On 8/5/2025 at 10:32 AM, theguru said:

This year McLaren is dominating and it isn't remotely close.  To me that is boring and the 2026 F1 season can't get here soon enough.

I can't really argue this.  Red Bull put themselves in this spot by making some calculated mistakes IMO.  They went TOO heavy on the Max Verstappen car only and to heck with the rest.  (Verstappen is partly to blame here IMO, but is what it is.)  Then they didn't make sure Adrian Newey didn't leave.  He did.  

So now you have an "undriveable" car that ONLY Max Verstappen can beat down to make it work and even he is having more and more and more problems with it.  WHY?  IMO Adrian Newey is not behind the scenes to develop the cars productively and now you have been jettisoned off the back gear box of McLaren and are in a pack with Ferrari, and Mercedes and seem to me to be falling back to them as well.

You just fired the head guy who took you from being an energy drink with a car to a World Championship Team. Now What Red Bull?????  I really don't know.  If Verstappen leaves after next season which I fully expect him to do, REALLY THEN WHAT!!!!!!

Let's be honest, no one is catching McLaren.  And I, like you G like both Norris and Piastri so it makes the battle a little too close to home to fall overly in love with that battle IMO.  I'm pulling for Piastri as he is my F1 Fantasy guy, but that's it.  

To me, I like to follow the mid-pack as well (Racing Bulls, Astin Martin, Williams, Kick Sauber, Haas, etc.) to me are fun to keep up with, but I certainly see how the less enthused fan has a hard time with that.  If that's your position, put on an orange shirt and enjoy the race!!!!  Ha!

Great stuff 88.  I am the same with McLaren and I probably side with Piastri because every F1 fan I have come across the last couple of years (not many) is a Lando Norris fan.  In other words, Oscar needs some love too, lol!

It seems to me if Max leaves Red Bull they could scrap the Red Bull cars for more Racing Bull cars and build from there.

I like the mid-pack too and hopefully Caddy can be competitive in it next year. 

And we still have a couple of weeks until the Dutch Grand Prix. ☹️

On 8/14/2025 at 4:18 PM, theguru said:

Great stuff 88.  I am the same with McLaren and I probably side with Piastri because every F1 fan I have come across the last couple of years (not many) is a Lando Norris fan.  In other words, Oscar needs some love too, lol!

It seems to me if Max leaves Red Bull they could scrap the Red Bull cars for more Racing Bull cars and build from there.

I like the mid-pack too and hopefully Caddy can be competitive in it next year. 

And we still have a couple of weeks until the Dutch Grand Prix. ☹️

Good stuff too G!  Yeah, the more and more I drive along here in the fan seat the more I like Piastri.  Nothing against Lando, just enjoy pulling for those less are pulling for.

That's not a bad plan for Red Bull as Hadjar and Lawson have done well this season IMO.

I really like the new tandem of Perez and Botas!  Should be competitive in the mid-field if they can get the car moving at all.  Everyone will be adjusting and it's a GREAT time to be coming in new!

Dutch Grand Prix this weekend!!!! 

12 minutes ago, Purple88 said:

Good stuff too G!  Yeah, the more and more I drive along here in the fan seat the more I like Piastri.  Nothing against Lando, just enjoy pulling for those less are pulling for.

That's not a bad plan for Red Bull as Hadjar and Lawson have done well this season IMO.

I really like the new tandem of Perez and Botas!  Should be competitive in the mid-field if they can get the car moving at all.  Everyone will be adjusting and it's a GREAT time to be coming in new!

Dutch Grand Prix this weekend!!!! 

A great race in Zandvoort, Netherlands at the Dutch Grand Prix!

Saturday was interesting from the fact that McLaren Driver Lando Norris had smoked the field in all 3 practices, but his teammate and really only other Championship Rival Oscar Piastri rose to the occasion when it mattered and scored an impressive pole position with Norris in second and hometown hero and reigning World Champ Max Verstappen (Red Bull) in 3rd.

The race had a lot of juice in it from the standpoint that you could sense pent up energy and over-aggressiveness and that's exactly what played out in multiple occasions.  It may be easier to just use bullets today to get through it all.  Let's try:

- Oscar Piastri was outstanding for McLaren.  The Australian went wire to wire for the first time ever!  He also tied his coach and mentor fellow Australian Mark Webber with 9 total race wins.  Impressive!   He had to swing over to cut off Lando on the start and keep good pace to out-duel Verstappen who was flying around Turn 1 on the high line and he did.  From there he just managed his race and restarts perfectly and now holds a 34-point lead in the Championship Standings!

- Lando Norris has to be wondering what happened.  I mean he was the top dog through all the practices, but in Qualifying he got out-dueled by his teammate by about a hundredth of a second.  That put him on the backfoot.  Then he lost a spot off the standing start to Verstappen but got it back a little bit later.  He was then managing his race well when his engine blew with about 3 laps to go!  Tough break for the Brit!

