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[Formula One & motorsport] Round 16, Russia: In Soviet Russia, V12 drives you!
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You could VPN into ITV Player, if that would work (You have to sign in for ads etc because ITV isn't paid for with the license fee as the BBC is). It has the usual post-broadcast stream but also a "watch live" function. On the Sunday they just dedicate the whole ITV4 channel to it so you get eight hours of coverage in one lump.
Hopefully there's other options more relevant to US viewing that someone else can suggest.
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I still miss Domenicali a bit, though.
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It also seems we'll have to wait until Canada to see the next upgrade to the Ferrari engine. Can't wait to see if that'll get them in matching pace without strategy stuff. Sad, though, because that'll make life a living hell for Rosberg, and I do wish he has more of a fighting chance for the championship. It just seems that for the first 3 races he just couldn't keep pace.
I think the single most important person for Ferrari's current (relative) strength is probably James Allison. He's been there a while now but the current car is the first one he has actually taken the lead on I think. And of course he, Arrivabene (how messed up is it that one of the most likeable people in F1 used to sell lung cancer for a living?) and to a lesser extent Vettel have had a massive impact on the culture and atmosphere at Ferrari. Mattiacci always seemed to be kind of out of his depth to me.
In non-F1 news, Michael Schumacher's son Mick made his official debut in an FIA-sanctioned race series last weekend in ADAC Formula 4.
All 3 races are still available online in full here.
And if anyone else is suffering from F1 withdrawal, next weekend is packed with other great motorsport: MotoGP at Jerez, WEC at Spa and the DTM season opener at Hockenheim.
James Allison is instrumental in Ferrari's current success, no doubt. Between him, Arrivabene and the more sunny Vettel in place of the more difficult Alonso, it's sort of a dream team coalescing. I don't care how much Alonso handwaves it away, it's got to be gnawing at him a bit that if he'd stayed on another year... although I understand when he says this has all been promised so many times over the last five years and not happened. I'm more glad that Raikkonen now actually has a good car to fight with and it looks like he's seriously ready to do so.
One annoyance I've found with other motorsport this year is how much the BTCC is clashing with F1. That's irritating.
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On that note, I'm just personally catching up on 2014's DTM to be ready for this year's. Love how they have the entire practice, qualy and race in youtube in nice quality. F1 could really take a page or two from those guys.
That is goddamned awesome.
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Or at least from the WEC or MotoGP, both of which offer a paid streaming option online. Meanwhile, F1 doesn't even have proper live timing available for free anymore.
I decided to try the BBC's driver monitor thing on their website for the Bahrain GP. Map of the circuit showing the position of all the cars, with times etc too. I gave up on it quickly when I realised it was perpetually running half a lap behind. The idea was nice, though.
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Can't say I'm a fan yet, but I'll see how it looks on track.
Let's hope Jenson can finally drive a race without complications.
My guess about how it will look on the track is "Slow"
Poor Williams, Sauber, and Lotus though after their strong looks earlier on, with RBR and STR also pretty clearly making some heavy progress(assuming they can make it through a full race without exploding)
...had to be the one to have its engine cover explode all over the track...
...red-flagging the session.
Now let's see if we can get through the weekend without a Mad Max Verstappen joke.
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Nice to see Rosberg back on form. Not sure if Vettel and Bottas did great or Kimi and Massa just underperformed.
Sainz taking Alonso's customary place at his home GP is pretty impressive, as is outqualifying Verstappen again.
McLaren might make it into the points soon, Sauber and especially FI are disappointing. Unless they improve significantly over the rest of the season I think Nico Hülkenberg will probably be off to the WEC next year as it doesn't look like a seat at a top team is going to be available for him any time soon and there are a lot of promising younger drivers around. Will still be a shame to see him go, though.
EDIT: F1Fanatic: One of Kimi's set of options was burned by the tyre warmers. Dude has really been having a shit weekend so far.
Not much of a fan of Nico but nice to see him get a pole, hope this race ends up stirring up the championship a bit more.
Otherwise, Torro Roso look nice this weekend. This might end up being the start of a decline for Sauber if they can't keep up with the upgrades.
Some vague rumours that Bottas might be moving to Ferrari in the future, probably as a replacement when Kimi retires. Then again, it's F1 - any driver with half an ounce of talent is rumoured to be going to Ferrari at some point in their career.
Personally, I don't think Bottas has been all that impressive so far, compared to Massa. He's solid but I'm not convinced he'd be the best available option. Grosjean could be good, Hülkenberg obviously, maybe Nasr depending on when Kimi retires. If Kimi sticks around for a while, Ricciardo might be an option when his contract with RB runs out. If Sainz actually manages to beat Verstappen over the season he's going to start attracting the attention of top teams as well.
EDIT: Here's Sky's comparison of Rosberg's and Hamilton's qualifying laps.
Spain rarely produces a classic race, but there's definitely things to watch for this time.
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Hamilton had a pretty bad weekend all round. Seemed pretty clear from Quali that his setup was off. Follow that up with the poor start letting Vettel past on a track where overtaking isn't much of a feature, and a rubbish pit stop keeping Vettel ahead longer and that was his chances of ever challenging Rosberg gone. When he had clear air though he was pretty damned fast, and may have at least caught Rosberg if the pitstop had worked properly.
Mclaren continue to disappoint. Yes they were faster than before, but both their engine and aero seemed poor to me this weekend.
I would do evil things to Suzi Perry. Evil, wonderful things.
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Lotus guy on the front right was also really lucky with his leg.
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For 2017, refuelling is back (pending an analysis of its potential costs), although the fuel usage limits will remain. Higher revving and louder engines (still hybrid V6 turbos, though) with a reduction from the current eight gears to six, raising the redline from 11,000rpm to 15,000rpm. "More aggressive" looking cars, with wider cars, wider tyres, larger wings, and reduced weight; the aim is to make them five to six seconds a lap faster, thus redressing some of the speed deficit to the record-fast 2004 cars which were in some cases ten seconds a lap faster than the current ones. Also, the driver's aids for starts will be banned, so starts won't be pre-calibrated and it'll be down to the drivers with hand clutches.
For 2016, "bosses have approved a plan to allow teams free choice of the four available tyre compounds for each race", which should mix up strategies a bit so long as all the pre-race analysis doesn't always draw every team to the same conclusion as to which selection will be fastest.
Hopefully the refuelling won't be set up with some of the ludicrous restrictions that were imposed on it before. No having to start on what was left after Q3, none of that ridiculous "burn off". Let them just do what they will fuel-wise, I say. The maximum amount and fuel-flow rates aren't changing, after all. I suppose it'll all get hammered out in due course.
As for tyres, Pirelli's contract runs out at the end of 2016. It's not certain yet that they'll re-sign or if multiple manufacturers will make a return (Michelin has made interested noises, apparently).
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One of the things they want to figure out (according to Toto Wolff) is if they can implement refuelling as fast as current tyre-only pitstops are. Given how much more fuel-efficient the cars are now, it's not out of the realms of possibility.
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I tried looking for information/clips about refuelling before it was abolished, but FOM makes sure you can't see any of that. Some information I did find was that in the past rigs were limited to ~11-12 litres per second, but I can't find anything about the density of the fuel used. Unless they're packing really dense fuel though, I can't see it being faster than a tyre switch. This is before accounting for the rig going on and off as well.