F1 Racing

[Duncan Glenday]

...
Now, here's the shocker. Stroll had 4 DNFs and 1 DNS (tested positive for the coronavirus). His DNFs were engine failure, tire puncture, hit by Leclerc, and collision damage (i.e. shitty driving today). Including today's DNF, Stroll has an average finish of 7.75. If you include only the races he finished, his average is 6th! That's better than Ricciardo, Leclerc, and Perez whose averages are between 6th and 7th. If he doesn't have anymore bad luck and also keeps his wits about him, Stroll could place as high as 8th or 7th for the season.
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Bear in mind that he has a superior car to the other mid-pack drivers (i.e. the 2019 Mercedes.)

That said - Stroll isn't always bad, and has shown flashes of brilliance at times. But he's too inconsistent, and yesterday's performance was pathetic - IMO.

...
You know I just realized Perez has no DNFs and two DNSs. If it wasn't for covid, he'd have an additional 14-16 points, based on an average finish of 6.4. He's finished in the points every other race and has had four top five finishes.
...

Yep - that's the consistency his team mate (Stroll) lacks!

[Hal...]

Stroll isn't really good enough to drive at this level.

Don't forget, Stroll's only 21.

Now that Hamilton has the record how does he stack up with the greatest of all-time?

Fangio
Senna
Schumacher
Hamilton
Stewart
Clark
Lauda
Prost

Well, he's certainly in the mix, isn't he? He has been for awhile, too. I would also add Ascari, who was a very dominant driver from '47 to '55, won the World Driver's Championship twice, and then lost his life in kind of a freak accident. Otherwise, he might have had more WDCs. He also won Mille Miglia, the 1,000 mile race in Italy for sports cars.

I'd also add Brabham to that list. He was champ 3x while also being a manufacturer. In fact, he holds the distinction of being the only person to ever win the driver's championship driving a car bearing his name. He also helped design the mid-engine car introduced by Cooper. And he finished 2nd in the WDC behind his teammate Denny Hulme. So, as a manufacturer and/or driver, he won 4.

Also, if you're talking greatest driver that has competed in F1, then there are some other names I would include: Moss, Hill, Andretti, and Ickx.

Moss finished 2nd in the WDC 4x in a row ('55-'58) and 3rd, 3x in a row ('59-'61). Back in the day, promoters also used to hold non-WDC F1 races. He finished on the podium in non-WDC races 29x, winning 19x. He finished 2nd at Le Mans (1st in class), and won Sebring and Mille Miglia. He also created the straight arm, hand on top driving style that a lot of drivers adopted in the late '50s and '60s.

Graham Hill won the F1 WDC twice, finished on the podium in non-WDC races 22x (winning six), and won the Indy 500 in '66.

Andretti won the F1 WDC in '78 (12 wins and 19 podiums total), won Indy in '69 (4 podiums total), was season champ in USAC/CART 4x ('65, '66, '69, '84), finished 1st in class at Le Mans (2nd overall; 3 podiums total), won Dayton once (3 entries), and won 12 hours of Sebring, 1000 km of Brands Hatch, 1000 km of Monza, 6 Hours of Daytona, 6 Hours of Watkins Glen, and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Jackie Ickx had 8 wins/25 podiums in F1, finished 2nd in the WDC twice, had 3 wins/4 podiums in non-WDC F1 races, won Paris-Dakar once, and won Le Mans 6 times (finished 2nd 3x).

But I don't like grouping drivers from different eras. The cars were so different in the era of Fangio, Ascari, Moss, Brabham, Clark, Stewart, and Ickx. Hell, even the car Fangio drove was different than Brabham's and Clark's, since Fangio drove a front-engined car and Brabham, Clark, et al drove mid-engined cars. Also, the cars didn't go as fast but they had no down force to speak of, little safety precautions, and with their design, drivers put their lives on the line every race. Even guys like Stewart, Ickx, and Andretti drove cars that were significantly different than Brabham's and Clark's.

And let's not forget that in '96, cars no longer had manual shifters. They've been paddle shifters since. It's apples and oranges.

Those guys from the '50s & '60s had to have had balls of brass and I can't help but see them as a notch above.


Fangio's car in '55:




Clark's Lotus (love this picture):




Brabham's in '66:

[Hal...]

Bear in mind that he has a superior car to the other mid-pack drivers (i.e. the 2019 Mercedes.)

That said - Stroll isn't always bad, and has shown flashes of brilliance at times. But he's too inconsistent, and yesterday's performance was pathetic - IMO.

