I thought it was a fun race, could’ve been more fun if the rain had really developed. Also props to the tv directors for getting some great angles that really showed the cars’ speed and performance.
Shame about Oscar getting chopped in T1.
Did he though? After seeing multiple angles I’d say his move was way overambitious. That corner is tight as hell and Sainz already had a car outside of him. Oscar stuck it in way too late also.
Obviously, but going back to the previous gen before the aero changes Max was struggling with straight line speed against the MB. Since then, the RB has dominated with its straight line speed over everyone. Don’t you think that Driver’s feedback about balance has an influence on the direction of design? That and given Max’s capability that the engineers would not play to his strengths? Max and Checo have the same car and yet Max has consistently finished in front of Checo by almost 30 seconds. I think compared to the mid to rear of the field teams that design a car around a certain plan and then hire the best driver they can to wheel it, versus the Big Boys find a way for the design to compliment their Lead Drivers rather than having the driver drive around the car. Example: How many different drivers have we seen at HAAS in the last 3 years?
Not to give too much away for those who have not seen today GP, a similar incident happened at the start where two drivers came together. One’s race was ended immediately and the other tried to carry on with a gaping hole in his sidepod. Inevitably he retired due to the loss of performance in car and to save the wear on the engine. The stewards ruled it a racing incident in the end. From Ham’s point of view, it looks like Checo still had some room and could have avoided track limit violation and both could have come through cleanly. If you watch Lewis’ hands, he never opens up the wheel where as Checo’s front tire clearly turns down on Lewis at the exit. It looks like a racing incident to me. JMHO.
I don’t know as though it was purely Sainz fault, but he did come down on Oscar. Whether Oscar was entitled to some room is up for debate. Sainz locked up and I think as soon as he did that he sliced down to cover his mistake.
Firstly, Max is special talent in the form of his life. We talk about the pure driving discipline he’s probably the faster karter ever, he’s one of the fastest F1 drivers ever, and to boot he can hang it with aliens on sims. When he’s on form it’s not unusual for him to be 30 seconds down the road. My only concern is whether he’ll get bored.
In terms of straight line speed. This is a direct consequence of aero efficiency/ How much drag the car produce for the amount of down force. This is the ultimate goal of any designer. There isn’t a driver on the grid that doesn’t want more straight line speed. To achieve these characteristics you can do it with straight design, which is immensely complex and also tricks of the trade suspension that can induce aero stalling or flexy aero.
It may be the case that you might find you have a quite sensitive aero platform and that necessitates a certain driving style, but the broad design of an F1, bar the obvious considerations isn’t influenced too much by the driver. If this was the case Mercedes wouldn’t have ignored Hamilton’s requests about driver position in pursuit of aero performance.
There might be some considerations here and there (and set up plays a role), but nothing worthy of performance differentiation worthy of note in terms of aero, especially with the heavy reliance on venturi tunnels now. Newey’s books makes little mention of listening to drivers, if anything he dislikes talkative drivers.
1 Like
I get it. Sort of like how at the beginning of last year MB had a fundamental design flaw that caused the car to porpus at high speed and obviously Lewis openly complaining about is not what lead to the update. I also agree that its the design team and the engineers ultimately making decision to make the most out of the rules. I was simply stating that some elements can be influenced by driver feedback. And YES, Max is an alien himself. He was out performing the car back in 2020 and 2021. Maybe that hurts Checo’s ego a little, but facts are facts and he is in the same car although it may be set up slightly different.
I think that is an issue with both genius’ and savants. That lack of challenge often leads to lack of interest. I think it actually leads to a form of depression, but I am no psychologist. My only relatable moment was after coming back from living in Germany as a kid. My school records were lost. My returning year was 8th grade and all of the scholastic testing had occurred during the 7th grade. The school had dumped me in mostly remedial classes and I got very bored very quickly having already covered the material. It showed when I started to get into a lot of trouble for goofing off in classes. Luckily one or more of my teachers recognized my misplacement and gave me an out with some advanced work and an alternative class that kept me interested. I was also allowed to skip levels when I moved up to High School back to where I should have been thanks to my teachers.
I’m not saying I am genius or a savant, just that I was definitely ahead of the mid pack in school. Especially in the Math/Science courses. Just saying I can relate to getting bored and losing interest. Now if I can get my driving up to that level, I would feel much better about myself. 
I wonder if Max feels like a vintage 100 driver in a field of LO206?
1 Like
FIA really doesn’t get it. Formula W didn’t work, this won’t work either. FIA needs to pull sponsors and support girls and women in the main branches of the sport, not create a championship without any value.
3 Likes
I don’t understand the need for the forcing of women in F1 or F1 like competition.
Women already have many physical advantages over men for motorsports, as well as unique sponsor opportunities. It’s more a lack of general interest so less qualified entrants more than anything. IT has the same issues, you can’t force an increase in gender mix without lowering the overall quality of people.
1 Like
I’m not sure I agree with that. Strength alone is a huge hurdle for women in motorsport. There have been women in lower level formulae that needed different steering racks just to be able to turn the wheel, and they can struggle with getting brake pressure on the pedal as well. Outside of being naturally smaller, which isn’t really a consideration when there are 6 foot men driving in the car, I’m not sure what physical advantage a woman would have over a man in motorsport.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. Having women compete against each other isn’t doing anything to help them establish themselves in the sport. If you want competitive women in racing, they need to compete against everyone to prove themselves. It’s like the WNBA, a WNBA player right now would get smoked by an NBA player, but if you took those top female prospects and had them grow up playing against boys and men, they’d have a pretty solid shot at being competitive to get to the NBA.
