172 replies to this topic

[Mat13]

I can’t help feel for many the problem is the person who is dominating rather than the dominance itself.

Anyone listing these complaints 2015-20 was a hater, let’s not forget.

For me it’s the nature of the dominance- 2014 to 2020 were mostly (2015 excepted- awful) good seasons because the winning driver at least had to race for it. Last year and this year are not the same, Verstappen has basically driving around on his own.

[KWSN - DSM]

23 more weddings… I shudder at the thought of the cost of gifts and 23 different dresses for the wife (while the fella is happy to wear the same suit every time )

 

I'll up it with chance of Wife being in Wedding part at all 23 of them, and all being destination weddings.

[Brian60]

With 3 full days of testing (minus the drain cover mishaps) plus the 3 practice sessions, did anyone expect anthing other than a borefest? That was more than enough running to give us the final race order without having a race!

[KWSN - DSM]

I really don't get how so many of you found this a boring race, there were action on basically every single lap.

[earthling45]

We have had so many seasons in which the gap between the first and last team on the grid was easily 3,5 to 4 or even 5 seconds.

Always one team at the top, wether it was Williams, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes.

The last two seasons we have seen a very competitive field and this year it is even more competitive with the slowest team just one second of the pace in Q1.

It means that a little mistake has huge consequences in qualifying and that during a race multiple teams are able to fight with each other because their performance is quite equal.

 

How that can be perceived as boring is beyond me.

[PayasYouRace]

I really don't get how so many of you found this a boring race, there were action on basically every single lap.

I don’t particular remember there being much action, but most of the action I do remember seemed entirely inconsequential to the final result. It just felt like a rerun of a dozen races last year.

[markpenske]

I voted Quite boring.

I recorded the race.

Looked forward to it with great expectations.

Enjoyed the pre-race show.

Enjoyed lap one.

Found myself doing tasks around the house by lap 10 with the race on in the background.

That seems to be the common theme for me over the past couple years.

I feel somethings got to change

[KWSN - DSM]

I don’t particular remember there being much action, but most of the action I do remember seemed entirely inconsequential to the final result. It just felt like a rerun of a dozen races last year.

 

Eyes of the beholder.

[William Hunt]

I am a RBR fan, so I say quite good!

 

Okay, you're a fan, I get that but... would you be happy if they end up winning all races, and most with a 1-2?

[Burtros]

Eyes of the beholder.

Lame.

Please give us some examples of the action on every lap?

[KWSN - DSM]

Lame.

Please give us some examples of the action on every lap?

 

That will really be a long list which will finally make something boring i..e reading through what I find interesting and seemingly most in this thread boring, what about?

 

 

Hulkenberg barging into Stroll.

Perez gaining a place in the start.

Norris passing Alonso.

Russel passing Leclerc round the outside.

Piastri passing Alonso.

First notice of Leclerc's brake issues.

Perez overtaking Leclerc.

Hamilton overtaking Alonso.

Sainz and Leclerc battling for position no holds barred.

Perez overtaking Russel.

Sainz overtaking Russel.

Alpine Ocon resigned to be overtaken putting up no challenge to Ricciardo.

Busted Bottas pitstop.

Hamilton undercutting Piastri.

Leclerc pressuring Russel into a mistake, overtake Russel.

Aston Martin applying Team orders, placing Stroll behind Alonso.

VCARB applying Team orders, placing Ricciardo in front of Tsunoda.

Tsunoda voicing his displeasure to his team.

Hard tires, soft tires, DRS and neither VCARB could overtake Magnussen.

Stroll making up 10 seconds on Alonso, being the better driver yet be told that Alonso should get a point more than Stroll.

Haas not eating it's tires.

Zhou racing (arguably) his best race.

Ebb and flow as the gaps between cars fluctuated.

Undercut, overcut, poor pitstops.

Williams giving Sargeant a steering wheel which made him look like a Muppet.

For all the issues Sargeant and Gasly both in top 10 in fastest lap.

Majestic dominance by Verstappen, taking a Grand Chelem and look absolutely untouchable.

Norris once again being the clear best McLaren driver.

Sainz showing that despite being fired effective end of season there is a very capable driver becoming available.

Perez getting some redemption from his many detractors.

Tsunoda once again showing the Ricciardo coronation is premature.

Hulkenberg once again showing himself to fall back at starts.

Hulkenberg once against showing himself capable of wringing every single hundreds out of a car during qualifying.

The overall debacle Alpine have become.

 

Let me stress this is not a discussion point, I am simply saying what I saw, what was not boring to me.

