I am actually a Ricardo fan and bummed he is not in a better car. I think Leclerc is the real deal and can be WDC, he makes mistakes too he got away with a few Sunday. I think he will only get better.

I just laugh at everyone ignoring it is the car when Lewis wins and say it was the car when Vettel was winning. Vettel is inside his own head and screwing the pooch, I do not think he is coming back from that. He is done and I will be surprised if he drives past 2020.

On nearly all of that we agree. I think both Lewis and Vettel have had the better car. But Hamilton has used that car when Vettel has screwed the pooch.

If Ferrari could hire Riccardo and dump Vettel they would be winning a lot more. Certainly they would have plenty of more constructors points.

I like Ricci, but if he replaces Seb, Lec would be Ferrari's #1 driver. Ricci won't want to be 2nd banana to anyone.

Leclerc is my favourite current F1 driver, I'm sure he'll be the next WDC after Hamilton

How about Alonso back at Ferrari next year? no No. 1 driver hierarchy, team lets them duke it out on the track/back at the factory. Never going to happen but it would cause Mercedes a few problems and make good viewing

Do not forget, when Hamilton was not in a winning car he was making a lot of mistakes too and crashing a lot, channeling his inner Senna to force people out of his way.

I hope one day we really hear what happened behind the scenes at Mercedes the year Nico took the WDC from him. You can see to this day Nico is still rattled by that season.

I read online that Riccardo has a clause in his current contract that specifically states if a Ferrari seat becomes available he can get out of the contract . If that is accurate I wonder what the conversations were like a year ago ? Did Ferrari tell him maybe in 2020 ? Or just wishful thinking on his part ? I just find it curious .

I don't want to believe in any stupid conspiracies, but Lewis' engine letting go in Malaysia... I still shake my head at that one :confused:

I heard that too....I don't think he'd ever willingly be a #2 but pretty sure he would jump on a Ferrari seat.

The Honey Badger rules.

When the clause was put in, he probably assumed he would be pared with Vettel if he moved to Ferrari and he already knew how that would turn out...

I have a feeling that every driver on the grid secretly or maybe not so secretly
wants to be in a Ferrari at some point in their career.

That's a great point. Plenty of drivers who turned out good were making lots of mistakes in bad cars, overdriving or what have you. Also some in great cars make bad mistakes or cannot repass the field even in the best car... Bottas comes to mind.

Hamilton (much as I am not a fan) starting dead last in a Mercedes is *still* a threat for a win. I'd say Ricciardo too in a good car... Max might crash in the process but has a shot as well... Not sure I'd put many more drivers in that list... not Magnussen or Grosjean for sure. These days not Vettel either...

Jensen Button was in the right car at the right time. Never did as well after that.

I think avocado is talented but I'm skeptical that ferrari would ever consider hiring a driver who drinks out of his sweaty gross shoe.
I'm surprised that ANY team in F1 would want to be associated with that.

I heard yesterday after the latest team/FIA meeting they are going to stir up qualifying a bit

Next year there will be 4 races with a qualifying race for the top 10 qualifiers. The interesting part is the grid order will be set by reverse championship position order. Great idea as the teams can't strategically position themselves on the grid.

Also the bio % of the fuel will go up to 10%, then later to 20%, can't remember the timeline for this but I didn't know that F1 has been using Bio-fuel for years

Old news but probably the biggest single potential improvement to the racing will be new aero rules specifically written to allow cars to follow closer. The FIA guy in charge of the aero rule program is a well respected ex-F1 chief designer/head of aero. Will be interesting to see how the teams adapt. The cars will also look more F1 less Indy than the recent release photos

Standard brakes make the list in the name of cost saving, 10 yrs ago the team I worked for easily spent $1 million on pads and discs a season. No idea what teams spend now but I guess every little helps. I'm sure the list of standard parts will only get longer.

The best news is the teams seem to all be on board with regards to improving the show, maybe I might start watching it again

UGH! Haas has signed Grosean for 2020 I was really hoping they would sign Hulkenberg.

^I am surprised too, by the Haas decision. Maybe Hulk turned them down, maybe Haas want consistency, we don't know. Whatever the reasons, I hope the team can turn things around, a big part of that being Grosjean creating much less carbon-fiber debris.

Amazing. Does he have embarrassing photos of Gene Haas?

https://twitter.com/HaasF1Team/status/1174578864535871489?s=20

Kubica leaving Williams after 2019, https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/146094/kubica-announces-williams-exit-after-2019

On the surface I'd agree with you guys. But it would seem though that Grosjean is capable of serious speed on occasion (not when he's crashing in a wall or his teammate though MAG is also to blame), gets along well with Magnussen ( no mean feat), but also that his technical feedback is quite good.

He nailed this year's problem when he insisted they went back to the original australia spec car. The data was not showing it, Magnussen didn't have a clue which way the wind blew, but GRO turned out to be right.

Honestly, I'm not sure Hulk is THAT good anyway. Good for sure, but if he was as awesome and unlucky as some say, he wouldn't have been stuck at 2nd tier teams his entire career, nor did he shame any of his team mates like Perez ou RIC. I kinda like that HAAS rewarded loyalty, early results, and the guy that wasn't afraid to tell them the car was $hite and heading nowhere, at the risk of being seen as a whiner.