- Max Verstappen in his home race was amped up and stormed off the line passed Norris in Turn 1, nearly/should have lost it in Turn 2 (maybe 2 people in the world are able to keep that slip on the track - but Verstappen did impressively).  But he conceded the spot back to Norris several laps later.  He said there was no use fighting it as the McLaren cars are just better and he's right!  Still a nice effort to come home 2nd in his home race!

- Isack Hadjar - the French Rookie is quickly climbing the F1 ladder.  He is fun to watch drive and aggressive as heck and becoming a driver, I find myself pulling for each race now.  In many ways this Racing Bulls "little brother" team is performing right with the Red Bull team.  And if not for Max Verstappen may nipping at their heels.  The Rookie had a great qualifying finishing 4.  Outstanding!  And then made it stick during the race even when faster cars came calling on his gearbox.  First Charles LeClerc (Ferrrari) and then George Russell (Mercedes), but the little Frenchman held firm and when Lando Norris retired he held on to a GREAT 3rd place Podium Finish (which is a big deal in F1) in only his 15th race in F1.  Way to Go!

 

Now going to cover a few of the noteworthy teams from the Netherlands Race:

1. Mercedes - George Russell and Charles LeClerc were battling for 5th and LeClerc's front wing hit Russell's side pod and caused some damage.  This meant Russell really couldn't battle hard for more positions and settled for 4th.  His rookie teammate Antonelli battled well after a poor qualifying session and on lap 53 dove low trying to pass Charles LeClerc, but with heavy understeer moved up the track and clipped the Ferrari and spun him out of the race.  Antonelli was correctly given a 10 second causing a collision penalty and a 5 second speeding in pit lane penalty that pushed him down to 16th spot.  Probably a rookie mistake, but you have to take chances in F1.

2.  Ferrari - A Day to forget.  7-time World Champ Lewis Hamilton likely had issues with light rain on the track and hit the wall on Lap 23 ending his day.  And with LeClerc getting taken out too it was a bad day for the red cars!

3. Haas - The American Team had a great day for a change.  Oliver Bearman just battled all weekend.  He had a terrible go in practice and Qualifying and chose to redo his engine.  Well, it showed.  He sprung board his way up the grid and had good pace today.  He ended the day in 6th place.  His highest finish of his short career.  Well done!  His teammate is a gamer too.  Estaban Ocon kneed and elbowed his way into the last points spot in 10th.  Great day for Haas!

4.  Aston Martin - This is a team to watch.  They didn't have a great early part of the weekend, but they continued to improve throughout and were hurt more than helped by the 3 safety cars today.  But both Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso came home in the points today.  That is starting to happen more and more.

5.  Yuki Tsunoda - I wanted to throw a bone to a guy who has continued to battle in tough circumstances.  The Japanese driver was doing well in the little Brother Racing Bulls team when he got the call up the Red Bull team.  It was fire hose drinking for the fiery driver from the beginning.  Qualifying and Race days have been very tough for him and I'm sure mentally too.  But he is a good driver, and it showed today/this weekend.  He qualified 12th but kept his nose clean and brought it home in the points in 9th.

Very quick turnaround!  As they head from Holland to the Temple of Speed in Monza (Italy).

GREAT Racetrack!  And as the moniker implies, it's all about speed here baby!  I expect McLaren to be hard to beat this year!

On 9/1/2025 at 3:16 PM, Purple88 said:

A great race in Zandvoort, Netherlands at the Dutch Grand Prix!

Saturday was interesting from the fact that McLaren Driver Lando Norris had smoked the field in all 3 practices, but his teammate and really only other Championship Rival Oscar Piastri rose to the occasion when it mattered and scored an impressive pole position with Norris in second and hometown hero and reigning World Champ Max Verstappen (Red Bull) in 3rd.

The race had a lot of juice in it from the standpoint that you could sense pent up energy and over-aggressiveness and that's exactly what played out in multiple occasions.  It may be easier to just use bullets today to get through it all.  Let's try:

- Oscar Piastri was outstanding for McLaren.  The Australian went wire to wire for the first time ever!  He also tied his coach and mentor fellow Australian Mark Webber with 9 total race wins.  Impressive!   He had to swing over to cut off Lando on the start and keep good pace to out-duel Verstappen who was flying around Turn 1 on the high line and he did.  From there he just managed his race and restarts perfectly and now holds a 34-point lead in the Championship Standings!

- Lando Norris has to be wondering what happened.  I mean he was the top dog through all the practices, but in Qualifying he got out-dueled by his teammate by about a hundredth of a second.  That put him on the backfoot.  Then he lost a spot off the standing start to Verstappen but got it back a little bit later.  He was then managing his race well when his engine blew with about 3 laps to go!  Tough break for the Brit!

