2017 Bahrain GP @ Sakhir

[RidgeBack]

Bottas!!!! Two Ts. or Bo77as!!!

Woohoooo! First pole. so happy for him.


But, it doesn't bode well for F1 this season if Merc can just switch on and find half a second over everyone. Hopefully, it's just the nature of this race/track at Bahrain - maybe even the night air (I hope). Perhaps they have learned big time from their failures at singapore the past couple of years.

So, Bottas, Vettel, and Kimi on the clean side of the track and Lewis, Danny, and Max on the dirty. Should be good if Vettel gets ahead of Lewis at Turn 1.

Also, stonking lap from Hulk. Gotta feel really bad for Palmer - 1.2 seconds off his team mate's quali pace. Ouch!

Who'd had thought: Renault best of the rest

[BoldUlysses]

Stoked for tomorrow. Hoping he doesn't pull a Hulk @ Austria and get totally swamped during the first lap. Rodgers&Hammerstein is surely going to try to make a statement and shut the door on him in the first corner, if he can.

[Yonkers320is]

And of course NBCSN continues to suck - they are not showing qualifying live, but have made the programming choice to go with Watford v. Swansea City on CNBC. This is total crap and I'm confused why NBCSN has chosen that F1 fans are second-tier fans. Watford/Swansea will have no bearing whatsoever on the EPL this year; whereas we're 2 races into the F1 season, and with Red Bull's resurgence in FP2, qualifying has a real chance of being wide-open.

Bold Ulysses - can you make an exception for profanity in this case?

I watched it at 12:30pm, supposed to be a EPL match, but went into qualifying. it was right after the ManC game.

[m3fuz]

I watched it at 12:30pm, supposed to be a EPL match, but went into qualifying. it was right after the ManC game.

Live qualifying was at 11 (not shown on TV) with the replay at 12:30 (on NBCSN). Here locally, the City game (at 12:30) was on the local NBC affiliate and the replay of qualifying was on NBCSN.

[Haifisch M3]

wow, what a race

[burninator]

Possibly one of the most exciting races in a long time

[BoldUlysses]

+1 that was a doozie of a race.

Bummed for Bottas, but I knew he didn't have a chance when he couldn't clear Vettel in the opening stages of the race. Same thing that happened to Lewis in Australia.

Not altogether dissatisfied with the outcome. If nothing else, if proves Ferrari didn't just get lucky in Australia. They really have the pace. Well, Vettel does at least.

[m3fuz]

T-minus what until Hamilton throws a temper tantrum?

[burninator]

T-minus what until Hamilton throws a temper tantrum?

I thought the same during the race

[RidgeBack]

Possibly one of the most exciting races in a long time

Absolutely!

Pity Sainz went out so soon.

Mid field with Alonso, Palmer and Kvyat was awesome racing.

Merc generator failed on the start grid resulting in bottas' tires having too much pressure resulting in overheating and degradation.

Good win for Ferrari! Excellent drive from Vettel.

Would have been one to remember if Max's brakes hadn't failed.

Great race and very happy with the result except for Bottas. Team telling him to move over and Lewis saying he would hand position back if he couldn't take Vettel... but end of race Lewis keeps the position... what a *BLEEP* move.

[BoldUlysses]

Scathing (but entirely justified) rants from Alonso...... It was like Groundhog Day for him out there---having the same battles lap after lap in the corners, but getting blown away on the straights. The magnitude of Honda's failure over the past 3 years is hard to overstate.

[MagneZium]

Good lord the Sky commentators are annoying idiots. 'Ooh, what if Hamilton passes Vettel' 'Oooh, blue flags should be banned so Hamilton can catch faster cars ahead...'. Even when there's 4 laps left and something like 7 seconds gap, with Hamiltons stupid 'act of trying to look fast' having already burned his tires up meaning he's not even gaining to Vettel who is still just coasting as before, they're still thinking that Hamilton will catch up to Vettel!

What is so hard to understand about the concept that if one driver, after a pitstop, drives at a constant pace, maybe even conserving tires (in case SC for example) they are just as fast as an idiot Hamilton driving like crazy for a few laps, looking really fast for the cameras, and then his tires have give up?

If I was Bottas, even with the tire catastrophe having hindered me, I wouldn't have given way to Hamilton but instead pushed up the pace to absolute maximum for about 5 laps to keep Hammy from catching up in the first place. Even if that would've torched Bottas' tires, it would've been better and looked better since by that point Hammy would've had torched tires too from trying to close the gap to begin with. Then there would've been maybe about 7 laps of a duel to see how much either had destroyed their tires so far, and good luck trying to pass Bottas in the same car with most probably less than 1 sec speed difference (and the more Hamilton burned his tires in Bottas' wake the more he'll lose speed).

This was really a bummer for Bottas, him having been let down by the tires. He would've deserved that 2nd, he probably would've had it even with those problems if the team wouldn't have favoured Hamilton just because of the stupidly, evidently impossible 'challenging of Vettel'.

Shame about Verstappen too, really gutting to be let down by a technical fault. Those points might've been really valuable later in the year.

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Absolutely!

Great race and very happy with the result except for Bottas. Team telling him to move over and Lewis saying he would hand position back if he couldn't take Vettel... but end of race Lewis keeps the position... what a *BLEEP* move.

