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I totally understand his move away from Red Bull. But not his decision to bail on Alpine. He was on mega money there as well, was the number one driver on performance, the team and car were being tailored around him.

I think some of the main reasons he jumped was the Merc engine and the McLaren name. Also I think he might have been spooked by the fact that in 2021 Alpine would have been running a three year old chassis. They re used the same tub from 2019 to 2020, then the rules were frozen because of Covid. I'm pretty sure this would have had something to do with him bailing. And the constant Renault/Alpine board shenanigans. Maybe he was McLaren as being more stable.

At the time, with McLaren rising rapidly through the field having very good results, it seemed like a great move/fit, and even though he's having struggles it still seems like the best team to be at for him. It's just so bizarre what is happening though, I'm not sure I can think of an example quite like it before?

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

perhaps he needs some motivation from guys like Flavio Briatore

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

Last year, McLaren did get some great results, especially when you see where they came from. But the results mostly came from Norris.

Frentzen at Williams came with huge "this guy is quicker than Michael" fanfare (based on their time together in shared drives for the Mercedes sportscar team.
He won early then fizzled out massively, before a 1 season redemption at Jordan, then he was back to underperforming

For a Mclaren example, Kovalienen was looking like a good prospect until his Mclaren move killed his career. Perez didn't really get on well there either (and neither did Mansell but that's a whole other thing)

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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

Fair examples, but I guess the thing with Riccardo, is that he was already established as being bloody quick in F1

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

he was quicker than vettel, but personally i attribute vettel's speed to adrian newey. as much as i like mark webber, he's no verstappen/hamilton/alonso.... and neither is vettel. and as much as i like riccardo, he seems very limited to how a car is set up for a particular driving style, and lets face it - the mclaren is designed with norris in mind (who just might have the speed to be up there with vers/ham/al).

IndyCar champion should have one regardless of other performances.

This makes me laugh, because everyone's ready to pronounce Norris as the next big thing based upon his performance at 1 team. Just as they were when Ric was at Red Bull. How do we know Lando won't equally struggle to change teams, make the most of an entirely different car philosophy, and establish a leadership role within a new group of people? The same for Max really. Most champions haven't done so well after splitting from their championship team; Lewis, Michael, Alain, Niki are the only examples of that working well that I can think of in the last 40 years or so.

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Palou has one. You need 40 points. The Indy Champion gets 40. It is Herta that doesn't have one he, has 32 points over the last 3 years. And as has been pointed out before the absurdity of the system means that finishing second or third in F2, or being F3 champion places you higher than second in IndyCar.

Championship position
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th
FIA Formula 2 Championship 40 40 40 30 20 10 8 6 4 3
IndyCar Series 40 30 20 10 8 6 4 3 2 1
FIA Formula 3 Championship 30 25 20 15 12 9 7 5 3 2
FIA Formula E Championship 10 8 6 4 3 2 1
FIA World Endurance Championship HYPERCAR 24 16 12 10 8 6 4 2

Wow, Formula E champion gets about as much respect as winning a Gran Tourismo race.

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Looks like the Belgium government is stepping in to help keep F1 at Spa

https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/116335/b ... ztRpvw_nuA

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

I mean, Formula E is not much more than electric karts with wings so yeah...

It hardly gets any attention in media, I have not seen many races but the races that I saw did not encourage me to see more, and the only reason I give it a little bit of attention is because there are some well known drivers in it and Stoffel Vandoorne isn´t doing bad. The tracks have no atmosphere at all, the sound is worse than F1 and again, it just looks like karts with wings.

I'll never understand that kind of snobbery tbh, I mean it's racing....they all start at the same time and a winner is the first over the line so it's largely the same as every other series on the planet, just with one or two idiosyncracies
F1 has DRS, Formula E has attack mode, Indycar has Push to Pass, the more you watch motorsport the more you realise it's all the same just with small differences unique to each series

F1 is big on installing itself as the elite series that is at the top of the tree, but that's mainly PR propaganda tbh, if you're American you'll see the Indy 500 as the biggest race in the world and everything 2nd to that, including the championship that runs it, for some reason, and various other places in the world will have other priorities too....
All this "F1 is the top league and when drivers can't get a ride there they've "retired" to a lesser series, therefore their talent wasn't as good in the first place" is just nonsense. People like Erricson in Indycar and all the "fired by red bull" drivers in Formula E, as well as Stoffel too, prove that they are just as good as those in F1, they just didn't get the breaks or have enough money to stick around

TL;DR, racing is racing, you're missing out on some damn good fun by not watching it.
(also they all try their hardest to not race at the same time, so it's not like you really have to choose one over the other either...)

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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

Your lose

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

So you've never seen the races, but you've seen enough to slag it off?

Races are way more exciting than F1 races, and yeah there's gimmicks, F1 has those too.

Yeah the sound of Formula E cars suck, but current F1 cars are the worst sounding cars we've had in 30-40 years.

I'm probably the only motorsport fan there is that doesn't give a shit about what they sound like
TBH I grew up watching a lot of Sci-fi shows, so the more we move towards the cars quietly humming (and maybe hovering ) the cooler they'll sound for me

I've never been into being deafened by loud noise no matter how cool people think that concept is, either in motorsport or in the music world.
It's another of societies recieved opinions I've never quite understood, but then I work in sound engineering and audio editing so my hearing is essential to getting paid, that might explain it lol

Engineers will tell you that noise is just wasted energy and I agree, they'd make them silent if they could...

Also, the cars must've become quieter in the 80s with the turbos they ran then, no-one complained...
Maybe because it wasn't uniform and you still had V12 screamers in the field as well as quiet Turbo running teams, who knows?

_________________
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

No. I don’t really care about it either. Yeah the sound can be great but great sound with shit racing is still shit while great racing with shit sound is still thrilling.

Don’t really get the whole V10 and V12 circle jerk either. Imho the sound in the early 90s was taste because you had the odd V12, a bunch of V10s and a ton of V8s on the track at the same time creating a great mix.
A band sounds good because of the different instruments. Not because 5 guys all play the same chords on a guitar

A lot of those Super licence disparities are to do with F1 wanting to promote their own categories over the others, and less to do with actual top flight nature of the series.

I can't watch FE because they play music during the replays. That's my sole reason, no kidding. If F1 would start playing some crappy techno before the start and during the replays, I would stop watching F1 as well. Mario Kart-styled red light beeps and the replay transition going "wroom" are almost too much for me. I don't need special effects for live events. Leave them for Netflix or YouTube highlights.

The last FE race I watched was the one where Heidfeld rolled. That was enough for me.