Since I am sure all of you are rabid F1 fans, this is probably a totally unenlightening post. (OK. I’ll stop being a smartass.)<\/p>\n
F1 season is off to an “interesting” start. LOADS of changes. For those of you who don’t follow\/aren’t all that interested\/couldn’t care to spend the time, here’s a recap of transpirings.<\/p>\n
Last year saw the winning of the car championship by Mercedes (no surprise – they pretty much ran off and hid from all the other teams all year) and the drivers championship won by a truly icky person – Nico Rosberg, son of yet another icky person Keke Rosberg. Father was a nasty piece of work, and son had all the pieces in his corner and STILL won by luck, as his partner on the team was clearly faster. Nico’s bad behavior was obvious in all the post-race shots in the preparatory room before coming out on the podium, where he sulked and groused while the other two drivers mostly tried to avoid interacting with him.<\/p>\n
Things are different this year. Nico’s gone! Retired rather unexpectedly, leaving Mercedes in the lurch for a driver, this after they bent over backwards on his contract last year. The difference is obvious immediately in the prep room – JOY, FUN, HAPPINESS with the win\/place\/show!<\/p>\n
First race ran in Melbourne, on a track that is kind of a street race, so lots of close walls. Rules changes were aplenty, mostly with things like seriously wider tires (2.5″ front, 3.5″ rear) giving lots more grip, lower and wider rear wing, different aerodynamic rules. Mercedes has given its incredible engines to other teams, and lots of homework was done during the in-between season time. The results of all this was that the track record was dropped by a couple seconds from Schumacker’s old one of 2004 – this in a sport where 0.1 sec is considered significant and the front 5 rows are generally divided by hundredths of a second in times.<\/p>\n
The other surprise was that Mercedes didn’t win. Ferrari did. Sebastian Vettel, who had real problems getting accustomed to new aero features in years past, has come back into his own and drove the winning Ferrari to victory. The new Ferrari IS impressive, but lest everyone get their hopes up too much, Mercedes took 2nd and 3rd, and that mostly because of a tactical mistake on the team’s part that ended up putting Lewis Hamilton behind Vershtappen who acted like the pouty kid he is and blocked him from being able to get by and take the Ferrari. Vershtappen was the boy-wonder of last year (17 years old and in F1!) and while he IS talented and fast, he also is often a jerk teen. Australia was one of those times. Lewis was not racing for his position and clearly faster and he ought to have done the right thing and let him by – but he didn’t. <\/p>\n
Next race in Asia I believe – next week. Tune in for some very fast cars going very fast (track record come to average speed of about 144 MPH).<\/p>\n
Since I am sure all of you are rabid F1 fans, this is probably a totally unenlightening post. (OK. I’ll stop being a smartass.)<\/p>\n
F1 season is off to an “interesting” start. LOADS of changes. For those of you who don’t follow\/aren’t all that interested\/couldn’t care to spend the time, here’s a recap of transpirings.<\/p>\n
Last year saw the winning of the car championship by Mercedes (no surprise – they pretty much ran off and hid from all the other teams all year) and the drivers championship won by a truly icky person – Nico Rosberg, son of yet another icky person Keke Rosberg. Father was a nasty piece of work, and son had all the pieces in his corner and STILL won by luck, as his partner … Continue reading