Formula 1 2015 Discussion

OGG said:
If they want to keep playing, they probably don't have a choice. Mercedes and Ferrari aren't dumb enough to put their power plant into a Red Bull chassis only to have them completely embarrassed by Adrian Newey and Co.

Renault is out of the question now that Red Bull has so viciously assailed them all year, and that will be even more true once Renault takes over Lotus.

Pretty much looks like Honda or bust at this point. The scary thing about that, is that Honda will not stay in this funk for long. They have the knowledge, experience and money to get their shit together, and when they do, we could very well see a changing of the guard.

According to Alonso, the McLaren chassis is spectacular. If they were still running Mercedes power, this season would be very different.

If that's the case, we could be on the cusp of a new group of dominant teams with Mercedes and Ferrari playing catch up.
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That was the gist I got from Alonso when they interviewed him after qualifying. He seemed to say that they could be competitive with a stronger engine. It was interesting to hear, and his comment about the power plant being an F2 powerplant. I remember Honda from the '80's and how successful they were but I don't have the confidence in the teams that one might have had in McLaren and Williams back then.

I just read that Ferrari was only offering Red Bull 2015 engines as they had already "committed" their 2016 customer engines to Haas and Sauber.

I do hope I am not the only one to call BS on that. Yeah, I get that they don't want to get spanked but with the money behind Ferrari one would think they could come up with an engineer or two...

I like it when teams like McLaren, Williams, etc...win and not some multi-billion dollar a year auto maker with a huge money base. If I were Merc, Ferrari or Renault and did not win every year, or at least be in a knife fight for the title, I would hang it up, especially if I were to get beaten by a team with less funding.
 
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OGG said:
Haas made it official this morning. Grosjean is in for 2016.
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They also announced he's the #1 driver. A bit of a slap in the face for the other driver when they haven't even fielded a car.

2112 said:
I heard that Red Bull is considering Honda for the Toro Rosso team next year.

Really...:facepalm:
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Rumor has it that Ron Dennis has nixed any chance of Honda supplying engines to anyone but McLaren for 2016. With Ferrari only offering 2015 engines as 2112 pointed out, that leaves Red Bull with...uh...nothing.
 
Flatspotter said:
They also announced he's the #1 driver. A bit of a slap in the face for the other driver when they haven't even fielded a car.


Rumor has it that Ron Dennis has nixed any chance of Honda supplying engines to anyone but McLaren for 2016. With Ferrari only offering 2015 engines as 2112 pointed out, that leaves Red Bull with...uh...nothing.
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It's my understanding that Kevin Magnussen is the #2 Driver. At least that is what's being widely reported. That makes sense. He's got F1 experience and a pedigree. He's definitely NOT a #1 caliber Driver yet. I think those two will be a solid team. If they bring in a vet as a Reserve Driver like Haikonnen, they'll be instantly more competitive than the past several expansion teams like HRT, Caterham, Marussia etc.

As for Red Bull... Fuck 'em. Worst case scenario is they take their ball and go home. That would be a BENEFIT to the sport in my eyes. There would still be the same number of cars on the grid as this year (assuming no one else pulls the plug), and it would almost certainly result in guys like Newey and the other chassis wizards finding new employment opportunities at other teams that aren't run by crybaby assholes.

Imagine how fierce Williams would be with the likes of Adrian in their corner.
 
OGG said:
It's my understanding that Kevin Magnussen is the #2 Driver. At least that is what's being widely reported. That makes sense. He's got F1 experience and a pedigree. He's definitely NOT a #1 caliber Driver yet. I think those two will be a solid team. If they bring in a vet as a Reserve Driver like Haikonnen, they'll be instantly more competitive than the past several expansion teams like HRT, Caterham, Marussia etc.

As for Red Bull... Fuck 'em. Worst case scenario is they take their ball and go home. That would be a BENEFIT to the sport in my eyes. There would still be the same number of cars on the grid as this year (assuming no one else pulls the plug), and it would almost certainly result in guys like Newey and the other chassis wizards finding new employment opportunities at other teams that aren't run by crybaby assholes.

Imagine how fierce Williams would be with the likes of Adrian in their corner.
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Didn't Newey design the car that Senna was killed in? If he ended up back at Williams they would wipe the floor with everybody.
 
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OGG said:
It's my understanding that Kevin Magnussen is the #2 Driver. At least that is what's being widely reported. That makes sense. He's got F1 experience and a pedigree. He's definitely NOT a #1 caliber Driver yet. I think those two will be a solid team. If they bring in a vet as a Reserve Driver like Haikonnen, they'll be instantly more competitive than the past several expansion teams like HRT, Caterham, Marussia etc.

As for Red Bull... Fuck 'em. Worst case scenario is they take their ball and go home. That would be a BENEFIT to the sport in my eyes. There would still be the same number of cars on the grid as this year (assuming no one else pulls the plug), and it would almost certainly result in guys like Newey and the other chassis wizards finding new employment opportunities at other teams that aren't run by crybaby assholes.

Imagine how fierce Williams would be with the likes of Adrian in their corner.
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I hadn't heard Magnussen's name mentioned as a Haas driver. Last I heard, Gutierrez was the leading candidate for #2.

