While Ferrari has pulled off some amazing pit stops this year, they fail when consistency is considered. And (as always), in strategy. I really thought that after the first race, they had their sh!t together. But it was all a dream - they accidentally stumbled into the brief appearance of a team that knew what it was doing. Then *poof*, they woke up.

Reliability is going to be the decider for this season. With all teams that matter essentially hitting the budget caps, I doubt that under the current policy we will see any significant change in the standings for the second half of the season. FIA will have to relax the cap, or nobody will tune in after the break.

Imposing a spending limit on all teams of essentially what Williams spent in 2019, in a year where a new car was developed, was a really stupid idea.

I like Montreal - there's always something that makes it interesting. All qualifying should be held in the rain from now on. That's my rule. :icon17:

Hey, 58 gear changes a lap times 70 laps. On a Sunday. If I were an F1 gearbox, I'd have thrown in the towel too! :rofl2:

The sport thinks its strength is conserving the lower tier teams. No its about racing and the cost cap is a hindrance not a help. It needs to go up to allow season long development. Its not an accounting mission and not racing. Its sad and stupid. You can follow but not pass and DRS trains are worse than last season it appears!

Agreed. I also think this "raise the car to save the drivers" is a load of crap. Mercedes completely F'd their design up, the drivers are paying for it, and they're using the "everyone else is suffering so raise the min height" as an excuse to not completely get blown out of the constructors and world championship. It's such crap. I'm with Horner.... develop your car, or raise your own ride height and figure out how to make it faster. Why does the FiA need to tell a 7x champion and 8x constructors winning team in the hybrid era to do this? :mad:

Furthermore............ Silverstone should be entertaining. Seems like a lot of teams are bringing real big upgrades to the weekend. Should be entertaining to see. :driving:

For some those are the final MAJOR upgrades lol. The accountant trophy season will proceed after lol. :happydance::happydance:

All this discussion and all the BS and politics currently... Don't know if this is worse than last year....

Comments on the race:
Max - was in another league, think it was just amazing to watch especially the last 10 laps.

Ferrari - I think its over, unless they can get more straight line speed.

Alpine - don't get stuck behind an Alpine - amazing how slipper this car is..

KMag - my son and I just currently believe he did it again. I understand, but really, there was no way he was going to hold that against a MB. As to his complaint about getting the meatball, he might be right, Hamilton did run in a race with half a wing and the only thing was the piece in question to not fall off.

LeClair - impressed on how he came up from the back

Saniz - was on it in the race, but the Ferrari just was missing a bit.

MSC - heartbreak after doing so well, would have been nice to see if he was in the points.

DRS Trains, oh my, this is getting bad, almost every race, and nobody can do anything for some time....

Comment added.

:iagree: and like your comments

I feel sorry for the race officials. With all the drama going on with the cars they haven't really been able to get in on the action yet this year.

I have found it interesting this year to see how much the track layout affects some cars more than others. Kudos to Red Bull for putting together such a strong car out of the gate. Clearly the cap is a problem and needs to just go away.

Ferrari miraculously didn't screw this one up.
Was hoping LeWing could net a LeWin with the handicap he picked up early on, but I'll take that.

Scary one for Zhou.

That was an exciting race. Glad it was not Max just flying off with the rest of it......just a mid pack scramble. Glad Zhou is ok.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/we...h-gp/10332702/

Wedged AlphaTauri endplate wrecked Verstappen’s British GP

Max Verstappen’s British Grand Prix hopes were wrecked by a front wing endplate from Red Bull’s sister Formula 1 team AlphaTauri getting stuck under his floor and ruining his aerodynamics.

Television footage had shown him hitting a part from Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari early on in the race, and it was thought that it could have been related to that.

However, it was only after the grand prix that Red Bull discovered the problem had actually been caused by the endplate from an AlphaTauri front wing getting embedded underneath the Dutchman's RB18.

The part had been ripped off after AlphaTauri team-mates Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly collided on lap 11, wrecking their own squad’s hope of points.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, who showed reporters later on a photo of Verstappen in the post-race debrief holding the endplate, reckoned that the disruption to his car’s airflow was costing Verstappen about 20 percent of his peak downforce.

