The Official Formula One and General Motorsport for the 2022 season! Has the 2nd era of Red Bull begun?

twitter.com/motorsporttv_uk/status/1485150197365755905

The classic keep your foot in it off track move :fp:

For anyone who's interested:

WRC Monte-Carlo, Monaco
21 – 23 January 2022

Friday highlights: https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/live/fia- ... highlights
Saturday highlights: https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/live/fia- ... highlights
Sunday highlights: https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/live/fia- ... highlights

Daytona 24 hours this weekend

Some really good videos there! Is the Daytona 24 hours being streamed on its website again? Seem to recall it was last year.

I’m seeing some rumours that the first test is a closed event due to Bahrain having paid for exclusivity to have the first official 2022 test :fp:

Robbo-92 wrote:Some really good videos there! Is the Daytona 24 hours being streamed on its website again? Seem to recall it was last year.

Yep it will be streamed online for international viewers on IMSA's website along with the rest of the season free to view for us in the UK

Robbo-92 wrote:I’m seeing some rumours that the first test is a closed event due to Bahrain having paid for exclusivity to have the first official 2022 test

Yep that is correct i read about that myself a few days ago utterly ridiculous a test for the new cars is behind closed doors :fp:

Pre-season testing dates have been confirmed for 2022, with three days of track running in Spain, before the brand-new cars head to Bahrain in March for the Official Pre-Season Test.

Two sessions of three days each will take place ahead of the 23-race Formula 1 campaign to ring in the new era.

DIARY DATES: The 2022 F1 calendar and F1 car launch schedule

Barcelona – February 23-25
The first outing is a lower key, pre-testing track session at Barcelona on February 23-25, allowing the teams to shake down their all-new-for-'22 cars for the first time in the same place.

However, as is traditional with teams’ pre-testing-type events, the running at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya won’t feature live, race-style coverage or live timing, but will include content and best lap times at the end of each day

Robbo-92 wrote:2022 WRC season gets underway this evening with the first round being at Monte Carlo. Can’t wait to see how the Ford looks out on the roads.

where does one watch wrc these days?

edit: oh already answered above sorry

Yeah some form of highlights are the best way to follow the WRC if you don’t want to pay for WRC+, shame there’s not a bit more live coverage on the sports channels people already pay more than enough to watch. Unrelated but I can’t remember if the 24 Hours of Le Mans is shown live for free on their site as well or not.

I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that for (probably in the grand scheme of things for something on the scale of F1) a bit of money they’re going to be showing less than what I’d class as the bare minimum of the first test.

This is no shakedown. A shakedown is a short half day, maybe a full day at a push, to check that a car is basically sound. There may be no official timing at all. It might even be straight line runs at an airfield. It's just to check the thing fires up, runs, doesn't break down, doesn't have any truly obvious faults....like it doesn't overheat when running for 10 minutes, doesn't catch fire, doesn't fall apart, the electrics don't suddenly fail. That is a shakedown.

The traditional Barcelona tests were always billed as....umm....the traditional Barcelona tests....until this week. Last week we learned they'd be behind closed doors and people were blaming the Spanish and their over-zealous covid regulations. This week we learn that Bahrain has actually offered FIA/Liberty a lot of cash to have the honour of holding the "first test" so they've invented a new word for what's going down in Spain....it is now something called a "pre-test"....which simply has never existed before. It's also being described as a shakedown, which clearly it is not.
This is all about money. And while money has been hugely important ever since Colin Chapman had the wheeze of entering his car as a Gold Leaf in 1967, it's now affecting the calendar, what we see on the screen, the format of the race weekend and even how the points are distributed.

McLaren MCL36 is only "10% similar" to the new reg demo car shown at Silverstone.

Cannot wait to see these new cars. :toot:

In other words the FIA have no idea if the new cars will work as intended.

Neo Cortex wrote:In other words the FIA have no idea if the new cars will work as intended.

They're going to side step the intention of these regulations yet again aren't they :lol:

Every time they bring in new regs to fix the issue of being unable to follow closely, there is always an unintended consequence that keeps things exactly as they are. It will need a much more radical philosophy change. Currently the only overtaking is where there are radically different strategies and tyre wear, DRS and KERs come in to play, to make an overtake pretty much arbitrary.

twitter.com/motorsport/status/1487005846747893760

This comes across as a bit dodgy to me. So Honda announce they’re leaving (well, ‘leaving’) F1 at the end of 2021, Red Bull buy the IP to produce the same power units till the new ones are announced in 2026 (I think thats the current year the new engines will be in the sport), now Honda are effectively going to be their power unit supplier without the branding on the car. The dodgy bit is that Red Bull and Honda got the rest of the teams to agree to a power unit freeze under the basis Red Bull would be taking over the Honda power unit, now that doesn’t seem to be the case……

Shifty strawberry floaters

Just reading that, it's a total loop hole job. They buy the operation, but as 'honda' run it, it doesnt count as a red bull engine, so when the new rules come in, they can rename it to RBR engines and get the perks of being a new entrant.

What perks does being a new power unit entrant get you? This does feel really wrong if I’m honest, I wonder if they’re trying to get Honda to work on a 2026 design or try and get someone like Audi or Porsche to become a lead sponsor (and designer) of their 2026 power unit.

Such a scummy strawberry floating team. :lol:

The Official Formula One and General Motorsport for the 2022 season! Has the 2nd era of Red Bull begun?

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