Good point Bas on Massa. I am sure you are right. My only comment about Massa is he seemed to lack the patience, self control or whatever you want to call it to be the Numero 1 at Ferrari. He had that mishap in the pits with the refueling hose. But for sure, in Hamilton's early days, Massa was his equal.
Exactly. 2010: WDC lost due to strategy f***up on the Scuderia's pit wall (Abu Dhabi, when Nando remained stuck behind Petrov) 2012: WDC lost due to an overenthusiastic Grosjean at the start of the Belgian GP (Vettel finished that race P2 IIRC).
Tell me about it - was at Spa where by the time the cars came round, Alonso wasn't there. At least got the chance to see Schuey. Best, Sammy
I don't understand how anyone can think lowly of Ricci yet highly of Max...if you look at the stats so far, Ricci has consistently outscored his teammate and proven superior, if not the very least a true equal! 2018 so far... Ricci scored 118 vs Max's 105. They both have had 4 DNFs so don't use that as an excuse to plead your case for Max. 2017 Ricci scored 200 vs Max's 168.
Massa's 2008 was incredible....IIRC in Singapore Ferrari gave him green in the pitstop but quickly changed to red again after it turned out the hose was still on...but at that point it's already too late. If a driver receives green his job is to react to that as quickly as possible, not second guess the team if all is sorted. Massa rattled Hamilton for sure...even post accident he was a match for Hamilton. Ferrari backed their horse (Alonso) from day 1, Massa was never given a chance. Slowly he wittered away...And I can't blame a driver for it, each time he did great only to get told to move over, receive the less optimal pit strategy and so on. On the other hand I don't blame Ferrari for backing Alonso as he was the more consistently fast driver of the two.
2010 We can blame Alonso also for losing the title...making an illegal overtake on Kubica. It was pretty clear cut. I guess at the same time FIA is also to blame as Charlie the Incompetent was caught twisting words. Ferrari could've told Alonso to give the place back. Hindsight. 2012 the only reason Alonso was still really in the fight was because of Vettel's poor reliability. Can't blame that loss squarely on Grosjean. Alonso can also be blamed for causing his own retirement by cutting his tyre on Raikkonen's front wing...
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/14837481/lewis-hamilton-longs-lighter-cars-v12s-manual-gearboxes Hell must be freezing over.
Would love to see a return to simpler aero packages, and older style engine configuration, forgetting this green stuff that should make the world cleaner. But if we listen to Marchionne's comments some time back, electric cars are not any greener than internal combustion engined vehicles. Not sure how Hamilton would fare in these more traditional vehicles.
+1 I think with the added lithium mining, sheer amount of batteries used and so on, these cars are actually dirtier than before. Humble opinion and all that.
Agreeing with Hamilton and many others about a return to simpler cars, but it will take a black swan event to turn the sport away from the inevitable fully electric engine. Politics not engineers are running and ruining F1 (and the automobile in general). The steering wheels alone are enough to make one vomit. But that is the nature of the modern world. Today's F1 cars are more like Apple watches than Patek Philippes. I guess the next trend will be drivers with big thumbs. Comparing the covers of Cavallino #208 to number #214...and La Ferrari looks like a Speed Racer Corvette.
I've seen it noted that lithium mining in both Chile and Australia has destroyed the landscape where its mined. And then it goes either China or Japan to be processed. Talk about giving the Far East control over our future? But I am hopeful that new battery technology will move beyond lithium.
There’s a lot of misinformation about lithium. Including a very popular picture of a supposed lithium mine that is really a copper mine. The vast majority (close to 90%) of the lithium harvested is from brine water...the water is evaporated away and the lithium is removed from the remaining salt (along with other compounds).
