The Formula 1 Thread 🏎

[Wyvern]

Yep its the spanish race

[Sweepslag]

See what I mean? If @GregRedd doesn’t make his post, everyone forgets about the race.

[Sweepslag]

Hard to tell whether the upgrades have worked for anyone as yet. The order seems pretty static, with the possible exception of Merc, who are fastest in FP2 for a change. It may have something to do with this new bargeboard arrangement of theirs, which is somewhere between a meat grinder and a modern art sculpture.

[GregRedd]

(Sorry for late and all ne. Eish, the treffic… Hau!. )

2019 Spanish Grand Prix Peview

Hola fanáticos de la Fórmula 1, bienvenidos a España!

Hello Formula 1 race fans, welcome to Spain! Or more correctly, welcome back. Round 5 of the 2019 season takes the teams and drivers back to Barcelona and to a circuit they know incredibly well thanks to all the pre-season testing that is done there.

And with F1 news headlines leading up to the race following a similar trend, we could see a number of teams running through similar test procedures as when they were last at the circuit at the beginning of the year.

• “Renault bring forward power unit upgrade to Spain”
• “Grosjean: Haas is ‘pretty much a brand new car’ for Spain”
• “Vettel confident about Spain updates as Ferrari hunt Mercedes”

The 2019 Spanish Grand Prix (formally known as the Formula 1 Emirates Gran Premio de España 2019) is on Sunday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Montmeló, Spain. The race will be the 5th round of the 2019 Formula One World Championship and marks the 49th running of the Spanish Grand Prix as a F1 World Championship event since the inaugural season in 1950. It will be Formula One Grand Prix #1002, the 29th time that the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya host a Grand Prix.

The circuit is located in the small Catalan municipality of Montmeló (pop. 8784) in the comarca (county) of Vallès Oriental, within the Barcelona metropolitan area, in Catalonia, Spain.

Barcelona (whose football team recently traveled all the way to Liverpool for nothing!) is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within its city limits, its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the Province of Barcelona and is home to around 4.8 million people. This makes it the 6th most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, London, Madrid, the Ruhr area and Milan.

Founded as a Roman city in the Middle Ages, Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. After merging with the Kingdom of Aragon, Barcelona continued to be an important city in the Crown of Aragon as an economic and administrative center of this Crown and the capital of the Principality of Catalonia. Barcelona has a rich cultural heritage and is today an important cultural center and a major tourist destination.

Michael Schumacher holds the record for most number of Spanish Grand Prix wins with 6, while Ferrari’s 12 Spanish titles make them the most successful constructor. Of the current drivers only Hamilton (3) and Raikkonen (2) are multiple winners.

In its current Formula 1 configuration, the circuit has a length of 4.655km with 16 turns, and 2 DRS zones. The standing Race Lap Record of 1:18.441 was set by Australia Daniel Ricciardo driving for Red Bull Racing during last year’s race.

Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes Pole Position time last year was 1:16.173. Hamilton converted his pole start into a race win and was joined on the podium by teammate Valtteri Bottas and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Pole position at the CdB-C is crucial and more often than not, the pole-sitter has gone on to win the race.

The Schedule

The Spanish know how to tell time in accordance with the precepts established here in the Cradle of Mankind many millennia ago. (They also drink lots of red wine and take siestas - more evidence of their cultural excellence!)

The Circuit

The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is a permanent motorsport racetrack in Spain. With long straights and a variety of corners, it is seen as an all-rounder circuit, and one of the reasons it is used as the principal F1 pre-season testing facility. The track has stands with a capacity of 140,700 and (somewhat obviously) a FIA Grade 1 license.

Built as part of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics development programme, the foundation stone was laid in 1989, while the first car race was a round of the 1991 Spanish Touring Car Championship. Two weeks after the touring cars raced at Barcelona, it was Formula 1’s turn. The track enjoyed a sensational debut, with Nigel Mansell and Ayrton Senna’s famous eyeball-to-eyeball drag race down the straight, before Mansell took the lead and drove on to victory.

Here’s Carlos Sainz’s Guide to Spain (aka, local lad takes us on a tour of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.)

The opening phase of a Grand Prix in Barcelona is important and things can go horribly wrong very quickly. To illustrate this, here, in glorious HD 360° view, is the onboard view from Romain Grosjean’s Haas at the start of last year’s race.

