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On December 22 2020 11:14 Amui wrote:
In more potentially spicy news, Mazepin seems more and more likely to be dropped due to breach of contract (improper conduct) over the sexual harassment stuff. Unsurprisingly, various sponsors have been talking to Haas, and it's likely even affecting the CNC machine side of the business.
Yup. I've seen people joking "what sponsors?" but it isn't just Haas F1 that has to be considered. Stewart-Haas in NASCAR is associated with the Haas name, and that team has some big ticket sponsors that likely don't want to be tied in with someone with as shitty of a reputation as Mazepin.
I genuinely hope Mazepin gets the boot. Given how the harassment story has changed over the last several days, it's pretty obvious the girl in the video wasn't okay with what went down and was probably coerced into her immediate response (Mazepin's apology has also been removed from social media as well which is weird to say the least). Even without this most recent event though, Haas should never have hired him in the first place no matter how much money he brings. He's not that good of a driver and his history both on and off the track is abhorrent and toxic in a way few drivers are. There have been F1 drivers who have been assholes or bad people before, but this guy's on a different level of vile. This was always going to happen, it was just a matter of when. People were joking about betting how many races it'd take for Mazepin to get a race ban next year.
This whole situation does not reflect well on the decision-making skills of the people up top at Haas. It's even more problematic than the Rich Energy saga was in some ways.
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the only other driver that could drive a RedBull car was Ricci; Perez will sink like how Albon and Gasly did before him.
(yea, i'm a Ricciardo fanboy)
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Danny Ric vs Verstappen is pretty close to Rosberg vs Hamilton IMO.
Danny Ric wasn't as good as Verstappen, but he was always ready to pick up the slack. He's an S- driver against an S+ driver. Yeah, he's not getting 100% out of the car, but he's at 99.9% most of the time.
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On December 22 2020 15:12 Lmui wrote:
Danny Ric vs Verstappen is pretty close to Rosberg vs Hamilton IMO.
Danny Ric wasn't as good as Verstappen, but he was always ready to pick up the slack. He's an S- driver against an S+ driver. Yeah, he's not getting 100% out of the car, but he's at 99.9% most of the time.
That's precisely why Riccy left. A young and upcoming driver is suddenly faster than him and is getting the royal treatment, while he himself wants to be the S+ driver. Riccy is fast, but talent like Max doesn't come around often. He could never become champion at RB while Max was there, and Ric knew it. Which explains the weird move into a shitty midfield team when RB wanted him to stay.
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Something to keep in mind with Ricciardo back then was that just before he signed with Renault, Red Bull announced that a bunch of staffing shuffles were happening in preparation for 2019. Several of the people on Ricciardo's side of the garage were being moved over to jobs at the factory, including his main race engineer.
The next year, when Gasly started on that side of the garage, he apparently was given a team of largely newer and less experienced engineers, some of whom had never worked as an engineer in this context before. The implication was that Red Bull had basically taken all of the best mechanics and engineers from Ricciardo's team and had given them to Verstappen, leaving the second driver with the leftovers. This was rumoured to be one of the things he got in a fight with management at Red Bull about and partly why they will not consider him for their top team anymore.
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Haas just announced they're keeping Mazepin. A lot of folks, including quite a few fairly high profile F1 people, are not happy about this since it appears Mazepin will suffer no consequences for his actions. This could get ugly for F1.
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Pretty much, Mazepin's cheque cleared for Haas.
Unless the fallout from this hits Haas's machining side of the business, it's just good business to keep Mazepin. Money doesn't grow on trees in F1, and sponsors do not want to touch Mazepin right now for good reason.
F1 got rid of grid girls a short while ago, so not a good look.
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News out right now that Alonso got hit by a car while out training on his bike. Not life threatening injuries but several news outlets are reporting that he has multiple fractured bones, though others are saying this isn't the case and he just has minor injuries (good ol' F1 media being useless as usual). I'm hoping he's okay and it is something he can quickly recover from.
Given it's 6 weeks before the season starts, it seems like Renault/Alpine might be needing to call in a replacement for at least a few races if Alonso does indeed have broken bones.
I imagine for the next couple days, Nico Hulkenberg will be keeping his phone close by.
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On February 12 2021 05:33 Ben... wrote:News out right now that Alonso got hit by a car while out training on his bike. Not life threatening injuries but several news outlets are reporting that he has multiple fractured bones, though others are saying this isn't the case and he just has minor injuries (good ol' F1 media being useless as usual). I'm hoping he's okay and it is something he can quickly recover from. Given it's 6 weeks before the season starts, it seems like Renault/Alpine might be needing to call in a replacement for at least a few races if Alonso does indeed have broken bones. I imagine for the next couple days, Nico Hulkenberg will be keeping his phone close by.
