Formula 1 Discussion - And favourite driver?

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
those faggots killed every glamorous thing about f1 by trying to be kid friendly. who the fuck cares about some WAG or an aerial shot from the latest shithole they are racing.
 
What does showing WAGs and idiots in the grandstands while missing the action add?
I would not be surprised at all if these celebs don't pay or have some reciprocal agreement with F1 elites. Like they "pay" to get camera time. Or if F! shows them on cam, they reciprocate by talking about F1 in social media or something. Just a thought. We all know how the rich operate.

But yeah, total retardism saying that shit adds "value". To who? The fucking morons who pout these fucking celebs up on a pedestal? If that is who they are trying to bring value to, they are idiots. Those types of people who are "influenced" don't care about F1 for what it is, a high speed motor racing competition to determine who is the best team and driver at end of season.

If I cared enough (and I have thought about doing it but would give up interest after once or twice I am sure) every race I would break the coverage down in blocks to determine how much time is ultimately wasted by not showing cars on track. As an example 31:24-33:27: Pit stop, wheel stuck, mechanics rushing around, Team Principal mad, driver smashing steering wheel, boy in crowd crying, man in other team's gear laughing, GF of driver with hand over mouth, etc. I am sure a fair percentage of the coverage would be found to be useless to the racing fan.

Put $100 on Max for WDC on Monday at 7.4 odds. Won a good soccer parlay so figured why not. LOL
 
Those types of people who are "influenced" don't care about F1 for what it is, a high speed motor racing competition to determine who is the best team and driver at end of season.
It will also attract the hater assholes that are only too glad to make yet another sport all about their social causes.

"Why doesn't Celebrity X use her platform to get Grid Driver Y to speak up against how bad F1 is for the environment?"

Lest you think that's stupid (it is), remember how Tay Tay was supposed to denounce the Chiefs for both the team name and the Harrison Butker speech that everyone whose business it wasn't clutched their pearls over.
 
or an aerial shot from the latest shithole they are racing.
I fucking hate a load of the aerial shots now. Like oh look a car so far in the distance I can't tell if it was a good line or not and that's before they get blocked from shot behind tall buildings and trees.

----------

Some interesting bits out of the Palou vs McLaren suit in court currently. This is where Palou signed for Mclaren indy team under the pretense it was a way into F1, then they signed Piastri to replace Ricciardo and Palou reneged on the contract. Mclaren are suing for signing money they paid Palou and Palou is arguing Mclaren breached implied terms.

“I went for dinner with Zak at Beaverbook near MTC,” Palou’s witness statement reads. “Zak told me it was not his decision to hire Oscar. He said it was the decision of the team manager Andreas Seidl.

Definitely rings true given everything we have seen this season.

There had been some rumours in the media about AlphaTauri looking for a F1 driver and my name was in the mix... [Helmut Marko] was open to me driving for them, and asked for the conditions of my McLaren release… I don’t know what happened in that conversation [between Marko and Brown], but for sure it didn’t help because suddenly Helmut was not interested anymore.

Red Bull seemed like they were serious about getting him but Zak did some fuckery.

Either way nothing I have seen in all of this paints Zak in an even half way positive light.
 
Last edited:
Zuccbook is going crazy again with rumors saying that Pastry is gonna get swapped for the pale Carl in a McFerrari deal. That shit makes no sense.
 
Zuccbook is going crazy again with rumors saying that Pastry is gonna get swapped for the pale Carl in a McFerrari deal. That shit makes no sense.
Silly season has restarted. Saw rumors of Piastri going to Ferrari replacing Hamilton. From acontract perspective it makes no sense as both drivers have a contract for 2026. Of course a contract is as streong as the paper it is printed on but seriously, why would Piastri exchange a strong Mclaren team with the Grande Casino that is Ferrari? Unless Ferrari has some ace in the hole as they allegedly have stopped developing for 2025 since June and the results somewhat reflect this
 
but seriously, why would Piastri exchange a strong Mclaren team with the Grande Casino that is Ferrari?
On one hand, put up with Fat Brown and his favorite son, on the other, be part of a team that fumbled to 4th from pole in Monaco.
 
Silly season has restarted. Saw rumors of Piastri going to Ferrari replacing Hamilton. From acontract perspective it makes no sense as both drivers have a contract for 2026. Of course a contract is as streong as the paper it is printed on but seriously, why would Piastri exchange a strong Mclaren team with the Grande Casino that is Ferrari? Unless Ferrari has some ace in the hole as they allegedly have stopped developing for 2025 since June and the results somewhat reflect this
Also rumours of Horner going to the screwderia, seems like an obvious conflict to me.
 
