Topic: Motosport General discussion tread --- Formula1, MotoGP, WTCC, ETCC, DTM..... - page 104. (Read 137641 times)

I have not heard anything about Max retiring from F1 as that would be stupid from him right now,we have Nico Rosberg who retired as soon as he became World Champion in 2016 and that was a senseless move in my opinion.Max said to the team when he won his first title in 2021 in that team radio message,"let's do this for another ten years" so I highly doubt that Max will retire.Even if management at Redbull changes that would mean nothing for Max as he would be still racing with them,he is now in the best moment of his career and quitting now makes absolutely no sense.

I don't think there'll be another dominant car again like what Red Bull  has currently. Come 2024, a lot of things will change, so Red Bull better secure all the help he could and top every record that has been created if Max ever wants his legacy to be sealed in F1. Also, he's been planning to retire soon, so Max should go out with a bang.

Every race gets more boring than the previous one lately. I'm really fed up with Verstappen's high dominance. I had the same feelings in Hamilton's era also of course. I just don't like the domination of only one team and one driver in this sport. Therefore in the recent years there is only one season that I really liked a lot.

It is the 2021 season obviously. Because I just loved that high level rivalry between Hamilton and Verstappen. We were watching incredible races in that season. There were really sensational accidents between the two also. They even had the same points before the last race of the season.

I really have no idea about when we would have such rivalry for the title again.

Even despite starting from 6th place, winning race still was so easy for him. While Perez who got criticised a lot delivered confident 2nd place. After all, he is 2nd in championship, leading by 40 points against 3rd place. I'm not sure that Ricciardo in place of him would do much better.
In general, race today didn't disappointed, there was some nice overtakes. And now we are getting into 1 month summer break.

Another race where there was no competition has been completed, it was won by Max Verstappen, with Perez finishing in second place with the same car
I had predicted Max as the leader after 4 laps, but he took it easy. As Hamilton said a few months ago, this is the most dominant car ever in Formula 1 history, and they will break all the records

I have to say its definitely a different thing to see Max being so good that not only he beats everyone and gets ahead, he doesn't break a sweat about beating his own teammate, Perez has red bull too but it looks as if they are different cars. I know everyone keeps saying that Red Bull has the best car but I am starting to doubt that because it looked as if Max has the best car. Norris and Mclaren didn't finish the way they would have liked to, they improved so much recently and yet in the end we have seen them not be that good this week, Piastri having some rookie bad luck, and Norris not being able to recover from unlucky situations. All in all, it was a decent race, can say I had fun.

Even though I'm rooting for Verstappen, it's been an extremely boring season, unfortunately, and this race is one of them. If there were equal cars and limited setup space like in formula 2, we would have much more fun races and seasons, but that's against the nature of this sport. So this dominance is the reality of formula 1. Teams with good engineers and good strategy dominate. Redbull is dominating these years, before there was mercedes, before there was ferrari. There will be other teams in the coming years, there is no avoiding it. Verstappen took his 10th win in 12 races. I expect him to win all the remaining races this season.

Looking at the number of incidents Carlos Sainz has caused by being a dumb guy not checking his mirrors in critical situations I wonder why should Ferrari or any other team want a driver like him.He crashed into Piastri without looking at all who was side to side with him as they were in the first corner and caused havoc there.

The race though is becoming interesting,Perez first and Verstappen next to him while we wait 10-15 minutes where rain is expected and will most likely make the race more beautiful and more unpredictable than it already is.Finally we are seeing a good race in the SPA as this track is legendary and I don't expect any other thing.Verstappen just got the lead,it will be boring again  .

It didn't take me a long time to start watching a boring race. Because Verstappen has overtaken everyone in not a long time and he is closing in on Perez to take the lead slowly. Leclerc couldn't defend his place against Perez much just as I expected. On that long straight after leaving the first a few turns behind it was easy for Perez to overtake him.

Piastri was really unlucky that he was out of the race a short time after the start. Because there was a chaos at the end of the start straight. Sainz and Piastri touched and both cars took damage. Sainz is still continuing maybe but he is far behind in the standings right now.

I would strongly agree with this,the spectacle would be back in F1,it is a shame that just 2 years from now we just waited 4 hours in the rain in Belgium and just ran 2 laps under Safety Car and the race ended.Today after one hour the race stars again and most likely we will see a delayed start because of rain being present so far in the track,I hope it ends the rain at least until we start the race and then the rain can come on and be welcome again on the track so we can see a super beautiful race,from what we saw from yesterday it won't be that easy for Verstappen if we start under the rain.

Next week MotoGP will return to Britain, whose circuit is Silverstone. But yesterday and today I had the opportunity to watch the WSBK Czech Republic with a very good level of tension where now the race is even more exciting after Ducati had to cut their engine RPM. And other manufacturers like Kawasaki get a slight increase in terms of their RPM according to the regulations and rules from Dorna.

Yesterday Jonathan Rea won Race1 which was followed by Toprak in second and Alvaro Bautista in 12th and Toprak also won SPRace today which was completed by Jonathan Rea in second and Alvaro Bautista in third. Now the point distance from Alvaro Bautista himself is getting closer to Toprak so this will make the competition for the title very fierce for the rest of the season because Toprak will continue to try to catch up on points by being on the top podium. Let's watch the Czech Republic WSBK Race2 which will take place soon.