[SB]

I gave 1 pt out of 10 , and that point goes to Yuki for his (losing cool) cool down lap.

[derstatic]

 

That will really be a long list which will finally make something boring i..e reading through what I find interesting and seemingly most in this thread boring, what about?

 

 

Hulkenberg barging into Stroll.

Perez gaining a place in the start.

Norris passing Alonso.

Russel passing Leclerc round the outside.

Piastri passing Alonso.

First notice of Leclerc's brake issues.

Perez overtaking Leclerc.

Hamilton overtaking Alonso.

Sainz and Leclerc battling for position no holds barred.

Perez overtaking Russel.

Sainz overtaking Russel.

Alpine Ocon resigned to be overtaken putting up no challenge to Ricciardo.

Busted Bottas pitstop.

Hamilton undercutting Piastri.

Leclerc pressuring Russel into a mistake, overtake Russel.

Aston Martin applying Team orders, placing Stroll behind Alonso.

VCARB applying Team orders, placing Ricciardo in front of Tsunoda.

Tsunoda voicing his displeasure to his team.

Hard tires, soft tires, DRS and neither VCARB could overtake Magnussen.

Stroll making up 10 seconds on Alonso, being the better driver yet be told that Alonso should get a point more than Stroll.

Haas not eating it's tires.

Zhou racing (arguably) his best race.

Ebb and flow as the gaps between cars fluctuated.

Undercut, overcut, poor pitstops.

Williams giving Sargeant a steering wheel which made him look like a Muppet.

For all the issues Sargeant and Gasly both in top 10 in fastest lap.

Majestic dominance by Verstappen, taking a Grand Chelem and look absolutely untouchable.

Norris once again being the clear best McLaren driver.

Sainz showing that despite being fired effective end of season there is a very capable driver becoming available.

Perez getting some redemption from his many detractors.

Tsunoda once again showing the Ricciardo coronation is premature.

Hulkenberg once again showing himself to fall back at starts.

Hulkenberg once against showing himself capable of wringing every single hundreds out of a car during qualifying.

The overall debacle Alpine have become.

 

Let me stress this is not a discussion point, I am simply saying what I saw, what was not boring to me.

 

 

Probably true all of it but as a supporter of "the competition for glory" the main thing I take from this race is:

End of lap one. Verstappen win confirmed. And that's dull. This is not me disliking him or anything, it's just the love for competition and unpredictability. In the Vettel years I rooted for Alonso. In the Hamilton years I supported Rosberg, then Vettel, then Verstappen. Now I support everyone who can take the fight to Verstappen. 

[ATM]

But take the Verstappen car out, as an exercise, and we get a very tight and exciting pack-both în qualifying and race. It's only boring because - much as I dislike to admit it, as I like a good competition - the Max-RBR combo îs unbeatable currently.

[JimmyClark]

But take the Verstappen car out, as an exercise, and we get a very tight and exciting pack-both în qualifying and race. It's only boring because - much as I dislike to admit it, as I like a good competition - the Max-RBR combo îs unbeatable currently.

I thought we were in for a classic in the first 10 laps when all but one car behind Max seemed to be within 1s. Then after that, each car was 2-3 seconds behind each other and that seemed to be that. Even Croft seemed oddly flat.

[ATM]

They kind of regrouped by the end too, I mean the end timesheets for this race are quite relevant (no SC/VSC) and the margins were really not that big.
Except Verstappen, who once again spoiled the fun...good for him, bad for us.

[Gary Davies]

The descent to boring racing began at Kyalami on the 1st of January 1968. I fear the genie cannot, now, be persuaded back into the bottle.

 

That said, the decline has not been linear and neither was the racing uniformly engaging prior to the arrival of Big Money. Sometimes quite the opposite.

 

There have been many villains contributing to this sorry state of affairs, but 'filthy lucre' is the biggest. 

 

Talking of which, I recall reading of a certain vertically challenged gent sitting beside the track at Monaco with a former driver, watching the old Grand Prix cars at the Monaco Historique one year and lamenting something along the lines of, "We've made a right horlicks of it, haven't we." (I recall rather more robust words were used.)

 

And more latterly of course, we must acknowledge our dear friends Liberty, who certainly know how to turn a quid. 

 

24 Grands Prix (shouldn't that be Petits Prix?) a year is surely the very definition of absurd. 

[PayasYouRace]

What changed in the 1968 South African Grand Prix?

Also, there were often upwards of twenty grands prix in a season prior to that date, just very few counted for the championship, if there even was one.

[Gary Davies]

It was the first time advertising was allowed on Formula One cars.