- Max Verstappen in his home race was amped up and stormed off the line passed Norris in Turn 1, nearly/should have lost it in Turn 2 (maybe 2 people in the world are able to keep that slip on the track - but Verstappen did impressively).  But he conceded the spot back to Norris several laps later.  He said there was no use fighting it as the McLaren cars are just better and he's right!  Still a nice effort to come home 2nd in his home race!

- Isack Hadjar - the French Rookie is quickly climbing the F1 ladder.  He is fun to watch drive and aggressive as heck and becoming a driver, I find myself pulling for each race now.  In many ways this Racing Bulls "little brother" team is performing right with the Red Bull team.  And if not for Max Verstappen may nipping at their heels.  The Rookie had a great qualifying finishing 4.  Outstanding!  And then made it stick during the race even when faster cars came calling on his gearbox.  First Charles LeClerc (Ferrrari) and then George Russell (Mercedes), but the little Frenchman held firm and when Lando Norris retired he held on to a GREAT 3rd place Podium Finish (which is a big deal in F1) in only his 15th race in F1.  Way to Go!

 

Now going to cover a few of the noteworthy teams from the Netherlands Race:

1. Mercedes - George Russell and Charles LeClerc were battling for 5th and LeClerc's front wing hit Russell's side pod and caused some damage.  This meant Russell really couldn't battle hard for more positions and settled for 4th.  His rookie teammate Antonelli battled well after a poor qualifying session and on lap 53 dove low trying to pass Charles LeClerc, but with heavy understeer moved up the track and clipped the Ferrari and spun him out of the race.  Antonelli was correctly given a 10 second causing a collision penalty and a 5 second speeding in pit lane penalty that pushed him down to 16th spot.  Probably a rookie mistake, but you have to take chances in F1.

2.  Ferrari - A Day to forget.  7-time World Champ Lewis Hamilton likely had issues with light rain on the track and hit the wall on Lap 23 ending his day.  And with LeClerc getting taken out too it was a bad day for the red cars!

3. Haas - The American Team had a great day for a change.  Oliver Bearman just battled all weekend.  He had a terrible go in practice and Qualifying and chose to redo his engine.  Well, it showed.  He sprung board his way up the grid and had good pace today.  He ended the day in 6th place.  His highest finish of his short career.  Well done!  His teammate is a gamer too.  Estaban Ocon kneed and elbowed his way into the last points spot in 10th.  Great day for Haas!

4.  Aston Martin - This is a team to watch.  They didn't have a great early part of the weekend, but they continued to improve throughout and were hurt more than helped by the 3 safety cars today.  But both Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso came home in the points today.  That is starting to happen more and more.

5.  Yuki Tsunoda - I wanted to throw a bone to a guy who has continued to battle in tough circumstances.  The Japanese driver was doing well in the little Brother Racing Bulls team when he got the call up the Red Bull team.  It was fire hose drinking for the fiery driver from the beginning.  Qualifying and Race days have been very tough for him and I'm sure mentally too.  But he is a good driver, and it showed today/this weekend.  He qualified 12th but kept his nose clean and brought it home in the points in 9th.

Very quick turnaround!  As they head from Holland to the Temple of Speed in Monza (Italy).

GREAT Racetrack!  And as the moniker implies, it's all about speed here baby!  I expect McLaren to be hard to beat this year!

Great recap like always.

The McLaren's, ugh, too fast for the rest of the field.

Three cheers for driver of the day, Isack Hadjar, 3rd place and a podium.  What a great result.

I am ready for the 2026 F1 season..

Ten more years of great views and bad racing!

Max Verstappen just ran the fast lap in F1 history, from F1DataAnalysis:

THE FASTEST F1 LAP EVER (vs its predecessor)
⬛️VER's more loaded upper plane vs ?HAM's 2020 car made his DRS much more effective:
-Similar straight-line performance without DRS
-Yet +8km/h top speed with DRS! ?
Old-gen cars still quicker in most fast corners ?
What's your race prediction? ?
Made via JMP #YesJMPcan
#F1 #Monza #ItalianGP

As @theguru mentioned above The Temple of Speed didn't disappoint on delivering speed, but there wasn't a lot of battles on track today to be honest.

Practices this week were all about Max Verstappen and Red Bull loving the low downforce track and leading most of the practices.  That carried over to qualification with Verstappen starting on pole.  The McLarens (Norris and Piastri) were 2 and 3 with the hometown Ferrari's in 4 and 5.

