THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

I knew max would win, I knew redbull would have a margin but fuck me, that was dull. Where on earth are the others? How can they still be so far behind after 2 years of the formula? If the season follows in this manner it’s going to be shit.

If that’s the curtain raiser to a new season of F1, then the seasons over, just give the manufacturers and drivers trophies to Red Bull and we can all watch something more exciting, like the World Paint Drying Championship.

Nothing happened, Max roared off and won by about two weeks, with pretty much nothing going on in the lower order, an occasional overtake, a few tyre changes and that was it, 50 odd laps of sheer boredom.

I used to love watching F1, now it’s just shit

Well, this seems like as good a time as any to remind you all that the proper motorsport - MotoGP and IndyCar - both start next weekend.

And if you have Discovery Plus, I can't recommend highly enough going back to watch all three World Superbike races from Phillip Island last weekend. Three of the best motor races you will see this year!

_________________
"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

There are lots of things coming together to make it boring:

> One team, and one driver, dominating is only part of it - and it's not their fault that nobody else is up to their level

> The first race of the season, when you would expect teams to be ironing out reliability issues - everyone finished FFS! Back in the good old days, at least you had the jeopardy of drivers going off or cars breaking down

> Sargeant went off early on, Hulkenberg nerfed Stroll at the start and they were I think the only yellow flags of the entire race

> Most of the overtakes were DRS sail-bys

> The ridiculous hype (Liberty ladybits again) doesn't match the product

> Most people seem to care more about who Christian Horny has or hasn't sent pictures of his cock to (I've been sent the link to the dossier and it isn't pleasant )

> Sky giving it the big'un that F1 is the best thing since sliced bread, when a blind man on a galloping horse can see the opposite

_________________
"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

All of that is true Dan but its the scruffy edges for me.

The main issue is that the formula gets set, all the teams agree to it. Off they toddle and hope that the design they come up with is the one thats going to be the holy grail of fast on most tracks and reliable. Over the last few iterations one of the teams has hit that spot where the others all missed to one degree or another.

The issue arises in that the teams are no longer able to spend their way out of the corner anymore, which might be a good thing for lots of circumstances but hasnt really levelled the field up as was the original intention. Bar a few place swaps here and there, the order of the teams remains more or less the same.

So you end up with multiple seasons of one team dominating completely and the immediate chasing pack unable to close the gap because 1) the DNA of their original offer is virtually impossible to change mid cycle and 2) The cost cap means that even if a teram understands what needs to be done, the budget isnt there to do it. It disproportionately affect the lower level teams even more as they might ot even have the budget to be bothering the cap anyway and as they have to buy their engines ( the engine manufacturing teams can absorb a lot of the cost outside the cost cao as part of the R&D process) and then they are frozen anyway.

Outside of that, I can never quite shake the feeling that when a team is so dominant, they are doing something a bit dodgy. I know they are scrutinised heavily but so were Toyota in the infamous WRC turbo scandal and it was only sheer bad luck that got them caught.

Did anyone brave the 4am get up and watch this weekends race? I was so hopeful of something a bit more exciting this weekend and those hopes were raised even further with Max forgetting to take the handbrake off but sadly a race never really materialised.

I love F1, always have and most probably always will but unless the FIA can do something to make the cars lighter and remove all the gimmicks and aids then I fear we will forever be stuck with procession races rather than any meaningful action. At least the reliability metronome was broken this weekend, still didnt manage to shake things up though.

Saw the "highlights" in the pub Sunday night. Only thing of note was Crofty excitedly declaring the smoke that was clearly pouring out of Verstappen's rear-right wheel as an engine failure. Fucking idiot.

_________________
"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

I cant decide if I really like or really dont like Crofty. Hes so epically bad it hard to tell which way to go with it!

There are two different people here.

David Croft is a very good, knowledgeable, long-standing commentator on motorsport (he was excellent on 5 Live F1 before he joined Sky), and on a load of other stuff like darts.

"Crofty" is a weird caricature of a commentator, full of excitable nonsense, contrived statistics and what seems like an almost deliberately boorish lack of knowledge of the sport.

I don't blame David for playing the character of 'Crofty': he gets to be the voice of F1 and travel all over the world, and presumably get paid very well for doing it. I blame Sky and their absolutely horrendous coverage of the sport: sensationalist, chummy, lacking depth, and increasingly a bit tired and lazy. Why the fuck are Sky on air for 90 minutes before the race, and at least the same after it if you count Ted waffling his way down the pit-lane during pack-down? There really isn't that much of interest to cover!

Then again, you could use that to describe every sport Sky get their mucky paws on, with the exceptions of their cricket and NFL coverage.

_________________
"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"

Liberty are trying to buy MotoGP.

Hopefully the EU competition people intervene, like they did when CVC owned both and they were forced to sell one of them.

I dread to think what these wankers will do to it.

_________________
"I sometimes buy the Big Issue out of social embarrassment. I don't buy a fucking bank!"