The official Formula One and General Motorsport thread for the 2021 season! Season finale live on Sky & Ch4 Dec 12th 1pm

[Robbo-92]

While I’m not really a fan of joker laps (in F1 I could see everyone would just do the joker lap either on the first lap and on their pit out lap, take full advantage of the new tyres and minimise the time the joker lap takes up), changing the circuit is very doable (the longer route in that video could be great) and may improve the actual racing a little tiny bit. Problem is, Monaco doesn’t want to change the track, it’s probably one of the most (if not the most) iconic track on the calendar so they’ll be worried if they change it, it’ll lose some of its status. The 2 styles of qualifying could actually work too, if they insist on not changing the track then it’d be worth a shot? Qualifying is by far the best part of the weekend so may as well go all in on it rather than have a very processional Grand Prix where the overtaking mainly happens in the pits.

[floydfreak]

[floydfreak]

[floydfreak]

twitter.com/1990sF1/status/1403253619688869889

twitter.com/1990sF1/status/1403245866530611201

[captain red dog]

The problem is, with each major rule change for the last 20 years they keep saying that the intention is to bring the cars closer together, but it never works. They need really dramatic rule changes, something to get the fastest lap at Monaco back to something like a 1min 18 secs. Massively reduce braking performance and downforce. Hugely reduce the grip the cars have. The fans will not notice a bit on TV. You watch footage of cars from the 80s, which I think were about 6-8 secs slower per lap than the current cars and the speed still looks incredible.

Monaco has to stay, its just one race among 23 or so these days. But the drivers need to be properly challenged on the circuit. To have a Monaco GP without even one yellow flag is just absolutely mental. The tyres alone meant the challenge was just to keep your car on the track and drive as slow as you can.

We shouldn't have any compound of tyre that can do 40 laps on a stint. Tyres should last 15-20 laps max in my opinion. How you sell that the tyre manufacturer is anyone's guess, but one stop races usually tend to be utterly crap.

[floydfreak]

One stop races are always crap and processional

[Imrahil]

The processional nature of some races has little to do with the tyres though. It's to do with certain track layouts + the inability of modern F1 cars to follow each other closely due to ridiculous aero fluctuations.

People will quickly start ignoring whether a race is 1-stop or 2-stop (or how good or bad the tyres are) if the racing between the cars was naturally closer to begin with. Which... apparently could happen next season, at least to some extent. We'll see.

[Vermilion]

[Vermilion]

Bwoah!

[Robbo-92]

Mercedes complaining for Bottas going to wide onto the yellow kerbs and getting damage, Vettel gets a snap and hits the wall with his rear. Not a bad FP1 session so far to be fair. Tracks still awful to watch on TV though.

[floydfreak]

[Return_of_the_STAR]

Bwoah!

It would be as dangerous as strawberry float but can you imagine if we had tracks with multiple choices of where you can go

[Vermilion]

It would be as dangerous as strawberry float but can you imagine if we had tracks with multiple choices of where you can go

It would be like a football match with 4 different balls on the pitch.

[Neo Cortex]

Bit baffled as to why Mercedes have swapped the chassis on their cars?

[Victor Mildew]

Yuki Spinoda

[GrinWithoutaKat]

He looked so good in Bahrain, but he seems to have some kind of incident every race weekend since then.

[Victor Mildew]

Mick SchLOLmacher

[Victor Mildew]

Darren Ricciardo

[Robbo-92]

Just caught up in time for Q3, Tsunoda really has gone from hero to relative F1 zero hasn’t he? So so qualifying so far, looks close between the top 4 though.

[Captain Kinopio]

Was this Qualifying messed up? I switched over the the football for 20 minutes and I've missed it all bar the final 5 minutes of Q3.