Regarding silly season, bit late on the news but nobody bothered to post it here
Russell and Antonelli to stay with Mercedes in 2026 (BBC)
Russell being paid around 30 million GBP a year, becomes third-highest earner behind Verstappen and Hamilton (Independent)
And the absolute GOAT got his MBA
1760627145205.png
 
why would Piastri exchange a strong Mclaren team with the Grande Casino that is Ferrari?
I've been stewing on this for days now that my YouTube feed is full of race predictions.

The only thing I've got is that Piastri wants to show off how calm he can be in an even more fucked situation than he is now. Which...the only one that gets dunked on in that situation is LeClerc. So, no real victory.

Russell being paid around 30 million GBP a year, becomes third-highest earner behind Verstappen and Hamilton (IndIndependent
And speaking of "no real victories ", great that he has a contract, and he's certainly no slouch, but it must suck to be part of the meme where the guy is walking with one woman while he looks back at another woman, that woman being Verstappen.

Imagine being on a worldwide stage and knowing you're not the one your team really wants. I suppose I'd cry into my pile of money, but it still sucks.
 
Apparently they're looking at a 2 day weekend format with a practice then a 1 shot take it in turns qualifying format (everyone remember how shit that was? Because they don't) on Saturday and race on Sunday.

Stefano is so staunchly antipractice because apparently it's too dull for the ADHD riddled DTS "fans" and they need to jingle their keys harder. Just ignore how any rookie is ever supposed to build any ability in the sport.

Because the new motto for F1 is apparently lets all fix what isn’t broken.
 
People acting like he and Herta will be the future of F1...pump the brakes there a little.
On Herta especially. I only occasionally watch an indy race if it happens to be on when I'm watching TV and he seems pretty crap considering he was touted as the great American F1 hope whp was going to come in and break every record in hsi first season by the media for years.
 

WHAT IS A2RL AND HOW DO I WATCH IT?​

Apr 11, 2024

Motorsport and technological advancement are inextricably linked. Always have been, always will be.

It was inevitable, then, that with autonomy evolving at a remarkable pace that motorsport would end up becoming a testbed for systems that could change the way we travel.
So remember they had that goofy autonomous "race" last year in Abu Dhabi? They are back for another try on November 15th. If they have managed to improve on a similar trajectory to AI, will be interesting to see if they have improved it. Anyway, here is the long article:

What's changed ahead of A2RL's big 2025 return​

Oct 15, 2025

Showcasing groundbreaking technology in such a public arena as the Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit to more than 1 million global streaming views was a fittingly bold way for the A2RL - Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League - to begin last April.

Now the world-leading autonomous A2RL series is preparing for its second major event on November 15 in Abu Dhabi, and there’s the expectation from the organisers of another significant advancement in the autonomous technology, as the championship prepares to field up to six fully autonomous in the grand final race this year.

The Race spoke to A2RL’s head of racing operations Josh Roles, as part of The Race F1 Tech Show Podcast, to find out what’s changed for season two.

A2RL uses an autonomous Dallara Super Formula SF23, one of the fastest single-seaters outside of F1 that reaches speeds of up to 300km/h.

Teams are all given the hardware and basic software, and they’re tasked with developing complex algorithms that can simultaneously assess changing grip levels, outsmart opponents and, of course, set fast laptimes.

The base car has been upgraded for season two, renamed the EAV-25, and has a new set of safety, reliability and powertrain enhancements versus its predecessor.

The teams’ programming will determine the car’s real-time decision-making, but A2RL provides the ‘autonomous stack’, the sensor and computing package.

This has been overhauled this year, containing a sensor fusion architecture that better assesses the conditions around the car.

That means there are a number of additional sensors on the cars this year, which form part of a more streamlined data stream that improves the split-second decision-making the autonomous vehicles need to make to compete with their human counterparts.

“This year in particular, we've upgraded the cars,” Roles, whose CV includes a stint being Fernando Alonso’s number two mechanic at McLaren, told The Race.

“So I think the learnings from last year was that the technology we developed was great. Of course, you can always build on technology, right?

“What we're doing here is trying to create technology here in the UAE. Our first mission as such was to build on the technology we created from season one.”

Alongside a number of safety improvements, the technical changes include an upgraded alternator, a new Honda OEM unit that’s more compact with less inertia.

There are also shorter gear ratios that will enable teams to extract better performance from the Yas Marina circuit and there have been gearbox calibration changes to reduce the harshness of the upshifts and downshifts while creating a more progressive power delivery.

Fundamental to the improvements has been far more testing of the algorithms in a virtual environment.

“We did a lot of stuff in a digital twin environment,” Roles explained. “To put cars on track is complex, expensive and comes with high risk, certainly when it’s about autonomy and autonomous racing.

“We created a platform that allows teams to deploy their AI software in an exact replica digital twin environment of Yas Marina Circuit and with the vehicle itself.

