F4 driver Billy Monger, 17, had a horrific crash at Donington Park last weekend. Completely unsighted, he crashed at full racing speed into the back of another car that had spun and stopped. Nobody's fault, just an awful freak accident (unedited on-board footage exists but I'm not going to link it - it's not graphic in terms of Billy's injuries or anything but the severity of the crash is instantly apparent). He has lost both of his lower legs due to the extent of his injuries.
He's been awakened from his induced coma now, and apparently one of the first things he asked was how he could to about using a clutch with his hands. Definitely the sign of a born racer, and also of his remarkable mental fortitude, I think.
There's a crowdfunding page been set up, to provide help for him, and it blew past its initial goal of £260,000 in a matter of hours. It's now past £500,000 and still going. Jenson Button and Max Verstappen each donated £15,000, and Lewis Hamilton (and I suspect others) unspecified amounts.
The way the motorsport community comes together after an event like this always makes me smile. Danger will always be an inherent part of the sport. But so will, it seems, the sense of community and the coming together in support when tragedy strikes. It will always be a bit paradoxical, but it drives at the heart of the best of human nature.
Get well soon, Billy, and I'm sure we shall see you doing what you love again before too long.
Wife and I are going to Spa in August. Wish we could have hit Monza on the same trip, but got a family wedding. The Euro is down to $1.07 USD, which is insane. So we gotta get all this F1 travel in while the gettin is good.
As the F1 facebook etc is keen to remind me, Sochi is where Kyvat earned his demotion from Red Bull last year. Easy to forget he was in a Red Bull at all last year considering how well Verstappen has been doing.
Steve Jones, the lead presenter on Channel 4 in the UK, is being worse even than usual today. I seriously don't know how the hell he still has this job. It's even more glaring because the rest of the presenting team is so good at what they do (it's largely the old BBC team so they know their stuff).
Damnit Vettel, I was hoping for a Kimi pole!
Don't really know what happened with Hamilton. He just doesn't seem to be there this weekend.
Differences in driver ability showing up once again in the midfield. Makes it hard to judge where everyone is. Well, except for Sauber and Mclaren who are clearly at the back.
Going to pick on Palmer a bit here but it really is becoming a struggle to justify his seat in Renault. That car seems good enough for regular Q3 appearances at the minute but not with him in it. Id did feel a bit sorry for him today but F1 is a harsh place.
was so nearly there. If he hadn't flubbed the last corner on his last lap he may very well have had the pole. Still, good to see him genuinely on the pace. Fair play to Seb, though... and to Valtteri. Lewis is kind of nowhere this weekend, and it's a bit odd.
And as for Renault, if this carries on, Fernando is a shoe-in for that seat next year. If he can't get the second Merc.
Eddie Jordan is insistent (and probably right,
let's face it) that McLaren will have Merc engines again next year. That's a big change given that they're practically a works team at the moment, but it's what they need to do just to survive at this point. Sauber are virtually confirmed to have Honda engines next year, but financially that might be a good move for them.
If McLaren go back to Merc, Honda would still have only one customer team and a much less famous one at that. I wouldn't be surprised if they leave the sport soon, and I really hope Sauber are prepared for that possibility.
Single round of pitstops over, not a whole lot of point watching the rest. Race is a snooze fest with no cars within 1s. Any time they get anywhere close dirty air is just killing pace. Short of an incident and safety car I expect this to end as it is now.
I think that race didn't have a single overtake on track (after the start/lap 1).
Sochi isn't a good fit for F1, especially not with the new, even more aero-sensitive cars. I like the layout, it could be great for cars that can actually follow each other through these corners, but for F1 it's clearly not working.
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
No overtakes, but lap 45 through to the end was fairly nailbiting. Really happy with the result
Love Massa totally-not-blocking for his old teammate, kudos
Have to agree on Sochi being a poor track for F1. There wasn't even the threat of an overtake for the most part. After the first lap basically nothing happened.
Congrats to Bottas on the first win, he was good for most of the weekend. Vettel was close but Sainz and Massa killed him. The influence of the backmarkers on the pace of the car behind them showed just how bad the track is for racing really. That said, I don't think Vettel would have been anywhere near close if Bottas hadn't wrecked his tyres with that lockup.
Hamilton was basically rubbish all weekend. Never looked comfortable and his car was sliding around all throughout quali and the race, not to mention the cooling issues.