 

For we geriatrics, this is broadly acknowledged as the beginning of the end. Feel free to mock; along with years comes a thick skin. ;-)

 

Had I the time, I'm sure I could dig out something from the Motor Sport archive in which either or both of Bill Boddy or Denis Jenkinson produced a masterclass of huffing and puffing. I might add that even though I was but a slip of a lad at the time, I huffed and puffed, too. So perhaps I was born a geriatric.

 

In the meantime, I did notice this mini huff and puff from DSJ in the February 1968 'Continental Notes' in Motor Sport, "Colin Chapman has negotiated with the cigarette manufacturer John Player & Sons to finance Team Lotus, replacing the income lost by the withdrawal of Esso petrol. What we have known as Team Lotus for many years is now called the “Gold Leaf Lotus Team” and the cars are to be painted red, white and gold like packets of twenty, though how the F.I.A. International colour scheme is to be got round remains to be seen, and if Clark or Hill are seen smoking any other brand of cigarette one can imagine questions being asked in high places."

 

My bolding.

 

As an additional resource into, inter alia, the further caramboulages that Grand Prix racing has embarked on, may I recommend the series of articles by the excellent historian and delightfully feisty fellow, Don Capps - one of ours at Atlas, although I'm a tad nervous as to how he might react to such a descriptor. Whatever... go here. You can believe every single word he tapped out! - http://atlasf1.autos...eb19/capps.html

[PayasYouRace]

Not sure why you bold the livery part.

[Gary Davies]

I bolded it to illustrate an example of the outrage felt by many of what was known as the armband brigade at the time at the 'effrontery' of Formula One to defile cars with something as tacky as advertising. Please understand I am not agreeing with that sentiment. I'm merely pointing out an attitude that prevailed at the time.

[Gary Davies]

What changed in the 1968 South African Grand Prix?

Also, there were often upwards of twenty grands prix in a season prior to that date, just very few counted for the championship, if there even was one.

That is indeed true. However, you will find that few such races attracted a full field of drivers who regularly competed for the World Championship. They tended to be regional and usually, with more than a sprinkling of amateur or semi-professional drivers. Several, for many years, travelled around Europe either alone of with a mate, in a van, either with their F1 car in the back or on a trailer and slept in a tent alongside the car. So... the approximately 40 races around the world attracting Formula One cars in, for example, 1962, bears little comparison with the 24 compulsory races in 2024 for those wishing to race in Formula One.

[Burtros]

That will really be a long list which will finally make something boring i..e reading through what I find interesting and seemingly most in this thread boring, what about?


Hulkenberg barging into Stroll.
Perez gaining a place in the start.
Norris passing Alonso.
Russel passing Leclerc round the outside.
Piastri passing Alonso.
First notice of Leclerc's brake issues.
Perez overtaking Leclerc.
Hamilton overtaking Alonso.
Sainz and Leclerc battling for position no holds barred.
Perez overtaking Russel.
Sainz overtaking Russel.
Alpine Ocon resigned to be overtaken putting up no challenge to Ricciardo.
Busted Bottas pitstop.
Hamilton undercutting Piastri.
Leclerc pressuring Russel into a mistake, overtake Russel.
Aston Martin applying Team orders, placing Stroll behind Alonso.
VCARB applying Team orders, placing Ricciardo in front of Tsunoda.
Tsunoda voicing his displeasure to his team.
Hard tires, soft tires, DRS and neither VCARB could overtake Magnussen.
Stroll making up 10 seconds on Alonso, being the better driver yet be told that Alonso should get a point more than Stroll.
Haas not eating it's tires.
Zhou racing (arguably) his best race.
Ebb and flow as the gaps between cars fluctuated.
Undercut, overcut, poor pitstops.
Williams giving Sargeant a steering wheel which made him look like a Muppet.
For all the issues Sargeant and Gasly both in top 10 in fastest lap.
Majestic dominance by Verstappen, taking a Grand Chelem and look absolutely untouchable.
Norris once again being the clear best McLaren driver.
Sainz showing that despite being fired effective end of season there is a very capable driver becoming available.
Perez getting some redemption from his many detractors.
Tsunoda once again showing the Ricciardo coronation is premature.
Hulkenberg once again showing himself to fall back at starts.
Hulkenberg once against showing himself capable of wringing every single hundreds out of a car during qualifying.
The overall debacle Alpine have become.

Let me stress this is not a discussion point, I am simply saying what I saw, what was not boring to me.

Credit to you for this reply!!

I’m not sure you haven’t just listed what happened in the race and a few discussion points it generated but at the end of the day what makes a race interesting is subjective to all of us so it’s silly to argue over.