The official Formula One and General Motorsport Thread for the 2020 season!

[floydfreak]

radical design

twitter.com/Rturcato83/status/1318667585538445312

[captain red dog]

I see Stroll had a positive test after his illness last race. Its interesting how many in the paddock tested positive after being in Russia!

[Robbo-92]

Not like they had many fans in is it

[captain red dog]

Ferrari have said they have diffuser updates this weekend. Hoping to be fighting for 4th place.

Granted, all progress is good progress, but how the mighty have fallen.

[Robbo-92]

Hope it works out for them but what they really need is more power, in Leclerc’s onboard the car actually looks relatively decent but just lacking power when it matters. Still expecting a Mercedes win with Max in second or third depending on Bottas’s start. Wonder if we’ll see quite a few teams with upgrades this week though as I got the impression from something I saw on Twitter midweek that anything introduced after this weekend eats into their token allocation for big changes for 2021?

[Vermilion]

One thing which will be interesting about 2021 is how close the teams are, the midfield is already pretty tight and with Merc having ceased development on this year's car, it may make for a better season if everyone is just using B spec versions (red bull have already started to close the gap).

[Robbo-92]

Confirmed that Grosjean and Magnussen will be leaving Haas at the end of this year.

[Rawrgna]

Its probably a sound plan for Haas to have a clean slate for when all the new rules and regulations come into effect

[Peter Crisp]

Time for Robocar to shine .

[captain red dog]

One thing which will be interesting about 2021 is how close the teams are, the midfield is already pretty tight and with Merc having ceased development on this year's car, it may make for a better season if everyone is just using B spec versions (red bull have already started to close the gap).

This is kind of the thing with F1 this decade though. We always look to next season where things will probably be better, but it just never materialises.

The best we have had it recently was 2007 to about 2010 where the championship was pretty close and exciting. Kind of feel massively old now when I think that was 10 years ago.

I'm not really sure of the solution. Part of me thinks they should rethink and maybe go back to grooved tyres. They definitely can do something with pit stops which have just got ridiculously fast. They should change the rule on pit stops so that it's one guy per wheel so that it actually adds more of a variable for the team.

[Robbo-92]

Time for Robocar to shine .

Love it

Future of F1, drivers will just be sat at home/office piloting the cars from their sim rig as the cars will be more or less un-drivable as they’ll be as quick as the Red Bull X cars from Gran Turismo

One thing which will be interesting about 2021 is how close the teams are, the midfield is already pretty tight and with Merc having ceased development on this year's car, it may make for a better season if everyone is just using B spec versions (red bull have already started to close the gap).

This is kind of the thing with F1 this decade though. We always look to next season where things will probably be better, but it just never materialises.

The best we have had it recently was 2007 to about 2010 where the championship was pretty close and exciting. Kind of feel massively old now when I think that was 10 years ago.

I'm not really sure of the solution. Part of me thinks they should rethink and maybe go back to grooved tyres. They definitely can do something with pit stops which have just got ridiculously fast. They should change the rule on pit stops so that it's one guy per wheel so that it actually adds more of a variable for the team.

Next year is a bit of a write off anyway, I think they’re just trying to trim the teams of some of their downforce (which they know they’ll inevitably claw back throughout 2021, well the top teams anyway) as not all of the teams wanted the newer tyres, instead they’re using older ones and just trimming downforce. Changing up the pit stops could work, but so could saying in a dry race each driver has to use each compound at least once, this would enforce 2 stop races (giving more scope for errors in the pits) and mean more drivers are on different tyres at different stages of the race. Slightly artificial? Yes it would be, but wouldn't be the worst idea they’ve tried (Australia 2016 qualifying flashbacks read:).

Let’s be realistic too, the big gainers for 2021 will be McLaren, getting the Mercedes power unit could be a huge bonus for them if they can integrate it properly into their current car, if not it might be a bit of a so so season for them leaving the terrific midfield scrap between Aston Martin and Alpine, hopefully they don’t improve to much (although I’d love to see them back up there ) as the midfield between these 3 teams has been the best thing about the 2020 season!

I do agree that the sport always seems to think ‘next year is the year’ and so on, much like football fans up and down the country who tell themselves things will get better for their club, whether it does or not. Hopefully 2022 might actually go some way to bringing the grid closer together with new rules and a budget cap. Whether we get 3 teams fighting out for the WDC and WCC with the rest all in another close group capitalising on the top 3’s errors and reliability who knows? One of the best seasons I’ve seen in my time watching the sport was 2010, that was a terrific season that had 4 drivers capable of winning the WDC going into the last race, 5 in the second to last!

[Vermilion]

The best we have had it recently was 2007 to about 2010 where the championship was pretty close and exciting. Kind of feel massively old now when I think that was 10 years ago.

2005/06 we're great seasons too, as Schumi's Ferrari dominance suddenly ended and Kimi/Alonso came along strong. The 06 battle between Schumi and Fernando was a classic.

[floydfreak]

[Vermilion]

Saw that vid earlier, great stuff.

Way too many teams fell by the wayside in the early-mid 90s, some had the potential to do really well had they been able to get the funding they needed.

[floydfreak]

some of the teams late 80's pre-94 were hopeless, an old site i used like to visit back in the day on crap f1 teams was F1 Rejects.

twitter.com/LegendarysF1/status/1319391228929204224

[K]

2012 was also a great season. The guy in the best car won in the end but Alonso, Raikkonen and Hamilton were all phenomenal that year and all could have won that WDC with better luck. Ham had 5 DNFs, several of which were in races he would have comfortably won.

[Imrahil]

Although it turned out that Ferrari were being naughty with their power unit, 2018 and 2019 would have potentially been very close if Ferrari and Vettel hadn't made a bunch of stupid errors at various times. They threw away an obscene amount of points those seasons unnecessarily; their illegal car was very quick!

[Robbo-92]

Knowing Ferrari were cheating with their power unit it makes you wonder how long they were doing it for, 2017 to 19 they had a very strong car at times so was some of that performance from the now illegal power unit?

No idea how good the race will be round Portimao but the track looks a joy to drive, lots of ups and downs, blind corners etc

[floydfreak]

Sky F1 broadcasting this weekend's Spa 24 hours

[Robbo-92]

Albon pretty much has the next two races to decide whether he gets the 2021 Red Bull seat or not, if not they’ve said they will look outside of the Red Bull pool of drivers.