Posted this in the Williams thread, hence the quote above, but it’s relevant to this thread too, as I feel f1 is actually imploding and killing itself....... Trouble is though, it looks as if the whole package is at fault, there’s no part of the package in isolation they an focus on and sort out. It takes almost a year to get these cars right, generally getting them to track in January with six months already gone, and the next six months of practices and racing to get them absolutely right. They haven’t got time for a new car design which is the thing they really need, and with the prospect of less money to use with sponsors leaving and no one coming in to replace them, what business can justify the immense expense of starting that process now, they have to write the year off really and get started on next years car with their financial limitations..... very awkward position to be in. If they could guarantee a new design would get them more points and improve their prize money or new sponsors, it would be different, but they haven’t got time to reap any results if they did it. It’s a real shame. If F1 lost force India, or toro Rosso, I wouldn’t be so upset as they haven’t a long pedigree, but Williams has been a championship winner, the number one team, in the past, and for them to fall so far is really quite disappointing. Same goes for McLaren....... I hated them while they were fighting us for championships (but loved them when Ayrton was in his MP4), but I wouldn’t wish their current predicament on them. It was funny at first watching whitmarsh blunder his way about and torture Ron Dennis with his incompetent management, but it’s gone too far when they are racing with rubbish at the back. The rubbish at the back is always there, never moves, no one expects results from them, and no one really cares. Every year, those guys seem to want to run up just to make up the numbers and celebrate when they finish a race. McLaren should not be there, and neither should Williams, they should be up towards the front in the mix for points at the very least. F1 doesn’t need cost cutting, it doesn’t need budget caps. It needs racing to be simpler, to be about the design and the drivers, it should not be about KERS and MGUH and the rest. Most fans are petrolheads - the name gives Liberty a clue - they aren’t electricity heads, or spark heads. Leave the development of electric cars to those firm in the market, let them test their road cars, and if they want to run something on the cars, make allowances for it to happen if you want but for God’s sake, f1 should be racing. These fuel limited cars, with tech even the cleverest fans get a headache understanding, doesn’t make for good racing. We get lift and coast, grid penalties, reliability issues, these things do not make racing exciting - fast cars and loud engines do, wheel to wheel tussles, not cars being relaxed allowing passes because they are on a harvest strategy, or cooling the tyres, or only able to finish if they turn down to 80% or less. Keep v6 turbo if you want too (I don’t want the average hot hatch having a better sounding engine than F1, but do what you like) but give engineers free rein to push their engines and designs to the absolute limit, allow them to use more or less fuel as suits them (the weight of the fuel differing car to car would help make some racing happen) and simplify the aero so cars can run closer for longer. If a team wants to use ten engines a season, as long as they can afford it, do it! If the back marker teams can only afford three, big deal. I don’t have an F1 team because I can’t afford to run one..... if I could, I’d be in there like a shot. If you go into f1 without enough cash, do you really go in expecting to compete at the front? I doubt it, and if you do, you need your bumps read! There is no reason to ‘level the playing field’. Firstly, it will never happen properly, there will always be ways to avoid the regulations, or to simply cheat (a la Mercedes and strat 2 etc) Secondly, what real fans want to see all the cars artificially hobbled so that the all run the same speed? None of us, we want racing, we want the best drivers duelling week in week out, and if their engine blows, all the better, they must be trying hard enough, and the next week they are 1-2 and duelling again, we don’t have a title challenger having to start at the back or in the pits because a spark plug was dirty or his gearbox blew a gasket..... that’s pathetic. Instead of increasing the amount of artificial ******** into races supposedly to enhance it, just stop meddling, stamp down hard on the bad practices, but for ****s sake, let them race and let them develop
My business partner used to have a significant stake in a graphite mine. Dirtiest thing he's ever seen. Guess what graphite is used in?
Interesting. Embarrassed to say that I assumed hard rock mining was a larger percentage. If you're a science nerd, this is a good read. https://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2018/02/20/how-does-lithium-mining-work/ T
There are definitely environmental issues related to graphite mining; with proper oversight and regulations those issues can be mitigated. At the risk of going P&R, the current US administration is not known for rigorous oversight or logical regulations. Fortunately, we don’t mine much (if any) graphite in the US. Unfortunately, the majority is mined in China...also not known for good oversight or regulatory responsibility...although they seem to be getting better. Graphite is used in lithium batteries and MANY other things. Pointing out a few things that can be described as “not green” by themselves overlooks the big picture. Nobody and nothing is perfect...but, pragmatically, we should have the goal to utilize our resources to make tomorrow better than yesterday. F1 is far from the Sierra Club’s definition of green...but, it is also far better than it was ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago. Because of the current formula and its requirements, we are seeing ICE efficiencies that were literally thought to be impossible when I was in College...the benefit to us is the ICE has a life line and might still exist in road cars in ten years.
This is something the detractors of the present hybrid fengine ormula fail to grasp completely, to my dismay. They are hell-bent on bringing back gas-guzzling and noisy multi-cylinder engines from the past, when the salvation of the ICE will be increased efficiency.