Don't forget, if Red Bull goes, so does Toro Rosso, so they'd be down to 18 cars.
 
Flatspotter said:
I hadn't heard Magnussen's name mentioned as a Haas driver. Last I heard, Gutierrez was the leading candidate for #2.

Don't forget, if Red Bull goes, so does Toro Rosso, so they'd be down to 18 cars.
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I heard this too. guitierrez fits well with the idea of Haas getting tech from Ferrari and maybe being almost a junior team, both in future driver development and tech idea testing. We shall see how that plays out in real life. I think Ferrari might benefit from close ties to a junior level team, and Haas would get a massive tech jump with all the Ferrari parts and tech knowledge.
 
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Manor Marussia has officially signed on to get the 2016 Mercedes PU. That should help them move up the grid significantly.

Jenson Button has been confirmed to stay with McLaren for 2016 too. If Honda doesn't get their engine sorted next year McLaren will be finishing my Manor Marussia.
 
TomcatMF said:
Manor Marussia has officially signed on to get the 2016 Mercedes PU. That should help them move up the grid significantly.

Jenson Button has been confirmed to stay with McLaren for 2016 too. If Honda doesn't get their engine sorted next year McLaren will be finishing my Manor Marussia.
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Whoa!

I had not yet read about either of these developments.

Glad Button got another year, too bad it's likely to be another very frustrating one. I hope Honda pulls it together, but it's a very short off season this year and development time is extremely limited.

How in the Hell did Marussia score a Mercedes power deal? That's crazy. Assuming that the Mercedes engine remains the pace setter next year, they could score some real points.

The scary thing is, that this is likely because Ferrari has said they will only provide 2015 engines to customers. I have a sneaking suspicion that they have something terrifying up their sleeve in regards to their own 2016 engine. Ferrari is after all... Ferrari. They never stay down for long, and when they rebound from a funk, it's usually because one of their shop gremlins has come up with something that catches every other team out and just smokes the competition.

They might be sandbagging the remainder of this season. Fargin sneaky bastiges!
 
I read that Ferrari was supplying 2016 engines to Sauber and Haas, but they didn't have the capacity to supply Red Bull and Toro Rosso with 2016s, which is why they offered 2015s.

It will be a dark time in McLaren's and Honda's history if they are last on the grid behind Manor next year.
 
Well it's a lame duck season now. Mercedes took the WCC after Kimi's penalty for causing a collision (I don't think it was warranted since Bottas shut the door on Kimi). And with Rosbergs DNF the WDC is over unless Hamilton has some really bad luck over the next 4 races.

Oh well, even though there will not be much on the line at the USGP, I am still looking forward to it. Hopefully the weather is warm so that Ferrari can make the race interesting.
 
Turned on the TV yesterday AM to watch the Sochi race. Found, instead, NECKCAR on NBCSN so I watched football. Sounds like I did not miss much, I coulda called the results in last week and would not have been far off the mark.

I did watch about 2/3 of the Fuji 6 Hour and saw some great racing with (due to the rain) some story changes as the track dried out. Fun stuff to watch but I missed the end of the race, (Was too tired after working fire/rescue for the Lucas Oil Off Road Series-that was a blast!).

Fact is I do not regret missing out on the Sochi race while I would have regretted missing the Fuji race.
 
I have to side with the FIA on Kimi. That turn was a very sharp +90, there's no room to be given. Trying to make a move at that corner is ridiculous. It can't be done, and shouldn't be attempted. Either Kimi forgot where he was, or he came down with a bad case of sudden onset Crashtoritis. He straight up speared Valteri. Kimi also has a little history with dubiously timed collisions. That plays heavily against him with the Stewards.

Big kudos to Sergio Perez and Force India. Nice to see some fresh faces on the podium.

And how 'bout my man Felipe Massa? All the way from 15th to 4th. Granted, he had a little help in the form of attrition, but after a terrible Qualifying session that was good to see.

So, from watching two Sochi races, hearing all of the comments about that asphalt not being abrasive enough, super soft tires going crazy numbers of laps, this weekend had a series of very violent and very fast crashes. Cars leaving the track at 190MPH and barely decelerating if at all before hitting a barrier is not good.

One of the GP2 cars actually destroyed an entire section of the secondary barrier.

I think they may have to rough up that surface before the next event.
 
In all fairness, Kimi had trouble judging the feasibility of the pass attempt on Bottas because his head was so far up his ass. Seriously, there was no way in hell he was in position to make a clean pass. It's a pity Bottas didn't see him coming, or he could have pulled an over-under and left Kimi in the dust.

Great race for Massa! Such a shame for Nico, not that he had any real chance of catching Hamilton, but he could have at least made it interesting. I think his spirit has been broken at this point, at least for this year.
 
I'll believe it when I see it. If there's one thing Bernie's good at, it's saber-rattling. I think any engine change has to be ratified by the Strategy Group, and they're not keen on tossing out all the money they've invested in the hybrid.

Have fun at COTA!
 
Got to see first practice and fortunately it wasn't raining, but the track was wet so they weren't going flat out like they do when it's dry. Unfortunately practice 2 was rained out when a wicked thunderstorm came through. It appears tomorrow will be a wash to since the remnants of a hurricane are headed this way.
 
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