tires later in the race.
Anyway, it didn't really change the outcome—they didn't lose anything, and Vettel stayed completely untouchable.

The logic wasn't totally broken, though. They saw Red Bull was still eating through tires worse than them and that Alonso was closing in on Vettel during that first stint...

But then again, they should've realized Vettel had tire issues right from turn one—he took a nasty flatspot, which was probably a huge part of the equation...

And if they were truly certain about staying ahead of Webber by a mile, they forgot he ended up breathing down Alonso's neck right after the pit stops. One slightly slower stop and they could've easily lost two spots...

All in all, it was a gamble that ended up hurting Massa while leaving Alonso unscathed, but it could have gone south for both of them fast...

Plus, Anderson nailed it when he said their tactics were a mess—they might have even thrown away the win with that move...
He argued that if they were going to play it risky, they should've kept doing it until the end...
Maybe letting Alonso stay out longer would've worked if they’d sacrificed Massa. He could've held up Vettel for a few seconds in traffic, potentially handing Alonso the win...
In that scenario, Massa would've lost P4 (he was P3 at the time, but they were already too far behind to save him) and finished 6th at best. He was faster than Rosberg and Hulkenberg, so he might've jumped them anyway, but they could've walked away with an Alonso victory...

At the end of the day, Alonso winning plus Massa finishing 6th would've netted them 25+6 = 31 points. Instead, they scraped together 30...

It was the crew that made the difference yesterday—the team and the driver together, way more than just the car... and when you look at Webber compared to those two Ferraris, it’s mostly down to the crew.☕

You could see this interesting trend perfectly at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.😁
The kind of teamwork other teams can only dream about...🙏

Lap 23:
The gap Vettel - Webber was about 11 seconds, and they both hit the pits at the same time.
First, the stop for Vettel took 2.6 seconds, then Webber’s stop followed at 2.7 seconds—not even a millisecond of waiting for Webber while Vettel’s crew finished up.🙏

An insane gain.🙏
Vettel vs. Alonso: before the pit stops, he had about a 5-second lead; after Alonso exited the pits, that lead jumped to roughly 10 seconds. That’s a massive 5-second swing by the end of the race.🙏

Webber vs. Massa: before pitting, he was trailing by about 1 second; after the stop, he came out with a 2-second lead.🙏
Webber vs. Alonso: before the pits, he was down about 6 seconds, but after the stops, he was only about a second behind...

The crew deserves all the credit for closing that gap; it was much more about them than the machinery.☕
Even Vettel couldn't pull away from Alonso by more than maybe 0.200 on average per lap. To put that in perspective, for Webber and Vettel to have gained that much ground on Alonso through pure pace alone, it would have theoretically taken them 25 laps. Instead, the Red Bull mechanics and strategists just did it in the pits.🙏

Yesterday at Indy, almost every top car was neck-and-neck—maybe the closest we've seen in the last 10 seasons.
I don't recall a race where even Hulkenberg and Massa could hang with the Red Bull pace, let alone having the top six drivers finish within 10 seconds of each other in a standard dry race without an SC (and I'm not talking about Monaco on those crumbling Pirelli tires...).

Just look at the comparison to the Red Bull wins in2013 and 2011. Look at how many cars were in the same lap, and where the backmarkers were compared to the winner... And man, some of them didn't even manage to stay on the same lap.

And honestly, even Hamilton’s McLaren2012 and Alonso’s Ferrari2010 had significantly more dominant wins than what we saw yesterday, which clearly shows those cars were way more dominant over the field at Indy.

Edward Howard2 said:The issue isn't the refs; it's the people bashing them without having a clue how the basic F1 rules actually work.

I feel like I've spent half this season explaining when a driver is actually off-track versus staying within the lines, but hey, whatever... let me break it down again using the Grosjean/Massa and Maestro/Webber examples...

Grosjean overtaking Massa


Maestro overtaking Webber


So, what's the takeaway here?
In the first shot, you see Grosjean with all four wheels way past the white line marking the edge of the track. That means he clearly left the circuit while passing Massa, which breaks FIA rules, making his penalty totally justified.

In the second shot, you see Maestro crossing the white line with maybe one or two wheels, while the other two stay on the asphalt. Per FIA regulations, that counts as being on the track, so there’s no reason for a penalty, which is why nothing happened and nobody even debated it.

Bottom line... what does one situation have to do with the other to claim the refs are being inconsistent? Absolutely nothing. 🤣

How are they not related?
In both cases, you have a driver staying on track being pushed wide by the guy trying to pass him...

The big difference is that Massa shoved Grosjean completely off, whereas Webber gave Alonso a little more room—though still not enough for Alonso to keep all four wheels on the asphalt. Whether it's 4 wheels or 2 wheels off is just the result of that contact...

So, I really don't see how the guy being pushed is at fault here...
And regarding passing with two wheels off? Just look at Indy—they used to penalize that and order drivers to give positions back back in 2008. I was actually rewatching that race today.

