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Formula 1 Discussion - Page 66
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pebble444
Italy2503 Posts
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
Taking Russell's seat at Williams is possibly Alex Albon (he's rumoured to be their top choice currently, with Nyck de Vries and Guanyu Zhou as other options), with Latifi likely staying also for some continuity (The Williams team principal has noted Latifi has made huge improvements this year). Motorsport Italy also reported that Red Bull also has offered Albon up for Alfa's second seat as an option should Alfa opt not to keep Giovinazzi, with other rumoured options for that seat being Callum Ilott among others (what's important to note is that Ferrari no longer has a say on who has this seat. Reportedly, the last sponsorship renewal agreement between Alfa and Sauber got rid of this requirement so Alfa can hire as they please). | ||
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bluzi
4703 Posts
On September 01 2021 01:04 Ben... wrote: The silly season rumours are starting to get spicy. The latest is that Kimi is retiring so Bottas is taking his seat at Alfa, making way for Russell at Mercedes. This will be announced at Italy and Mercedes want to wait until then for making the formal announcement. This also lines up with the timeline Wolff gave for when they want to announce drivers, which was by the end of September at latest. Taking Russell's seat at Williams is possibly Alex Albon (he's rumoured to be their top choice currently, with Nyck de Vries and Guanyu Zhou as other options), with Latifi likely staying also for some continuity (The Williams team principal has noted Latifi has made huge improvements this year). Motorsport Italy also reported that Red Bull also has offered Albon up for Alfa's second seat as an option should Alfa opt not to keep Giovinazzi, with other rumoured options for that seat being Callum Ilott among others (what's important to note is that Ferrari no longer has a say on who has this seat. Reportedly, the last sponsorship renewal agreement between Alfa and Sauber got rid of this requirement so Alfa can hire as they please). Russell is going to give Lewis a run for his money , Bottas had potential at the start of his Merc stint , but Hamilton pounded him into a pulp by this time and his a beaten man , George is coming in hot , with tons of confidence and flare , lets see how he does , the one thing here is that he and lewis will be driving a new car all together next year and i am not sure whos advantage thats going to be , if Lewis is better at understanding the car and tires he will be doing much better , where as if they kept the same car which is a known quality Russell only needs to get used to running the optimal setups (or close to it) ,but at least if we get another Merc domination year we might get a 2016 , which is fine by me! | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
RaceFans is also now reporting about the Bottas/Russell/Albon/De Vries seat arrangement thing: Albon and De Vries to gain F1 seats from Russell’s Mercedes move, Giovinazzi loses out I totally forgot that Jost Capito from Williams has very close ties to Red Bull because of his time as the VW team principal in the WRC (VW's biggest sponsor was Red Bull for years). Between that and both current Williams drivers having good relationships with Albon (especially Russell, who has talked Albon up in the media a lot), this all is making a lot more sense. | ||
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pebble444
Italy2503 Posts
On September 01 2021 01:04 Ben... wrote: The silly season rumours are starting to get spicy. The latest is that Kimi is retiring so Bottas is taking his seat at Alfa, making way for Russell at Mercedes. This will be announced at Italy and Mercedes want to wait until then for making the formal announcement. This also lines up with the timeline Wolff gave for when they want to announce drivers, which was by the end of September at latest. Taking Russell's seat at Williams is possibly Alex Albon (he's rumoured to be their top choice currently, with Nyck de Vries and Guanyu Zhou as other options), with Latifi likely staying also for some continuity (The Williams team principal has noted Latifi has made huge improvements this year). Motorsport Italy also reported that Red Bull also has offered Albon up for Alfa's second seat as an option should Alfa opt not to keep Giovinazzi, with other rumoured options for that seat being Callum Ilott among others (what's important to note is that Ferrari no longer has a say on who has this seat. Reportedly, the last sponsorship renewal agreement between Alfa and Sauber got rid of this requirement so Alfa can hire as they please). i mean this all sounds like it was more or less the plan, Russell at Mercedez especially; interesting Albon (he is a reserve driver atm) so that makes sense, he wasn' t bad, but second seat at red bull is a curse as we all know; i think we all know why Latifi is staying (cough, Michael, cough) As Russell and Mclaren have gained momentum this year, i feel like Alfa Romeo completely lost any kind that they did have; so it would make sense for a completely new driver line up, sad to see Raikonnen go (not set in stone), what an amazing run he had, i hope he becomes team director of a scuderia (scuderia in Italian means originally Horse stable and nowadays a racing team) one day; Can' t say Giovinazzi deserves to stay, hes a good guy and all but i believe the only reason he got to stay in F1 this long was to have an Italian driver on the grid, which is very important for Ferrari. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
