IT'S race Week !!! United States Grand Prix Indianapolis Motor Speedway 03.20.2022

Jason Newman said:Max Verstappen squeezed out everything he could, while Charles Leclerc snatched pole with those yellow sectors. That gap in favor of Ferrari might actually be even wider.

Give me a break...
Max's lap wasn't even close to his limit.
Yellow, green, purple sectors don't mean squat anymore because they completely trashed the Graphics. 🤦

If you want to follow along, just watch the times and remember them...

For crying out loud, Leclerc clocks a 27.xxx and gets a yellow sector (even though he’s not just fastest in the Third Qualifying Session, but the fastest in the whole qualifying session), Max hits a 28.1xx and gets a purple sector,
then Hamilton at about 28.4 and Russell at 28.7xx both have purple sectors all the way through at the same time—except Russell has three purple sectors. 🙏🤣
By those standards, Russell absolutely maxed it out. 🙂

Yeah, seriously, you can't trust their Graphics for anything.
I’m dying to know where I can actually find the deep-dive stats... you know, like seeing Charles Leclerc's sector times during his first run in the Third Qualifying Session versus his second run and all that stuff.
But honestly? I'm convinced Red Bull Racing has the fastest car on the grid right now.
This is Max Verstappen's championship to lose, even if Mercedes manages to step it up a bit as the season goes on...

cosmicmoose2 said:Yeah, seriously, you can't trust their Graphics for anything.
I’m dying to know where I can actually find the deep-dive stats... you know, like seeing Charles Leclerc's sector times during his first run in the Third Qualifying Session versus his second run and all that stuff.
But honestly? I'm convinced Red Bull Racing has the fastest car on the grid right now.
This is Max Verstappen's championship to lose, even if Mercedes manages to step it up a bit as the season goes on...

Check the Live Timing app while you're watching live, or just hit up the FIA website later...
There's also this other site—it's way easier to read and actually lets you compare data and whatever.
https://en.mclarenf-1.com/
Though since it's a Russian site, we've obviously got sanctions in place, so you probably need a Russian VPN to even load it.😳

That info isn't on the official site yet, though. It'll likely pop up late tonight or maybe tomorrow...

EDIT:
Well, damn.🤣
Turns out mclarenf-1.com works perfectly fine with a Russian VPN, but with an American IP address, it's a total dead end...

Finally, some movement from Ferkan.
3 teams at the top 👍

Talk all you want, but I’m just not buying this whole idea that Mercedes is actually bad right now. There’s no way in hell they’re sitting a second or two behind everyone else; the other teams are basically right there in the mix, we just aren't seeing it yet.
I mean, we’ll have to see how tomorrow's race plays out, and probably the next couple after that too, while they're still trying to get everything dialed in properly. If you look back at those last four races from last season, the rest of the grid looked like they were moving in slow motion compared to Mercedes. And now, suddenly, they're supposedly on the same level as Alfe!?
Give me a break.

Come on, Valtteri Bottas. 👍 👍

silverviper44 said:Come on, Valtteri Bottas. 👍 👍

It is honestly such a joy to watch his interview afterward. He’s just beaming from ear to ear. 😁

"Maybe we could battle with Mercedes, that could be fun." 🤣 🤣 🤣

Looks like Mercedes was sourcing rocket fuel from Russia for their engines—now that they're switched to regular Super 98, they aren't exactly performing like a beast

James Harris34 said:It’s a bummer seeing the Mercedes-Benz team struggle through Q3 again. We probably won't know the exact outcome until it happens, but those 9/1 odds on Lewis Hamilton look like a pretty sweet opportunity...

Man, I really should've placed that bet.

Word on the street is that Red Bull Racing and Alpine are carrying about 10kg of extra weight.

Does anyone actually know what the deal is with the difference between the F1 live options and the International ones on F1 TV?
I noticed a difference in the commentary, and I'm pretty sure the International feed features Brundle's voice.

The Indy circuit has audio coming from the Sky Sports F1 broadcast

stormybadger8 said:And that's not even the half of it. Now purple doesn't necessarily mean fastest sector, 🤦
green isn't always better than the last one, and yellow isn't even guaranteed to be slower. 🤦😵

God knows what kind of intern they have running this stuff. 🙄
Idiots. They’ll probably screw up the live graphics just like they butchered the perfectly functional Live Timing and the app—which they spent two whole seasons trying to fix, and even now, it's still barely halfway back to being decent.🙄

Did they mess something up during today's broadcast, or have they actually gone and changed the fundamental meaning of the color coding?

rapidstag2 said:Did they mess something up during today's broadcast, or have they actually gone and changed the fundamental meaning of the color coding?

