Racing Season 2019 (Spoiler Alert)

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Re: Racing Season 2019

Post by Rodster »

Tragedy on the race track at Spa. F2 driver Antoine Hubert was killed when he lost control of his car, came back across the track and got T-Boned at high speed by another driver and his car was split in two.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Good to see Renault on the rise. McLaren and the works team are making strides. So now we are seeing them join the Merc, Ferrari and Honda engines.

Leclerc, is the real deal. Podium finishes in the last what 7 races and back to back wins and that came with pressure filled wins because both weren't easy. He's maturing in how he's managing the race. On the other side we have Vettel who keeps doing dumb stuff, hitting a car, losing his wing then spinning off, rejoining the action then getting a 10 sec stop/go penalty.

Alex Albon is just the opposite of Pierre Gasly and I cannot not fathom him losing out to either Gasly or Kyvat next year. He's keeping up with Mad Max, is combative and passing other cars. In his two races he's outperformed Mad Max.

F1 has a good crop of young drivers for the future: Leclerc, Mad Max, Albon, Norris, Russell, Sainz.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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GB_Simo wrote:Watching Leclerc make absolutely no bones about putting some manners on Vettel, you could be forgiven for wondering if you weren't watching something of greater significance. Charles will have his day soon enough, and a few more besides - how many and how soon will depend, at least in part, on exactly how rattled his team mate is. Vettel's race was not that of a man dealing especially well with the sight of another red car vanishing into the distance.

On a similar theme, it's too early to say definitively but I fear that the new and improved 2019 edition of Valtteri Bottas might have a touch of the "Coulthard: This Is MY Year" about it.
Ol' Mystic Sim, coming over a bit giddy at actually getting some things right. Shooting fish in a barrel, I realise, but never mind that.

What needs to be remembered with Seb is that in order to deliver his best, he needs his car to be just so. Specifically, he pitches the car into a corner late and aggressively, and in doing so he needs to know that the rear of the car has the grip to deal with it. This made him such a successful exponent of the blown diffuser, a device that might as well have been tailor-made for him, but a car lacking that behavioural trait blunts his effectiveness.

So what? Vettel is not by any means the only world champion who lacks a bit of adaptability. It's quicker, in fact, to list the ones who had it: Fangio, Clark, Alonso, maybe Hamilton at a push, and...you might wish to add one or two more, but only one or two more, and you only might. For many others - Schumacher is the obvious example, Senna too - their devastating speed in a car that did what they needed was the catalyst for development paths that gave them exactly that, year in year out, because why wouldn't you?

With Sebastian and Ferrari, it's surely now the opposite question, just as it is if you put him next to Max at Red Bull: why exactly would you? Assuming you accept that, it then becomes a question of exactly how much he fancies being the de-facto number two with a top team, or number one at a midfield outfit, or neither...


Did anyone ever think for a second that Valtteri might win? How fortunate he is that Esteban Ocon's approach to inter-team relations has previously had a touch of the Rosberg about it.

Edited to add: I am, on reflection, doing Ayrton a bit of a disservice. The general point still stands, and Ayrton had McLaren dancing to his tune for a fair old while, but look where he was qualifying that FW16...
Last edited by GB_Simo on Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Monza 2019 was truly one of the more competitive and entertaining Formula 1 races i've seen in a long, long time. From start to finish it was competitive and had the right type of drama which has been sorely missing from F1. It needs more of that

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Rodster wrote:Monza 2019 was truly one of the more competitive and entertaining Formula 1 races i've seen in a long, long time. From start to finish it was competitive and had the right type of drama which has been sorely missing from F1. It needs more of that
The circuit has a lot to do with it. Monza is not a BS Tilkedrome. It's a proper circuit with flowing, fast corners -- except for the two chicanes that never should have been added to the magic track.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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pk500 wrote:
Rodster wrote:Monza 2019 was truly one of the more competitive and entertaining Formula 1 races i've seen in a long, long time. From start to finish it was competitive and had the right type of drama which has been sorely missing from F1. It needs more of that
The circuit has a lot to do with it. Monza is not a BS Tilkedrome. It's a proper circuit with flowing, fast corners -- except for the two chicanes that never should have been added to the magic track.
True and true.

