Topic: Motosport General discussion tread --- Formula1, MotoGP, WTCC, ETCC, DTM..... - page 5. (Read 142948 times)

No way they put Imola over Monza.
Imola is one of the most boring track ever.
When they need to race there they will change the name of the GP, not Gp of Italy but GP of Europe or San Marino.

The worst part about all of this is that Ferrari is getting a title would be something marvellous for them and their fans, they have a bigger fan base, sure other teams did better for a long time and Ferrari wasn't good during that same period, but remember, this is the team with the biggest fan base for a reason, they are Ferrari.

To explain how great they are, Mercedes beat Ferrari for so many years in a row, Hamilton was the root cause of all Ferraris troubles, their biggest rival and now Hamilton is going to Ferrari, everyone loves them. So if they finally get this title, it is going to be something amazing for all the fans all over to world, everyone would cheer, even other teams would cheer aside from maybe just Mclaren.

The 24-point difference is not impossible for Ferrari to overtake McLaren from the first position. What Ferrari needs to pay attention to is how they can be consistent and maintain their performance, especially in Sprint as much as possible they have to get points here. Moreover, McLaren's performance has been inconsistent in the last few races, and that can be used by Ferrari to develop their car and set a good strategy so they can get a podium in the remaining races. What I'm worried about is Sainz and Leclerc who are not doing well after the Vegas race yesterday, both drivers expressed some dissatisfaction with the race, their team, and their teammates, it could be a bad incident if these two drivers can't work together in the remaining races - but hopefully that won't happen because I hope that Ferrari at least gets the constructor's world championship this year.

That's awesome news, one of best tracks in calendar. And European tracks rarely get such long contract extensions.
BTW, as I understand it's very unlikely that Monza will be included in track rotation. More likely that Imola will have to rotate with other tracks.

I have no trust in Ferrari to get it to be fair, but I can doubt Mclaren all day long. We have seen Mclaren be amazing for a stretch during the season and get a lot of points, but for the past two races we haven't seen them doing that great, they haven't gotten that 1-2, and that is costing them a lot now, maybe other teams upgraded better and Mclaren just felt like they were already great and didn't focus on this season and already started working on next seasons car, which isn't really a bad idea to be fair.

So if somehow Ferrari wins, which I doubt that could happen, we could say that it would be thanks to Mclaren having a bad period could lead to Ferrari getting the title and couldn't see this growing at all.

And now it is official.
The italian gp of F1 will be raced in Monza until at least to 2031.
They just found the deal and F1 will be there for 7 more years.

And thinking that 2 years ago they were close to cancel it for money/not meeting the quality of the standards.

The last sprint race of the season is going to be really crucial this weekend. It is a huge opportunity for Ferrari to play bigger in constructors championship. 

They must target not less than finishing the session in top 2 with both of their cars. Every point counts now. 24 points is a gap which isn't impossible to close up in the remaining 2 races.

As you can see there is a significant performance loss on McLaren side at the same time. I'm really thrilled about the Qatar race already. There are only a few days left.

That's the easy part...  They need to be 'almost perfect'.  But the hard part and something that's totally out their control is they need McLaren to make a grave mistake or have one of the cars crash and doesn't finish the race.

Anyway yeah...  The constructor's championship is the only thing that's making this thing a little bit interesting.  Would be good to see if Ferrari gets the gap closer after the next race, setting it up for the final race of the season. 

While everyone is only talking about the constructors' championship... which for me is already a given, or do you believe in miracles¹?... I've been looking at another very interesting piece of information.

The 2024 season title is already guaranteed and Red Bull is not the only team that can celebrate in Formula 1 because Ferrari, even without winning the F1 constructors' championship since 2008, has the highest value of all the teams on the grid. The Italian team was valued at US$ 4.78 billion according to Spotico, which is an expert in this.
Mercedes, which was champion between 2014 and 2021, is in second place in the ranking, with US$ 3.94 billion. Red Bull, which is valued at US$ 3.5 billion, comes in only third and ends with McLaren in fourth place, with US$ 2.65 billion.

Where does all this money come from? From Liberty Media after entering the category, after acquiring F1 in 2017, it led efforts to expand the sport's fan base, expanded the sport's presence in the United States and closed new sponsorship deals.
By 2026 this should improve even more with the addition of a new team, controlled by General Motors and Cadillac... the first expansion of the category since 2010.

This is F1 increasingly a "rich kids' sport".

24 points in 2 and half races.
Just need a win to hope in something.

They have 25+25+18+18+10+8 over 100 points obtainable considering the sprint race and that is a lot of points.

For sure to have any chance they need to be almost perfect, hard but not impossible after the "nerf" of the "second drs" of the Mclarens.

Today it was confirmed that from 2026 season GM-Cadillac will become 11th team on F1 grid:
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/statement-on-general-motors-application-to-join-fia-formula-one-world.69uoRF1uwHwXkr4efkpnhc
That's all ok, but I'm wondering what's difference between them and Andretti, that they wrere accepted and Andretti's application was declined.

