Hello all, the 2020 seasons of various forms of motorsport will soon be upon us (or Formula E may well have started already? It had done by this point last year!
) so its about time to get the 2020 thread underway.
Once again the main focus will most likely be on F1, seen by many as the pinnacle of motorsport (although other series do produce some classic racing/test of driver skill) so it makes sense to start with that,
Team Lineups Mercedes - Lewis Hamilton (44) & Valtteri Bottas (77)
Ferrari - Sebastian Vettel (5) & Charles LecLerc (16)
Red Bull Racing - Max Verstappen (33) & Alexander Albon (23)
McLaren - Carlos Sainz (55) & Lando Norris (4)
Renault - Daniel Ricciardo (3) & Esteban Ocon (31)
Alpha Tauri (formally know as Toro Rosso) - Daniil Kyvat (26) & Pierre Gasly (10)
Racing Point - Sergio Perez (11) & Lance Stroll (18)
Alfa Romeo - Kimi Raikkonen (7) & Antonio Giovinazzi (99)
Haas - Romain Grosjean (8) & Kevin Magnussen (20)
Williams - George Russell (63) & Nicholas Latifi (number TBC)
This is how the gird is lining up for the 2020 season, a remarkably small amount of driver changes, with only 2 changes of Esteban Ocon replacing Nico Hulkenberg and the (most likely) already crowned rookie of the year in Nicholas Latifi replacing Robert Kubica at Williams after the Polish drivers first season back in the sport sadly didn’t go to plan after 8 years away after he had a major crash while participating in a rally event).
2020 F1 season schedule The 2020 season will have a staggering (and frankly bordering on ridiculous in my opinion) 22 races after the standard 2 tests that have now been shortened to 3 days rather than 4, round the well known Circuit de Catalunya. We do however have one new, and one returning venue in Hanoi and Zandvoort.
As has been the case for the past few seasons, Sky sadly still have all the races live (except the British Grand Prix which Channel 4 will be airing live) and Channel 4 do seem to imply they’ll be airing highlights of qualifying and the races
https://www.channel4.com/4viewers/formu ... age-updateTest 1 - 19th to the 21st of February
Test 2 - 26th to the 28th of February
Round 1 - Melbourne, Australia, 13th to the 15th of March
Round 2 - Sakhir, Bahrain, 20th to the 22nd of March
Round 3 - Hanoi, Vietnam, 3rd to the 5th of April
Round 4 - Shanghai, China, 17th to the 19th of April
Round 5 - Zandvoort, Netherlands, 1st to the 3rd of May
Round 6 - Barcelona, Spain, 8th to the 10th of May
Round 7 - Monte Carlo, Monaco, 22nd to the 24th of May
Round 8 - Baku, Azerbaijan, 5th to the 7th of June
Round 9 - Montreal, Canada, 12th to the 14th of June
Round 10 - Le Castellet, France, 26th to the 28th of June
Round 11 - Spielberg, Austria, 3rd to the 5th of July
Round 12 - Silverstone, Great Britain, 17th to the 19th of July
Round 13 - Budapest, Hungary, 30th of July to the 2nd of August
Round 14 - Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, 28th to the 30th of August
Round 15 - Monza, Italy, 4th to the 6th of September
Round 16 - Singapore, 18th to the 20th of September
Round 17 - Sochi, Russia, 25th to the 27th of September
Round 18 - Suzuka, Japan, 9th to the 11th of October
Round 19 - Austin, United States of America, 23rd to the 25th of October
Round 20 - Mexico City, Mexico, 30th of October to the 1st of November
Round 21 - Sau Paulo, Brazil, 13th to the 15th of November
Round 22 - Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi, 27th to the 29th of November
So here we have the 2020 season, the last under the current regulations before we see a drastic change to the cars for the 2021 season (but maybe not a change to the pecking order!), I can still see it being business as normal for Mercedes, minus 2017 & 18 they have been utterly dominant in the hybrid era, even in 2019 they recorded five, 1-2 finishes at the first 5 races
I don’t believe that has been done ever before and I’ll be amazed if we see it happen again. If Mercedes do indeed produce a killer of a car for the 2020 season (which judging by how relatively little they upgraded their 2019 car could be a very real possibility) then I can see Lewis Hamilton breaking a lot of Michael Schumacher’s records before the year is out, this is unless we get the same Bottas who showed flashes of brilliance last season, all season long. As for Ferrari, I’m really not going to make any predictions! They seemed to have the measure of the entire grid in pre season testing last year only to show up at the first race woefully far away from Mercedes, one thing they do need is no team orders (as frankly they’re laughably poor at implementing them) and for Sebastian to be a lot more consistent and less hot headed. Red Bull could be a dark horse (much more than Ferrari as they seem to be lot better as a team), will the Honda power unit make a big step to the benchmark of the Mercedes and Ferrari power unit? Or stay 3rd best ahead of the lowly Renault? It’ll be good to see how close Albon can be to max when he’s had pre season testing to get used to the car rather than just the second half of the season, he seemed to adapt quite well though last year. I won’t bother mentioning all 10 teams but one of the hottest midfield fight
should be between McLaren and Renault, can McLaren still have the upper hand on the works team before they switch back to Mercedes power for 2021? Or will Renault finally get their act together? I can see Renault pinning all of their hopes on the regulation change in 2021 personally.