But this race was different unlike last year and the year before. To use an analogy you can relate to, this race turned into The Main Event title fight. The up and coming challenger vs the Champ. Lewis and Mercedes threw and hit this kid with everything they could and not only did Leclerc take their punches but hit back hard.

The scene where Leclerc dive bombed below the Renault to try and distance himself between he and Hamilton going flatout through the Parabolica was just Classic stuff. This was real drama not the fake drama that Crofty gets overly excited about.

Put it another way. This is the type of battle Formula 1 was hoping for between Hamilton and Vettel that never materialized. Remember last year “The Battle: Hamilton v Vettel”? That never materialized because Vettel wilted under the pressure. Last Sunday, Formula 1 got its wish between Leclerc and Hamilton.

And now that Leclerc admits that he learned and changed his approach to racing from his Austria clash with Mad Max taking the win. Formula 1 is hoping for future fights between he and Max.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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I hope Chuck LeCluck kicks Verstappen's ass.

I'm not a fan of Max at all. He comes from the Andretti school of never admitting fault for anything. He's definitely Jos' son, with a LOT more talent.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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I don't understand Haas? They're keeping K-Mag, that I get but they decided to keep Romain Grosjean as well. That one is puzzling because he's a lot like Sea-Bass who went to Indycar. Both are talented drivers but underachiever and became complainers. I would say the Hulkster is a much better driver than Grosjean albeit another underachiever who is out of a ride after this season. He lost his seat to Esteban Ocon.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Please do not compare Romain Grosjean to Sébastien Bourdais. :) In Bourdais' career to date, he has 37 wins combined from CART to Champcar to Indycar and 4 Champcar Series Titles. Granted a lot of his success came during the waning years of Champcar, but he has scored wins for Dale Coyne in Indycar when they had no business being up there compared to the Penske, Andretti, and Ganassai teams. He can be a complainer for sure, but I would not call him an underachiever, if anything he has overachieved with his current team on many occassions.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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You can have a good career in Indycar while not achieving anything in Formula 1. IIRC, Alex Zanardi's career in Formula 1 was so bad that he did not score any points for Williams. But Zanardi was a fabulous driver in Indycar.

Seabass: F1 = Underachiever, Indycar = Success

Alex Zanardi: F1 = Underachiever, Indycar = Success

Michael Andretti F1= Underachiever, Indycar = Success

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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DChaps wrote:Please do not compare Romain Grosjean to Sébastien Bourdais. :) In Bourdais' career to date, he has 37 wins combined from CART to Champcar to Indycar and 4 Champcar Series Titles. Granted a lot of his success came during the waning years of Champcar, but he has scored wins for Dale Coyne in Indycar when they had no business being up there compared to the Penske, Andretti, and Ganassai teams. He can be a complainer for sure, but I would not call him an underachiever, if anything he has overachieved with his current team on many occassions.
Agree 100 percent. Bourdais was in a Toro Rosso -- did you expect a World Championship or race wins? He was a victim of the Red Bull Junior Team and its complete mismanagement by the draconian Helmut Marko, who wanted Alguesuari in the car. Yes, Seb struggled against Buemi. But he's a damn good race driver.

And as for the "complaining" Bourdais, I insist he's colored by his passport. Americans think all of the French are aloof, whiny prats. Seb is not.

Bourdais is THE straightest shooter in the IndyCar paddock. He says it like it is. Fans would love him if he carried a British or American passport and was just as candid -- and right about 90 percent of the time.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Andretti - one full season in F1
Zanardi - one full season in F1
Bourdais - two full seasons in F1

Grosjean - now on his 8th full season in F1

I agree with you in not understanding why Haas is sticking with both their drivers, particularly Grosjean. He is not terrible, as looking back at 2013 it's shocking to realize he took his Lotus to 6 podiums that year, but at this point he seems to have proven his mediocrity and whining and I would agree with the underachiever tag for him. Bourdais happens to be one of my favorite racers as he will race anything (Indycars, F1, V8 Supercars, Endurance - LeMans and Daytona, Sebring, etc.) and is a great personality. I love his segments with Marshall Pruett and Robin Miller. He has also overcome some pretty big obstacles and continues to go out there and race. Sorry, I just took great offense to him being compared to Grosjean. :)