Yeah but it's obviously very hard for Ferrari to get enough points to get one spot over McLaren with just a couple of races to go.

https://www.formula1.com/en/results/2024/team

McLaren is at 608 pts and Ferrari at 584.  I think what needs to happen is for Ferrari to get at least a couple of podium spots for both drivers and one of the McLaren drivers gets a DNF in one of the last couple of races.  Not sure exactly tho.  But yeah...  That's basically the idea.

The Las Vegas GP was an enjoyable race with Verstappen crowned champion. My pre race prediction was a Ferrari double, but Mercedes won very comfortably. Considering the structure of the track, the transitions were not too difficult. It was clear that Mercedes were going to have good tires. They were good in all the corners and they had the least problem with oversteer. So they managed the tires very well. Mercedes do well on cold tracks because normally they can't warm up the tires. It was cold in Montreal and Silverstone and Mercedes were very fast in those races too. Mercedes took advantage in Las Vegas, where Hamilton started tenth and finished second.

Yes, a great victory for Mercedes, but you can't win a championship just by performing "miracles", which is why Max Verstappen is the four-time Formula 1 world champion for the fourth consecutive time, despite having crossed the finish line in fifth place.

Max Verstappen won the title in a season of overcoming the problems faced by Red Bull, as the Dutchman gave the impression at the beginning of the year that he would be able to repeat or come close to his feat of 2023, in which he won 19 of the 22 races. However, the year turned out differently... less surprising but still champion before the championship ended.

When will this guy retire and let his opponents have a chance to win too?

unexpected win for Mercedese, the expert called high degradation on their part.
Russel won in the first 10 laps with the medium tired he build a decent gap and noone recovered it.

Superb race for Hamilton today.

Construction world championship is stil open.

First of all, congratulations to Verstappen for winning the world championship title, he managed well and drove the title home. Also congratulations to Mercedes, didn't think they would have the pace to win.

Ferrari were second behind Mercedes this weekend, I was rather disappointed with McLaren...

Well, congratulations to Russell who managed to win the Las Vegas race, he got 3 podiums so far and that's pretty good. And for Max, 4 times in a row he got the world championship, it's not easy to defend his title, especially in the last few races he had to deal with RB's declining performance - his mentality really proved that he is a world champion. As for Ferrari, they are only 24 points behind McLaren in the constructor's championship, that's not a big gap, and if Ferrari maintain their consistency, then they can get the title, and they should get it, because they have been without a title for a long time. Overall Las Vegas was not disappointing, it was a really exciting race and I enjoyed it.

Congrats to people who bet on Russell @4.00 or even higher odds probably after Free Practice sessions.    He had an incredible race from the beginning to the end.

But I must admit that I got impressed by Hamilton's huge effort the most. He did everything he could and climbed by 8 positions.    If he had 4-5 more laps we would watch a fierce fight for the win.

Great job by Verstappen, 4-time world champion! He was really comfortable as Norris messed up countless times. Ferrari was also disappointing today.

Yeah, in the end the race showed us what we know...  Nothing.    Russell was the obvious pick.  He had the pace, he had pole positions and he's a decent enough driver who could win races.  But I never even considered him to win the race.  Lolol.

Anyway here are the results.  And oh...  Congrats to Verstappen.  Let's see what kind of driver he'll be next year when RBR might have a worse car than they're having this year.

2024 F1 Las Vegas GP Race Results

1   George Russell   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   50 Laps
2   Lewis Hamilton   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   +7.313s
3   Carlos Sainz   ESP   Scuderia Ferrari   +11.906s
4   Charles Leclerc   MON   Scuderia Ferrari   +14.283s
5   Max Verstappen   NED   Oracle Red Bull Racing   +16.582s
6   Lando Norris   GBR   McLaren F1 Team   +43.385s
7   Oscar Piastri   AUS   McLaren F1 Team   +51.365s
8   Nico Hulkenberg   GER   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   +59.808s
9   Yuki Tsunoda   JPN   Visa Cash App RB F1 Team   +62.808s
10   Sergio Perez   MEX   Oracle Red Bull Racing   +63.114s
11   Fernando Alonso   ESP   Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team   +69.195s
12   Kevin Magnussen   DEN   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   +69.803s
13   Zhou Guanyu   CHN   Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber   +74.085s
14   Franco Colapinto   ARG   Williams Racing   +75.172s
15   Lance Stroll   CAN   Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team   +84.102s
16   Liam Lawson   NZL   Visa Cash App RB F1 Team   +91.005s
17   Esteban Ocon   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   +1 Lap
18   Valtteri Bottas   FIN   Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber   +1 Lap
    Alex Albon   THA   Williams Racing   DNF
    Pierre Gasly   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   DNF

The current odds are like this.

Sainz is even favoured more than Leclerc for the win. It is difficult to pick one between them but I also expect a Ferrari driver to win this Grand Prix.

Because currently Ferrari is the best team in qualifying and racing pace both. Under normal weather conditions I mean. If it rained here I would say we should be aware of the Verstappen threat. 

Anyways today qualifying session was fun to watch. Russell was fast and Hamilton couldn't focus much clearly. I think Mercedes will be good only at making one-lap times. I don't expect Russell to be able to fight for the win until the end.