Yep - that's the consistency his team mate (Stroll) lacks!

I am no champion of Stroll. I guess I'm just pointing out that my lack of esteem for him may be unwarranted. Again, three of his DNFs are not his fault. Yesterday's race was a disaster, we agree on that. But it may be simply due to his age and the fact that he had two DNFs and a DNS in a row (he was over anxious for a good result).

If you look at head to head qualifying, Perez is the clear winner, out qualifying Stroll 7 to 2, and has only failed to get to Q3 once:

Race Austria Styrian Hungary Silverstone Silverstone II Spain Spa Italy Tuscany Russia Eifel Portugal

Perez 6 17 4 DNS DNS 4 8 4 6 4 9 5

Stroll 9 13 3 6 6 5 9 8 7 13 DNS 12

But when you compare finishes, check this out:

Race Austria Styrian Hungary Silverstone Silverstone II Spain Spa Italy Tuscany Russia Eifel Portugal

Perez 6 6 7 DNS DNS 5 10 10 5 4 4 7

Stroll Engine 7 4 9 6 4 9 3 Puncture Punted DNS DNF

Stroll's winning this battle 4 to 2. That is, if you agree it's not fair to criticize him for an engine failure, a puncture that caused a spin, and being punted into the wall by another driver (Leclerc at Russia).

I don't know. I think we may be a little too hard on him.

[NogbadTheBad]

I am no champion of Stroll.

I don't know. I think we may be a little too hard on him.

He's the beneficiary of daddy buying a racing team to be a plaything for his son, slack will not be cut.....

[Duncan Glenday]

I am no champion of Stroll. I guess I'm just pointing out that my lack of esteem for him may be unwarranted. Again, three of his DNFs are not his fault. Yesterday's race was a disaster, we agree on that. But it may be simply due to his age and the fact that he had two DNFs and a DNS in a row (he was over anxious for a good result).

If you look at head to head qualifying, Perez is the clear winner, out qualifying Stroll 7 to 2, and has only failed to get to Q3 once:

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Stroll's winning this battle 4 to 2. That is, if you agree it's not fair to criticize him for an engine failure, a puncture that caused a spin, and being punted into the wall by another driver (Leclerc at Russia).

I don't know. I think we may be a little too hard on him.

Good points.

But then...

He's the beneficiary of daddy buying a racing team to be a plaything for his son, slack will not be cut.....

This ^^^





Kidding - your point about Stroll's abilities are taken.

[Hal...]

He's the beneficiary of daddy buying a racing team to be a plaything for his son, slack will not be cut.....

[Duncan Glenday]

Well that was a heck of a weekend, in so many ways!

[NogbadTheBad]

Qualifying looked nuts, haven't watched the race yet.

[Duncan Glenday]

It's definitely worth watching, Ian. Don't delete the recording.

[Sunlight Caller]

Yes that was a really entertaining and interesting race, and Lewis showed his ability and the gap between himself and Valteri who just couldn’t keep the Merc on the track. He’s always been a different class in the wet though. Perez must surely get a drive next year after that showing too.

[Hal...]

How can you not feel for Stroll? I was actually rooting for him.

Botas proved to me, once again, he can't drive in the rain.

I thought Max looked so immature yesterday. He was brilliantly fast on Sat but on Sun, while running as fast or faster than just about everyone else, his seemed to lack any nuance in throttle control when he got close to someone. So impatient.

I always wondered if inters could be driven to the point they become slicks. Now we know.

I set my alarm to get up early to watch the race but slept through it. Consequently, I didn't get to vote driver of the day. If I had, there was no one more deserving than Lewis. An absolute brilliant drive.

Second best, imo, was Perez, especially considering that Racing Point looked to have set their cars up for a wet race and were fading in the second half. That he's not signed for 2021, yet, is criminal.

And how about McLaren, finishing 5th and 8th? Especially Sainz, who started 13th and finished 5th!


Drivers' Standings show tight battles for 4th, 7th, and 10th:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Hamilton Bottas Max Perez Leclerc Ricciardo Sainz Norris Albon Gasly Stroll

307 197 170 100 97 96 75 74 70 63 59

Constructors' shows a battle for 3rd thru 5th:

1 2 3 4 5 6

Mercedes Red Bull Racing Point McLaren Renault Ferrari

504 240 154 149 136 130

There are only 3 races left and they're all in the dry Middle East; two in Bahrain and one in Abu Dhabi.

The two in Bahrain are the normal track and the outer track, called Sakhir.

