2019 F1 Championship - Round 2 - Bahrain Grand Prix

[happy_eagle]

Back for the second race of the year. I feel like I have been very unfair towards the Bahrain Grand Prix in recent years. It has proven to be a pretty good track and offers more for overtaking than Melbourne does thats for sure.

Anyway this is a race for the West Australians, with a slightly more manageable 11pm Qualifying and Race. 2am start for EST

Once again Ferrari have shown to have the strongest pace in all 3 practice sessions so far. Whether or not Mercedes are sandbagging like they did in Melbourne we will have to wait and see. Daniel has been considerably off the pace in comparison to Hulkenberg and the other drivers fighting for 7th.

I'm going to tip a Ferrari pole and win here. Hope its Leclerc

 

[YippeeYiYeo]

So Ricciardo outqualified Hulk bit just misses out on Q3. Not a bad result. Starting from 11 with his choice of fresh tyres is probably better than starting from 10.

Gasly is getting destroyed by Verstappen.

 

[Acinath]

Sad for Gasly, would be feeling an immense amount of pressure already and it’s only round 2

LeClerc was unreal, this kid is a dtar

 

[Galaxie77]

LeClerc doing very well indeed.
Vettel .... dont get put off your game.

Do ppl here not like Verstappen?

 

[The Dice Man]

LeClerc doing very well indeed.
Vettel .... dont get put off your game.

Do ppl here not like Verstappen?

Verstappen reminds me of Ivan Drago.

Really impressed by LeClerc. Im a casual observer of F1 but recently watched the Netflix series which is quite engaging in getting an insight into the driver's thoughts. I dont understand why Ricciardo left Red Bull to go to Renault.

 

[hey shorty]

Gasly not coping with the pressure and Max has lifted knowing he isn't going to get much of it.

Le Clerc VERY good

 

[imadodgyumpire]

RE: Gasly - Sometimes guys need to adjust to driving for a higher team. We taken for granted as fans because we also see drivers adjust with seemingly no problem. But for some, it's only a problem that will occur once they're there in the hot seat.

RE: The first line in happy eagle's OP. There's nothing wrong with Albert Park, and I don't like the criticism the circuit gets. Since it requires some thought to articulate, I'll make my point in the 2019 thread later.

RE: Bottas - 0.66 behind Hamilton to go with being 0.112 at Albert Park. Before I have to do research on my own, was it typical that he'd be this close to Hamilton in qualifying? Because if he wasn't, then I think this new version of Bottas still exists. and Albert Park wasn't a one-off.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

Oh yeah. What happened to Hulkenberg?

It's appear McLaren are justified atm in dumping Honda. They've improved their competitiveness and RB are pretty much where they normally are.

 

[hey shorty]

Oh yeah. What happened to Hulkenberg?

It's appear McLaren are justified atm in dumping Honda. They've improved their competitiveness and RB are pretty much where they normally are.

Seems like Hulk had a couple of minor issues that hampered his quali

 

[Broken]

I hope LeClerc can keep it together to win, I don't mind seeing some new winners.

 

[davis_756]

Seems like Hulk had a couple of minor issues that hampered his quali

Didn't he have his engine in limp mode for the entire qually lap? Given he was so much ahead of dan all weekend you would have to think the Renault could have pushed verstappen for 5th.

Does seem strange that Dan and Gasly are struggling with the change too and from the Red Bull garage

 

[hey shorty]

Didn't he have his engine in limp mode for the entire qually lap? Given he was so much ahead of dan all weekend you would have to think the Renault could have pushed verstappen for 5th.

Does seem strange that Dan and Gasly are struggling with the change too and from the Red Bull garage

Gasly is finding the RB hard to drive, very twitchy.

He and Dan will get there.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

Does seem strange that Dan and Gasly are struggling with the change too and from the Red Bull garage

Chemistry is not there.

 

[davis_756]

Chemistry is not there.

Kimi and Leclerc aren't having the same issues in their swap between ferrari and alfa, Must be something in particular about the red bull car that handles differently to the rest of the field was my thinking.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

Kimi is an experienced driver driving for a small team and there's no pressure on him.

Leclerc is a new guy who been brought up by Ferrari over a couple of year.

Gasly, I'm not concerned about atm. But the situation Ricciardo is in is not the same. He's is in a new working environment.

 

[happy_eagle]

Grosjean rightfully handed a 3 place grid penalty for blocking Norris on a hot lap yesterday

 

[Forward Press]

Ricciardo didn't sign for Renault expecting immediate podiums in 2019. It's him trying to emulate Hamilton when he moved to Mercedes from McLaren - at the time they were a midfield team with a shitload of money and he would be their clear number one driver to help drive development.

If he can grab a couple of points tonight after starting P10 it will be mission accomplished.

 

[happy_eagle]

I can't see Renault being a title challenger with the current engine regs.

Change all the aero rules you want in 2020, the Ferrari and Mercedes engines are going to win championships for a long time with these hybrid engines.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

He's lined up his contract to fall in line with the contract of other big drivers and the change to new regs for 2021. Regardless of his results, he's best to keep developing himself and make sure he's a better driver at the end of his current contract than he was at the start.

Ideally he'd have been in the Ferrari this year. But Leclerc is a Ferrari junior development driver, even though Riccardo is better anyway. If Ferrari hired Ricciardo, then when were they ever going to hire their own development driver? Not for 5+ years. What would be the point of having a driver development program then?

We all have seen that it's not just there's a seemingly certain bias towards Verstappen at RB, but it doesn't even appear Ricciardo is going to get a clean shot at driving his own race. He can drive his own race at Renault. If Hulkenberg knocks him off, then it's going to mean nothing for the next race and next season.

 

[Doc_]

Its worrying that Renault couldnt change a chassis and bring the car back to the same specs they had.
A bit of dialling in fair enough. But to serve up a pig of a car is BS.

 

[happy_eagle]

Do the new regs in 2021 include significant engine regulation changes ?

If not, they are pointless

 

[Boxhead_31]

Grosjean rightfully handed a 3 place grid penalty for blocking Norris on a hot lap yesterday

Was interesting to see Norris' comments on the incident. Put a fair amount of the blame for the incident on Seb as he overtook Grosjean just be the final corner when Roman was setting up to start a lap which made Grosjean back off significantly to make a gap.

 

[Boxhead_31]

Just a bit breezy

 

[YippeeYiYeo]

heres hoping Ricciardo has a clean race and gets some points.

 

[Quokka]

Hulkenberg wont be too happy with Grosjean

Edit: Sorry was Sainz