Several drivers in basically identical Alonso/Webber situations (just two wheels off, if I remember correctly, maybe even the exact same corner) were ordered by the FIA to hand those positions back.😉

Nancy Scott5 said:Those are the only times you can actually count as relevant. You can't just grab times from some other track or whatever. And if the FP times aren't relevant, how did you decide Ferrari was that good? (based on the situation right before the race)

Real speed shows up in qualifying and the race...
And then in the race, the second slower Ferrari finishes 9.3 seconds behind Vettel, or if you do the math, 9.3/53 (laps) = 0.175 sec, while the first Ferrari is only at 5.4/53 = 0.101 ☕

Ferrari definitely had the pace, but they totally botched the tactics and missed their shot—especially when both Red Bulls were having issues during the race...

Or did Massa suddenly turn into this incredible driver who’s just as fast as Alonso all of a sudden...
Think whatever you want.😁

You're claiming true speed is seen in qualifying and the race. Fine. Who took pole in qualifying, and who started P2? The Red Bull drivers.
Who won the race? A Red Bull driver. Based on that, Red Bull had the better car than Ferrari.
So now we have a situation where Red Bull was better in FP, qualifying, and the race compared to Ferrari, yet you're arguing Ferrari had the winning car? On what basis?🤷
And before you start rambling about Ferrari's sloppy tactics and incompetence (which could honestly be why Red Bull looked so dominant), the reason I'm bringing this up is that Alonso was defending his position at the end of the race against Webber, who was being told to shift gears early. So you've got Webber having to baby his car while pressing Alonso, whose car is working perfectly fine. I think—and I bet most people agree—that Alonso is just a slightly higher quality driver than Webber, and the only reason Webber was putting on the pressure is because the Red Bull was the faster car (even if Webber had a better fastest lap than Alonso). I'm not saying it was super ultra dominant, but it was faster.

The fact that Webber couldn't pass him is proof enough that he absolutely had a shot at winning. ☕

If he had qualified P3 on the grid (which was anything but an impossible mission...), considering how much better Ferrari's starts were compared to Red Bull, plus the fact that Red Bull eats tires way faster than Ferrari and they generally behave in opposite ways...
Red Bull is fast at the start of a stint but falls off toward the end, while Ferrari is slower initially but picks up speed later and the tires last longer...
On top of that, Red Bull definitely isn't a car capable of overtaking Ferrari even with DRS. 😉

So, with a solid qualifying and a decent start, a win was totally within reach.
Even if nothing else, he could have been breathing down their necks. After that initial advantage wore off and Alonso settled into P2, it was just too late.

At the end of the day, I didn't get the impression that Red Bull was the fastest... it looked like that at Spa, but definitely not at Monza.
Maybe it wasn't even Ferrari, but Kimi and Hamilton were insanely quick—it's just that they completely blew it in qualifying.
Look, after all that nonsense with their early pit stops, there's one interesting thing... Hamilton and Kimi were steadily chipping away at Vettel's lead and putting together a whole string of faster laps than him, all while dealing with dirty air and a bunch of overtakes...

Unbelievable. He’s still messing around at the press conference after everything that happened. 🤣

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlin...3/9/14966.html

Q: (Andrea Cremonesi - The Wall Street Journal) Sebastian, during the race we heard a little message radioed by you that you were complaining about the rear light on the Vettel car. I would like to know how disturbing, how annoying it was for you during the race?
SV: Me?
FA: Was the question for me? Well, it was...
SV: Will you listen now? You complained about the red light?
FA: Yeah, yeah. It was disturbing a little bit. Obviously it’s a very strong light with no rain.
SV: It’s worse in here.
FA: Sebastian is not used to having a car in front so he doesn’t know how it feels to have a red light on but when you are behind, a little bit close, it’s always flashing and sometimes you just have to touch one button because that’s the red light or something that you press by mistake, if he could switch, but he didn’t. So the whole race I had it flashing in my eyes.
SV: I was trying to get away so it wasn’t disturbing you so much.
FA: You didn’t...

🤣🤣🤣
I need to find a video of this. I really want to see their faces. 🙏🤣

Amanda Kelly said:It’s funny how the tire consistency always seems to finally show up right around this point in the season.

Obviously.😁
The first half of the year is just Bernie playing games with everyone, then we actually get some Formula 1...

Tyler Bennett5 said:stormybadger8, please don't mess around with those Ferrari gaps at the end of the race.
What do you mean, 5.5 seconds at the finish?
Alonso only gained 3 or 4 seconds on that last lap because Vettel completely backed off right before the checkered flag.
When Vettel was actually driving at pace, the gap stayed consistently over 10 seconds.
Honestly, his pit wall was practically begging him over the radio to slow down just a bit, which is why Alonso managed to close in.
And even then, it wasn't much—maybe a 2-second difference over about 10 laps at most.

