FORMULA 1 MSC CRUISES GRAN PREMIO DELL'EMILIA ROMAGNA 2024.....Race.... ▄▀▄▀▄▀ SPOILERS ▄▀▄▀▄▀

Why the Vettel 'finger' lol

 

The tires actually provided the offset to the boredom today. The hards were inconsistent for some and ok for others. Again its always the tires.

 

Leclerc is doing a very smart championship.
Scoring maximum points avalaibles with the car he has .
Of course his car isn’t championship material but at least we aren’t wasting any points like we did with Binotto’s team..
Step by step.

 

Autosport Writers bring their opinions of the race. Overall was boring until last 12 or so laps. Interesting one thinks the track is not that suitable for current F1 and that could easily apply to Monaco of course. Interesting and quick article to read.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/our-writers-rate-the-2024-f1-imola-grand-prix/10612979/

Our writers rate the 2024 F1 Imola Grand Prix
Max Verstappen won the 2024 Imola Grand Prix despite late pressure from McLaren driver Lando Norris.
Autosport Staff May 19, 2024, 5:47 PM
Upd: May 19, 2024, 5:47 PM

The Red Bull driver maintained a comfortable lead until the last few laps and rarely seemed to be threatened by the McLarens and Ferraris behind him.

Our writers give their verdict on the seventh round of the 2024 season.

Late Norris surge fails to disguise snoozefest: 4/10 - Filip Cleeren
As much as the drivers love racing at Imola - can't blame them, it is a mega circuit - today's race further underlined that some of these traditional circuits aren't necessarily suitable for this current formula of modern grand prix racing.

Between the lack of tyre strategy and the difficulty of overtaking cars, it was a drab affair, with the silver lining that Max Verstappen is no longer winning by half a minute or more. Lando Norris's late surge injected some life into the race, but whether he truly could have overtaken Verstappen is another matter.

Imola may be iconic, but between the circuit, the tyres and the cars themselves the recipe isn't working on a track like this. The smaller gaps between Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari are at least promising for the rest of the season.

It's the hope that kills you (twice): 2/10 - Alex Kalinauckas
Having seen Max Verstappen off the road two times in FP1 and then Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc blitzing rapid long runs in FP2, it really raised expectations that Red Bull was beatable here.

But that team and its factory – the simulator work done on Friday night by ex-F1 racer Sebastien Buemi and Formula E world champion Jake Dennis – is just so good and things were predictably better on Saturday.

Still, without the Nico Hulkenberg Q3 tow the start and first stint might not have been dire had a McLaren started ahead, but that was an awful race until Norris's hard tyre advantage came to bear. He was brilliant late on, but just fell short.

Also worth considering is how Pirelli bringing softer tyres in a (failed) bid for more pitstops made Red Bull's degradation advantage more potent on the mediums in stint one and that made the critical difference at the end…

A slow burner that didn't actually spark to life: 2/10 Haydn Cobb
A surprisingly well-mannered start meant no early chaos or strategy gambles. With limited options due to the tyres, the race was nullified by a lack of overtaking opportunities and copy-and-paste race plans.

Norris creeping up to Verstappen in the final 10 laps gave this race some grace but as the two never went into combat, there's not much to be gained.

Simply not much excitement: 3/10 – Ben Vinel
I'm giving this race three points based on the following criteria. One point for the Imola track with its grass and gravel traps, which means errors do not go unpunished, as Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton found out today. Another one for Yuki Tsunoda's remarkable overtake on Logan Sargeant, around the outside in Tamburello.

One last point for the (very) ephemeral suspense as Max Verstappen and Lando Norris (nearly) battled for the win late on, after the Dutchman dominated the whole contest. Other than that, it's fair to say not much happened in terms of quality racing or interesting strategies, with nearly everyone on a one-stopper.

Late Norris charge skews the picture: 3/10 - Pablo Elizalde
Not even the late Norris charge can disguise the fact that the Imola race was almost a non-event in which nearly nothing happened.

The old-school circuit might be a welcome sight to many F1 drivers but, combined with this breed of cars, it just doesn't appear to be a track capable of producing great grand prix racing.

The complete lack of strategy options didn't help either, and drivers switching to hard tyres some 15 laps into the race was never going to be a good sign.

Norris's charge will leave a better taste than the race probably earned.

 

"Driver" of the day was: Norris' race engineer.

Interesting comparison: The McLarens were notably faster than the Ferraris on the mediums.
Good job by Carlos holding off Piastri.
When the hards went on, it seemed like the Ferraris had a slight edge.
But the Ferraris wore out their hards by lap 48.
Piastri's ran out around lap 55 or so.
Norris' lasted until lap 61.

