Topic: Motosport General discussion tread --- Formula1, MotoGP, WTCC, ETCC, DTM..... - page 34. (Read 133242 times)

At this point, I think it's a bit more regards to rest of the cars, like remove Max and even Perez from the calculations, and you start to see a real fight. For example last year Mercedes finished with 409 points at second place, but Ferrari had 406 points, ONLY THREE points behind, and became third, if you really watched that close then you would see some fun in that battle.

Or for example Mclaren finished fourth, but they were nowhere to be found at the start of the season, they had one of the worst cars in all of the track, whereas Aston Martin had a beast, they almost even won races, whereas at the end of the season Mclaren finished above Aston Martin to be fourth. If you watched their race, that was quite fun too. So as you can see, if you stop checking who is first, then you can find many battles in every part of it.

I think the Saudi Arabian GP was a good race for Leclerc and Bearman. Ferrari and Leclerc in particular will be the favorites for third place throughout the season. Maybe it's too early to say, but if the guys behind Leclerc don't go for him, he could see 2nd place a couple of times, depending on how Perez does during the season.

Bearman's got that Verstappen vibe. He's crazy. And that reminds me of Max Verstappen.
Red Bull's race pace is incredible. Maybe Leclerc will push them, but there is no one else to push them. I don't think we'll see any exciting races this season except Monaco and Barcelona.

Moto GP Losail Circuit of Qatar is about to being in 4 minutes and this year I'm said to myself that I will try to watch MotoGP from 1st race until the last one as I'm trying to engage with the sport like I do with F1.

Is Ducatti the best moto out there right now ? because I do see 3 Ducatti's in top 5 of the grid. 

Well the first two races just emphasized that this is going to be an extremely boring season for the third consecutive time,no one is getting even closer to Redbull,they are racing in another league as Fernando Alonso claimed yesterday through radio,do we have any plan B as these guys are racing in another league showing the frustration of the team being nowhere near competition together with all other teams.The bad thing is that I highly doubt any team will improve their car in order to be at least competing or trying to against Redbull this time,there is no drag problem for me,it is no competition at all and this is the biggest problem of F1 2024.

He prolly was thinking if he had Sainz instead of Bearman, Sainz would've finished third at quali and Sainz would've defended his rear and he would've finished second or better.  This year is his last chance as next year Ferrari will have Hamilton and possibly Horner and Newey.  Who would be the second driver under that scenario.  :/  

I feel for the guy...  I like Leclerc tbh.  He'll be a champ one day.

There wasn't a proper challenge even between Leclerc and Perez despite the qualifying results. Ferrari are really slow when it comes to race pace in comparison with Red Bull.    But it was still nice to see the young F2 driver Bearman doing a superb work in his first F1 race.

He didn't have much time to get prepared for even qualifying after Sainz's urgent surgery. Still Bearman managed to finish in 7th position by gaining a few more. 

Probably Bearman will finish this season ahead of a few F1 drivers after collecting 6 points yesterday. 

Morbidelli is a new rider at Pramac Ducati who this season is teammate with Jorge Martin, because last season Morbidelli was still at Yamaha and he also did not have time to take part in official tests in Sepang and also in Qatar because he had to undergo a period of healing from an injury. So it is very natural that Morbidelli is in last place in the first race this season.

Jorge Martin was completely untouchable by other riders during the Sprint Race, where he was really ready to start this season by being on pole position and also winning his first Sprint Race. I think that in today's long race Jorge Martin would also do the same thing if no rider was able to overtake him in front. Although there will also be differences because in the next 22 laps all riders must be able to maintain their tires well enough to be able to finish in a better position.

Cars has changed.

The prediction made in 2022 was to reduce the drag resistance of the car using the bottom of the car.
In the 1st year of this generation of cars it was true, cars was able to follow in dirty air.

In just 2 years teams empowered their cars and now if they are following in dirty air they will lose drag, so we are going again to have the 2020 problem when cars weren't unable to follow in turns due the loss of drag.

The only good thing out of the F1 race was this guy coming from F2 with never being in a F1 car before with just one hour free practice he near missed Q3 in his first race,in his debut and came today to finish 7th ahead of Norris and Hamilton.This guy is a true master class for me and he deserved,well deserved that huge percentage in driver of the day at 46% or 48% don't remember now.This guy is only 18 years old and his name is Oliver Bearman,I won't forget this game as it is the first time I see such debut and I do not credit all of it debuting with a car like Ferrari,all credits to him,overtaking guys with whole lot years more experience than him.

This season F1 is really not interesting. 2x early series redbull racers finish always one two. not interesting there is no resistance from other than redbull racers. redbull cars without opponents are less exciting. if motogp ducati is without opponents but there are many ducati user drivers so it's more exciting.

What a race right ? Piastri is proving race after race to be way better than Norris but also he can be a top 4 easily race after race with just a bit of improvement to the car because the kid has everything it needs to bring success to McLaren.

Charles looked so focused the entire race that he forgot he was on the podium because his mind was still racing at that point and barely cameras barely got a smile from him so I guess this version of Charles 2024 is the most motivated one so far.