A final little CdB-C track fact for ya: Until 2005, only world champions had ever won at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The man to break the pattern was Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen, who would only win his World Championship crown two years later.

The Tyres

Pirelli know this circuit as well (or maybe even better?) than the teams and drivers. Here’s what they have to say about keeping rubber and tarmac well connected:

• The track was resurfaced last year, which changed its previously bumpy and abrasive nature. However, the surface has since matured, making it more similar to how it was previously.
• Although the teams had a free choice of all the 2019 P Zero Formula 1 tyre range for pre-season testing, they tended to concentrate on the softer compounds (more commonly used during the year). So they may be missing a bit of data on the hard and the medium.
• Barcelona is a good all-round test for a car and tyres, which is why it is so often used for testing: the famous Turn 3 takes the most energy out of the tyres, while the front-left is the most stressed.
• Last year, the race was won with a one-stopper: the same strategy being used by all the top three. Lewis Hamilton claimed victory for Mercedes after starting on the soft tyre and moving onto the medium. There were also some two-stoppers and three-stoppers.
• This year’s C1 compound is slightly softer than the 2018 hard, with the C2 being roughly equivalent to the 2018 medium and C3 to the 2018 soft. The selection for this year’s Spanish Grand Prix has been made to enable drivers to push hard from the start to the finish of each stint in what are likely to be warm conditions, without resorting to pace management.

Here’s Pirelli’s visual preview of the track characteristics and the selected tyre sets for each of the drivers:

The Weather

It’s Spain in mid-Spring on the Mediterranean coast. What more could you want? The long range forecast looks good, with cloud cover to keep things cool. There’s a vague outside chance of some rain hiding in those clouds, but really vague and really outside. (Because, as you should know, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, and this is the coast, so, not.)

And FYI

In closing, the return of the F1 brigade back into Europe also sees the return of the Formula 2 series where Spain will host Round 3 of 12 this weekend. And it will also see the inaugural race of the newly formatted FIA Formula 3 Championship.

The 2019 FIA Formula 3 Championship is the inaugural season of the FIA Formula 3 Championship, a multi-event motor racing championship for single-seat open-wheel formula racing cars.

The championship features drivers competing in three-point-four litre Formula 3 racing cars which conform to the technical regulations, or formula, of the championship. It is due to run in support of the Formula 1 World Championship and its sister series, Formula 2. It serves as the third tier of formula racing in the FIA Global Pathway.

The championship was formed by the merger of the GP3 Series and the FIA Formula 3 European Championship in 2018, which brought the two championships under the umbrella of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

All F3 teams will be supplied with a new chassis package, named the Dallara F3 2019. It will be powered by a 3.4 litre naturally-aspirated V6 engine developed by Mecachrome that also powered the GP3/16 chassis which was used in the championship’s predecessor, the GP3 Series from 2016 to 2018. The chassis will use tyres supplied by Pirelli and also feature the “halo” cockpit protection device used in the championship’s sister series Formula One and Formula 2.

Of particular interest to South Africans in Formula 3 will be Raoul Hyman, the Durban-born youngster (he celebrates his 23rd birthday on Sunday) who will be racing for Charouz Racing System in Formula 3 this year. He moved to the UK in 2011 to pursue his racing career and drives under a British license. But we’ll still lay claim to him being South African. Just like Charlize and Elon.

Hyman, who won the F3 Asian Championship last year, joins Fabio Scherer and Lirim Zendeli as 2019 drivers for the Sauber Junior Team. Sauber Motorsport, which runs the Alfa Romeo Racing entry in Formula 1, partnered with Charouz Racing System late last year to launch the Sauber Junior Team programme.

And that’s it for this preview. See you again in 2 weeks time from Monaco!

¡Disfruten de la carrera amigos!

[GregRedd]

FP 2 times. It’s tight at the top*

And the Speed Trap times. Ferrari powered engines still have straight line speed.

. *

[PsychoFish]

2019 Spanish Grand Prix predictions:

Mercedes 1-2, Vettel, Verstappen
Ricciardo won’t finish the race (again)
Kubica will probably be the first retiree and well probably see one of the Racing Point drivers collide with some poor driver actually trying to do something useful

[Dragonic]

Barcelona (whose football team recently traveled all the way to Liverpool for nothing !) is the capital

Loooool I don’t follow soccer, but I heard about this.

