Exciting race. Ferrari is finally making correct decisions.

Ferrari now has a car that Vettel can win with. They were ghastly last year.
Hamilton was hammering back and was fun to watch. Poor decision on his part resulting to a 5 second penalty though. Lastly, Red Bull's cars could not keep up with the silver and red in the long run. I'm starting to get concerned about Daniel Ricciardo. Not aggressive enough. Not sure if he is as hungry as the Max.

I was a great race and yup, Hamilton screwed his self for sure. I don't think Ferrari has the pace of Merc but their car so far has been just as reliable. You can win if you don't finish. Red Bull is off the pace and they have reliability issues. Ricciardo is not cut of the same cloth as the other. He is much more even keeled and a realist. He doesn't have the car to win or even compete so he would rather finish as high as possible and call it a day. Max is young and as aggressive as they come which mean it is all or nothing and that mean if the car does break on its own he will do it himself trying to get more than he can out of it. He has a lot of maturing to do but I really enjoy watching him. There are some up and comers, they just need better cars. I think Ocon is going to be a keeper!

The 2 second pit stop
 

I've always been fascinated by the crew's speed and precision and asked how do they it. I found the answer. No idea there's a winning team in the pits. Here's Williams with their 23 crew members getting 4 wheels changed in 2 seconds. I read somewhere that individually (one corner), the fastest was 1.6 seconds.

GP Russia practice today - Russian GP: Ferrari pace 'more robust' than Mercedes', says Wolff - F1 - Autosport


Toto Wolff says Ferrari's 2017 Formula 1 car appears to work better in a wider range of conditions after Mercedes struggled in Russian Grand Prix practice.

Ferrari topped both Sochi practice sessions on Friday, with Kimi Raikkonen fastest in the morning and championship leader Sebastian Vettel in the afternoon.

Vettel led a one-two in second practice, with Valtteri Bottas the best of the Mercedes drivers, 0.670 seconds off the pace with Lewis Hamilton just behind.

Both of Wolff's drivers' fastest times came several laps into a run, and they also had off-track excursions on a "difficult day" trying to set representative times.

"You could see you needed a couple of laps to put the tyre in the window, and you needed to have clean laps, then it's easier," Mercedes boss Wolff said.

"And if you haven't got the clean laps, you won't be putting it in the right spot.

"The wider the window is, and the easier you put the car into the tyre window, the faster you go.

"The more narrow it is, the more difficult it is to hit the window, and this is what we are seeing at the moment.

"The Ferrari seems to be a car that is pretty robust in a wider window temperature than ours, and it doesn't matter whether it's Bahrain, where it's very hot, or Sochi where it's cold.

"It's just a very good car."

Ferrari has won two of this year's first three races, with Vettel's victory in the season-opener in Australia the team's first since winning in Singapore in 2015.

Mercedes never found a way to make its car work on that street circuit that weekend, but Wolff believes it is not on for a repeat in Russia.

"There's a pretty good indication what's happening, and what they have been doing, so it's all relaxed until now," he said.

"In Singapore 2015 we were the only team out of position, and we just couldn't make the tyre work.

"What you can see is there is one team that is extremely fast today, for whatever reasons.

"There are pretty good clues."

don't really buy those mercedes talk cos vettel just said what I've been thinking since the pre-season test...

Vettel reckons Mercedes is sandbagging - GPUpdate.net


mercedes was behind ferrari during the pre-season, and then the FP in melbourne GP, and then top the qualify in the last moment with some significant margin.

same in shanghai, same in bahrain....

it's only FP1 and 2 for now, pretty sure mercedes will pull something out from their pocket in qualify and race.


still... hope ferrari can keep the mercedes behind thus we will have a more exciting season and some droopy face from hamilton... :icon17::icon17:

Formula-1 2017...!!
 

What a race very exciting!!!! I hope the rest of the season is like this! :) I feel bad for Ricciardo and Alonso, their teams need to get their cars straightened out.


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It was a very good race. Down to the last lap. I have a feeling the championship will come down to the last race of the year as well!! :tup:

Race weekend in Spain coming up. Lots of development going on!!

Spanish GP: What upgrades to look out for on the cars in Barcelona | F1 News

Driver number and ID on the side now - Mercedes reveals what F1's new car number and name display will look like

Qualy is on! Watch SkySports F1 | SkyF1 | Sky Sports F1 | Sky F1 Live Stream Online

Exciting qualify sessions!!!

Great to see Alonso back in the top 10 :tup::tup:

And hopefully his car can run with full power and last the whole race.

the sectors time are actually very close between the ferrari and mercedes, only the ferrari is quite a bit off on the last sector, and it's somehow a massive +0.4s


It's a track which is almost impossible to overtake...looking forward for an exciting race tomorrow! :tup::tup:

Yes and LH needs to guard his start against Bottas whos the better starter. Vettel will be lucky to be P2 starting on the dirty side. This will be won or lost at turn 1. Fun!

it's going to be interesting cos the first one is a chicane then follow by a long curve.

bottas made a fantastic start at sochi, it's going to be much tighter if he does the same thing tomorrow and get par with hamilton, i believe hamilton wouldn't be as nice/gentle as vettel...


hopefully what happened last year won't happen again this year.

I think the deciding factors will be the wind and who makes the least amount of errors. If you are in the lead and make mistake you will be toast!

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