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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pk500 wrote:
DChaps wrote:Please do not compare Romain Grosjean to Sébastien Bourdais. :) In Bourdais' career to date, he has 37 wins combined from CART to Champcar to Indycar and 4 Champcar Series Titles. Granted a lot of his success came during the waning years of Champcar, but he has scored wins for Dale Coyne in Indycar when they had no business being up there compared to the Penske, Andretti, and Ganassai teams. He can be a complainer for sure, but I would not call him an underachiever, if anything he has overachieved with his current team on many occassions.
Agree 100 percent. Bourdais was in a Toro Rosso -- did you expect a World Championship or race wins? He was a victim of the Red Bull Junior Team and its complete mismanagement by the draconian Helmut Marko, who wanted Alguesuari in the car. Yes, Seb struggled against Buemi. But he's a damn good race driver.

And as for the "complaining" Bourdais, I insist he's colored by his passport. Americans think all of the French are aloof, whiny prats. Seb is not.

Bourdais is THE straightest shooter in the IndyCar paddock. He says it like it is. Fans would love him if he carried a British or American passport and was just as candid -- and right about 90 percent of the time.
But his benchmark IIRC was Sebastien Vettel and if TR thought he was good enough he would have stayed with the team possibly moving up to Red Bull. His complaining over the radio about the car not feeling right or it was raining too much and they should stop the race did not make him look good when others had to deal with the same. Grosjean is pretty much the same. Pierre Gasly another Frenchman got the axe cause he wasn't good enough for Red Bull. That's not taking anything away from the person, driver and his accomplishments but he just wasn't good enough to compete in F1. Scott Speed was another Torro Rosso driver not good enough.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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DChaps wrote:Andretti - one full season in F1
Zanardi - one full season in F1
Bourdais - two full seasons in F1

Grosjean - now on his 8th full season in F1

I agree with you in not understanding why Haas is sticking with both their drivers, particularly Grosjean. He is not terrible, as looking back at 2013 it's shocking to realize he took his Lotus to 6 podiums that year, but at this point he seems to have proven his mediocrity and whining and I would agree with the underachiever tag for him. Bourdais happens to be one of my favorite racers as he will race anything (Indycars, F1, V8 Supercars, Endurance - LeMans and Daytona, Sebring, etc.) and is a great personality. I love his segments with Marshall Pruett and Robin Miller. He has also overcome some pretty big obstacles and continues to go out there and race. Sorry, I just took great offense to him being compared to Grosjean. :)
Yeah, I'm not dissing Boudais. He just did not show enough to keep his F1 seat. Zanardi, I believe may have been on his 2nd stint in Formula 1 but not too sure about that. Regardless Zanardi, just was out of his league in F1, not scoring any points. Andretti was going up against Senna as his teammate IIRC, and that's tough enough. Perhaps Andretti could have made a go at Formula 1 if he had stuck it out but chose to come back to the States and race in Indycar's.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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DChaps wrote:Andretti - one full season in F1
Zanardi - one full season in F1
Bourdais - two full seasons in F1

Grosjean - now on his 8th full season in F1

I agree with you in not understanding why Haas is sticking with both their drivers, particularly Grosjean. He is not terrible, as looking back at 2013 it's shocking to realize he took his Lotus to 6 podiums that year, but at this point he seems to have proven his mediocrity and whining and I would agree with the underachiever tag for him. Bourdais happens to be one of my favorite racers as he will race anything (Indycars, F1, V8 Supercars, Endurance - LeMans and Daytona, Sebring, etc.) and is a great personality. I love his segments with Marshall Pruett and Robin Miller. He has also overcome some pretty big obstacles and continues to go out there and race. Sorry, I just took great offense to him being compared to Grosjean. :)
Haas may think the status quo is more tenable than pairing K-Mag with Hulkenberg, who do not like each other. Remember K-Mag's "Suck my balls" comment on live TV to Hulkenberg when an angry Nico interrupted a live interview with K-Mag to complain about his driving standards?

