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2016 Formula 1 No one would watch this crappy race if it wasn't season finale Abu Dhabi Grand Prix



Season standings


Timetables
all times are local

Friday 25 – Sunday 27 November 2016

Practice 1 Friday 13:00 – 14:30
Practice 2 Friday 17:00 – 18:30
Practice 3 Saturday 14:00 – 15:00
Qualifying Saturday 17:00 – 18:00
Race Sunday 17:00 – 19:00

We're finally at the end, no one can stand a long season that ends in a Mickey Mouse track

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Even though this has been a record-long season, I feel it's been the shortest ever. Didn't Alonso flip just a few weeks ago at the Australian GP?

Hopefully the race is a total borefrest, with Mercedes finishing 1-2. Anticlimactic ending would represent the whole season.

To me it actually felt like months since Alonso fliped

time usually runs faster when we get older

then we sit to watch a random grand prix and suddenly time moves real slow

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

It's been months since Fisichella flipped at Monaco. Although the download information of the video clip says May 27th, 2004, 1:50PM.


Yes, I'm getting older.

Thank god it's nearly over.

10/10 thread opening

Nico has decided that he will be full attack for this race. I predict he will finish 8s down in second, despite having won here last year and only ever being outqualified by a team mate here once.

Nico will probably win.....The race AND the title.

So we have the run in to the least exciting championship fight at a finale since 2003 (not that 2003 wasn't a good season, it was just pretty much ended at the USGP with Montoya dropping out and MS becoming 9 points ahead of Kimi and needing just an 8th to take the title. Still didn't stop the media from building it up like it was the climax to a hollywood film though )

Hope has come this week from Bernie who has suggested Singapore is getting tired of its race and wants out after next year.
Maybe the rich Sheikh fascination with F1 will end soon too and we can bid goodbye to this shitty track and go back to ending our seasons at proper race tracks?

Can't help wondering how perfect a finale last week would've been, Nico getting the title, Lewis going into the off season motivated for a change, Red Bull showing well, Force India having a great race to pick them up for next year, Sauber getting points so having half a chance of making next season, the storylines just seemed right.
Nothing will be added to the legend from this race except maybe a crash in turn 3 again among the midfield.
Ho-hum

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

talking about getting older, it's already 7 years since this race was added...

Rosberg will cop for a rare mechanical failure for him this year and Lewis will take the crown.

Both the Mrs and my Dad want this to happen.

I want them both to crash.

I don't understand why people keep complaining about how bad this season was. It was down to the wire, with Spain, Austria and perhaps Australia as classics IMHO and many other great races (Monaco, Spa, Brazil, perhaps Malaysia and arguably more) too. I mean, the season wasn't the greatest (of course) but it surely wasn't the worst one. The only problem (or drawback) it had it's the Mercedes domination, 3rd year in a row, but the rest was good.

NOTE: Sorry for the off-topic but it was answering to a few posts.

All I remember is whoever got to be the 1st after the first lap normally leading from flag to flag and not much else happening on the top 3.


I would love to have what happened on Austria and Spain more often, not necessarily crashing, but more on-track action, not just the finishing position and points battle.

It's still on balance a little better than last year because we still have a championship battle happening even if it's a dead rubber.

No matter what anyone says, the reliability issue with Mercedes has cast a shadow on what could've been a great year
(I'm sure even Rosberg fans would rather Nico beat Lewis on a completely even keel instead of all the excuses this year's championship result will generate)

There's no question it was just sheer blind bad luck that Lewis had slightly more things go wrong with his car than nico did, but if just ONE of those reliability issues that had befell lewis early in the season had happened to Nico we'd probably be looking at a closer finish than 2014 even.

That said, it's always the way in F1 that when there's wholesale rule changes the first season is a classic as its the same for everyone then each year is a series of diminishing returns as the teams get a handle on the rules and it gets boring for a while, leading the FIA to shake things up again
Indeed, I was looking back at qualifying for the 2014 Australian Grand prix and was impressed about how little grip and how much torque the cars seemed to have back then.
The cars handled like they were on ice, so its no wonder we had a few classic races in that period, culminating in Bahrain which is still one of my all time favourite races.

I don't think we have too much to worry about with the new rules for the first half of next year in that regard then, even if it is my view we'll just be swapping Merc dominance (and likely winding down to a pull out after 2018) for Red bull dominance.
The question mark will be how extra boring things will be with the extra downforce once the teams get a handle on the new regs from the european season on....

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

I'll never understand the 12-20 complex and the 2-7 complex. Just go all out and make it a point-n-squirt track instead of point-n-squirt mixed with the mickey mouse stuff.

I also can't believe it's been on the calendar so long. It seems like the 2009 race wasn't that long ago. I remember watching that on TV...being excited at first.

And then...

Kobayashi had some good runs at the track though.

I have a dim memory that the first braking point after turn 1 was meant to be the hairpin and the chicane wasn't going to be used at all, but they fucked up on the runoff and Charlie demanded the chicane was used to slow the cars down before they reached the hairpin

I also kind of remember this was supposed to be a temporary solution

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

That's true - Tilke didn't make the chicane

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I remember seeing the track layout and imagining a street circuit with close walls, and getting really excited about it, but then.... Just like Valencia and Socchi and Korea


Thank God for Singapure.

Would like to see Nico winning the title and preferably by outpacing Lewis the whole weekend or at least during the race.

Although I doubt that will happen it would certainly make his title a bit shinier (can't find the right word for it ).

And yet, Schumacher barley finished eighth after two almost race-ending incidents, with Barrichello leading a race where anybody could've broken down an engine like Montoya did early in the race.

Maybe the build-up to it made it seem like an easy one, but how things unfolded made it a quite tense/uncertain championship ender - I'd say a bit like Brazil 2012 where if it wasn't for Vettel's start incident, it was supposed to be quite a snooze finale.

So, yeah, someone crash into Rosberg at the start please (non-terminally). I nominate Vettel to do it, given his track record this year.