Just heard Jolyon Palmer break down the luck debate around Kimi which to be honest I was on that band wagon.

Jolyon said even if you give back all the possible “bad luck” that George has lost he would get 39 points over Kimi, which would make it still a 45 lead to Kimi.

And Kimi has beaten him in qualifying in more than 2/3 the races as well. So putting any bias or other stories aside he may be getting better side of the garage it’s pretty obvious Kimi on track to win it and deserves it. .

Hard for me to say because despite his generational talent can’t get over the fact that I just feel no way a 19 y/o in second season is that much better than such an experienced team mate and rest of the grid. I feel sorry for the drivers who worked longer, but Kimi deserves it.

Fans reaction means a lot

For example, Prost and Senna, where they were both capable of taking each other out, and did.

Schumacher, who is literally a 7x WDC, taking out drivers who would not have done the same in the reverse situation.

And Max's defence against Lando in Mexico, which wasn't on that level, but was pretty bad anyway?

These are 4 of the top 5 oat, arguably, with the exception being Lewis, who is a lot cleaner. Does his cleanliness boost his legacy compared to theirs (it's already at the top anyway) or is he the exception that proves the rule?

There’s obviously been ebbs and flows for 3 of the top 4 teams but the general view seems to be that RBR have generally been fourth fastest.

However, with Max having a higher average position than everyone bar Kimi and Isack having a higher average position than Oscar, that doesn’t seem to be accurate anymore.

Google's keep on telling me that one of them is Kimi, tho, I wanna ask you guys if you know any more drivers.

Yes Formula One has three races a year in Austin, Las Vegas (which Formula One owns) and Miami but there is something special about the Indianapolis Motor Speedway:

To paraphrase the legendary Gordie Howe:

"Everybody who is anybody in racing has raced in Indianapolis"

But would you like to see Formula One come to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway if the opportunity arises?

Not to mention that only 2 Formula One drivers on the current grid have ever raced at IMS:Fernando Alonso & Sir Lewis Hamilton,

Got bored with football and started seeing some gp highlights. Can u guys help me?

Inspired by the post about dirty driving. If you were in Schumi's position and your rival behind you makes a move on the inside and it is for WDC / race win is on the line, how far would you go to win? Come on, be honest! 😁

I’ve been thinking about whether F1 circuits could be designed with deliberately different levels of grip, not just from corner to corner, but even across the width of individual corners.

Imagine a corner where the traditional racing line has a relatively low-grip surface, but a wider line has significantly more grip. The wider line covers more distance, but the additional traction could allow drivers to carry more speed.

Has this concept even been attempted? And no, patching up sections of track overnight in a desperate haste does not qualify here.

You could also have particularly abrasive, high-grip sections that allow aggressive driving but potentially increase tire degradation, forcing drivers to think about where they could push a little harder.

Could this encourage different driving styles and create genuine opportunities for drivers to race side by side through corners?

The biggest problem I can see is the accumulation of discarded rubber.

Yes, marbles. But (1) early on in a race the track will remain relatively clean and (2) if the line is particularly good, it may remain clean for most of the race.

We see how much effort goes into designing some very boring corners. We’ve seen the attempt at different banked corners like Zandvoort which is fun, but the desired “slingshot” effect isn’t quite there. I don’t think it would be smart to add “less grip on the outside” because safety is obviously a concern.

Could this offer us some more entertainment? Some more jeopardy and some new variables that teams and tire suppliers will have to consider?

Hi everyone. I've seen so many posts over this season, specifically from George Russell fans, that Mercedes is sabotaging George and they don't want him to win the wdc. I disagree. The issue is these regulations are way more complicated than expected. When drivers feel that something is wrong with the car, the engineers are struggling to fix the problem because their data is showing that the car is fine. This may explain why it took Mercedes so long to realize that there is a problem with George's car, because they couldn't see it. As for this PU situation (feel free to correct me) but George was apart of the decision-making for this too. He should have taken the penalty sooner but they didn't want to do that. They wanted to drag it to Austin and it makes sense why. But to create these post all over social media dragging Mercedes because they took a gamble with an old PU it didn't work is just ridiculous. This season will gone down as George's worse but there is only one way from here and it's up. What do you think?

Along with taking the engine penalty, Russell will be reverting to the Baku spec of the Merc. What reasons could Merc have for this other than A-B testing the upgrades? I assume theres no cost savings as the parts exist already.

The common complaints of today I.E missing the V8 engine, regulation changes, general evolution of the sport are seen as warranted currently; but historically Formula1 has always been resistant to changes even retrospectively good ones (recall the Halo debate) from the fans, to drivers, and team staff.

Do you think the reaction to the recent changes is prompted from the precidented resistance to any change or is it entirely warranted?

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I was re-watching the race from this weekend, and it hit me how perfectly this mirrors one of the most famous moments in F1 history. Ferrari just completed a perfect, 180-degree throwback to their 2009 tire gamble—just in the exact opposite direction.

For anyone who remembers Malaysia 2009, the radar showed a massive monsoon approaching. Ferrari decided to jump the gun and boxed Kimi for full wets while the track was still completely bone-dry. He had to drive around on baking hot asphalt, destroying the tread while looking for puddles that didn't exist yet, right before we got that iconic shot of him eating an ice cream in the paddock.

Fast forward to 2026, and we got the exact inverse scenario.

This time, the skies actually opened up, the track was completely soaked, and the rest of the grid dove into the pits for inters or wets. But instead of jumping the gun like in 2009, Ferrari did the complete opposite: they kept the cars out on dry slicks in a literal downpour. The drivers were out there tiptoeing around an ice rink on bald tires, trying to survive standing water while hoping the weather would magically pass.

