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

[Robbo-92]

Massive error from Stroll there, could have had 2 good points finish and now they’ll struggle to get one.

Lewis “my tyres are done” Hamilton doing his usual too

Albon is done. They've given him two more races and this isn't good enough.

Yeah he’s not exactly doing himself any favours, wonder who they’ll replace him with for a year.

[Imrahil]

Too often, Bottas' race pace just falls away inexplicably.

[Memento Mori]

Another penalty for StrolLol. Just retire the car at this point.

[Robbo-92]

LecLerc doing a stellar job once again as well, another penalty for Stroll too

[Robbo-92]

Kimi still has it

Ok now he doesn’t McLaren a fair bit quicker than Alfa of course.

[Robbo-92]

Perez easy driver of the day, from facing the wrong way on lap 1 (and last) to 5th currently. Ocon has had a very good race too, Vettel actually having one of the better races of his season down in 10th, might snatch 9th too.

[Captain Kinopio]

Between Hamilton, Verstappen and Le Clerc it's hard to think of a time when the top teams have had such a massive difference in driver performance.

With the Red Bull and Ferrari in particular it's quite difficult to work out how good their cars actually are such is the huge differential in drivers.

[Captain Kinopio]

New World Record

How dumb

[Imrahil]

Immense from Lewis.

[Robbo-92]

Honestly I know they’ll say both drivers for Red Bull and Ferrari are in identical cars but it really would not surprise me one bit if they weren’t with the difference in performance, it’d be daft if they were driving differing specs for so long (can understand it for one race), but then you look at Bottas finishing 25 seconds off of Hamilton and realise they’re just having a shocker of a season rather than any foul play from either team, well I certainly hope this is the case anyway. I can’t see Albon staying at the main team at all, hope they take Perez or Hulk for 2021, if they don’t either would make a good candidate for Alpha Tauri too as I can’t see Kyvat staying around past this year either.

Anyway, Hamilton now on 92 wins, I would say that’s unassailable but I imagine most people thought the same about Schumacher’s final tally of 91.

[captain red dog]

Yeah I remember, as a Schumacher fan, I never thought anyone would get close for perhaps 50 years, but the sport has changed so much. Schumacher was the first of the athlete kind of driver, and now they do so many races and can get into a competitive drive at such a young age it really wouldn't surprise me to see someone get close if they get a dominant car whilst young enough. Also F1 seems to flick from era to era a little slower now, so teams dominate for much younger whilst the rules are fixed.

So I think it's more of a case that the records need to be looked at in a different perspective. For example, most of Schumacher's early career there were only 16 races a season, they messed around with qualifying too which dented his pole record with the one lap system they had for a few seasons. So there are just lots of variables that don't really make it easy to compare records directly like for like.

[Robbo-92]

The longer seasons do help massively, I don’t know the exact numbers but both Hamilton and Schumacher can’t be too far apart when it comes to race starts to wins can they? Could be one of the fairer comparisons to make when comparing different eras of the sport, Hamilton has just gone to 262.

Only person I could see theoretically beating Hamilton are Leclerc and Russel, but they would need a consistently dominant car with teammate who pushes them just enough to bring out the best in them, with 2022 looming with the new regulations and the (more important in my opinion) cost cap who knows if we’ll see domination to this degree again? Also let’s not forget, Hamilton is only going to extend his lead at the top, chances are he’s going to stick around at Mercedes till 2022 (no reason for him not to, see how they react to the new regulations and see what’s what thereafter), with how well he’s performing he could win the last 5 races with another 10+ at least next year unless Red Bull and Ferrari really ramp it up (don’t see it happening personally) so his 92 wins will rapidly become 100+ making it harder for anyone to catch up with how Formula 1 are trying to shape the future.

[Imrahil]

Verstappen's already on 9 wins and just turned 23 - ahead of Hamilton at the same age. So if he ends up with a dominant car then he has a slim chance. It wont be till 2022 at the earliest though when the major new regs come in.

Lewis actually has a better win per race percentage than Schumacher, which surprised me. 35% compared to 29%.

[Captain Kinopio]

Odd to be thinking about Le Clerc or Russell beating him and not Verstappen. Russell it’s far to early to say, he might not even be on the grid next season! Le Clerc certainly looks the business but hasn’t really proven himself against a competitive team mate. When the Ferrari was quick Vettel certainly had his number quite a few times and it’s only now Vettel has jumped fully in the bin that Le Clerc is on top.

Verstappen has proven he can win in a less than competitive car and can beat the very best drivers on the grid. It’s hard to see who would partner with him long term and come out on top. Still, he needs to get another team behind him fast as things don’t look too hot for RBR in the medium term.

[Robbo-92]

To be honest I’d forgotten Verstappen is only 23 as he’s now in his 6th season in the sport

Think I was leaning towards Russel as if Mercedes stay as they are then he’s probably in with a good shout of winning a fair few races at least when/if he partners Hamilton and potentially being in a position similar to Hamilton when he eventually leaves the sport. Whereas while we’ve seen Red Bull dominate more recently than Ferrari, their dominant spell was nowhere near the Mercedes of 2020 and Ferrari don’t seem the most competent team of late, obviously times change and 2022 is the biggest shake up for a while, could see some of the other teams getting further up the grid too (hopefully).

[floydfreak]

[floydfreak]

[captain red dog]

It looks like Vettel has made some veiled comments that he doesn't think his Ferrari is equal to Leclerc. I find it hard to believe he would be having a season this bad given the same equipment. Even past champions that have lost their edge (Schumacher in his second career for example) didn't seem this far off their team mates.

Really interested to see how he goes again next season. Stroll seems to have really dropped form recently so I think Seb can have real confidence of outperforming him.

[Robbo-92]

Where have you seen said veiled comments? Just the way Ferrari and himself feel the need to say that their cars are identical or something else? I’m just more interested in how Vettel performs in the terrific midfield fight next year, hopefully with McLaren’s different power unit they don’t move too far ahead (or if they do, Aston Martin and Alpine stay really close all season long) of the midfield.

[floydfreak]

Final race of the IMSA championship is in a couple of weeks and is the 12 hours of Sebring