You might have a point there... but you're nowhere near the mark with those numbers...
http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?p...nando%20Alonso
He only pulled within 1.9 seconds on that final lap... definitely not 3 or 4.😉
Plus, check how Alonso was chipping away at Vettel's lead during the first stint too.😳

Vettel's pace dropped because his tires were getting old and because Red Bull burns through rubber way faster than Ferrari does... you can see it clearly in the first stint, and the exact same thing happened at the end of the second.

All in all, they were incredibly close this race. I'm pretty sure Alonso knows he blew his chances back on Saturday...

If he’d qualified that Ferrari in 3rd—which the car could easily have done—there's no doubt he’d be right on Vettel's gearbox after another killer Ferrari start, if not ahead of him entirely...
But regardless of how that start went, he would've been hunting him down through the DRS zone, and the whole story could have ended very differently...

Daniel James8 said:Oh, come on, stormybadger8, don't give me that. You know perfectly well that Domenicali is out of his depth here. 🙂 But he isn't the only one; you've got guys like Martin Boullier, Martin Whitmarsh, and hell, even Christian Horner. By the way, during the broadcasts, we seem to see Adrian Newey more often than Horner—maybe Newey would actually be a better team boss?
Like you already pointed out, the only guy on the grid I see as an absolute authority—someone nobody would dare argue with—is Ross Brawn.

Honestly, though, wouldn't it be wild to watch Alonso with that classic fiery Spanish temperament, acting as the long-term number one at Ferrari, paired up with Kimi and his whole "I don't give a damn about anything" attitude? Domenicali's only options would be to hand in his resignation or just end it all. 😁

I'm not kidding... I'm not entirely sure Domenicali couldn't handle it.🤷
To me, the guy seems solid. Based on his interviews, he actually sounds a lot wiser and calmer than Whitmarsh or Horner... so he might actually pull it off.
And if I could pick anyone from the Ferrari ranks to jump over to Red Bull Racing, it would be Domenicali and Smedly.

As for the rest, I haven't got a clue what to say...
Horner is clearly struggling. He lacks the backbone to make any driver actually listen to him, and the whole situation looks messy...
When he talks, you get the feeling he's just spinning his wheels and praying someone rescues him and hauls him off to a domestic violence shelter...
Then again, maybe it's all just a front. Honestly, his approach seems to work somehow, since Red Bull still has two drivers consistently scoring points and a second driver constantly stealing title points from the direct competition...

Whitmarsh is just spinning his wheels; you can tell he's uncomfortable and clearly out of his depth...
Actually, he looks like the worst one in this whole mess...

Boullier isn't bad in that regard—he clearly has some authority—but on the flip side, it feels like he mentally broke Romain Grosjean, so there probably isn't much use left in him anyway...

Ross is the real deal. 😳
Not only can he handle things and make people listen, but he does it in a way where the second driver doesn't totally spiral or get crushed. That's why Nico is definitely the most consistent and currently the best number two driver out there; he shows zero signs of cracking, no matter what.

Nancy Scott5 said:Let's break down the practice sessions for a second.
In FP1, Vettel finished 4th, trailing Alonso (who was 2nd) by 0.153, sitting 0.350 ahead of Mark Webber (8th) and 0.696 ahead of Massa (14th).
In FP2, it was Vettel 1st, Webber 2nd (+0.623), Alonso 5th (+0.887), and Massa 8th (+1.066).
In FP3, Vettel was 1st, Alonso 2nd (+0.283), Webber 3rd (+0.317), and Massa 7th (+0.635).

On average, Vettel averaged 2nd, Alonso sat at 3rd with +0.339, Webber was 4th (actual result 4.3) with +0.43, and Massa was 10th (9.6) with +0.799.

So now you're claiming both Alonso and Massa could have been in the top three. Looking at these numbers, Alonso might have squeezed in between Vettel and Webber, but Massa didn't stand a chance.
One more thing. Look at the gap between lead drivers versus second drivers. The split between Vettel and Alonso is +0.339, while the gap between Webber and Massa is +0.369. Comparing the leads to the seconds shows Alonso is only +0.091 faster than Webber, whereas Vettel is a whopping +0.799 faster than Massa.
To me, this data proves Red Bull Racing had the faster car at Indianapolis by about three-tenths per lap. All that talk about Ferrari fighting for a top-three spot just doesn't hold water.

And how much does he get if he crashes into Vettel?😁

You can't take these FP's times as gospel...

Real speed shows up during qualifying and the actual race...
And then in the race, the slower Ferrari finishes 9.3 seconds behind Sebastian Vettel—which is roughly 9.3/53 laps = 0.175 sec—while the lead Ferrari is only 5.4/53 = 0.101 seconds back. ☕

Ferrari definitely had the pace, but they completely botched the tactics and blew a massive opportunity right when both Red Bull Racing cars were struggling mid-race...

Or did Felipe Massa suddenly transform into a superstar driver just as fast as Fernando Alonso?
Believe whatever you want.😁