I think it's good that Albon may be getting a second chance. Gasly did after his horror stint at Red Bull and we've seen how well that has gone. Albon's form in 2019 was very impressive for someone who had never even touched an F1 car before. He was on the upward trajectory at Toro Rosso (he got a 6th on merit at his first ever wet race in F1 in Hungary, which included him passing Gasly's Red Bull. This was his last race at TR before the Red Bull switch) when he got promoted, and then did quite well at Red Bull that season (minimum top 6 at almost every race, usually 4th or 5th) until Hamilton knocked him off the track on what would have been a podium drive. His 2020 season wasn't great but Red Bull openly admitted that the car was difficult to drive, and Perez's performances in a more stable, improved version of the same car have confirmed this. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
Go back and watch his races while he was with McLaren. They were incredible. If his car wouldn't have kept breaking he would have had 3 championships easily. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27477 Posts
Great driver I loved watching him, plus a great and enjoyable character over the years too. | ||
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pebble444
Italy2503 Posts
Don' t be sad because it is finishing, smile because it happened; you WILL get the drink, Kimi | ||
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fLyiNgDroNe
Belgium4148 Posts
All the best to the Iceman | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
Christian Horner kinda accidentally may have given away the Russell-Mercedes announcement again. He was asked about Albon, and confirmed that Williams and Alfa have asked about his availability (Williams wouldn't be interested in other drivers if George was staying). Horner then walked it back and said wishy-washy things about where Russell goes being key. He also confirmed that Red Bull would be willing to release Albon from contract and potentially provide a bit of financial backing because they want Albon to be in F1 (my guess is they might want to try and get him back once he's had a couple years to develop in a lower pressure environment, depending how Tsunoda and the juniors do. Albon also sacrificed an entire year to develop Red Bull's 2022 car so this might be payback for that as well). Toto Wolff also confirmed that they're looking at spots for Nyck de Vries but that they may keep him in Formula E to finish off Mercedes's last season there, as they want him to stay in the Mercedes orbit. Wolff also said that everything depends on where Albon goes since he's the primary person being looked at by teams right now. Wolff also talked Albon up a bunch also and said he deserves a seat in F1. That must be nice for Albon after a year of being shit on constantly by the media. Albon's motorsport career continues to be the weirdest thing. | ||
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bluzi
4703 Posts
On September 04 2021 00:41 Ben... wrote: Zandvoort's a fun track to watch F1 cars go around. Not sure how the race will be, but qualifying should be great. The banking is way steeper than I thought it would be. Christian Horner kinda accidentally may have given away the Russell-Mercedes announcement again. He was asked about Albon, and confirmed that Williams and Alfa have asked about his availability (Williams wouldn't be interested in other drivers if George was staying). Horner then walked it back and said wishy-washy things about where Russell goes being key. He also confirmed that Red Bull would be willing to release Albon from contract and potentially provide a bit of financial backing because they want Albon to be in F1 (my guess is they might want to try and get him back once he's had a couple years to develop in a lower pressure environment, depending how Tsunoda and the juniors do. Albon also sacrificed an entire year to develop Red Bull's 2022 car so this might be payback for that as well). Toto Wolff also confirmed that they're looking at spots for Nyck de Vries but that they may keep him in Formula E to finish off Mercedes's last season there, as they want him to stay in the Mercedes orbit. Wolff also said that everything depends on where Albon goes since he's the primary person being looked at by teams right now. Wolff also talked Albon up a bunch also and said he deserves a seat in F1. That must be nice for Albon after a year of being shit on constantly by the media. Albon's motorsport career continues to be the weirdest thing. The common opinion in the paddock is that the race will be decided on Saturday , but there is a very good chance for cars going off and creating red flags and safety cars , that will no doubt spice things up. Also my boyz at Ferrari are doing work here , not expected at ALL , nice see them running so well , too bad they dont have the engine upgrade for this weekend. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4558 Posts