Bahrain:


Sakhir:


Anywhoo, this is how I see the rest of the season shaking out:

Barring engine failure, etc, I see Checo holding on to 4th and Danny Ric moving up to 5th. I think the Ferraris will continue to under-perform.

How Sainz, Norris, and Albon do is a crap shoot. McLaren will often perform really well one week and then they're so-so the next (a generalization). The same for Renault. At least, that's how it seems.

That Albon is 9th in the standings says a lot about him. He should be up there with Perez, Leclerc, & Danny Ric.

I think Gasly will finish the season in 11th and Stroll will move up, possibly challenging for 7th. At the very least I think he has a very good chance of finishing 9th. Consider this: he's 15 pts behind Norris in 8th. 5th & 6th place finishes for Stroll vs a 9th and a 10th place finish for Norris and they're tied. That is easily accomplished. Also, recall that I previously pointed out Stroll's 5 DNFs and that only 1 was his fault. Looking at the rest of his finishes, he's finished out of the points only once and has an average finish of 7th. Norris has had 3 DNFs and has finished out of the points 3x. His average, not counting the 3 DNFs, is 8th. Which is right on target since he's finished 8th or lower half the time vs only 4 of 9 times for Stroll. Of course, this all depends on what Albon, Gasly, and Ocon do. Ocon, btw, is 19 pts behind Stroll. I just don't see Gasly & Ocon challenging for positions higher than they already are in.

Albon's the wildcard. He's had one DNF and has finished out of the points 4x! That's unacceptable when driving a car that's considered the best of the rest. As for his DNF, that was at the Eifel GP and was for damage to his radiator. I seem to recall it was due to some sort of driving error, but I could be wrong. Regardless, his average finish for the rest of the races is 8.5th, worse than Norris, and he's had only four top 5 finishes with 1 podium vs Max's 9 podiums. I swear, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko really need to rethink their position and sign Perez. In an inferior car, Perez is 30 pts ahead, with an average finish of 6th, and has never finished outside of the points.

As for the teams, I'm not willing to go out on a limb to pick between Racing Point and McLaren. I do believe, however, they'll finish 3rd & 4th.

I also think Renault will finish ahead of Ferrari if only because Vettel has finished in the points barely over 50% of the time. Actually, Ocon has hardly done any better. He leads him by 7 points. However, yesterday was a bit of a fluke with Vettel finishing 3rd. Otherwise, Ocon has finished ahead of Vettel 7 times and has had twice as many DNFs. So does it come down to Leclerc and Danny Ric? To date, DR has finished ahead of Leclerc 8x. It does say something, tho, that Leclerc has had 3 DNFs to DR's one and is still a point ahead. I'll put my money on DR, tho.

Alright, well, it seems I may be running on and on, now, so I'll leave you with all of this to digest.

[Duncan Glenday]

I'm REALLY looking forward to the Bahrain outer-track race. it promises to be the fastest racing we've ever seen.

I think LeClerc and (particularly) Vettel were also candidates for driver of the day.

You're right about the pink Mercedes being set up for rain, and then struggling when it became drier. Perez held on bravely and deserved the podium that he lost on the very last corners. I hoped Albon would hold his own against Verstappen. He didn't, but drove very well nonetheless. I noticed that the Sky guys were openly talking about the possibility of Perez replacing Albon.

I was impressed by Stroll at first - his driving was very mature. And then - it wasn't.

I think Bottas spun 5 times. Heck, even Latifi doesn't usually spin that much

It's going to be fun watching the Perez / LeClerc / Ricciardo performances in the next few races, considering how very close they are.

And the Sainz Norris race has always been insanely close!

[Hal...]

I'm REALLY looking forward to the Bahrain outer-track race.

I had images of both Bahrain and Sakhir uploaded and I deleted them for some reason (can't remember why) and then forgot to upload them again. When I tried to add them just now, PE wouldn't let me. There are many times I've tried to upload images only for PE to fail. And I've even tried to reduce the file size, thinking that had something to do with it. PE is hinky AF when it comes to adding images, whether I'm uploading them or adding via URL and then "referencing locally". Just now, in fact, I tried to add via URL, "retrieve" and "reference locally" but got the error message that it's an invalid image and yet I was still able to post them without doing that (see below). WTF?

But, yes, Sakhir looks like a very fast track.

[Hal...]