Honda managed to out-Honda themselves by not even making the formation lap. I guess Vandoorne actually finished though.
No overtakes, but lap 45 through to the end was fairly nailbiting. Really happy with the result
Love Massa totally-not-blocking for his old teammate, kudos
Yeah, the last few laps were actually awesome, made up for a rather snoozy rest of the race. Agreed that the track layout really doesn't suit these cars, though.
It's always interesting to me how visible Putin makes himself at this event. Speaking (at considerable length) with the drivers after the race through an interpreter, handing over the winners' trophies for winning driver and constructor... he knows full well exactly how big of a PR boost the race is for the country and for him personally. And judging by his broadcast conversation with the drivers, I think he might actually genuinely enjoy the racing, at least to a point.
I'm trying to think of any other head of state who gets so visibly involved so much.
After Fernando's excellent showing in the Indycar test, and the news that after the big race he gets to keep the car (such is the life of the multiple world champion racing driver), he made his way back to the day job. And the McLaren's engine blew up two whole corners into FP1, dumping fluids all over the track as it did so. Awesome.
I kind of love that after his car's engine blew up after two corners in first practice he fucked off to go play tennis with his trainer. Granted, he's never been known to be a team builder, but with how dire things have been for him this season he is starting to say that unless things improve he's going to sign with another team for 2018.
I think he's basically saying he's open to any and all offers for next year. At this point, anything is a step up. Although given Sauber's engine deal for next year, I'm going to assume it won't be with them...
I think he's basically saying he's open to any and all offers for next year. At this point, anything is a step up. Although given Sauber's engine deal for next year, I'm going to assume it won't be with them...
At least Raikonen's and Massa's will be up for grabs.
Looks like an easy walk for mercedes now that they've dumped a metric assload of cash into front wing and bargeboard upgrades.
We'll see if they're still having tire problems, but if they don't, I expect Hamilton to win probably 80%+ of the races going forward given their speed advantage.
Still pretty damn close between the Mercs and Ferraris in qualifying. Hamilton/Vettel and Bottas/Raikkonen have very little separating them in their respective pairs. It ain't over yet.
The MVP of this race was a small boy in a Ferrari outfit.
That said, the driving wasn't bad either.
Nice to see actual racing for the top spot, a huge result for Force India and Fernando finished a race!
Brat got to meet Kimi after the race in the Ferrari team area. So ummm anyone have a small kid I can borrow for Montreal or Spa (would need to fit in overhead bin)
Cue many jokes about everyone crying in the grandstands from now on.
But for serious, that was very, very cool of Ferrari and Kimi.
Fine race by the occasionally humdrum standards of this track, too. Proper wheel to wheel action for the lead, and awesome it was too; bizarre accidents and incidents in which no-one got hurt except in the pride; good calls by the stewards (left most things alone but Stoffel gets a well-deserved three place grid penalty for that dumb turn-in on Felipe); and a great day for the pink cars until they got hauled up in front of the beak for their livery not being up to snuff regarding the driver numbers!
They have the problem of having already got sponsorship agreements, predating the new rule, in place for bits of the car where the numbers need to be. They'll be working with the powers that be and I guess the sponsors themselves to sort this for the next race.
I'd argue that Vettel was the fastest driver out there today. He may not have won but he had comfortable gaps in the first part of the race and it took Bottas blocking and a virtual safety car to allow Hamilton to catch and pass him. It was great to see an actual fight for the lead that ended in on track passing for a change.
Hamilton's race was a bit compromised by his poor start (again), but with similar issues for Bottas it seems like it was a Merc issue. A real pity to lose Raikonnen and Verstappen on the first corner. With Raikonnen in particular it would have been interesting to see the comparison to Merc/Bottas (who had a relatively anonymous race until his engine blew up, but it was an old one anyway).
Some of the midfield drivers are really coming up lacking now. In particular there's Stroll and Palmer who are vastly under performing. Massa was in two collisions, had a slow pit stop to change nose at the start, putting him at one more stop than Stroll, yet still finished ahead of him. And Massa isn't exactly the quickest on the grid. Likewise Palmer just generally under performs. Hulkenberg is a regular Q3 and points finisher, Palmer is often out in Q1 and finishing at the back. Vandoorne also had a weekend to forget with that rather stupid looking collision with Massa. Harder to get a judgement on Vandoorne given that the car barely finishes anyway though.
