Well that doesn't seem right. It was scheduled for start @1700 hrs Baku time, so if they intend to avoid darkness they should go to 1600 hrs Baku time. Going to 1800 wont help. IMO

It's ridiculous. They start Australia late enough in the day that the drivers have a hard time with glare in certain parts of the track; they've started Malaysia late enough that a red flag caused enough of a delay that darkness became an issue...

Bernie is insane.

JR

I hope you have your DVR's set to record after the scheduled ending times for each session. There's a good chance of delays. Lots of yellows, VSC, a red flag... now GP2 qualifying is postponed because of track problems.

JR

FP2 actually happened on time. Lots of problems with the curbs coming up and cutting tires. GP2 Qualifying was postponed so they could temporarily weld the curbs in place but at least one came loose in FP2.

I can see lots of places where biting off too much curb coming into a corner could pitch a car into a barrier. Worst case, you might see a pile-up. Pit entry looks bad.

Lots of places where a damaged or broken car might take forever to collect. God forbid more than one ends up in the run-off zones at a time. Backing out of the run-off near turn 8 (only option, it's too narrow for anything else) puts you backing up into oncoming traffic.

If they have much safety car time, or a red flag on Sunday, that late start time might bite them in the ass.

Another classic "European" GP.

JR

That would be interesting for a bicycle race (we used to call courses like that "crasheteriums"). An F1 race - probably not so much. Will either be carnage or a parade. Or a little from column A, a little from column B...

Yeah, strange looking race track, the whole place looks weird. I watched the entire practice 2 and can't recall seeing a single person or grandstands. Gothic, dark and sinister looking. IMO

Might be a great race, who knows?

That's the sad thing. Bernie just wants the money, the countries just want the publicity. Fans? Who cares?

I find it ironic that the "European GP" is next door to Iran. That moniker was always given to a GP that had questionable provenance. Need another GP in your country? Fine, we will schedule the "European GP" there... just pay us.

At least when they used to have the San Marino GP, most pundits thought San Marino was part of Italy...

It will be interesting to see if they can get through the race without a safety car or red flag. I'm hoping nobody gets hurt.

JR

That looks like one helluva dangerous race. If no one gets killed, then it'll be great.

F1 needs the revenue. Remember, racing costs money. The money FOM receives is split with the teams.

You can't have F1 races as charity events at sentimental old tracks that don't pay. If it doesn't make a commercial success, then the whole thing just goes away. I know some guys will ***** and say "ok it should go away". Well, then don't watch.

Maybe you don't understand that the teams only get around half. Nearly a billion dollars goes to the "owners" of F1. Imagine how much better it could be if they didn't need to charge such high sanctioning fees to pay the owners. That works out to about $40MM per race, if you do the math.

JR

Maybe you don't understand half equals 50%?

You are free to watch other racing series, since you don't want to start your own. May I recommend Formula E, Nascar, GP2.....

Who do you think pays for the fuel, the safety staffing, etc. These races do not run themselves.

I'm just saying that the owners don't add anything to F1 and if you didn't have to pay them that enormous amount of money, like in the old days, you could go to better tracks, have more fans attend the races, etc.

It's like a tax. Nothing good comes of it.

JR

I predict a safety car. There, I've said it!

It wouldn't surprise me to see a safety car on lap 1. One thing I though was odd was how little running there was with two or more cars in close proximity. If they don't practice that a little, lap one will get interesting.

The other things was how much faster they were running than the official trap speeds shown. They were north of 350Kph.

JR

A Quote from Hambone:

It’s really bumpy down the main straight, and you can’t really see Turn 1 that well, because the car’s vibrating, so it’s really hard. :D

JR

The question is, what color will the flags be : yellow, or red?

The track was slippery yesterday. Hopefully GP2 lays down some serious rubber and it gets properly run in.

Right, I saw very few cars also. Looks ghostly. Such a big (long) track. Too long really for a street track. Over 6 Km I think. Not sure why it's so long. Odd, but I'm no expert. Maybe it's all for the better. We shall see on fathers day.

So...Happy fathers day to you all (Ya'll) Take time to enjoy your family!

Wow. Watching that video, I was struck by how many gaps there seem to be in the concrete walls lining the track. Like they didn't have enough K-rails to fully make it around the place, so they spread the ones they had put a bit. Lots of hard corners to hit in the event of a crash. And that metal crowd control railing on the inside of turn 1 doesn't look like setting I'd want to hit, either.

Looks like a video game track, where you expect there to be big cartoon arrows in the corners telling you which way to go.

Interesting quali quotes
 

Hamilton as always "balls to the wall" in more ways than one. "And Alonso whose just come from the carpet factory museum, was unable to weave his way through traffic"

"Bottas has learned some of Vettel's flowery language" "Seriously WTF is he doing" (Bottas on Max's driving)

I hope no one gets hurt in tomorrows race.

I think there's a pretty good chance of a red flag on lap 1. For sure, this circuit has got to have the greatest likelihood of a safety car period, as there are so few cranes around the circuit. If somebody bites off too much of the curb into turn 8, you could have a pileup. Turn 1 might be interesting, too.

Very few stands and very few butts in the stands. There are supposed to be only 28,000 tickets for the weekend; today's attendance looked like a few thousand. Even the numerous free balconies were mostly empty. Obviously the locals could give a crap and maybe nobody wanted to travel to this race. Russians, maybe?

All in all, a weird event. Sad to think we have this and we are on the cusp of losing Brazil and Monza for next year.

JR

My prediction: 3 safety cars, 2 red flags, and a Bottas victory. All bets are off if it rains :D