We will probably know tomorrow if Hulk will be driving. Depends on location, quantity and severity of the fractures.
Minor fractures you can probably start rehab almost immediately at least to try and maintain some strength and while it'll hurt, you can definitely still drive in Bahrain.
Full on breaks and I while I wouldn't be surprised to see him in Bahrain, I would expect to see him in form only at round 3 or even later.
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On February 12 2021 06:00 Amui wrote:
We will probably know tomorrow if Hulk will be driving. Depends on location, quantity and severity of the fractures.
We will probably know if Hulk is driving 3 hours before first quali. So will Hulk himself.
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Statement from Alpine:
![[image loading]](https://i.redd.it/g8cji1aky0h61.jpg)
Looks like it'll be painful, but he should be up and running in the next few days.
He'll be driving from day 1 if all goes well.
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Oh I did not know that there is an F1 thread, cannot wait for 2021 season.
Hope Alonso will be fine for the start, only about a month until pre season testing now.
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France12907 Posts
Why did Renault change name?
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On February 15 2021 20:07 Poopi wrote:
Why did Renault change name?
Alpine is Renault's Motorsports arm.
Really just a rebranding.
Everybody in Europe knows what Renault is, the value of advertising isn't as great. My guess is that Renault wants to launch more sports cars under the Alpine brand where they could get more solid name recognition.
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On February 15 2021 20:23 Amui wrote:Alpine is Renault's Motorsports arm. Really just a rebranding. Everybody in Europe knows what Renault is, the value of advertising isn't as great. My guess is that Renault wants to launch more sports cars under the Alpine brand where they could get more solid name recognition.
Not a bad idea, honestly. I don't think a lot of people are going to buy a family hatchback Renault because they're in F1. But a lot of sportscars enthusiasts (Who are also a more likely group to watch F1 in the first place) are going to perceive Alpine as being a good brand because they're an F1 team
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In the most important of F1 news, all of the cars have been launched with Ferrari's being launched today. Ferrari's livery is so ugly. I genuinely laughed when I saw it. That weird red-to-maroon transition and the completely out of place lime green Marlboro Mission Winnow logo are sure something. Ferrari has what should be the easiest livery to design on the entire grid but instead it's this busy mess. If they wanted to do a heritage livery they should just have used their one-off livery from Mugello. That was way nicer than this one. Also notable is that Ferrari, Haas, and Williams are the only teams with wide noses this year. Ferrari wanted to do a narrow nose but couldn't because of development restrictions. They used their development tokens to redo the rear suspension and gearbox of their car instead.
Testing starts tomorrow so we'll at least be able to see these cars on track and up to speed soon.
edit: As far as other liveries, Aston Martin and Alpine both have quite nice ones. Mercedes just looks like last year but slightly different. Red Bull and Alpha Tauri are similar to last year as are Alfa Romeo and McLaren. Williams' livery is a bit busy but at least they tried something different. Haas' livery is cringy as can be. I suppose that's one way for Mazepin to get around being banned from wearing the Russian flag: just make the whole car the flag. It's apparently already being looked at by WADA and Haas may have to change it.
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On March 11 2021 09:39 Ben... wrote:
In the most important of F1 news, all of the cars have been launched with Ferrari's being launched today. Ferrari's livery is so ugly. I genuinely laughed when I saw it. That weird red-to-maroon transition and the completely out of place lime green Marlboro Mission Winnow logo are sure something. Ferrari has what should be the easiest livery to design on the entire grid but instead it's this busy mess. If they wanted to do a heritage livery they should just have used their one-off livery from Mugello. That was way nicer than this one. Also notable is that Ferrari, Haas, and Williams are the only teams with wide noses this year. Ferrari wanted to do a narrow nose but couldn't because of development restrictions. They used their development tokens to redo the rear suspension and gearbox of their car instead.
Testing starts tomorrow so we'll at least be able to see these cars on track and up to speed soon.
edit: As far as other liveries, Aston Martin and Alpine both have quite nice ones. Mercedes just looks like last year but slightly different. Red Bull and Alpha Tauri are similar to last year as are Alfa Romeo and McLaren. Williams' livery is a bit busy but at least they tried something different. Haas' livery is cringy as can be. I suppose that's one way for Mazepin to get around being banned from wearing the Russian flag: just make the whole car the flag. It's apparently already being looked at by WADA and Haas may have to change it.