For the Race, the first 6 laps were pretty exciting with Norris holding the line into Turn 1 and Verstappen couldn't make the first corner and went wide and was made to give the spot back.  But Verstappen passed Norris going into Turn 1 about lap 3 and really just ran away with the race from there.  LeClerc (Ferrari) really battled with Piastri (McLaren) in the first 6-7 laps and that really held up Piastri and when he finally passed LeClerc for good he was 5 seconds back of his teammate in 2nd.  So, the race just really was maintaining at that point.

It did get interesting at the pit stops for the McLarens (MCL).  MCL decided to pit Piastri first in order to get him out ahead of LeClerc in good track space and they did.  The issue came when they then brought Norris into pit, they had a very slow pit stop, which allowed Piastri to pass Norris.  So MCL decided to pull a "team rules" and asked Piastri to hand Norris the place back on track.  Piastri did, but man these guys are racing for a World Championship.  IMO MCL have been inconsistent in these "team rules" and we will see issues again with this IMO later in the year.  Will be something to keep track of.

So, Verstappen wins by about 20 seconds over Norris, then Piastri, LeClerc, Russell (Mercedes) and Hamilton in 6th.

A few other items:

Williams - had a pretty good weekend even though they struggled in Qualifying after good practices.  Albon comes home in a great 7th and Sainz can't stop getting hit and slides down to 11th, but still a decent effort and they led the Midfield this week so good for them.

Aston Martin - a dog of a weekend for the green team.  Alonzo was having a decent race but his suspension broke suddently and he was out of the race.  Hard to explain that.  And Lance Stroll finished dead last for all cars still running.  Going to be along stint before the next race for them.

Rookies - Garbielle Bortolletto with Saber ran great today and finished in 9th.  Hadjar who had his first podium last week started from pit lane today and still brought it home in the points in 10th.  That's hard to do.  Kimi Antonelli (the Italian - so I think there was alot of pressure on him today) brings it home in 8th, but he had a penalty for eratic driving, but really, he could have only gone up one more spot IMO today so a good effort.

Two weeks to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in the old city of Baku on the coastline along the Caspian Sea.  Would be cool to go there, I think!

I think Verstappen will definitely be in the mix here.  Will be interesting to see how MCL counters this.  This track isn't as much a low downforce track so it will come back to MCL a little anyway.

One of the wilder Qualifying sessions you'll ever see at Azerbaijan!

Overview

• Round 17 of 24 comes from Baku, Azerbaijan

• Max Verstappen grabs pole from Carlos Sainz and Liam Lawson

• Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc both crash out in Q3, Lando Norris is only seventh

• Alex Albon, Nico Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto all crashed in Q1

• Ollie Bearman crashed in Q2 - with this Qualifying setting a record after six separate red flags

• Eliminated in Q1: Colapinto, Hulkenberg, Ocon, Gasly, Albon

• Eliminated in Q2: Alonso, Hamilton, Bortoleto, Stroll, Bearman

 

Going to be a wild race tomorrow I think!

Didn't get to watch this one yet.  Had to go to Parents weekend at WKU!  Go Tops!

After the Qualifying above, with an F1 record 6 red flags you'd expect a wild grand prix and it seems so.

Well it started just unpredictable as Championship leader Oscar Piastri (McLaren) who hit the wall in Qualifying jumped the standing start and feel immediately to the back of the field.  He was making up positions, but his tyres were still cold and he hits the wall in Turn 5 of Lap 1!  Incredible!  Is he feeling the pressure of being the Championship Leader?  Perhaps.

So that gave his teammate Lando Norris a great chance to make up ground in the Championship fight.  But he was mired in the bottom of the top 10 and only finished 7th.  So he did cut the 31 point lead to 25, but man he missed a chance to be really tight.

But worse for McClaren, who others seem to have now been caught or they aren't so far out in front as in the past, is Max Verstappen will now battle to the end for the Championship and will win several more races and is now only 69 points back in the Championship points race.  But think he would have to win nearly all the remaining races to have a chance to win, but stranger things have happened and McLaren was really bad this weekend.

So Verstappen wins from pole position.  George Russell drives a great race and finished second for Mercedes.  And Carlos Sainz has his best weekend in the Williams finishing 3rd and on the podium!  GREAT day for him and Williams and they now have a big lead in the Constructors Championship in 5th place which is a big deal due to money payouts at the end of the year.

Couple weeks to the Singapore Grand Prix.  An awesome spectacle as it's a night race with all the lights!  Really cool.  We will see if McLaren can bounce back.

5 minutes ago, Purple88 said:

So Verstappen wins from pole position.  George Russell drives a great race and finished second for Mercedes.  And Carlos Sainz has his best weekend in the Williams finishing 3rd and on the podium!  GREAT day for him and Williams and they now have a big lead in the Constructors Championship in 5th place which is a big deal due to money payouts at the end of the year.

Other than Piastri having the worst race of his life it was boring.  Max, Max, and more Max.   Happy for Sainz though!! 

No F1 this weekend, no problem for Max.