All reports indicate that animosity is still very much alive. And other than Hulkenberg, who is a proven F1 free agent in 2019? Please don't say Kubica. He left Williams because he can't cut it as an F1 driver after his rallying injuries, not because he thinks Williams is going nowhere, even if that's true.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Rodster wrote:But his benchmark IIRC was Sebastien Vettel and if TR thought he was good enough he would have stayed with the team possibly moving up to Red Bull. His complaining over the radio about the car not feeling right or it was raining too much and they should stop the race did not make him look good when others had to deal with the same. Grosjean is pretty much the same. Pierre Gasly another Frenchman got the axe cause he wasn't good enough for Red Bull. That's not taking anything away from the person, driver and his accomplishments but he just wasn't good enough to compete in F1. Scott Speed was another Torro Rosso driver not good enough.
Comparing Sebastien Bourdais to Scott Speed shows a naivete or ignorance that isn't even worth a comment, Rod, but I will, anyways. Speed was brought into F1 for one reason, and one reason only -- the flag on his passport.

On his best day, Speed was nowhere close to the talent of Bourdais on his worst day.

You're vastly underrating Sebastien Bourdais. Your opinion isn't shared by many outside of the F1 paddock. He's an elite driver who was in the wrong team at the wrong time. His outbursts on the radio were due to the fact that Marko and the Red Bull setup REVERED Vettel, who admittedly is better than Bourdais. But the same situation existed the next year with Buemi. He was Marko's golden child, and Marko didn't give three sh*ts about Bourdais or his opinion on anything.

It was in Marko's best interest to promote all of his Red Bull Juniors boys and do everything possible to ensure their success because the entire program was Marko's brainchild. And Marko finally was exposed as a charlatan through the status of the Red Bull young driver roster today -- it's barren. Marko chopped and changed drivers from the program with Machiavellian ruthlessness backed by no real clue or plan.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Rodster wrote:Andretti was going up against Senna as his teammate IIRC, and that's tough enough. Perhaps Andretti could have made a go at Formula 1 if he had stuck it out but chose to come back to the States and race in Indycar's.
Again, here's some context. Senna liked Michael Andretti and did as much as he could to help him. Andretti was making progress before he was sacked.

But the biggest mistake Andretti made in his aborted F1 career was to continue living in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. He never integrated himself into the team or at the factory. He only showed up at tests and races.

Becoming an integral part of the team is essential for any F1 rookie, especially one that's paired with and against an all-time god like Senna. Andretti's decision not to move to Europe -- fueled in part by his now ex-wife Sandy -- played as much of a role in his failure at McLaren as anything he did in the cockpit.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Further context: McLaren had three drivers on their books during 1993, a consequence of Senna's stand-off with the team over money (which he got) and first call on the best Ford V8s (which he didn't get). Contestant number three was Mika Hakkinen, who was in Europe, readily available to test and bloody quick whenever he did so. Michael has always said that the team only had to call and he'd have taken a flight over to a test session at a moment's notice. True though this may be, it rather overlooked the presence of the younger, much cheaper fella knocking Ron's door down.

There are all kinds of conspiracy theories, some of them floated by the Andretti family themselves, surrounding why the McLaren spell didn't work out. What we know for certain, though, is that things had changed since the days when Mario could parachute in from a race at Milwaukee to qualify at Monza, which neither father nor son seemed to grasp. It constitutes a major What Might Have Been to me, particularly because of those odd occasions (Donington warm-up being the best example) when the Michael Andretti you'd been expecting turned up.

On Sandy, legend has it that The Ron employed a personal shopper, assistant or similar for the specific purpose of keeping the then Mrs Andretti away from the pit garages and timing stalls she'd grown used to occupying in CART...


Patrick Head rather gave up on Zanardi, whose occasional flashes - running 4th at Spa, or those glorious few laps at Monza before his floor fell off - tend to get lost in the thick fog of that year at Williams. Remember that the lesser-talented Schumacher was having the year of his life on the other side of the garage, which left the team less inclined than they might have been to act upon Alex's feedback. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but what he needed from the team that year, he was never going to get.


Grosjean is searingly quick on his day, was a key player in the team's recent discovery that their Melbourne-spec car is as fast as their upgraded model and is cheaper than Nico Hulkenberg. This is as much as Haas really need and, if we're being honest, as much as they can realistically get. If not Romain, then who else?
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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pk500 wrote:Comparing Sebastien Bourdais to Scott Speed shows a naivete or ignorance that isn't even worth a comment, Rod, but I will, anyways. Speed was brought into F1 for one reason, and one reason only -- the flag on his passport.
Again, both you and Don are misunderstanding me. I'm just putting out names that went into Formula 1 and were NOT successful. That list includes Andretti, Zanardi, Speed, Bourdais etc. All those guys wanted to make it in Formula 1 and didn't. That is my point and has been. I am not and have never compared driver talent with the names I listed. Again, they ALL wanted to be in Formula 1, they went there and for whatever reason, whether it was a talent or logistics issue, they failed.

