Be Excellent To Each Other

Well, that was pretty awful, up until the last 10 seconds, which was shocking.

It looked like he'd hit the barrier head first. Not pleasant viewing.

Pun.

Fanboost. Really?

Apart from that, though, and the slightly silly pitstops, I thought it was all rather good as auto racing goes, certainly no worse than Formula 1. What a ridiculous move by Nico Prost at the end, he sure didn't look very proud about it either. The whole race is on YouTube for anyone interested in watching it. I am already looking forward to the next one.

I thought it was utter bobbins.

Far too uniform*. Too slow, Wank music, The rather unsporting idea of fanboost, dull circuit, rather stupidly thought out pitstops (Aside from the entire car changeover thing, the fact that they were timed over the entire pitlane rather than the time in garage can obviously lead to shenanigans - get out quickly to block and then go slowly - completely negating the safety aspect). Oh, and obviously unsafe curbs and drivers who just don't seem to be good enough to make it to F1 despite their famous name.

* - Uniform acceleration, uniform breaking, uniform handling etc etc. Didn't really add anything to the feeling that anything could happen.

What Dave said. I also have a horrible feeling that the rubbish track was chosen specifically because the cars don't go that fast. Put them on a real race track and they're going to look really slow.

I think they'd be much better off with a pair of sprint races rather than one long one where they have to swap cars, which is properly absurd.

Also I'm surprised they didn't give them boatloads of mechanical grip so they wouldn't need so much downforce, thus allowing them to go a bit quicker.

Some backpedalling from FIA re. radio messages. (formula1.com)

Messages not permitted (by radio or pit board)

- Driving lines on the circuit.
- Contact with kerbs.
- Car set up parameters for specific corners.
- Comparative or absolute sector time detail of another driver.
- Speeds in corners compared to another driver.
- Gear selection compared with another driver.
- Gear selection in general.
- Braking points.
- Rate of braking compared to another driver.
- Rate of braking or application of brakes in general.
- Car stability under braking.
- Throttle application compared to another driver.
- Throttle application in general.
- Use of DRS compared with another driver.
- Use of any overtake button.
- Driving technique in general.

Which is pretty much what the ban should've been in the first place. Drivers aren't engineers and the cars aren't designed for them to be as such. Moreso given the way that getting it wrong can impact multiple races.

I find it utterly unsurprising that the sports foremost senile old dolt was behind it all.

A fair few drivers clearly never found that button...

So Hamilton was just reminded that he has new brakes. Isn't that against these new regulations? Or do they only apply during the race?

Sky commentators thought it was.

Shame about the end of qualifying.

Shiiiiiiiit.

Guardian says Bianchi has a serious rash.

You know it's not good when you don't get to see what happened.

Is it on the telly?

They're probably not replaying the crash until they know what the situation is. I remember when Senna crashed and all the replays and speculation around that, they were taking the twitch of his head that was visible to be a good sign that he was alive, but it turned out that was a spasm and he was already dead. (IIRC he suffered three separate massive injuries, any one of which would have been fatal.)

I was on early this morning.

Yeah, not looking good at all. They took him to hospital in the ambulance rather than the helicopter, which is not a good sign.

Apparently the lack of helicopter was because it couldn't fly in the storm. I'm not sure there were any TV shots from the copter in the race either.

Yeah, it could fly, but it isn't as well equipped and the time difference is small, so the medical staff wanted to use the road ambulance.

The race wouldn't have run if it couldn't fly anyway.

Difficult to know what the truth is. To start it was that the helicopter couldn't fly because of the weather, but you can't hold the race if the copter can't fly.
Then it was stated that the copter could fly, but they chose to go by road anyway. I've read that the trip is 45minutes by road and 10 by copter, which isn't a small time difference.

The BBC coverage was awful, they didn't even realise Bianchi was involved until after the race had finished!

Same with sky. They had no idea why the safety car had come out and only noticed a bit of Marussia bodywork well after the event (they were speculating sutil was injured). My guess is that the crash immediately looked so horrific that they didn't release it to the feed

Edit: Judging from a photo of the state of the car after the crash and where its is, I'm not surprised that they haven't released the film.

Breathing on his own after the operation which is a good sign.
http://www.lequipe.fr/info-continue/bianchi/97363

I thought they picked up on it pretty quick - certainly before I noticed anything. They knew Sutil was wandering around, but thought someone might have clouted a marshal.

Here's the footage - watch at your own risk. You don't see anything gruesome, but fucking Hell...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x27dh1 ... otion_auto

I'm fucking amazed he's still alive.

Hell, yeah.

Yeah I saw that earlier. Brundle has been going on about this for years after he almost hit one himself.

Fuck me, that's a big impact.

Despite with knowing what was coming (broadly) from seeing the car after, that was met with a full scale FUCK.

Hamilton has won 9 races to Rosberg's 4 so far. If he loses on the double points finale it will be a bit disappointing.

That race was still as hell. The track looked quite interesting, too. Never mind.

Same happened with India.

The first few laps were great, and then I got bored and made fudge.

You could have watched on the iPad from the bathroom.

Yeah, but boring that one. As much as I want Lewis to win, I'm no more excited by him leading unchallenged for 50 laps than I was when Vettel was doing it.

Jenson "You sure I should come in? You sure? Sure this time?"

Marussia has shut down, and it's employees made redundant

Sad, but inevitable.

Last race! Exciting!

Shame about Red Bull, but it should make things more interesting.

"Red Bull gives you wings, so I got a new one."

Lulz

Go German Engineering!

After Rosberg purposefully blocked Hamilton's quali lap in Monaco and crashed into him on purpose at Spa, this is all he deserves.

Boo!

Racist.

You were saying?

Hamilton is the racist.

He won eleven of them this year.

I get it!

Jenson keeps his seat at McLaren. Yay!