Honestly, they’ve messed up everything they possibly could. If you actually stop to think about it, there is zero logic behind these color changes—absolutely none. 🤦
George Russell's purple sector isn't even a thing; it wasn't the fastest sector at that moment, nor was it his personal best...
In fact, the only thing it could realistically be is his absolute worst sector of the qualifying session...😵

But hey, it’s nothing new. Ever since Liberty Media took over, this kind of nonsense has been the norm. They take things that actually work and tweak them just for the sake of changing them,
and then we get hit with total stupidity and massive screw-ups. Then comes years of "fixing" it, yet we never actually get back to where we were before their big overhaul, let alone make it better. 🤦

What really worries me is this famous ROC system of theirs (basically their version of VAR in soccer), which, if history with rule changes under Liberty tells us anything, is going to be a massive, embarrassing disaster...
I'm genuinely curious how long it'll take them to catastrophically fail with this new system of theirs...
I have this nagging feeling we're all going to end up missing that clown Masija, realizing that even as incompetent as he was, he was still five times better than this new "super-duper" solution. 🙂

Jack Kelly5 said:Talk all you want, but I’m just not buying this whole idea that Mercedes is actually bad right now. There’s no way in hell they’re sitting a second or two behind everyone else; the other teams are basically right there in the mix, we just aren't seeing it yet.
I mean, we’ll have to see how tomorrow's race plays out, and probably the next couple after that too, while they're still trying to get everything dialed in properly. If you look back at those last four races from last season, the rest of the grid looked like they were moving in slow motion compared to Mercedes. And now, suddenly, they're supposedly on the same level as Alfe!?
Give me a break.

They aren't...
https://www.formula1.com/en/results....ualifying.html

It’s weird, but for some reason, both Mercedes cars were slower in the Third Qualifying Session than in the Second Qualifying Session. Russell was actually a full second slower than his Second Qualifying Session time. 😵
And he isn't the only one. Hamilton wasn't quite as dramatic, but it's still strange that he was about 0.2 seconds slower in Third Qualifying Session than in Second Qualifying Session...
Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly, Kevin Magnussen—it's the same story...

Red Bull Racing is barely faster, and Charles Leclerc made the biggest jump...
The only logical explanation for me is the tires and how they're warming up. 🤔

On another note, it's interesting to watch Valtteri Bottas; all his times are hovering right around the same mark from First Qualifying Session through Third Qualifying Session...
Alpine seems fast, and consistently fast at that, though I think they have even more potential.
Because it's honestly bizarre how tiny the gaps are between their First Qualifying Session, Second Qualifying Session, and Third Qualifying Session...

They’re still using those old graphics for F2, and honestly, they’re way better and much easier to follow

stormybadger8 said:They aren't...
https://www.formula1.com/en/results....ualifying.html

It’s weird, but for some reason, both Mercedes cars were slower in the Third Qualifying Session than in the Second Qualifying Session. Russell was actually a full second slower than his Second Qualifying Session time. 😵
And he isn't the only one. Hamilton wasn't quite as dramatic, but it's still strange that he was about 0.2 seconds slower in Third Qualifying Session than in Second Qualifying Session...
Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly, Kevin Magnussen—it's the same story...

Red Bull Racing is barely faster, and Charles Leclerc made the biggest jump...
The only logical explanation for me is the tires and how they're warming up. 🤔

On another note, it's interesting to watch Valtteri Bottas; all his times are hovering right around the same mark from First Qualifying Session through Third Qualifying Session...
Alpine seems fast, and consistently fast at that, though I think they have even more potential.
Because it's honestly bizarre how tiny the gaps are between their First Qualifying Session, Second Qualifying Session, and Third Qualifying Session...

I guess we should probably just sit tight and wait for the race to actually get going, then we'll see how every car decides to behave under these conditions, I suppose.

If the fight for the win ends up being between Ferrari and Red Bull Racing, I guess I’d lean toward Red Bull, mainly because they seem to have operated with much more focus and seriousness as a team over the last few years, whereas the decisions coming out of the Ferrari garage felt somewhat questionable at times during the previous seasons.

darkmarlin16 said:They’re still using those old graphics for F2, and honestly, they’re way better and much easier to follow

The graphics are an absolute epic fail. With how they messed up the purple/green/yellow sectors—it was probably just a random mistake since in the newer driver comparison graphics, purple still means the fastest, just like it used to.

Yesterday's stream on F1 TV was pretty trash overall. It kept lagging—like, the broadcast started while the commentators were already mid-sentence, so you have no clue who's even talking. My ears were practically ringing before I realized it was just Palmer. There was stuttering too, and it definitely wasn't my internet or anything on my end. Not to be totally negative though—at least we didn't get the Croft/Brundle combo, so I'll take the win.

This track isn't exactly a natural fit for Mercedes anyway, and we saw Lewis Hamilton lagging by about half a second in qualifying last year. We'll have to see how their race pace holds up, but I expect them to be much stronger at other circuits. Don't write them off in the title fight just yet...