But I stand by my comment that both Bourdais and Grosjean like to complain and I don't think Grosjean is worthy of that seat but i'm not running the team. I think Hulkenberg would have been the better option.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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The relative success of Grosjean and Magnussen shows that some drivers get cycled out of F1 too quickly. Hell, give Stoffel another shot over Grosjean at this point...maybe Jean Eric Vergne?

Hopefully the Haas boys can celebrate another year together with more in-race contact this weekend.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Dave wrote:The relative success of Grosjean and Magnussen shows that some drivers get cycled out of F1 too quickly. Hell, give Stoffel another shot over Grosjean at this point...maybe Jean Eric Vergne?

Hopefully the Haas boys can celebrate another year together with more in-race contact this weekend.
One driver who I think deserves a shot is Pascal Wehrlein just to see what he can do. He tried getting on with Haas but Gunther Steiner nixed the idea because he's been out of F1 for at least 2 years. Kimi's my favorite driver but he's long in the tooth by now and it would be nice to see what fresh blood in that seat could do and Antonio Giovinazzi career started off good and now he's basically regressed.

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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Rodster wrote:One driver who I think deserves a shot is Pascal Wehrlein just to see what he can do. He tried getting on with Haas but Gunther Steiner nixed the idea because he's been out of F1 for at least 2 years. Kimi's my favorite driver but he's long in the tooth by now and it would be nice to see what fresh blood in that seat could do and Antonio Giovinazzi career started off good and now he's basically regressed.
Wehrlein earned a noted reputation as a diva during his limited time in F1. He acted like a superstar without the results to support it and wore out his welcome quickly.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

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pk500 wrote:
Rodster wrote:One driver who I think deserves a shot is Pascal Wehrlein just to see what he can do. He tried getting on with Haas but Gunther Steiner nixed the idea because he's been out of F1 for at least 2 years. Kimi's my favorite driver but he's long in the tooth by now and it would be nice to see what fresh blood in that seat could do and Antonio Giovinazzi career started off good and now he's basically regressed.
Wehrlein earned a noted reputation as a diva during his limited time in F1. He acted like a superstar without the results to support it and wore out his welcome quickly.
I wasn't aware of the Diva part, not dimissing it because a good majority probably are. IIRC, he did a decent job for Sauber when he was a Mercedes academy driver. Then he got injured and was lying in a hospital bed in traction due to those injuries. Pictures were released because people were questioning if he was actually injured.

Well Christian Horner is asking the same question: "Horner ‘can’t see’ why Haas kept Grosjean"

https://www.planetf1.com/news/horner-ca ... -grosjean/

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Re: Racing Season 2019

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That impressive debut season with Manor feels a very long time ago for Pascal Wehrlein. To address the question of whether "being much faster than Rio Haryanto" and "being fast" bore any resemblance to each other, Wehrlein needed to blow Ericsson into the weeds at Sauber, much as Leclerc subsequently did. When that didn't happen, he needed to look a class above in Formula E. Now that hasn't happened, I'm not absolutely sure what his route back into the F1 paddock looks like.

His reputation doesn't help. His public illustrations of why that reputation exists really don't help. Here's one from the archives:

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/radi ... 84/841684/

Shame, really. Imagine what Wehrlein, Magnussen and Steiner in the same team would have done for the Netflix series.
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Re: Racing Season 2019

Post by Rodster »

Too bad Ferrari are so far back in the championship standings because they've put together 3 good weeks in a row. Leclerc, three Poles in a row, who would've thought they could do so well in Singapore? This track was not supposed to suit their car. Vettel could've had Pole if not for sliding his car in one of the final corners. I was hoping for a Ferrari front row lock out but Lewis splits the two Ferrari's.

It was supposed to be a battle between Verstappen and Hamilton. Now it looks like it's round 2 between Leclerc and Hamilton.

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