I agree that the ladies don’t seem best served by having a seperate seties. I’d like to see them racing the guys, frankly. I get it that maybe in some cases, the cars require more strength than the typical lady but that’s totally fixable, I would think, with strength training.
I mean Pippa been driving Indy cars just fine. Danica shows us that ladies and nascar is no problem. Is formula that different?
I’m not trying to say it’s not doable, just that I don’t see where they have a physical advantage in the sport. If anything, they’re having to work harder to be at the same level as a man in the same car, because they have to overcome a strength defecit.
I’d rather have seen the W Series organizers do something to push longevity in the sport instead of just declare the best female driver. In my opinion, the championship should have been shortened up, and they should have pushed the successful driver(s) further along, like guaranteeing funding for two seasons of F3 or something along those lines.
This just isn’t accurate at all, it’s so far from the mark I don’t know where to begin. In physical sports men have an underlying advantage. Female 100m runners would get beaten by men from 100 years ago who didn’t have the technology, training and equipment (and drugs) we have today. Let’s not lose ourselves here.
motorsport is entirely different and I am firmly against segregation, but lets not pretend men don’t have inherent physical advantages.
I was just reading something the other day about distance running and I also noted that the men’s record from literally 100 years ago would still almost beat the current fastest women on the planet.
Physical strength isn’t the problem with women racing though. If Yuki is strong enough to drive an F1 car, there are obviously plenty of women who would be up to it. And like Dom noted, Pippa Mann, Danica Patrick, Simona de Silvestro all have competed in IndyCar which is more physically brutal than F1, other than the Gs.
Women have other advantages. We all know Alonso is a master at planning his race, judging strategy etc., but with how many things my wife juggles with the kids, work, and keeping the house going on a daily basis, she could surely manage a race better than a lot of guys! There’s a reason that F1 teams often employee women as strategists.
I hope Chadwick can salvage some kind of decent result in NXT this year. She hasn’t shown anything impressive yet and she’s becoming too old to really be considered a future talent. I know and have worked with some of the kids in NXT right now, so I know their level somewhat. There are good drivers there and she is being shown to be mediocre in comparison. We will see what she does next year once she knows the tracks and has a year of experience under her belt.
I was hoping FIA would help Doriane Pin more, but it seems she is flying under the radar.
Well, here’s my points on this.
I’m not aware of any full-size car racing series that have un-assisted brakes. Of course with hybrids (e.g. F1), you are braking by wire so you’re just pushing on a sensor anyhow.
F3, F2, and Indycar all use manual steering, with Indycar being the most brutal due to rough tracks trying to rip the wheel out of your hands. Most other series use power assisted steering, either hydraulic or electric, so that isn’t much of an issue for those. Ironically, Indycar has had more women drivers than F1. So I don’t think that is insurmountable issue, but upper body strength is certainly important.
Being smaller is a definite advantage, as minimum weight can be met easier, and any excess mass can be placed in a more advantageous location. See Jenson Button about height and weight issues with F1…
Physiologically women typically have better heat tolerance than men. That’s important when you are wearing a multi-layer fire suit in hot racing conditions. Even when using a cool suit, the less cooling required, the less mass.
So yes, in general, they have have a physical advantage.
1 Like
All I can say is I wish we had more female drivers here to chime in…
7 Likes
It’s a bit sketchy if you had the FIA making moves to help one specific driver. They are a governing body not promoter. So their actions will need to be broad and not about helping one driver. Especially in our sport where it’s so expensive.
Yeah motorsport seems to be a sausage-fest which is a pity. That being said, the young ladies I have seen racing tend to be badasses and more of them should do it.
Not that it matters or anything but in this day and age of differentiating yourself as a student with athletics, Motorsport is an intersting subject that might involve a “huh, what an unusual applicant.” from admissions folks.
I’m probably going to risk the ire of the world here, but skills that often attributed to genders are on a spectrum.
Taking multitasking as an example, some women are great at it, some aren’t, some men are great at it some aren’t. But the stereotype is that women in general are better at it then men. Conversely the stereotype is that men are better at indexing thoughts (lining them up and thinking about them one by one in a dedicated way) then women. But its a spectrum as are all attributes (even physical ones, some people have longer arms then other etc).
It’ll be a contribution of these attributes at the right point on the spectrum that will produce the perfect driver regardless of gender.
For me the issue isn’t at the F1/Indycar level, and I’m loathe to highlight karting as a stepping stone but we just don’t have enough women (or girls) in karting. If it was 50/50 at a karting level, in 20 years it’d be 50/50 in F1 too.
But we should also accept that maybe they just don’t want to.
2 Likes
That is hardly how the brakes on an F1 car work. The front brakes are a direct hydraulic system, and the rear uses a Brake By Wire system that measures the pressure applied to the pedal to determine how much braking force is being applied at the rear. The Brake By Wire system is used to coordinate the brakes, engine braking, and energy harvesting system to get the correct brake pressure. There is also a fully functional standard hydraulic brake system for the rear brakes as a backup in case the Brake By Wire system fails. The drivers are still required to put 100 Kg, or 220 lbs, of force through the brake pedal, so I wouldn’t water it down to “just pushing on a sensor.”
Driving is still a very physical exercise as we all know, and I find it hard to believe that women have an advantage on the driving aspect of the sport compared to their male counterparts. The argument that women are smaller and therefore advantaged doesn’t make any sense. George Russell is what, 6’1"? If being smaller was that much of an advantage, he wouldn’t have made it to F1, but size is a trivial issue compared to actual driving ability.