“We didn't have a puncture,” explained Horner, reflecting on Verstappen’s problem.

“He was reporting, because it was so bad, that it felt like a puncture. But basically on lap 11, he hit a piece of debris which was an AlphaTauri part from an incident that they had.

“So he's then done the race with a modified floor that had a piece of an AlphaTauri endplate stuck under the bottom of the car. It stayed in there and got stuck and wedged itself almost like a blockage.”

Sad though, that an Alfa Romeo is faster on its back than rubber side down!

Glad everyone was OK. That was a bit too scary for my liking. With a full race load of fuel and the car/driver being wedged like that for 20 minutes, things could easily have been a whole lot worse!

Even the catch fence looked like it barely held. There might be some permanent brown stains on the spectator seating immediately behind where the car came to rest!

Interesting, as from the camera angle it really looked like the left rear tire went down considerably and suddenly (compared to his right rear), then more or less stayed where it was.

Alpha Tauri ought to get points for style on that synchronized spin, though! That was classic. Thought I was on the wrong channel and "team drifting" came on!

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/f1...tion/10333441/

F1 teams set to challenge FIA’s porpoising intervention

The FIA’s plan to enforce a porpoising metric and clamp down on flexi floor tricks looks set to face a challenge in this week’s Formula 1 commission meeting.



By: Jonathan Noble
Jul 5, 2022, 4:55 PM

Ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, F1 teams , Formula One Management and the FIA will meet to discuss a number of burning topics that are being put forward for action.

As well as the discussions to involve the inflation impact on the cost cap and the latest on the 2026 F1 engine regulations, it now looks certain that the issue of the FIA’s intervention on porpoising will be brought up.

It is understood that a number of teams are not happy about the approach of the governing body on the matter, with two Technical Directives having been sent out on the matter.

A number of teams argue that there is no need for the governing body to step in on cars bouncing.

Furthermore, some squads are unhappy that there is scope for the FIA to influence how teams set up their cars when the sport has always been about maximum performance.

As one team boss said: “What will be next? A wet track metric that forces us to change from slicks to inters when a certain amount of rain has fallen?”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner thinks it important that the whole situation regarding the FIA’s intervention is talked about in a transparent manner.

“I think the process is the thing to discuss,” he said.

“TDs shouldn't be regulatory changes, there is a governance and a process for that. So I think we just need to talk through exactly why [they have been issued].

“It didn't look like there was a lot of porpoising in this race [the British GP]. So teams are sorting it out. I don't feel it needs the intervention of a TD.”


Even the Mercedes team, which has suffered badly from porpoising and would have broken the oscillation metric if it had been in place at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, is not sure the FIA needs to be too involved.

Asked about the metric plan, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “It wouldn't be a very good metric if we weren't over it in Baku and I think we were probably the one case that they could use it to sort of calibrate. In Montreal, we were in a sensible place.


“But the point that we've made to the FIA, and we're very supportive of their efforts, is that we will fix these problems for our own performance.

"So, to be honest, the metric that the FIA is doing is not a particular distraction to us.

“We are sincerely hoping that whatever they come up with, we don't trigger it and we just run the car how we want to, because that's exactly what we're trying to do for lap time.”

One of the knock-on consequences of the FIA’s analysis on porpoising is a move to clamp down on tricks that some teams are believed to have done with flexible floors.

Amid suspicions that some cars feature more flexible floors and planks that allow them to be run closer to the ground for extra performance, the FIA plans to tighten up its policing of the matter from the French Grand Prix.

Horner thinks, however, that the governing body cannot just simply step in to regulations if teams having found clever interpretations.

“The regulations need to be black and white,” he said. “Otherwise I think we end up with encyclopedias that sometimes are way too complicated.

“And there's no such thing as the intent of the regulations either: it is a binary thing. So I think with the Commission meeting: there's many things to discuss on the agenda, and maybe two hours won't quite be enough.”