I am hyped for the start of the season!!! Its going to be a Merc double championship again , that's almost a given , BUT we should have great fun for the 3rd place running , as I believe Ferrari will be competitive again and would give McLaren a run for their money , also Aston Martin intra battle will be VERY interesting , if Vettel loses to Stroll , it means that CL16 was overrated last year , also Carlos vs CL16 will be a good fight to watch and gauge CL16 talent.
I hope we can see Max give Lewis a run for his money , but to be honest until 2022 I don't think we can expect anything else but Mercs 1/2 and the other teams fighting for crumbs when the Mercs have issues of any sort.
Prediction for intra team battle , everyone can copy paste the template and give it a go , I put them at the standing the teams will end the season (guessing and sprinkled with some hoping !).
Mercs : Lewis > Bottas - easy , no need to explain.
RedBull : Max. > Perez - Perez will do much better then Albon , but will not be beating a Veteran mega talented Max
Ferrari. : Charles > Carlos - this will be a blowout in qualifying , Sainz not beating the breaks off Lando is not a good sign.
AstonM : Stroll > Vettel - First surprise call here , Stroll will finally beat his teammate !! will be a close fight.
McLaren : Ric > Lando - Lando will be surprised by the pace and consistency of Ric , close on Saturdays but not on Sundays.
Alpine : Ocon > Alonso - I feel Ocon got better as the season went , he will have a big gap until Alonso will get up to speed, I think at the back end of the year Alonso will surpass Ocon but wont catch him in the rankings.
AT : Gasly > Tsunda - Gasly will out qualify Tsunda on each qualifying session he finishes without an accident (Sundays will be one sided as well).
Alpha. : Gio > Raikkonen - the end of a legend career , Gio last season if cant beat Kimi in a convincing manner , will be close due to how slow they are and how hard it will be to get points.
Hass : Sch > Mazepin. - getting Ferrari PU will be enough to beat the Williams car.
Williams. : Rus > Lat. - easiest call for Saturdays , but Sundays its down to luck as the car will be the slowest again.
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My prediction is that Perez will open strong, being only a little bit off pace from Max. Then, as he's trying to push himself to shrink the gap, he'll start doing more and more mistakes, lose faith in his own abilities, get lapped by Max in the last few rounds, and be booted from Red Bull without a seat for 2022.
Schumacher is going to start strong, easily beating Mazepin, and then start experiencing a series of unfortunate events, which sees him not collect a single point due to DNFs for the latter half of the season.
Russel is going to continue his streak of not losing a single qualifier to his teammate, continuing to prove that he is in fact one of the best drivers on the grid, followed by never gaining a single race point on Sunday.
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On March 12 2021 00:10 Excludos wrote:
My prediction is that Perez will open strong, being only a little bit off pace from Max. Then, as he's trying to push himself to shrink the gap, he'll start doing more and more mistakes, lose faith in his own abilities, get lapped by Max in the last few rounds, and be booted from Red Bull without a seat for 2022.
Yup. I totally agree. Hopefully he does well I have a hunch reality will set in for Perez soon enough. He already commented during their media track day that the Red Bull car is completely different to drive than any of his past cars. A previous engineer of his at Aston Martin mentioned recently that Perez has a very different driving style from most drivers and his car setups tend to be quite different compared to his teammates. If Perez's driving style complements the Red Bull car or is similar to Verstappen's at all, he'll probably do decently. If it doesn't work with the car, Perez might be in for a rough ride.
As for the season, yeah Mercedes will walk away with it again I'm sure. Red Bull will probably have an easy second. Third place is impossible to predict. If Ferrari got it together for their power unit, then they may be back fighting Aston and McLaren for third. If not, it'll be another disaster season for Ferrari. There's been rumours Alpine has had setbacks so we'll have to see. Williams has already talked about focusing on next year so I'm not expecting miracles.
My team battle predictions:
Mercedes: Hamilton over Bottas. This will be a bloodbath. Bottas was off form the second half of last year and comfortably outperformed in the race by Russell when he stood in for Hamilton on a few days notice (Bottas only finished ahead of Russell because of a puncture). I feel like, unless Hamilton retires, this will be Bottas' last year at Mercedes.
Red Bull: Verstappen over Perez. Partly for the reasons I explained before but also because Verstappen's been embedded at Red Bull for 5 years now, has the best mechanics, and has priority for everything. Verstappen's also faster and much more consistent than Perez. Perez has moments of brilliance but also has races where he's a non-factor and is off pace.
