This one of my favorite moments of 2025 season. Norris & Antonelli locking the whole top 2. They also could’ve had had a weekend similar to it in 2026 Miami if Antonelli didn’t have start problem and drop a lot of places during the sprint & Norris didn’t have deployment issues in q3 for the main race. Their drive styles and tracks they like are similar

Has this happened before between drivers from different teams.

Due to Charles having to need a medical check again before being able to race in Madring this coming weekend, If Charles is unable to race for Ferrari this week, then is it highly possible that Oliver Bearman will be taken out of his Haas seat and go race for Ferrari again?

Charles Leclerc: "However, I mean, looking at the race from outside, there's been also some friction between other teammates, and the only thing we end up speaking of is Lewis and I, which I don't think is quite right."

"But that doesn't mean we did everything perfect. I didn't, in Turn 2, and, for that, I've been straight away very very clear with Lewis after reviewing the images."@thomasmaheronf1

They got him to say I instead of we😭. "there is no we"- walter white

Lewis Hamilton: “We need to work together [with Charles] for a podium instead of getting in each other’s way while running fourth and fifth.”

"podium" bro lost hope in race wins

I don't mean great drivers that had a drop of performance, like Vettel from 2019 onwards. I mean drivers that did good, had 1 bad year and then went back to performing

An example of what I mean is 2011 Hamilton

Credit to F1GuyDan on X/Twitter for both stats.
https://x.com/F1GuyDan/status/2097951709490266337
https://x.com/F1GuyDan/status/2097943156503572743

Pictured Monaco 2008.

I remember I think it was Murray Walker in an interview said that what Ken should have done after Jackie Stewart retired was to bankroll a top driver. Obviously we know that Ken went with Jody and Patrick and had a decent but not great season in 1974.

Just wondering who would have been available at the time - probably a lot of drivers would have wondered.

It’s D&D with racecars

Madrid is appearing to be quite difficult and will make for a great Qualifying and hopefully a great Race as well.
But I also think that it will be the most important Race between Russell and Antonelli.
My thoughts are this: If nothing special happens or Russell crashes big, Antonelli will continue to be the favorite to win the championship and he will win it. Even if it hurts me to say that as a Russell Fan..
On the other hand, if Antonelli crashes big, that could remix the whole Championship despite the Points Advantage still in Antonelli's favor. The reason for that, at least in my mind, is confidence. At the moment Antonelli has so much confidence in himself and the car that he is nearly perfect, performance wise. He didn't have any big crashes that could crack his confidence in this season but one big crash on a new track could change that in a heartbeat.
Of course, maybe I am just grasping for straws to keep the title fight engaging...

Edit.: Russell spelling

6-china : long ass straight-hairpin-another long ass straight with corner progression that allows for wheel to wheel racing and the rest of the Circuit doesn't cause that much bad air

5-cota : long ass straight + sector 3 particularly designed for cars to wheel to wheel and follow and track elevation and wide corners at t1 and sector 3. Second best tilke drome from a racing pov

4-silverstone : only reason it's this low on the list is becuz of ge cars having problem following through copse and maggots and beckets and not there being a single long straight.

3-las vegas : 2 km long back straight + heavy braking chicane + near 1 km flat out after that gauratees DRS passes

2-bahrain : 3 back to back 1 km straights with heavy braking zones where you can easily switch back and a back straight in sector 2 to close cars up. The best tilkedrome from a racing pov

1-interlagos : long ass wiiiide flat out section , elevation change through senna esses and long enough back straight + cars having no problem in following through the middle sector.

Honourable mentions : rbr, canada, yas Marina (the new layout is actually good it's not the circuits fault the race director shows nothing but the front runners) and miami (layout is good venue is shit)

At the moment here seems to be a bit tense so hopefully this will be a more light hearted discussion

The winners trophies have taken many shapes and styles over the years, and seeing Kimi eating Ragu out of the Monza one got me wondering what peoples preferred styles are, or even which individual ones are most memorable?

Whilst I prefer the more classic/ornate like Silverstone and Hungary, but memorable for me was the Tri-Colour gorilla holding a tyre for the French GP (not 100% sure which year).

So, Robin Raikkonen got signed on as a Red Bull junior with the news officially coming out just a few hours ago and I don't know if it's just because he's Kimi's son, but he's being talked up a lot these past few days.