Formula 1 with FIA is trying to find a solution to the water spray issue generated by wet tires at high speed.
They are discussing the possibility of adding a tool similar to fenders, which would allow us to see again races on wet tires, rather than just races on intermediate tires.

Piastri is a big talent.He is extremely fast in the single lap and he clearly lacks experience during the race which cannot be acquired otherwise except to race as much as he can,he is in his 12th race and he lacks that aggressiveness that Verstappen has had more than needed as when he was a rookie he crashed against many other drivers,Piastri is very calm and sometimes more than he should,McLaren has clearly improved a lot and I predict for Piastri to be in the podium in the race of tomorrow,he had the better pace compared to many other drivers.

Piastri has started to be really impressive lately. Today he did even much better by taking the 2nd place in sprint shootout. He managed to keep his position at the end of the sprint race also. He even had an opportunity to take the lead a short time after it started but it was really hard to defend his place against Verstappen later of course.

Still seeing him above Norris in this area in the standings really deserves to be appreciated. He will start ahead of Norris to the race tomorrow also. I would like to see both McLaren drivers having a good finish in this race despite heavy conditions.

Because it is very likely to rain tomorrow during the race also. I hope Ferrari have a decent race this time but I don't believe in them fully of course.

Norris has been doing great drives in his previous race. It'll take some time for him to be aggressive and take those early spots like what Max is trying to do to get that huge gap between him and P2. I think McLaren's recent upgrade with the car is good enough to beat Red Bull in a fine day, although that remains to be seen of course. But based on what we're seeing on the previous races, I think McLaren has a pretty good shot in snatching P1 against Verstappen every now and then. At least the competition isn't as boring as it was before.

Mclaren seems like the only one who can catch him for the time being but that's not even that easy, it takes time for them to get used to the car they have, it is not easy to improve the car and expect the driver to be good right away, their car is even better than what we have seen so far, but the drivers will get to feel it and get used to it a bit.

I think they have a chance to catch up to him, but it is not going to be easy because Max has  the best car (I assume but also Perez makes it look like they don't) and Norris is not as good of a driver as Max if you ask me, that's why I think it is going to be pretty difficult to catch him and then pass him. Max will probably win every race left, that's going to be pretty obvious.

I have zero doubt about Verstappen to win the race comfortably. It wouldn't take him much time to take the lead and have a safe time gap with the others. However Q2 was still quite interesting. Verstappen was nearly staying out of top 10. He finished it just in the 10th position. But he made up for that really great by finishing as the 1st.

I really admired Perez's effort in the qualifying. Because recently we haven't seen him performing this good mostly. There was some progress previously and he improved it even more here. Despite the poor weather condition he was still able to finish in upper positions. He is starting the race right behind Leclerc so I wonder if he can take the lead by overtaking him on the start straight already.

It was topped by Verstappen and today we have the Sprint which I have no doubt at all that it will be dominated by Redbull again.Unfortunately the Redbull upgrades proved to be working well in this kind of long technical track,the opposite of Hungary where did not see a big dominance from Redbull overall,in here the dominance will be more extreme because of the long track and as such the difference with the other teams will be bigger than in Hungary.The fact that Verstappen was almost 1 second faster per lap than the direct contender says a lot about the developments of this upcoming race tomorrow.

2023 F1 Belgian Grand Prix - Free Practice Results (1)
Pos    Driver    Nat.   Team    Time
1   Carlos Sainz   ESP   Scuderia Ferrari   2m03.207s
2   Oscar Piastri   AUS   McLaren F1 Team   2m03.792s
3   Lando Norris   GBR   McLaren F1 Team   2m04.484s
4   Charles Leclerc   MON   Scuderia Ferrari   2m08.148s
5   Sergio Perez   MEX   Oracle Bull Racing   2m08.240s
6   Alex Albon   THA   Williams Racing   2m08.394s
7   Yuki Tsunoda   JPN   Scuderia AlphaTauri    2m09.067s
8   Kevin Magnussen   DEN   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   2m09.229s
9   Daniel Ricciardo   AUS   Scuderia AlphaTauri   2m09.319s
10   Nico Hulkenberg   GER   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   2m10.042s
11   Fernando Alonso   ESP   Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team   2m10.283s
12   Lewis Hamilton   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   2m10.299s
13   George Russell   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   2m10.475s
14   Valtteri Bottas   FIN   Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake   2m12.085s
15   Zhou Guanyu   CHN   Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake   2m14.002s
16   Logan Sargeant   USA   Williams Racing   No Time Set
17   Lance Stroll   CAN   Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team   No Time Set
18   Pierre Gasly   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   No Time Set
19   Esteban Ocon   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   No Time Set
20   Max Verstappen   NED   Oracle Red Bull Racing   No Time Set


As predicted, heavy rain on track.

Same weather for the Qualify in 2 hours.

Source: https://www.crash.net/f1/results/1032205/1/f1-2023-belgian-grand-prix-friday-practice-results

Very hard for any team to fight today against Max for pole in qualies but then again , the only one who can lose pole today is Max himself as with a slight mistake again , McLaren boys can speculate this and try for a perfect lap.

We still have Practice 2 in about 1 hour and 4 hours later we go for qualification session as this weekend as many of you told here , it's a weekend with sprint race and I do hope this format will be a bit adjust in the next season because I still find no joy watching the sprint races.