Living in Belgium and being somewhat interested in F1, my dad has been asking me for years if I wanted to go see the race live. I always said no cause imo you can watch it better on TV. This year I finally caved and agreed to go, so he got silver weekend tickets for me, my girlfriend, and himself. Turns out that the main difference between silver and gold (other than a slightly better view and 150 euros/ticket) is that gold stands have a roof overhead. First mistake xd. Anyway on Saturday the plan was to drive from home straight to the qualifier, then go to a hotel in Liege in the evening and back to the circuit in Spa the next day. Home -> Spa is a 2 hour drive, Spa -> hotel was a 1 hour drive, Spa is in the middle of nowhere and there weren't any hotels closer to the venue. A potential fix for this is to camp on a field next to the circuit, we saw lots of tents and camper cars as we got closer, of course due to the shit weather these ppl were literally camping in a mud swamp. I salute their bravery, would rather drive 2x 1 hour and pay outrageous money for a sleepover. We left nice and early and headed towards the 'yellow parking area' which we bought tickets for. As we got closer to Spa the police started directing us away from the circuit, and also away from where the yellow parking area was meant to be according to maps. We kept flashing our yellow tickets in confusion but they kept sending us in another direction. We later learned that they didn't open the 'real' yellow parking on Saturday as they were afraid it would turn into a swamp before the Sunday event. Instead we got sent to a farmer's field quite far from the circuit and then had to take a shuttle bus there. It was already rainy at this point and my dad had some concerns about parking on this field, he decided to ignore the steward who was directing us towards the bottom of the field and parked more at the top (very good move in hindsight). Due to these parking issues and the shuttle buses we arrived later than expected at the track. I'd hoped to see the Porsche event and we got there just in time to see the final 2 laps of it. At this point it was already raining and the walkways towards Silver stand 1 were super muddy. Qualifier starts and it's stopped raining for a bit, yay. We're already soaked and cold due to the previous showers though. We brought rain coats, umbrellas and bin bags to sit on but it was still pretty miserable. Between Q2 and Q3 the rain started again and things got a bit more miserable. Q3 started anyway and we saw Norris crash live in front of us at Eau Rouge, probably the 'highlight' of the weekend. After that we sat in the rain some more waiting for Q3 to resume. My initial plan was to wait after qualifiting to see the F3 race and the other event, but due to the weather and concerns about the parking lot we already got up with 1 min left to go in Q3 and made our way to the top of the stand. As soon as the session ended we started heading back up the hill to the shuttle buses  Got to the parking lot fairly quickly and managed to escape without problems. Lower on the field there were already cars stuck in the mud however. Saw lots of videos on social media that evening of ppl stuck in the mud being towed out by tractors. This was a parking lot we paid 16 euros/day for btw, criminal. Made it to our hotel and had a nice dinner that evening. We decided if the weather forecast was similar for the Sunday that we would just go home cause this wasn't a fun experience at all. And that's what happened the next morning. THANK GOD WE LEFT. Watched 'the race' from the comfort of our warm couch later that day. Feel bad for my dad since he finally got me to come with him to an event like this and then it's a giant shitshow. Just further confirms my view that it's better to watch from home tbh. Either way, terrible organisation regarding the parking lots, terrible luck with the weather, 0.5/10 wouldn't recommend. | ||
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Excludos
Norway8281 Posts
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LennX
4572 Posts
Worst kept secret in 2021 for F1 is out | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27477 Posts
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
On September 06 2021 20:53 LennX wrote: Valtteri Bottas confirmed at Alfa Romeo for 2022 F1 season, with George Russell set for Mercedes - Skysports Worst kept secret in 2021 for F1 is out Wolff and everyone openly talking about available seats at Williams and Alfa while also pretending that things haven't happened behind the scenes the last week or so has been the dumbest thing to watch. They've all been dancing around the obvious for so long that it's getting tiring. If Mercedes truly did sign someone else it'd be hilarious. | ||
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Excludos
Norway8281 Posts
On September 06 2021 20:53 LennX wrote: Valtteri Bottas confirmed at Alfa Romeo for 2022 F1 season, with George Russell set for Mercedes - Skysports Worst kept secret in 2021 for F1 is out Oh man, what a shock. I never would have expected something like this... Anyways, what do we think, Albon to Williams? Or Jack Aitken? Personally I'm hoping for Jack, he's a really likable guy. Not that I have anything against Albon either | ||
GTR
51707 Posts
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
And there we go, worst kept secret revealed | ||
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