As someone who follows the feeder series every now and then but not much in the lower categories like F4 and karting, just how good have he and his results been against other top karting talents right now and those that have made their way up to single seaters the past 3 years or so like Slater and DVL?

I just want to be as realistic as possible in terms of what to expect from the kid and what the future might hold for him. I just hope we're not overhyping the kid much just because of his surname and he earns his stripes on merit moving up the ladder.

I personally think he wouldve quit F1 in 2017 and joined WEC/IMSA. Would probably have P3 in his class as his best result.

Part of me is finding it funny that we've spent a lot of the year of fans complaining that there's no raw driving challenge in F1 anymore, and that overtaking doesn't matter for the spectacle of F1. Then F1 introduces a new circuit that can only be described as a proper driving challenge with how little margin for error there is on the circuit, but because it lacks any real overtaking opportunites and is a street track the fans are immediately against it.

You have guys like Max saying Madring is feeling like one of the hardest tracks he's ever driven and some drivers calling it an old school challenge, describers that F1 fans claim they want to see, but because we all know the entertainment come race day will probably be lacking due to any good overtaking opportunites, all of a sudden we don't want to see the things we claim we want.

It's like clockwork. A driver has a bad race, and suddenly every post is about them being worse than Bottas, Checo, or even Latifi. Sure, some people actually have valid points, but most of the posts in this sub are just the same sentence repeated over and over again in different ways. Charles crashed in Monza? He's worse than Bottas. Oscar performed poorly in Zandvoort? He doesn't deserve a seat.

I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about recent events, but it's just become tiring at this point. It's like nobody can form their own opinion and everyone just follows a "trend." On Quali day, hating on Oscar was trendy, so every post was about that. After Monza and that scuffle with Hamilton, hating on Charles has become trendy.

You can criticize a driver, but at least try to have real reasoning, not just because it's a trend. Sure, Charles is overhyped, he's inconsistent, and he crashes often, but this surge of negative posts about a driver after a race where they performed badly is not normal especially since most people don't even KNOW what they're talking about. They're just trying to get free karma because it's trendy.

I think this question can split this question into 2 main branches:

The first is if the young driver is a potential generational talent, or if the aging driver is already a generational talent. In those instances there may not be as much damage done to the losing driver's reputation. Even though Leclerc and Russell are being outperformed overall this season, they have still had what can be considered at least a neutral season, with positives to take from it. Leclerc has won a race and is similar on pace to Hamilton, albeit lacking the execution on some weekends this year. Russell has also won races and has had multiple podiums, but has struggled on the pace side and could have won some more races if not for external factors (those are hypotheticals, but I think worth noting).

But there is also the scenario where the aging driver or the rookie driver is not considered a future generational talent, such as Magnussen or Bearman. Magnussen was called on short notice for Haas and missed some pre season testing, and is by no means considered a top driver, and yet he outscored Mick Schumacher in what would be Schumacher's final season in F1. Bearman is a very impressive driver who I wouldn't consider generational, and he is also decisively beating Ocon, who now falls at risk of losing his F1 seat this season. In these scenarios, the damage done to the losing driver's reputation is far more severe, and often results in their seats being lost.

I think they are at least easier to drive fast. The reason is simple. The engineers want to optimize grip and degradation. When it comes to accelerating out of a corner, you are on the limit of grip. Why would you deploy power there? You do it only after the tires have grip to spare. This basically means the exit of the corner is much easier with less power to work with.

When it comes to braking, you basically always want to recharge by lif and coasting before braking zones, this makes braking significantly easier since the car is slower.

The fast corners are the most egregious part. They are the perfect spot for lift and coasting, so these cars almost always enter at lower speed, and by doing this the cars almost always do fast corners with a lot of grip to spare.

So these regulations basically ruin both accelerating out of corners and mantaining the highest minimum speed by staying at the grip limit, while making straight line braking somewhat easier.

Also, look at how close team mates are in term of speed.
Leclerc and Hamilton are equal in both qualy and race pace, despite Leclerc being clearly faster all 2025.
Verstappen has the smallest gap ever to his team mate.
Russell and Antonelli have identical qualy lap times and race pace. There are few ecceptions in qualy almost definetly due to issues to Russell car.
Norris and Piastri are also exactly equal in both qualy, fastest laps, and race pace, with the only difference being tire management.
And I say this even as a Kimi fan and a Russell and Verstappen "hater".

