My Motorsport 2014

F1 season is about to kick off with the new look cars starting to be revealed and the first Winter test at Jerez about to kick off.

I think France and Eccelstone got together to think up some Mickey Mouse new rules. The big dumbass one for F1 is the final race being worth double points.... not quite as bad as the NASCAR knockout so the final race is for everything with no regard to the points from other 35 races... but just as "anti- true-racing" in my mind.

New hybrid V6 engines and nose height rules are making it appear designers have been left in quite a fixed box, with the 3 cars we have seen so far being pretty much copies of each other... which sucks for looks and innovation. But it is what it is now.

Should be a fun season still with all the changes.

Loving the driver lineups for F1. Especially the Caterham and Force India pairings. But almost every team seems to have managed to go for quality in their pairings, rather than just money.

Red Bull Racing
#1 Sebastian Vettel (Germany)
#3 Daniel Ricciardo (Australia)

Mercedes
#44 Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain)
#6 Nico Rosberg (Germany)

Ferrari
#14 Fernando Alonso (Spain)
#7 Kimi Raikkonen (Finland)

Lotus
#8 Romain Grosjean (France)
#13 Pastor Maldonado (Venezuela)

McLaren
#22 Jenson Button (Great Britain)
#20 Kevin Magnussen (Denmark)

Force India
#27 Nico Hulkenberg (Germany)
#11 Sergio Perez (Mexico)

Sauber
#99 Adrian Sutil (Germany)
#21 Esteban Gutierrez (Mexico)

Toro Rosso
#25 Jean-Eric Vergne (France)
#26 Daniil Kvyat (Russia)

Williams
#19 Felipe Massa (Brazil)
#77 Valtteri Bottas (Finland)

Marussia
#17 Jules Bianchi (France)
#TBA Max Chilton (Great Britain)

Caterham
#TBA Kamui Kobayashi (Japan)
#TBA Marcus Ericsson (Sweden)



Williams have done the paddock a dis-service by coming out early with their clearly ugly nose design;




But I think McLaren have done a decent job of packaging the dick-nose design into soemthing half attractive.

Tried to add a poll to this thread asking what series you like... tried to have 10 different to chose from... but get this annoying message when hit post.

You can only add a poll to a thread within 1 minutes of posting the thread.

If a mod reads this, and you are able, can you please add a poll to this thread.

"Which motorsport series do you like?"

Touring Cars
Sprint Cars
Rally/Offroad
Formula E (electric)
MotoGP/Bikes
F1
Indycar
Sportscar/Lemans
Drag Racing
NASCAR


Multiple options allowed. No time limit. Show who voted what.


Thanks if you can...

I was wrong about all the noses looking the same. Lotus and Ferrari very different.

I bet they all end up nearly the same by next year though.

Don't mind the Ferrari look. Retro kind of I think.

Opt, thanks for mentioning the change in awarding points in F1. I was unaware.
I was surprised that F1 would do something so drastic. I always thought Ecclestone was going to run it into the ground. Hopefully things will turn around there since he's relinquished his role as the director.

Since it's the off-season - and it's colder than crap here - I'm re-reading my favorite racing book, "Best Damn Garage in Town", Smokey Yunick's autobiography. Yunick was heavily involved in NASCAR when it began and for many years after. His experiences with Bill France Sr. shed a much different light on the man who many look back upon with great respect.

Originally Posted by rob

Opt, thanks for mentioning the change in awarding points in F1. I was unaware.
I was surprised that F1 would do something so drastic. I always thought Ecclestone was going to run it into the ground. Hopefully things will turn around there since he's relinquished his role as the director.

Since it's the off-season - and it's colder than crap here - I'm re-reading my favorite racing book, "Best Damn Garage in Town", Smokey Yunick's autobiography. Yunick was heavily involved in NASCAR when it began and for many years after. His experiences with Bill France Sr. shed a much different light on the man who many look back upon with great respect.

Thanks Rob. About time I bought a new NASCAR book.


Anyone else watch the SkyF1 first day of testing roundup?

Damn the new engines sound a bit lame. Not as loud as a GP2 engine apparently.

Anyone have a shot at unseating Vettel

Originally Posted by Vegas39

Anyone have a shot at unseating Vettel

For sure.

But no way to know who might beat him yet. Brand new engines and new car designs should mix things up for a while at least.

Most of them didn't manage to put in a proper fast lap on day 1 of testing. 11 more days to come.

Opti an Indy Car question. What do you expect from Montoya over there

Originally Posted by Vegas39

Opti an Indy Car question. What do you expect from Montoya over there

I don't know enough about his situation, but my bias about what a great driver he is makes me think he could be a runaway winner by the end of the season, and dominate the rest of the 'almost good enough for a top series' drivers over there for a few years.

But I don't really know. Often rely on MatI and others for proper Indycar insight myself.




The new Mercedes engines (McLaren/Merc/Williams/Force India) look like they have the early advantage in F1 so far. Ferrari ok too... but the Renault teams (Red Bull/Torro Rosso/Lotus/Caterham) are all having trouble on the first two days.

Fastest cars are still 4 or 5 seconds off last year's testing speeds though. So can't really read too much into performance comparisons until they have all got their shit together enough to do fast runs.

really good explanation of how the new F1 engines and energy recovery systems work on SkyF1 right now.

http://cricfree.tv/sky-sports-f1-live-stream.php

I may have mis-read this because it was just scrolling in bottom of the screen during racehub earlier in the week, but here is what I saw I tiink?

But it I swear I thought I saw Kurt Busch say he is 70% sure he is gonna run the Indy 500. Any1 else hear that?

Yes he is wanting to that's a brutal day running 500 and coke 600.

Gene Haas has to get maximum media for Kurt is most of the reason this is being talked about I think.

Although would be fun to see how he goes.

Hey opti, been sitting here following the testing this evening. It's got be salivating for some racing!!

already put some f1 bets on already today. Couldn't help myself

Hope you are well mate, I've been laying real low but looking forward to getting back into it with 500 coming up.