Despite that Saudi Arabian track is fastest on calendar, it's not easy to overtake here and it makes races here not very interesting. And if last season we saw Max alone racing in his own league, now it seems that Perez is getting hard to reach for rest of drivers too.
Very solid debut race for Bearman, expected that he can get points, but he looked above my expectations.

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Not watching MotoGP often, but tuned in first qualifying and sprint race of season. What surprised me that there is OnlyFans team in MotoGP. This is some proper marketing .

The first sprint race is over and Martin has won it, a slightly (fortunately) different podium than expected, there are three different manufacturers on the podium and not three Ducati as feared. We'll have to wait and see if the long term race tomorrow is as even.

But Yamaha und Honda had an worst start...

MotoGP is coming back, tomorrow we will watch the 1st race of the new season.
Qualifying result for tomorrow race is as listed below:

What an irony for the Pramac Ducati, Jorge Martin get the pole position but Morbidelli as the teammate should start from the last position.
Marc Marquez with his new bike will start from the 6th position which is not that bad.
Jorge Martin, as predicted that he will remain the same as the previous session.
Who will win this first race? Ducati's riders will have big chance ofc as Ducati is still the best bike.
I hope to see the battle between these 3 riders; Jorge Martin, Pecco and Marc Marquez.

Meh.  I hate to say it but yeah.  It could be another one of those dull and boring seasons again.  And around September when you're watching a race, you'll be at a mindset asking yourself...  'Wtf am I even watching this?'.  Lolol.

Looking at the quali's results...  Pretty sure Sainz would've gotten third and would be defending Leclerc's rear to give the him a go at it vs Verstappen.  Could get dicey with Perez behind him.

Here are quali's results.  Enjoy the race later.

2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP Qualifying Results

Max Verstappen   1:28.171   1:28.033   1:27.472   
Charles Leclerc   1:28.318   1:28.112   1:27.791   
Sergio Perez   1:28.638   1:28.467   1:27.807   
Fernando Alonso   1:28.706   1:28.122   1:27.846   
Oscar Piastri   1:28.755   1:28.343   1:28.089   
Lando Norris   1:28.805   1:28.479   1:28.132   
George Russell   1:28.749   1:28.448   1:28.316   
Lewis Hamilton   1:28.994   1:28.606   1:28.460   
Yuki Tsunoda   1:28.988   1:28.564   1:28.547   
Lance Stroll   1:28.250   1:28.578   1:28.572   
Oliver Bearman   1:28.984   1:28.642      
Alexander Albon   1:29.107   1:28.980      
Kevin Magnussen   1:29.069   1:29.020      
Daniel Ricciardo   1:29.065   1:29.025      
Nico Hulkenberg   1:29.055   DNF      
Valtteri Bottas   1:29.179         
Esteban Ocon   1:29.475         
Pierre Gasly   1:29.479         
Logan Sargeant   1:29.526         
Zhou Guanyu   DNF

2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP Qualifying Highlights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mquz3QK0SNY

That small gap is reminding me of the race of 2021 where Checho won I think in the first Saudi Arabia held race or 2022 don't remember the real season but it was really close between him and Leclerc and most likely we are going to see that battle again if Leclerc has no braking issues like in Bahrain.The real fight I think will be even between these guys and McLaren and why not Aston Martin and Mercedes,so the real race to watch will be from P2 and below because for P1 if normal conditions of the race don't change then it is going to be an easy win for Verstappen.

I think I will have a bet or two for McLaren and Aston Martin in top 3,just trying my luck to also incentive my race emotions.

Exactly! Bearman performed better than my expectation.    I was worried about him about not being able to reach even Q2. But he did more than that and even missed Q3 by only 0.064s. He drove for only 22 laps in FP3 before so it is quite impressive effort despite that. I will be curious about his performance in the race today.

Yeah, Verstappen was so comfortable as usual. Red Bull have given him a wonderful car and we know how great driver he is also. The combination is just very strong. 

The gap between Leclerc and Perez was so close - 0.016s.    I can't wait to see them compete during the race also.

Surprised at Aston Martin pace but not surprised with Alonso doing so great in a really fast track.Fast tracks are the tracks where great drivers excel,I never thought that a great driver like Alonso would show great skills in low speed tracks although he made a super awesome overtake in Hungaroring many years ago so maybe the true great drivers.

We have to give huge credit to Bearman as I doubted him because of the lack of experience and he showed that despite making a mistake in the first run he barely knocked out Hamilton from Q3 in his F1 debut which is with a great team like Ferrari.Personally I will watch most of the race with the Sky decoder red button through his race camera,it will be really interesting.

Pole position for Verstappen once again.

Decent confidence for Bearman, he was so close to join q3.

Max already won the 2024 title

Aston Martin is not really a bad car, I would say they are definitely in the top 5 without a doubt, which means that when you combine that with Alonso, it becomes a pretty good result in many cases. Of course in this track anything could happen, so we shouldn't really be surprised about it, but that also doesn't mean that it is going to be too hard for him to go for that top 5 in drivers as well.

Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes are usually better, so that's 6 drivers, but Alonso could do a consistent result and while others may crash out, he may just finish at high places and get that fifth position. Same can't be said for Stroll, he is just cruising with the car thanks to his dads money as we all know, he wouldn't be in f1 without that, he doesn't have the talent for it.