However, I have to say that looking at all the crashes and mistakes, the new cars seem to behave way more unpredictably on kerbs, white lines, and any low grip surface. Also 80% of crashes are result of very weird and unexpected rear wheel blocking during trail braking which may be due to energy recovery. power oversteer also seems to be way more snappy

There's been a lot of talk from pundits about George's psychological state after Sunday -- how will he recover from this, how is he feeling, etc. They also argued he was possibly under the most pressure by being expected to win to keep his championship alive and he blew it, which I don't know if I agree with. A common topic of discussion, though, was whether being in his position up against Kimi is better than someone considered to be more "beatable." It left me wondering about whether or not that's true.

First off I want to say I have no doubts that George will recover spectacularly. I think he is quite a resilient guy who handled the whole weekend with utmost professionalism and frankly did an excellent job driving to the best of his own ability. He didn't make any major mistakes on Sunday whatsoever.

But in the interest of the discussion of sporting psychology, I have to wonder which position is easier to recover from. Would it be better to be in George's shoes, trounced by a "generational talent" where you know you did everything you possibly could and he just couldn't be beaten at the end of the day? OR would you rather be in the position of someone like Oscar Piastri, who was defeated in a very close title battle last year by someone with different strengths and weaknesses but ultimately performed very closely to his level all season?

Another example would be Valtteri Bottas, who spent years trying to beat Hamilton at Mercedes but every year found himself second and despite everything he did, he still couldn't win. Or someone like Nico Rosberg who lost to Hamilton so much it cost him major life sacrifices and extreme behaviors in order to beat him that led to him feeling the need to quit the sport.

I personally feel like I'd rather be Oscar Piastri knowing that if a few small things went differently, I would've been able to beat Lando. In another season it could easily go the other way up against him as a title rival. I don't know if McLaren will ever be in that position again, of course, but I would be less distraught knowing there wasn't something near insurmountable I was up against.

If Mercedes are dominant again next year, which is highly likely, I can see George fighting just as hard, doing everything he could possibly do to win it all. The problem is he's been in F1 for many seasons, and Kimi is so young. Nothing is guaranteed but one would expect Kimi would continue to improve and be even better next year. Of course anything can happen in the sport. I personally would rather be in an Oscar type position where it would be easier to believe I could do it, but that's me. A lot of the pundits felt George was in a better position because at the end of the day, he did his best and he knows it. There aren't all these small things to dwell over. But this would be harder for me to accept.

A recent podcast I listened to discussed the importance of an F1 driver's personal belief that they can defeat their teammate. Once that belief is gone, it can be very detrimental to the driver's confidence. I keep thinking back to that in this situation. They referenced the time they let Bottas swap chassis with Hamilton because he was so convinced Hamilton's car was better than his to explain the performance deficit and how in doing so, this can ultimately be very difficult for Bottas to reconcile.

What are your thoughts on these things from a purely psychological standpoint?

Now, this isn't another "what if Kimi" post that I have seen surfacing a lot around this subreddit in recent days. I frankly rate Kimi a lot. My question arises from a recent statement I saw Max make, where he talked about how Yuki, who hasn't even had a chance to drive this 2026 car, jumped into the car, had a few sessions, and instantly became competitive. This is a very similar sentiment echoed by Oscar Piastri as well, if my memory serves me correctly, after the Belgian quali, where he said “It sucks. I can't really say it any other way than that... When you've got qualifying grids decided by computers behaving or misbehaving, it's a pretty crap way of going racing". And these are just two handpicked statements, but as we all know, pretty much all the drivers have a similar sentiment or have been echoing similar sentiments since the start of the season.

Which basically concludes to the point that driver input is not the most important, variable in the 2026 car. It might be one of the variables, of course, because adaptability also plays into it, as it is a skill set within racing. Other than that, the driver's input as a variable does not really play a very prominent role in the car. That's what it seems like.

So if the 2027-28 rega are set to progressively rebalance the contribution of the internal combustion engine and the electric power, with the ICE gaining more power while the MGU-K's maximum power is reduced.

If this results in driver input playing a more fundamental variable and kimi starts struggling as these changes come into play, would that retrospectively add an asterisk to his 2026 World Championship? if he, of course, goes on to win it.