The MVP of this race was a small boy in a Ferrari outfit.
That said, the driving wasn't bad either.
Nice to see actual racing for the top spot, a huge result for Force India and Fernando finished a race!
Brat got to meet Kimi after the race in the Ferrari team area. So ummm anyone have a small kid I can borrow for Montreal or Spa (would need to fit in overhead bin)
I do have a 2 year old niece that likes loud and fast cars...
The 1988 McLaren MP4/4 (yes!), 1992 Williams FW14B and 2002 Ferrari F2002 are confirmed; there will be 12 classic cars altogether, with more to be revealed. Sadly, the MP4/4 is DLC, as a pre-order bonus or purchasable later, because something had to be. Ugh.
Anyway.
Apparently they're even incorporated into the career mode this time, as part of invitational events through the seasons.
There's also four alternative circuit layouts, though no further info on them yet, and new modes etc to further bolster the package.
2016 was a genuinely great game, after a couple of years of the series being off the boil, but this all bodes well for 2017. It's out in August.
Alonso has qualified fifth for the Indy 500. For context, back in 1993, Mansell qualified eighth, and it was his fourth IndyCar race - he finished third.
IndyCar is a reasonably interesting open wheel racing series, but it doesn't surprise me that the talent level is significantly lower than F1. You know, since IndyCar mostly just draws from the USA for its racers, while F1 draws from the entire world.
I actually enjoy Indy a lot more than F1 because the racing is so much closer and the drivers are vastly more personable. With all the teams running very similar cars you're just as likely to see a winner from a small underfunded team as you are one of the top Penske/Ganassi/Andretti teams.
It's going to change each year, but right now there are more international drivers than US drivers right now. I wont deny that F1 drivers are probably going to be the better drivers, but I'd like to see what the top Indy car drivers could do in a F1 car from an equivalent top F1 team. There are only so many F1 seats and many F1 drivers are there because of the money the bring and not the skill of their driving. It's like that in Indy too but not to the same extent.
While I do prefer road circuits versus oval tracks, they are two very different things. I've grown to like both of them because they're very different kinds of races.
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He's been awakened from his induced coma now, and apparently one of the first things he asked was how he could to about using a clutch with his hands. Definitely the sign of a born racer, and also of his remarkable mental fortitude, I think.
There's a crowdfunding page been set up, to provide help for him, and it blew past its initial goal of £260,000 in a matter of hours. It's now past £500,000 and still going. Jenson Button and Max Verstappen each donated £15,000, and Lewis Hamilton (and I suspect others) unspecified amounts.
The way the motorsport community comes together after an event like this always makes me smile. Danger will always be an inherent part of the sport. But so will, it seems, the sense of community and the coming together in support when tragedy strikes. It will always be a bit paradoxical, but it drives at the heart of the best of human nature.
Get well soon, Billy, and I'm sure we shall see you doing what you love again before too long.
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https://wtf1.com/post/kvyat-trolls-vettel-with-torpedo-helmet-design-for-russian-gp/
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Don't really know what happened with Hamilton. He just doesn't seem to be there this weekend.
Differences in driver ability showing up once again in the midfield. Makes it hard to judge where everyone is. Well, except for Sauber and Mclaren who are clearly at the back.
Going to pick on Palmer a bit here but it really is becoming a struggle to justify his seat in Renault. That car seems good enough for regular Q3 appearances at the minute but not with him in it. Id did feel a bit sorry for him today but F1 is a harsh place.
And as for Renault, if this carries on, Fernando is a shoe-in for that seat next year. If he can't get the second Merc.
Eddie Jordan is insistent (and probably right,
let's face it) that McLaren will have Merc engines again next year. That's a big change given that they're practically a works team at the moment, but it's what they need to do just to survive at this point. Sauber are virtually confirmed to have Honda engines next year, but financially that might be a good move for them.
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If McLaren go back to Merc, Honda would still have only one customer team and a much less famous one at that. I wouldn't be surprised if they leave the sport soon, and I really hope Sauber are prepared for that possibility.
Sochi isn't a good fit for F1, especially not with the new, even more aero-sensitive cars. I like the layout, it could be great for cars that can actually follow each other through these corners, but for F1 it's clearly not working.