There was the radio call where Norris was worried that the cars behind him were faster.
And his engineer told him, "They're using up their tires more."

It was preserving his tires that let Norris take a run at Max at the end.

But "the pinnacle of motorsports" comes down to tire wear?

 

As I posted above - Its always the tires. They are more of an unknown than they should be. We suffer with Pirelli.

 

Watching mostly in-car on F1TV, Max and Lando were especially bitchy with their RE towards the end of the race. Both feeling the pressure!
Lando made a couple of small errors when he was ~1.5 sec behind and closing, tires looked to have gone off and from then on he and Max were basically equal.

Too bad Lando didn't have his good luck choad for a miracle SC, like in Miami.

Looks like a fun track to drive. Charles was smooth and quick, just needed a tad bit more to be fighting at the front.

 

Pirelli delivers tyres with high degradation that FOM/Liberty ask for to spice the races .
Pirelli gets the contract because they are the only tyre manufacturer to accept these conditions.

 

Yes and we have 'tire saving' vs racing in almost every Liberty Marketing Event aka GP. Stella in the press today stating they saved tires to then attack etc. Id prefer a bit more 'racing' during my overpriced Liberty Marketing Event aka - GP than 'saving' tires lol. Its about a 1/3 of a GP in some where they are 'tire saving'. So its the 'Tire lottery/saving skills' as much as full driving/racing.

 

For a brief moment we had tyres in 2022 that allowed close racing without excessive overheating/wear. Then the formula was changed again along with the idiotic aero rule adjustment and we went back to square 1.

But hey, celebrities and the netflix show is going strong.

 

True.
Not the most important parameter to my modest opinion.
Lighters, smaller cars with NA screaming engines ( Efuel) would fix a lot of inherent flaws this Formula One has.

 

QQ: I watch the international announcers. But today while waiting for the start, I was on the F1 side.
That English girl in the red dress was talking with the over exuberant italian announcer.

Then she stopped, and apologized to the audience for something he said asking the audience to write it off
to excitement and a boys thing.

What the heck did he say? I missed it.

and IMHO - she shouldn't be apologizing like that. if the announcer slipped - let them say scusi. Otherwise, let it go.
Her interruption bothered me more than whatever he said.

 

We wait for rational cars and racing. But we get 'saving'.

 

Ironically the WEC championship is less about saving tyres ..

 

It's Formula Pirelli more than F1.

But the ground effect regulations have been problematic from the get-go. I personally feel teams should be free to choose their designs more freely, instead of trying to recreate what people think 1980 was.

 

Hence the word 'Endurance' implies a conservation effort to continue in the event over time lol.

 

Yes!!

 

Let's face it, GPs have stopped being "full on" races from start to finish years ago.
Nowadays, F1 is mostly about clever strategy decided by boffins, better power management ( lift and coast to recharge the battery), tyres preservation, and coaching from the pits.
GPs are not run like sprints anymore. I am surprised you didn't notice that before.

 

That's not the direction the FIA is heading for, by the look of things.

 

There's nothing wrong with tire conservation being an element of the racing, but for it to be the entire formula as it has been for over a decade is the top issue with F1 today, imho. It encourages the drivers to not race hard.

When F1 banned refueling in 2010, they took a major variable out of the racing. That was a major part of the teams strategy, where they could decide for themselves where they wanted their cars operating window to be with how much fuel they were carrying and when. I think the FIA knows how incompetent the F1 safety team can be, hence, why it's banned. The rest of the racing world has no issues with fuel safety.

Teams should be free to contract their own tire suppliers for their own needs. It's 2024. If McLaren wants Michelin and Ferrari want Bridgestone, that's their competitive right.

 

Some people are stuck in 2025 and refuse to realize that formula is not doable in 24'.

 

That's because the WEC organisers don't yet impose conditions on the manufacturers.
Once you decide on only one supplier, you can decide the tyres you want.
All that started because of the tyres war, and the Indy fiasco when all the Michelin-shod cars couldn't race.

 

Indeed, to be honest I realized what you are saying last year in Qatar where drivers have been forced to do several pit stops during the race because of Pirelli.
Drivers were exhausted not only because of excessive temperatures but also because this race was full beam every laps until the end.

Truth is cars are way too large and heavy right now.
Hybridization and electrification nonsense in the end.

 

These morons. Right is wrong and wrong is right to them. They clearly can’t see the foresta through the alberi. A great track is the problem and not the bloated overweight giant cars…? The track is great. The cars are the problem.

 

In an ideal world, all this is true. But that's not the F1 we have now.
They are adverse to risk, and with both refuelling and the tyre war, F1 had its fingers burnt in the past.
They won't go there anymore; they have eliminated these risks.