Formula 1 - 2016 Season

Ferrari livery is pretty ugly. Mclaren one is boring as usual. Can't they go back to having some color? Now that they aren't tied to Mercedes anymore and restarted their road car division it would be nice if they'd come up with something with a little bit more color in it.
 
I like black so to me McLaren looks great!

I hope that with new Honda engine they will retain their distinct sound or is that gone already?
 
Good news: McLaren has had pretty good reliability
Bad news: McLaren is still down on power
Good news (maybe?): Honda is going to produce another 2016 spec engine which will be at the next test. The best bits from the engine from this test and and the best bits from the engine for the next test will go into a third engine for Melbourne. According to Ted Kravitz at Sky.
 
So I watched the Mexico ePrix this weekend. It contained some good racing, some incidents and drama but it was weird. The sound the cars make can be described as "vacuum cleaner" or "big radio-controlled car" but it was good. It was a bit strange to see them change cars in the middle of the race.

Lucas DiGrassi won, followed by Jerome D'Ambrosio and Sebastien Buemi, all ex-F1. Buemi was really feisty trying to get past D'Ambrosio who started on pole and they made contact when it seemed Buemi almost lost control and speared into the back of D'Ambrosio, but it was DiGrassi who made good use of his fanboost (voted by the public for 3 drivers) and expertly overtook D'Ambrosio for the lead.
 
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So I watched the Mexico ePrix this weekend. It contained some good racing, some incidents and drama but it was weird. The sound the cars make can be described as "vacuum cleaner" or "big radio-controlled car" but it was good. It was a bit strange to see them change cars in the middle of the race. Lucas DiGrassi won, followed by Jerome D'Ambrosio and Sebastien Buemi, all ex-F1. Buemi was really feisty trying to get past D
Ambrosio who started on pole and they made contact when it seemed Buemi almost lost control and speared into the back of D'Ambrosio, but it was DiGrassi who made good use of his fanboost (voted by the public for 3 drivers) and expertly overtook D'Ambrosio for the lead.

But then after the race the order changed a lot as DiGrssi lost his position due to his car being underweight by almost 2kg. Good racing all around but I felt cars are about 1/3 too slow on straights. I wonder why ... :)
 
Just a note on Formula E, if you've not followed it before. The first season was completely single make - chassis, drivetrain, battery and aero. This years rules have changed to still maintain a single chassis, aero and battery but allowing for changes in the drivetrain. So far this appears to have fallen with a spectrum with two end points - one end being a few teams have stuck with the initial drive train, then a few teams across the range that have changed the motor supplier but with reduced number of gears (4 down to 2) and then a couple of teams running a direct-drive, twin-motor powertrain.

One of the teams running the direct drive system, NextEV TCR, went from winning the drivers champ to basically being back of the grid, to the point where there were reports of them potentially removing one of the motors (not clear to me they did). DS Virgin Racing have had more success with the concept so far, however comments from Sam Bird's winning race highlighted that he's struggled all season with oversteer, suggesting that there is an increased weight at the back from the twin motor concept. This season's dynamics should evolve as the teams get to grips with their power train differences and the characteristics that imposes on the standard chassis/aero options.
 
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Well that was pretty bad. Time to entertain the idea of super pole like they used to do in super bike reaching when I watched it. Sure some one from Ducati or Honda could be relied upon to get pole, but the added pressure of only having a single lap mixed up the grid.
 
Terrible qualifying format. People eliminated in the pits, no exciting end to Q3. Actually it was all over 2 minutes before the checkered flag.
 
Also I want to say that Max Verstappen needs to grow up and that even though Romain Grosjean benefited hugely from the stoppage, he didn't do anything wrong and fully deserved his points.
 
...and then of Bernie says he agrees with the drivers. Sigh.

Have to admit F1 going to Sky probably means I'l simply stop watching. The product simply isn't interesting enough for my to pay a significant about of money to watch, so I'll just drift away and spend my time doing other things. A shame, as I've followed F1 for over 30 years.
 
Well, the UK TV movements have actually been a benefit for me in Canada so far. I pay for "TSN" on my cable package as this is the only station that carries F1 here - prior years they have been taking the F1 commentary from BBC and they would basically only cut in at the start of the FOM feed just before qualifying and the race and end when the FOM feed ends; basically the bear minimum (partly because when they initially signed they only had a couple of channels and we can't have extended F1 coverage potentially getting in the way of any Ice Hockey here, now can we!). TSN extended to 5 stations a few years back and now they are actually using them properly and we are starting to get a lot more differentiated sports coverage across the channels and for F1 this year they now taking the Sky feed (yay, Brundle commentary) and we are getting a lot more pre and post race/qualifying coverage from SKY as well :)

News today is that the Qualifying format that everyone agreed was crap and would be reverted back for the next race will actually remain unchanged for Bahrain, with a view to tweaking it at a later date. Not sure why they didn't just go elimination for Q1/Q2 and current for Q3 thats what everyone is saying is the best format anyway (and I kinda think it would be OK).
 
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