I think that about wraps up the Formula One portion of this thread, hopefully we get a good season of racing and not 22 races that resemble the French Grand Prix from 2019
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World Rally ChampionshipThe 2019 WRC season was a very close second behind Formula One for me last year, in the past I’ve always watched bits and bobs of it but last year I really tried to watch as much as I could, mainly being highlights as to watch it live you need a subscription to WRC+ but still better than nothing, although in an ideal world all forms of motorsport would be free to air so anyone can watch it, as F1 still should be.
I found the 2019 season to be fantastic though, while many of the driver skills probably can be passed between circuit racIng and rally, there just seems to be something pure about it, nothing more than the driver, the car and a stopwatch. In 2019 Ott Tänak and Martin Järveoja both took their maiden championships with Toyota, the manufacturers championship went to Hyundai. The 2020 lineup is as follows,
Hyundai Motorsport, Hyundai I20 Coupe WRC
Car 6 - Dani Sordo & Carlos del Barrio
Car 8 - Ott Tänak & Martin Järveoja
Car 11 - Thierry Neuville & Nicolas Gilsoul
Car 19 - Sebastian Loeb & Daniel Elena
Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT, Toyota Yaris WRC
Car 17 Takamoto Katsuta & Daniel Barritt
Car 33 - Elfyn Evans & Scott Martin
Car TBA - Sebastian Ogier & Juliet Ingrassia
Car TBA - Kalle Rovanpera & Jonne Halttunen
M-Sport Ford WRC, Ford Fiesta WRC
Car 3 - Teemu Suninen & Jarmo Lehtinen
Car 4 - Esapekka Lappi & Janne Ferm
Car 44 - Gus Greensmith & Elliott Edmondson
The 14 round calendar is as follows,
Round 1 - Rallye Monte Carlo, 23rd to the 26th of January
Round 2 - Rally Sweden, 13th to the 16th of February
Round 3 - Rally Mexico, 12th to the 15th of March
Round 4 - Rally Chille, 16th to the 19th of April
Round 5 - Rally Argentina, 30th of April to the 3rd of May
Round 6 - Rally de Portugal, 21st to the 24th of May
Round 7 - Rally Italia Sardegna, 4th to the 7th of June
Round 8 - Safari Rally Kenya, 16th to the 19th of July
Round 9 - Rally Finland, 6th to the 9th of August
Round 10 - Rally New Zealand, 3rd to the 6th of September
Round 11 - Rally of Turkey, 24th to the 27th of September
Round 12 - ADAC Rallye Deutschland, 15th to the 18th of October
Round 13 - Wales Rally GB, 29th of October to the 1st of November
Round 14 - Rally Japan, 19th to the 22nd of November
If anyone has been following my inane ramblings elsewhere on the forums you’ll know that I’m loving playing WRC 8 and would easily recommend to to anyone who else is a fan of the sport or hard (yet fair) racing games. I’ve not been keeping up to date with the F1 series of games of late, my most recent version still being F1 2017 but unless 2020 somehow releases on the Switch, chances are I won’t be playing it (although it’d make a cracking companion for any boring F1 races!).
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Word Endurance ChampionshipSuppose I’m actually late to the party on this one, the 2019-2020 season actually got underway with the 4 hours of Silverstone back in September last year and currently there is only 4 races left to go of this season, it does end on the undeniable classic of the 24 hours of LeMans though
I would put a list of drivers and teams but there is far too may to list here.
The 4 remaining races are as follows though,
Round 5 - Austin, Texas, Lone Star Le Mans, 6 hours, 23rd of February
Round 6 - 1000 miles of Sebring, Sebring, 20th of March
Round 7 - 6 hours of Spa-Francorchamps, 25th of April
Round 8 - 24 Hours of Le Mans, Circuit de la Sarthe, 13th to the 14th of June
The past couple of years the 24 hours of Le Mans has fallen nicely for me and both years I’ve watched about 2/3’s of the race. Sadly the WEC hasn’t been doing great of recently, mainly because Toyota are the sole manufacturer left competing with the rest of the grid being made up of various private outfits. Hopefully the following 2020-2021 season will help the WEC get back on its feet somewhat, with the LMP1 class being replaced by new top class known as Le Mans Hypercars which will hopefully see plenty of road going hypercars made race ready and will hopefully mean the same manufacturer doesn’t win every race (although Toyota really haven’t had good luck in the 24 hours except last year). I think Aston Martin have already said the Valkyrie will be racing in the series.
A few other notable endurance races to watch out for (thanks Floydfreak),
24 hours of Nurburgring, 21st to the 25th of May
24 hours of Daytona, 25th to the 26th of January
12 hours of Bathurst, 31st of January to the 2nd of February.
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I think for the time being that will be the opening post done! Don’t want to turn it into a massive essay so will leave the other series out that we can just discuss as and when. Floydfreak may want one of the first few posts to do a bit about Indycar and a couple of other series to flesh out the thread a little