“Now we progressed that sim sprint to be able to race in Suzuka, in a fictional track, in addition to Yas Marina.

“And the idea is that we wanted to create a digital league that allows teams to perfect their AI code before they put it into the car, and basically reduce the gap of simulation to reality.

“So the idea is they can basically run their algorithms and their AI 24/7 at the cost of effectively a PC. That same code can be uploaded into the real car, and they can put it on track and race.

“This also allows us to open up the number of competitors who can access our car, but in a digital environment first, to show us they have what it takes to get their hands on an autonomous racing car and race wheel to wheel, in real life.”

There’s now less reliance on GPS data and more on the in-car sensors that will be feeding back data from the extreme range of conditions a real-world racing circuit produces.

“The car is seeing 360 degrees around it at any one point and processing millions of lines of data and code all simultaneously,” Roles added.

“And the teams have to ensure that their sensor fusion is up to the job. We give them the platform, the very high-specification computers to process all of this data.

“But if they don't code it to be efficient - you know what software can be like if it's not coded efficiently, they will not process in time. That's when you start to see the strengths and weaknesses of particular teams.

“It's really impressive with how we see some teams process data in different ways. And I think there's a bit of a cultural standpoint as well because the tech challenge is a software challenge, it's an AI-coding challenge.

“So seeing different strategies is very different to what we would typically see in normal motorsport where you're focusing on vehicle dynamics and camber, ride height changes and things like that.

“These guys are just focusing on 'how can I code better? How can I interpret that data better? And how can I make it more efficient to make faster decisions?' ”

The key question many fans will be wondering is - how much quicker will A2RL be in 2025, and how much closer will the autonomous machines be to those piloted by real racing drivers?

“I think from last year, we will see a considerable amount of, probably more importantly, consistency, which I think is what you want to see when you want to see racing,” Roles explained.

“Now, that's not to say the speeds will be slow because they won't. I've seen these cars going at 260, 270 kilometres an hour already. How far off a human pace are we? I think we're getting very close.”

In 2024, ex-F1 driver Daniil Kvyat raced against an autonomous machine, winning by over 10 seconds.

But Roles expects that gap to close in 2025: “I think we will be less than five seconds off the pace, I hope. And obviously that's a big step from last year.”

A2RL is a multi-year project so the progress will continue into 2026, where Roles expects there to be a bigger injection of motorsport thinking into it.

“From a motorsport perspective, the last 10% [of performance] is always the toughest 10% [to find], right?” Rowles acknowledges.

“But for sure when you start taking into account vehicle dynamics and how the car performs and behaves under certain conditions, it's why we're now pushing teams to start incorporating members and people with a lot of motorsport experience, rather than just hard coding and focusing on getting the car around the track.

“We want them to now bring motorsport professional strategists, vehicle dynamicists and things like that into the picture to start planning for probably what will be another rule change in 2026 where we will start pushing a bit more motorsport onto the team, see how they can handle it and ultimately see how the cars perform because we're developing technology, but this is a motorsport event.”

One of the most important changes is an expanded field of 11 elite research teams with teams from France and Japan joining for the first time - alongside returning teams from the USA, Germany, China, Singapore, Italy and the UAE.

Last year the final took place between the top four races but this number will be expanded to a minimum of six cars for 2025.

The event is free for fans - tickets can be found here - to attend, with over 10,000 spectators visiting the inaugural event last year. And there’s been plenty of A2RL activity at the Yas Marina circuit since then to ensure a big step is made in 2025.

“I think what's a shame is that the public don't get to see how much testing we put in behind closed doors,” Roles said.

“So obviously we're based here at Yas Marina. We're very fortunate to be on the doorstep of the circuit. And we do invite the teams here regularly to test, to try new algorithms, to work with us to develop new hardware solutions and things like that.

“I think from an event perspective, it will be just as spectacular as last year. We'll have the fan zone. We'll have a minimum of six cars this year on track.

“Actually that's all thanks to how we've structured the competition, with the qualifying and the sprint races and things which will all happen behind closed doors.

“So there's a lot leading up to the race that the public won't see, but it should put us on a course for success for November 15.”

A2RL has deliberately made this very ambitious technology drive a very public display. It acknowledges it “learned the hard way” how difficult it is to have an autonomous racing vehicle tackle the tricky Yas Marina conditions with all the real-world variables that virtual simulations can’t predict.

Roles added: “As SpaceX has demonstrated, meaningful innovation demands a readiness and willingness to fail in public. Advancing science in the open allows us to learn quickly, adapt and push the boundaries of what’s possible, whilst being held accountable.”

A2RL has been very hard at work behind the scenes, and it’s keen to ensure the impressive progress it has made privately will be on display when it returns to the public eye in November.
 
Back
Top Bottom