But yeah, surprising, in F1. And definitely his last chance. For sure he's had a lot more second chances than other drivers, there's got to be a reason we're not aware of (I heard it was his tech feedback and raw pace when all was well). With Hulk you never feel the guy is driving out of his skin or taking a chance, he seem content with a max of 5th place or something. Ok, so he probably asked for too much money ;-)

babbling about a miami F-1 race on tv locally again
new idea is to run it around the dolphin's stadium in N miami [sucks]
I would rather see it downtown but want a f-1 race here where ever

^^^ Might as well use the Dolphins stadium they sure don't need it :D

I attended to Formula E race in downtown Miami a few years ago and enjoyed it greatly. That was a fun city to have a race in with mass transit in place. We stayed about 2 miles from the venue, rode the metro mover to the race then walked to a bar after for drinks then walked back to the hotel since we were about 1 mile from it by then.

I would love to see them put a F1 race in Miami, I do not think it will happen, Miami does not NEED F1 and will not pay for it. They fill their hotels up just fine without it.

I attended the Race of Champions (ROC) 2 years ago? At the Marlins Stadium.

It was empty all weekend. Maybe 20% of the seats were filled.


Too much going on in Miami, honestly, as much as I like the idea, I do not see it happening. No way Miami is paying the extortion money to host an F1 race.

They really really do not need it. Unless it was during the off season (right now) which happens to be peak Hurricane season, so I do not see this happening.

I agree the fees F-1 charges are insane

BUT MIAMI IS WANTED BY F-1 and was a NO fee deal to hold a race
instead of a 10-20-30 million fee LIBERTY was GIVING MIAMI THE RACE FREE
so just expected to provide track and other set up costs locally covered
without a huge fee on top of the real costs
and some how the local political leaders are blowing it BIG TIME

the ONLY other no fee race is monte carlo

Interesting qualifying session I really thought Vettel might get the pole . Riccardo had good results but penalized for MGU spike ??? and now starts last . Grosean rewards Haas for picking him up for next year by not getting out of the first session ☹️ Lots of guys hitting the walls .

Interesting race too. I doubt anybody would have picked the winner.

I don't think Leclerc has much to complain about. If he had pitted first instead of Vettel, how do we know that Hamilton wouldn't have put in faster lap times for a lap or two before he changed tires and come out in front of Leclerc. Leclerc should have picked up the pace on his in lap if he had anything left in the tires and it didn't seem like he could. It didn't seem like Ferrari or Mercedes realized how much faster new hard tires would be.

Nota wants Miami to take on F1 when he thinks the place will be under water in five years??

Well, one of the ideas that the idiot Bernie Ecclestone had was to install water sprinklers in the corners and turn them on randomly.

Apparently there’s no degree of stupidity that’s too extreme for F1.

(Not that there’s any chance of Miami being underwater in our lifetimes.)

That, and I think he owed Seb one after the Monza qualifying shenanigans. It's fine.
You gets paid $millions, you drive for Ferrari, you won monza, eat that one the same way Seb ate monza... And I say that as a Leclerc Fan. it's all good.

I must say I was not expecting Ferrari to win 3 on the trot. Mighty impressive. Imagine if they sweep Russia !!

Agree 200%

It was a great display of tire management not allowing the top six to race. Silly, actually.

So Ferrari won one race by backing up everyone so they couldn't qualify. Then Ferrari won another race by backing everyone up so they couldn't race. Seems like Ferrari is back to form.

Which is exactly the scenario Mercedes was trying to make happen/ avoid. I get you like Lewis but the strategy is the same if they are smart, like the top teams are. Too bad racing doesn't enter the equation for any of the teams. Give the tires to last the event , a bunch of HP, and no radios and se what happens.

Actually Mercedes were using that strategy, they had Bottas backing up the field behind him so Lewis could pit and come out to a relatively empty track and get after the leaders.

Bottas has a large #2 stamped on his forehead now. Mercedes will still tell you there is no driver preference though and we should believe them.

Vettels pit stop was a last second reaction to cover Max, Ferrari saw RBR setting up and called Seb in 2 turns before the pit entry. At that point Seb was racing Max, his out lap, after a slow pit stop that lost him over half a second, was blisteringly fast as well as the lap the followed that, those 2 laps won him the race.

Also, once he cleared the front running cars that had not pitted he quickly built a 6 second lead over Leclerc. The safety cars negated that lead. Leclerc got stuffed for sure, I do not think it was nefarious though, I think it was dumb luck. Ferrari were reacting to Max and it turned out to be a brilliant move, no one thought the hard tires would be so quick.

Ironically, as much as I am a Ferrari fan, I was barely excited for these last couple of wins. It is too late, Mercedes have all the championships wrapped up. Lewis is already WDC and Mercedes at WCC, that was decided at summer break.

We are just testing for 2020 at this point.

All Redbull and Torro Rosso drivers taking penalties for Honda this weekend, good track for it as plenty of over taking opportunities and gives them a race to run in their Suzuka spec motors

In other rumour news McLaren about to announce a switch to Mercedes engines

Leaves Renault a little bit out in the cold with regards to using a customer team to help prove out reliability/power upgrades

If true, I wonder what kind of amend McLaren had to make....

Next year they will stay with Renault power, it's for 2021 and on.........