[Wyvern]

I am just gonna say Ferrari should just pack up it all up

[Dragonic]

Yeah, I agree. Going to be a long and hard year as a Ferrari supporter

[GregRedd]

Glad at least one person spotted that

[Dragonic]

FFFFFFFFFFFF Switched to the IPL to see the start of the match. Now DSTV Now is down. SIGH! Crap race for Ferrari anyways, but still.

[Sweepslag]

This championship is lost to everyone else. They may as well start building next year’s cars .

[Wyvern]

Ferrari needs to do a clean sweep, start that strategy team all over. Their calls are at least 5 laps late every time. They should have left all their updates at home.

I have to say I was impressed with Max today, he drove a clean stunning race.

Those Mercs, there are no words.

Sainz had a great race, Norris had an oops

Otherwise it was bland. That safetycar did not do much

[DieGrootHammer]

Well, that’s a wrap on the constructors title for this year. Well done to Mercedes for winning the title yet again.

Now obviously it is too early in the season to honestly say that, but from here on there is no way that it is not true. The Mercs are in a class of their own. Ferrari is just nowhere, Red Bull is there, and the rest is racing in Formula 1.5.

On the weekend where there are questions about the future of the Spanish GP, this was the worst race to have. It was a boring procession from turn 2 on lap 1 until the end. Not even a safety car could spice things up. And another Merc 1-2 is just so boring. I mean it’s not their fault, they are just driving the best car with the best drivers in the best way they can. Not a single fault or stupid move by either the team or the drivers meant they never looked like their 1-2 was under threat at all.

Ferrari is just a meme at this point. There were at least 10 laps in that race they actively cocked up the strategy for their number 2 driver, Vettel and Leclerc. Like seriously, who is the first driver, because Ferrari sure as shit doesn’t know. They just treat both their drivers like the number 2 driver. It’s just pure pathetic at this point in time.

Verstappen is pure class. He drove a great, clean race and got rewarded by absolutely destroying the Ferrari’s, who is supposed to be a lot faster than him. Gasly showed some semblance of a good driver, but after the news of Red Bull signing other drivers to their programs, his days are numbered. I wouldn’t be surprised if Albon takes his place before the end of the year. Either Gasly is making a good car look average, or Verstappen is making an average car look good.

In Formula 1.5 the racing was rather exciting. Just unfortunate that we didn’t get to see it with the bad camera work and coverage. So many passes missed and never shown, such a shame. Albon and Kvyat was so unlucky with their pitstop fiasco. Both were showing some amazing pace and would’ve score a lot more points. But Kvyat was really impressive.

Other quick thoughs: Magnussen is a douchebag and Gunter gave him a good earful after the race, Renaults are the slowerst Renault powered car on the grid, which baffles the mind. McLaren looks like they are growing well week on week, and Williams is still the slowerst, but are closer to the pack now.

Overall a really sad, miserable, boring race weekend. Let’s hope for more exciting racing on the next race…oh wait…it’s Monaco…

[Wyvern]

See I totally agree, this is the first time that I am already bored of the season. I still watch the 1.5 but that doesnt save the racing, there is no cameras on the real action, and don’t show me the “front runners”

[GregRedd]

What he said. With an added dash of “meh” for good measure. Totally unsatisfying race all round.

[Mottamort]

Think my mate that comes over to watch F1 with me on Sundays is starting to get annoyed due to my snoring…its not the first (or second) race this year that i’ve fallen unconscious in.

[Wyvern]

You are not alone, my brother kicked me awake when the safety car incident happened

[Dragonic]

And this new regulations was meant to increase the action. But nothing changed. In fact, last year was better somehow. Also I think Merc used to complain that because they are so far ahead they never got any coverage, which isn’t good for their sponsors.

[Wyvern]

All I know is I am losing what little faith I had left for the sport. I honestly used to love the front runners, no matter who’s car they are in.
But the gap keeps growing, I used to love the inventions that came from the sport, but I believe this budget cap needs to be put in place and enforced strictly now.

If we have to make F1 the same boring ass car as the Formula E, do so, because I cannot handle this feeling.

I used to so hyper and excited on race days, I used to shout at the tv during qualies and the race. Now I barely look up from my book, I havent watched a qualy in 4 races. . . .

For me it was a case of always watching the free practice sessions, to read every scrap of news, to inspect and investigate the cars. I could point out the minor changes that was made on wings and body. Now I honestly just do not care.