Bahrain:




Sakhir:

[Duncan Glenday]

I had images of both Bahrain and Sakhir uploaded and I deleted them for some reason (can't remember why) and then forgot to upload them again. When I tried to add them just now, PE wouldn't let me. There are many times I've tried to upload images only for PE to fail. And I've even tried to reduce the file size, thinking that had something to do with it. PE is hinky AF when it comes to adding images, whether I'm uploading them or adding via URL and then "referencing locally". Just now, in fact, I tried to add via URL, "retrieve" and "reference locally" but got the error message that it's an invalid image and yet I was still able to post them without doing that (see below). WTF?

But, yes, Sakhir looks like a very fast track.

Every time there's a race, I make a full-screen-sized image, with corner numbers, which I display on my laptop while watching the race on TV.

Here's Turkey. (Image uploaded to PE. Click to enlarge.)

F1 - Turkey.jpg

And here's the image linked from the Formula1.com site:








Give me some examples of images that wouldn't load on PE. I know someone who might be able to take a look

[Hal...]

This was the original image I had d/l'd and then u/l'd to PE: https://www.formula1.com/content/dam...tina/image.png

That's not entirely accurate. I actually did a screenshot of the image with it slightly cropped due to its large size. I then reduced the size it so it wouldn't look that large on PE. No problem. For some reason, I removed the images out of my post (I don't remember why but it seemed like a good idea at the time) intending to re-upload them. I forgot to add them back in. I saved the post and saw my mistake. Tried to upload them again and no dice.

I know there's a size limit on images. I know it's much less than 100 Kb but can't remember what. Seems to me that oftentimes, that region between PE's limit and 100 Kb makes a big difference in quality. Is there a way to increase the limit to 100 Kb?

[Hal...]

When I try to upload an image but fail, I keep getting this error message:

IOErrorEvent type="ioError" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text="Error #2038"

I thought the reason was either format or size. I changed the image from png to jpg (forgetting pngs are ok) with no luck. And just now, I saved an image in 8 bit png giving me a size of 36 Kb and couldn't upload it. I know for a fact I've uploaded files larger than that.

And when I try to add via URL but reference locally, I get an "invalid URL" error message. This image, btw, is the same one but uploaded to Flickr, which I use all the time for group messages.

Here's the image but added via URL only:




In most cases, it doesn't matter because I can upload the image to Flickr, which actually gives me a little more flexibility in picking a smaller size/resolution so that the image doesn't fill the screen. But sometimes, I'd like to upload an image so people have to click the small preview to see the larger image.

[Duncan Glenday]

When I try to upload an image but fail, I keep getting this error message:

IOErrorEvent type="ioError" bubbles=false cancelable=false eventPhase=2 text="Error #2038"

Wow - I've never seen that error here.

That's an Apache error, from deep in the bowels of your (or our) web server's software.

Were you just uploading a regular file, from a regular PC..? And do you see that error often?

As you see from above, I had no problems uploading an image file from my PC. Took all of 5 seconds.

[Hal...]

Wow - I've never seen that error here.

If there is any kind of a flaw in a system, I will find it. And 99% of the time by accident.

I'm not proud of this - tho I do find it amusing - but I once locked myself in a gas station restroom.

Were you just uploading a regular file, from a regular PC..? And do you see that error often?

Yes and pretty regularly. Couldn't give you an estimate on % but I'd say it's definitely over 50.

I've uploaded images before, too, but it doesn't always work and I can't figure out what the issue is.

Is there a max to the file size of images or any limit on bit depth?

[Duncan Glenday]

Max file size is 2k for most file types, though I created an override for JPG file types, and allowed 10k - with no specific limit to height and width.

[Hal...]

Max file size is 2k for most file types, though I created an override for JPG file types, and allowed 10k - with no specific limit to height and width.

Are you sure it's 10k for jpgs? I downloaded the Turkish track image and it's 58k.

[Duncan Glenday]

Are you sure it's 10k for jpgs? I downloaded the Turkish track image and it's 58k.

My mistake - I missed a "0".

It's 100k.

From the setup system:

PE Attachs.jpg

[Hal...]

Good to know. Thanks.

[Sunlight Caller]

Scenes from a previous age of motor sport today, and unbelievably and thankfully he walked away. What a testament to the safety measures introduced over the years.

[Hal...]

Most definitely. I suspect that without the halo, Grosjean would have been decapitated.

BTW, he was mostly okay so why TF didn't they show the in-car replay to its conclusion?

I've noticed, lately, that with accidents and injuries in sporting events, they're either not showing the replay or waiting to do so. I don't have a problem with that when someone's leg gets broken or their knee is hyperextended, but the in-car footage of Grosjean's accident would have probably cut out at about the time he hit the barrier anyway; or shortly thereafter. I wanted to see how he went through the barrier, etc.