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Hamilton was basically rubbish all weekend. Never looked comfortable and his car was sliding around all throughout quali and the race, not to mention the cooling issues.
Honda managed to out-Honda themselves by not even making the formation lap. I guess Vandoorne actually finished though.
Yeah, the last few laps were actually awesome, made up for a rather snoozy rest of the race. Agreed that the track layout really doesn't suit these cars, though.
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I'm trying to think of any other head of state who gets so visibly involved so much.
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And it's nice that there is actually a battle for 1st for a change instead of all the good stuff happening in the mid pack.
And that's the first Indy500 that I'm watching...
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I kind of love that after his car's engine blew up after two corners in first practice he fucked off to go play tennis with his trainer. Granted, he's never been known to be a team builder, but with how dire things have been for him this season he is starting to say that unless things improve he's going to sign with another team for 2018.
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At least Raikonen's and Massa's will be up for grabs.
We'll see if they're still having tire problems, but if they don't, I expect Hamilton to win probably 80%+ of the races going forward given their speed advantage.
Yawn.
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That said, the driving wasn't bad either.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Brat got to meet Kimi after the race in the Ferrari team area. So ummm anyone have a small kid I can borrow for Montreal or Spa (would need to fit in overhead bin)
But for serious, that was very, very cool of Ferrari and Kimi.
Fine race by the occasionally humdrum standards of this track, too. Proper wheel to wheel action for the lead, and awesome it was too; bizarre accidents and incidents in which no-one got hurt except in the pride; good calls by the stewards (left most things alone but Stoffel gets a well-deserved three place grid penalty for that dumb turn-in on Felipe); and a great day for the pink cars until they got hauled up in front of the beak for their livery not being up to snuff regarding the driver numbers!
They have the problem of having already got sponsorship agreements, predating the new rule, in place for bits of the car where the numbers need to be. They'll be working with the powers that be and I guess the sponsors themselves to sort this for the next race.
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D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
I'd argue that Vettel was the fastest driver out there today. He may not have won but he had comfortable gaps in the first part of the race and it took Bottas blocking and a virtual safety car to allow Hamilton to catch and pass him. It was great to see an actual fight for the lead that ended in on track passing for a change.
Hamilton's race was a bit compromised by his poor start (again), but with similar issues for Bottas it seems like it was a Merc issue. A real pity to lose Raikonnen and Verstappen on the first corner. With Raikonnen in particular it would have been interesting to see the comparison to Merc/Bottas (who had a relatively anonymous race until his engine blew up, but it was an old one anyway).
Some of the midfield drivers are really coming up lacking now. In particular there's Stroll and Palmer who are vastly under performing. Massa was in two collisions, had a slow pit stop to change nose at the start, putting him at one more stop than Stroll, yet still finished ahead of him. And Massa isn't exactly the quickest on the grid. Likewise Palmer just generally under performs. Hulkenberg is a regular Q3 and points finisher, Palmer is often out in Q1 and finishing at the back. Vandoorne also had a weekend to forget with that rather stupid looking collision with Massa. Harder to get a judgement on Vandoorne given that the car barely finishes anyway though.
I do have a 2 year old niece that likes loud and fast cars...
Classic cars are BACK!
The 1988 McLaren MP4/4 (yes!), 1992 Williams FW14B and 2002 Ferrari F2002 are confirmed; there will be 12 classic cars altogether, with more to be revealed. Sadly, the MP4/4 is DLC, as a pre-order bonus or purchasable later, because something had to be. Ugh.
Anyway.
Apparently they're even incorporated into the career mode this time, as part of invitational events through the seasons.
There's also four alternative circuit layouts, though no further info on them yet, and new modes etc to further bolster the package.
2016 was a genuinely great game, after a couple of years of the series being off the boil, but this all bodes well for 2017. It's out in August.
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
It's going to change each year, but right now there are more international drivers than US drivers right now. I wont deny that F1 drivers are probably going to be the better drivers, but I'd like to see what the top Indy car drivers could do in a F1 car from an equivalent top F1 team. There are only so many F1 seats and many F1 drivers are there because of the money the bring and not the skill of their driving. It's like that in Indy too but not to the same extent.
While I do prefer road circuits versus oval tracks, they are two very different things. I've grown to like both of them because they're very different kinds of races.
Indy races on plenty of road courses.
It also helps that Honda is real fast in Indy instead of real slow.