Well, Lewis thinks that he is entitled to everything, and he genuinely thinks that burning his tires for a few laps while others are driving constantly means that he is faster.

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T-minus what until Hamilton throws a temper tantrum?

Wait until the team doesn't let him past his teammate, and his teammate beats him. That'll be unfair in his book.

[badmonkey]

T-minus what until Hamilton throws a temper tantrum?

One more non-Hamilton win should do it.


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[Yonkers320is]

Good lord the Sky commentators are annoying idiots. 'Ooh, what if Hamilton passes Vettel' 'Oooh, blue flags should be banned so Hamilton can catch faster cars ahead...'. Even when there's 4 laps left and something like 7 seconds gap, with Hamiltons stupid 'act of trying to look fast' having already burned his tires up meaning he's not even gaining to Vettel who is still just coasting as before, they're still thinking that Hamilton will catch up to Vettel!

What is so hard to understand about the concept that if one driver, after a pitstop, drives at a constant pace, maybe even conserving tires (in case SC for example) they are just as fast as an idiot Hamilton driving like crazy for a few laps, looking really fast for the cameras, and then his tires have give up?

If I was Bottas, even with the tire catastrophe having hindered me, I wouldn't have given way to Hamilton but instead pushed up the pace to absolute maximum for about 5 laps to keep Hammy from catching up in the first place. Even if that would've torched Bottas' tires, it would've been better and looked better since by that point Hammy would've had torched tires too from trying to close the gap to begin with. Then there would've been maybe about 7 laps of a duel to see how much either had destroyed their tires so far, and good luck trying to pass Bottas in the same car with most probably less than 1 sec speed difference (and the more Hamilton burned his tires in Bottas' wake the more he'll lose speed).

This was really a bummer for Bottas, him having been let down by the tires. He would've deserved that 2nd, he probably would've had it even with those problems if the team wouldn't have favoured Hamilton just because of the stupidly, evidently impossible 'challenging of Vettel'.

Shame about Verstappen too, really gutting to be let down by a technical fault. Those points might've been really valuable later in the year.

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Well, Lewis thinks that he is entitled to everything, and he genuinely thinks that burning his tires for a few laps while others are driving constantly means that he is faster.

- - - Updated - - -

If I was Bottas, knowing I only have a 1 year contract with Mercedes Benz I wouldn't have let LH thru, would have made it very difficult. Now he is condemned to be the #2 driver, and I don't think he will get #1 status either in another team.....

[badmonkey]

Honda still can't pull it together for testing.. 17 laps.

http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/19185491




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[RidgeBack]

Yeah, I was reading today that they brought a new spec engine for testing, installed it in the car, did 2 laps and it broke.

Honda is an official F1 joke at this point.

[Stuttgart951]

Honda is an official F1 joke at this point.

After checking out some of the "classic" videos on f1.com, the real joke is their deliberate decision to mute the volume of the old engines in said videos...

[m3fuz]

McLaren, which should have kept Mercedes power, should opt out of their Honda deal ASAP. I can't believe Honda had approached Sauber about supplying them next year.

[Stuttgart951]

Did they, really?

"We have some engine upgrades coming!"

-Honda, 2014
-Honda, 2015
-Honda, 2016
-Honda, 2017

[m3fuz]

Did they, really?

"We have some engine upgrades coming!"

-Honda, 2014
-Honda, 2015
-Honda, 2016
-Honda, 2017

Yep:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/128727

[ELVA164]

In all honesty, Honda engines night not be the worst thing for Sauber. They desperately need the money, it would probably help them out significantly if McLaren moved on, and they don't have a ton to lose at this point.

[burninator]

Did they, really?

"We have some engine upgrades coming!"

-Honda, 2015
-Honda, 2016
-Honda, 2017

ftfy

[m3fuz]

In all honesty, Honda engines night not be the worst thing for Sauber. They desperately need the money, it would probably help them out significantly if McLaren moved on, and they don't have a ton to lose at this point.

How does it help them, if they're going to finish dead last or DNF each race though? Sure - you save a few bucks, but you have no chance of improvement at this rate.

[auaq]

They should boycott Honda right now and buy Mercedes engines asap. There is no guarantee the new Honda PU or the MGU-H/K is going to be fixed. Mclaren's chassis is really really good. I could rate them close to RBR. It's sad the Honda is letting them down so bad. Alonso is so least bothered what to say on team radio. He doesn't care anymore now. The amount of shuffling he had to do with Palmer and Kvyat back and forth was incredible. He just doesn't have the power or the speed to maintain his position and, thus, easily getting passed on the main straight.

[RidgeBack]

McLaren has "spoken" with Mercedes and McLaren has zero chance of getting Merc engines this year... and perhaps even next year. Renault isn't interested in supplying them either AFIR.

McLaren is really on the back foot here. They cannot anger Honda too much (Honda supplies IIRC $100 million a year to McLaren) and therefore while McLaren won't say anything publicly they cannot stop Alonso from saying anything. They could, but they won't because:

a) they need Alonso
b) they still need honda (for engines and monies)

Basically, Alonso is the untitled spokesperson for McLaren now.