Ferrari: Charles over Sainz. My opinion on Sainz is, like Perez, he's overhyped relative to his performance. He's a driver who is either very strong or completely anonymous in a race depending on the track. Like Perez, Sainz was subject to a bunch of media hype that I never fully understood, especially when his bad races were taken into account. Norris nearly matched Sainz in points and outqualified him. Charles is Charles. He's wicked fast but accident-prone. If he can get the accidents under control then he'll be one of the best on the grid.
Aston Martin: Vettel over Stroll, but just barely. Stroll knows the Aston car well and has had improving form the last couple years. Vettel is brand new to the car and the Mercedes power unit. However, the engineer I mentioned before also commented on Vettel's driving style and said it would work well with the car. Vettel likes stable cars with lots of rear grip and this car has both. We'll have to see if 2015 Vettel or 2020 Vettel shows up.
McLaren: Danny Ric over Norris, though this'll be close. This is the battle of the two consistent and fast drivers. I think McLaren has the best driver pairing on the grid. Norris is quite strong in qualifying and his race pace is rapidly improving. Danny Ric is Danny Ric. He's one of the best and most consistent drivers on the grid. He's nearly as fast as Verstappen but without the temper and ridiculous aggression, which makes him a huge asset to any team that has him.
Alpine: Ocon over Alonso. Ocon's start last year was rough but by the end of the year the Ocon we knew from past years had returned. Now that he's up to speed I expect his incredibly consistent and good performances will continue. He always looked better than Perez at Force India. We'll have to see how Alonso does. It's too hard to say right now.
Alpha Tauri: Gasly over Tsunoda. This should be a given. If Gasly loses to Tsunoda then he might be in trouble. There's also rumours of Gasly wanting out of the Red Bull/Alpha Tauri environment so we'll have to see.
Alfa Romeo: Gio over Kimi. I love Kimi but other than a few moments of brilliance last year, he just wasn't there. If I remember right Gio outqualified him in the second half of the season. Giovinazzi is becoming a very solid driver. I wasn't surprised that they chose to keep him.
Haas: Mick over Mazepin. Mick's a better driver from everything I've seen. Mazepin may have his dad's billions to buy him whatever he wants but that doesn't make him a good driver. He's also on thin ice right now with his team and the FIA. There's a good chance that if he fucks up once, he's gone.
Williams: George over Latifi. George is excellent. He's being wasted in the Williams car. We saw what he could do in the Mercedes. Hopefully this is his last year at Williams.
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Merc. Def Hamilton over Bottas. Bottas hasn't shown that he can keep it together for any race where tires matter(aka not Sochi). I don't expect that to change.
RB - Max will beat Perez, but I don't think it'll be by that much after a few races. Perez has quietly snuck podiums almost every single year in midfield cars. Certainly won't be losing by as much as Gasly or Albon.
Ferrari. Charles I think will beat up Sainz a bit. Charles is monstrously quick, just also boneheaded. I expect a better performance than Vettel last year.
Aston - Vettel, if he can recover his mentality will crush Stroll. Perez at times was also massively faster than Stroll(post covid), so I think Vettel has a chance here to show why he's a 4x WDC.
Mclaren - People love Norris, but sadly I'm going to say Ric beats him up after 4-5 races.
Alpine - Ocon I think will match Alonso. In his rookie year he matched Perez(who put him into the wall a bunch of times while he was attempting overtakes).
Alpha Tauri - Gasly wins over Tsunoda, by about as much as against Kvyat. Gasly in AT is about as fast as Gasly in a RB for whatever reason.
Alfa - Gio. Kimi I think is no longer the driver he once was, due to age and motivation. Gio is getting faster each season, and he's apparently a god of setup/development, so I think he'll be retained to stay as the Alfa #1/2 driver(depends on FDA) to provide a stable reference point, and to help nurture up and coming drivers.
Haas - I think both of them are going to be stuck fighting for 19th. Rookies in a horribly unstable car, and I don't know that they've fixed the issues for this year. Grosjean and Magnussen were both upper midfield drivers on speed, with huge experience and neither of them could figure a setup that would work for the Haas. I'm going to go with Schumacher here, but not by a lot.
Williams - George for sure. Hopefully the Williams is more competitive this year, and can at least fight for points. Merc had better not sit on Bottas for another year, or else I think he will be poached to another top team.
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EPT