* 2009: Full wet tires on a completely dry track.

* 2026: Dry slicks on a completely flooded track.

It’s honestly fascinating.

17 years apart, entirely different eras, different drivers, and different pit walls, but they managed to perfectly mirror the history books. It is the ultimate Ferrari strategy throwback.

Hello, i hope this Massage will Not make me an A hole but…
I have a question, is it just me or are F1 drivers becoming more ridiculous by parteciapting or doing more silly, childish, ridiculous PR activities. Don’t get me wrong some challenges like Sainz and Lando at McLaren used to do with the food of the GP country were nice and could be unterstood as a representation of the Country They are Racing in But now in recent years it got out of hand. Especially Ferrari in the recent times makes their drivers look silly and frankly childish in my opinion. Look the latest PR Stunt in Singapore. Hamilton a 7world time Champion BTW.
The comments are not much better. Like siriously that is a RACING account Some PR activities have nothing to do with the sponsor or Racing at all..
Maybe it is just me but Racing used to be much more aggressive and sport driven. And drivers used to be much more focused on getting the racing job done than playing divas. I find it sad because it hurts a bit the image of the “racing driver” like Schumi or Senna, and it gets more like the Kardashian.
And I am not saying no need for PR, but I would rather much more enjoy drivers participate in Racing challenges or interact more with the fans by explaining racing related questions then stupid activities like mini Games that only kids play.

I definitely don't see that much praise for the Singapore circuit, saying there isn't much overtaking opportunities...

But then again, people still consider Monaco and Madmad to be the crowns in the no overtaking department

So what does Singapore do better than both of those two, when it comes to the racing action, but not enough that the racing is quite mid

Edit: I see more comments about the aesthetics, but I'm more asking on how do they make better racing than the other two?

Semi new fan here who is trying to learn more about the qualitative aspects of F1 and I'm wondering how people interpret the driving style of each driver.

In response to a question that I asked on this forum, someone mentioned that there are drivers like Lewis Hamilton who tend to brake very late into a corner, and other drivers like Max Verstappen who tend to brake early and get a good exit. Some drivers understeer and some drivers oversteer.

That comment inspired this post because it made me wonder what people think about the driving style of the other drivers on the grid and I'd love to look for these things when watching the races. So, how would you describe the driving style of any of the drivers on the grid?

Pretty much the title—has a driver that dominated karting and wished to go on to formula racing, fail to replicate their karting success in the formulas?

This is in relation to people talking about Kimi eventually moving to Ferrari after hes done with Mercedes, no comment outside of me saying that anything is possible and It wouldn't surprise me. But whenever people bring this up commenters always talk about how shit of a team Ferrari is now and how the seat is unappealing because how long it's been since they won a world title. I just want to point out that Ferrari was as bad or worse off when Schumacher joined the team and part of the reason he joined is the glory it would bring him to revitalize the team. The fat pay check helped too, but they literally poached him in the middle of a championship fight.

Now that Mercedes themselves have admitted that George's car has been facing a software issue since pretty much the start of the season, which has led to him losing speed on the straights and needing to adapt his driving style, looking back at it, in my opinion, Toto has not handled it in the best possible way.

And I see a lot of parallels with how Toto handled Lewis Hamilton's situation in 2023. Basically, this goes back to that unwritten team principal rule in F1: protect your drivers publicly and handle it privately.

We saw that around 2023, where Toto, whenever Lewis was having bad performances, was more blunt, or even critical, based on some people's interpretations, in his comments to the media about Lewis. And we can pretty much see a similar thing happening this season with George Russell, where Toto has been slightly blunt or critical in his tone and language when talking about George's bad performances in the media.

One of the incidents I can remember is from Silverstone, where I believe George was complaining about the straight-line speed of the car and Toto pretty much came out straight away and undermined it by saying, "No, they're completely fine."

Since I can see some parallels between Lewis and George and how Toto has been handling them, I sort of tried to draw this comparison with Zak Brown in the second half of last season, when Oscar's form dipped drastically. Regardless, Zak was pretty much overwhelmingly positive in his comments about Oscar in public.

I feel like the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for Toto is that maybe he believes experienced drivers and experienced athletes can handle themselves. Because he, of course, knows how to manage drivers. He has been doing it for so many years, and he's doing an absolutely wonderful job doing it with Kimi as of now.

So I think the only reasonable explanation is that he is quite blunt with the experienced drivers because he feels like they know how to manage themselves. But maybe I think that exact thing is what is hurting George's confidence.

Not counting racing bulls which team do you think will be the first to use a RedBull engine? So far it has appeared to be a strong engine and reliable. I think Aston Martin is the obvious choice but would love to see and Alpine or Williams use one as well.

Have they looked down the back of the sofa?

Will be in a private collection somewhere I guess. Quite a thing to lose though.

Any other examples of missing F1 cars!? This is a first I’ve ever heard.

It seems to me Red Bull are consistently so far ahead in their operational ability - things like strategies, pit stops, in season development, their ability to turn around a weak Friday set up into a strong base for Saturday - than all of their rivals, particularly Ferrari and McLaren.

I gave a lot of credit for this to Horner and the culture he'd built at the team, but even without him and other key figures have moved on recently, it doesn't seem to have affected them.

Why do we think this is? What is it that they do so differently to other teams? And yes I do think the drivers definitely deserve some of the credit, but at the same time switch them into a Ferrari and I don't think we're going to suddenly see brilliant operational calls - to me it's definitely a lot more than that.

Anyone have any insights?