Posts by Kyle Edwards5

F1 has become such a pathetic joke. Honestly, the races only get remotely interesting when the Mercedes drivers drop out of the race...

Nobody’s even going to bother pitting anymore; fresh rubber just isn't the game-changer it used to be...
The real joke here is how Ferrari basically threw Sebastian Vettel under the bus just to cover for Ricciardo.

Raikkonen's tires are completely shot; there's zero chance of making a pass here.
Max Verstappen is playing this absolutely masterfully 👍

I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally held Ricciardo back just to give Max Verstappen that DRS advantage. If Sebastian Vettel were in the mix, one Red Bull would pass and then the other would follow right behind him.

I highly doubt Daniel Ricciardo stands a chance at overtaking both Ferraris on a track when they're running fresh rubber. It just isn't happening.

Jacob White49 said:Grab a hammer... at least 2kg... and give them a good whack on the head until they stop talking nonsense.😵 😵 😵

Thanks for the input, really helpful, bravo, just great. 👍

Red Bull Racing blew the race; they completely botched their strategy with Max Verstappen...

Are you seriously suggesting that McLaren has the third-best chassis on the grid? 😁
On average, they’re the slowest ones on the speed trap... which tells me they're running massive amounts of downforce.
Look at Manor—they absolutely fly on the speed trap, yet they’re the slowest of the bunch in the third sector. There’s your comparison right there.👍

jadeseal7 said:Well, maybe they won't take the top spot, but they could certainly be convincing runners-up with a few wins sprinkled in—though, honestly, looking at things now, I'm not even sure they can pull that off.

Look, even being the "convincing" runner-up is a stretch—who knows how things will shake out tomorrow. The only way they actually pull off a win is if Mercedes completely falls apart. On pure pace alone? Not a chance.

jadeseal7 said:It wasn't exactly a massive disaster when people were worrying about Mercedes getting pushed around at the Spanish Grand Prix, but in the end, it was Red Bull Racing that actually embarrassed them.

Look, these are just qualifying results. Even if they drop a driver from Red Bull Racing tomorrow, they’re still easily the second-best team on the grid. There is absolutely no way they're taking the top spot this season.

steelmaker83 said:What do you mean "nobody expects it"? Sergio Pérez said the wins start from right now.

Let’s be real, that was clearly just a massive PR spike. There's no way they're actually out there claiming they expect to walk away with 3rd or 4th place.

There were some whispers floating around about a potential upgrade for the Renault engine ahead of this race; maybe one of their tweaks actually holds water for once...🤔
On the flip side, I really don't see this being some massive catastrophe for Ferrari. It’s just qualifying, after all. Nobody is realistically banking on a pole position or a win from them anyway...
We'll just have to wait and see how things play out between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.

It was never realistic to expect some massive, overnight leap in performance. These engine tokens don't mean a thing; you could hand twice as many over to Ferrari, and the gap between them, Honda, and Renault would still look pretty much the same.
In my view, Honda made the biggest strides with their power unit compared to last season, but let's be honest—it’s still nowhere near being a serious contender...
Broadly speaking, most of this lap time improvement is down to the tires.

Ferrari picked up a little ground, sure, but not enough to justify anyone getting actually excited about it.

This is already looking better than what we’re seeing from Ferrari....
Qualifying sessions like this just hand everything to the top-tier teams on a silver platter. It would actually be competitive if the cars weren't all such different beasts.
Kimi Raikkonen isn't even heading out; looks like we're just getting more of those ridiculous tactical games 🤣
edit. and Vettel too... what an absolute disaster of a qualifying session. Three minutes left on the clock and there's nobody even on the track 😲

The whole format is pretty much useless to me. They really should have just let you finish the lap once your time runs out...

Man, look at that gap 🤣
And just like that, the season is over... 🥱

Everyone’s just holding their breath for the race wrap-up to decide if this season was actually worth the time 😁

I honestly don't get why Ferrari would bother trying to impress anyone during these tests. Nobody actually expects them to be faster than Mercedes in 2016 anyway. We’re heading into a season where 99% of people will just assume Mercedes takes the title again, so what's the point? Ferrari playing chicken with some little tricks just to look fast during testing for two weeks? It's pointless.
Ferrari just has their specific testing program and that's that. To be fair, everyone else is running basically the same schedule, except for Mercedes and maybe a bit of Red Bull.

What kind of stock price hike are you going to achieve in two weeks before the season starts just by showing off some testing results?
FCA isn't in such deep trouble that they'd act this desperate... As for Ferrari the manufacturer, I think they've decided to bump production up to 10,000 cars, which actually isn't a small number. They’re staying relatively true to themselves—finally, one brand that won't pivot to making an SUV.😁
Ferrari could easily sell 50,000 cars if they actually wanted to...

The power ratio is going to stay about the same; at the end of the day, there hasn't been any massive rule change.
Ferrari probably decided to take more risks than the other teams because they were relatively convincing last season and figured they had the room to be a bit more radical. But catching up 0.7-0.8s per lap is just impossible.
My take is they'll be convincingly second again, maybe trailing by about 0.5s per lap. Williams is a tiny outfit and they're only looking good because the big teams were bad—actually, they're still bad. I expect Red Bull to blow past them this year, while FI will be fighting Williams and maybe Toro Rosso.

I don't buy for a second that Ferrari has caught up to Mercedes, but honestly, I wouldn't complain if they were trailing by a realistic 0.4s per lap. At least then we’d actually have some excitement on certain tracks.
On another note, Toro Rosso is a genuine surprise during these tests—they've clocked the second-highest total mileage so far. It looks like Red Bull really went all out making sure that chassis was rock solid.
From what I've seen up to this point, McLaren is unfortunately nowhere near Q3 territory. They’re likely sitting at 7th in the pecking order right now, especially with Renault and Sauber right there on their heels... It’s a shame, regardless of how much I love mocking Honda; F1 just feels empty without a competitive McLaren.

So, any attempt at comparing lap times from last season is basically dead in the water, mostly because the tires just aren't the same anymore.
I’m honestly struggling to wrap my head around how much these teams have actually accelerated. Purely from a logical standpoint, the jumps in pace should be way more incremental than what we saw last year...