3 hours ago, Dobbo said:

Imagine thinking we'd ever see something worse than the 3 shitboxes from the 2010 season...

Spare a thought for those of us who remember Andrea Moda Formula

True but the 90s was a crazy time full of many terrible teams and cars (AM the worst of course) with all that pre-qualifying madness. Never did I expect to see such an unprepared team in the modern era.

Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey says vibrations from their Honda engine are risking permanent nerve damage for their drivers within 25 laps of running.

Newey's remarks on the eve of the new Formula 1 season laid bare the crisis at Honda as the company starts its new working relationship with Aston Martin beset by performance and reliability problems.

The vibrations in the Honda engine caused Aston Martin to do the lowest mileage of any team in pre-season testing and are likely to impact the team's potential to finish Sunday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

"That vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems," Newey said.

"Mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off - all that sort of thing, which we are having to address.

Congrats to George on his first world championship!

Well let's at least see what the 'racing' is like tomorrow. Last season was the closest grid in the history of the sport over one lap but the 'racing' itself was barely existent. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'm just hoping these new rules and super complex cars make for a lot more reliability issues throughout the grid. It's possible the rule change mid season will nerf the Mercs anyway and Verstappen Hadjar's time suggests Verstappen could well take the fight to George on some tracks

it’s starting to look like Flav has some grovelling to do in Paris

Maybe it wasn’t entirely the fault of Viry after all eh? Alpine having their McLaren moment after killing off their own factory engine programme is just delicious karma

FERRARI I AM IN YOUR WALLS

Big W for the new regs then (at least based on one race!) That early back and forth between George and Charles reminded me of the Max Vs Charles duals at the start of the 2022 season when those new regs were still raw! One thing hasn't changed though, Ferrari strategy calls...

Great start for both Lindblad and Audi! Australian driver curse remains in FULL effect.

Arvid should have gotten driver of the day, all Max did was pass the midfield 😭😭😭 it’s giving “Valentina your smile is beautifulllll 🥰”

An better race that I thought it would be. Great drive from Arvid who had got up to third in the early stages.

Still have a bit of scepticism about how these regs will turn out, but race was good after quali - just can't get over drivers slowing down on straights for quali laps, a dreadful spectacle. The top 4 do look well clear at the moment, hard to see the rest not fighting out for the small points.

Last year quali was amazing but the races were mostly uneventful. If it's the other way around this season then that's much better in general - don't think we're ever going to get a perfect balance.

I'll be happy if the starts are all as chaotic as Sunday's, reminds me of the early 00s where you had the Renaults always being rocketships and making up loads of place before ultimately holding up everyone else (the legendary Trulli train!) But at least overtaking should be easier now. I know a lot of people have derided the "artifical" overtakes but give me that over 50+ lap DRS trains all day every day.

Ultimately though we just need 2 or 3 drivers in the mix for the title to get a banger season. 2025 will go down as a great season in the future (like how 2010 is perceived positively now) despite both not having actual great racing just because of the closeness of the title fight. Hopefully Red Bull and McLaren can get closer cos I don't trust Ferrari not to bottle it as usual even if they have the fastest or second fastest car.

I've sat mulling over the race for a few days and watched it a couple of times and come to the following conclusions although I am keeping an open mind as much as possible, going forward.

Qualifying was painful to watch and with the possible exception of Monaco is likely no longer essential viewing. Watching cars decelerate huge distances before the start of the corner was simply depressing and battery management means those, on the ragged edge, ball out quali laps are history. We will also have seen some of the world's greatest circuits and corners taken away because you can't go flat out anymore.

As for the race, aside from the initial launch (which was much improved on the synchronised starts we've seen for a number of years), the opening laps appeared exciting with plenty of changes of position but once they were beyond the first corner virtually none of the overtakes felt earned and almost none happened in the braking zone. It felt too much like the driver's abilities were lost in deference to battery management. Yes, mastering that is a skill but it doesn't feel like pure racing and for me does F1 no favours. Secondly, after the drivers had completed a third or so of the race, they'd all figured out the ideal places to deploy battery and even that element was lost. So we settled in to a more traditional looking race, with tyre management and pitstops coming in to play but by then the writing was on the wall.

Melbourne isn't the most typical circuit and things might be different at others. We won't truly know the effect of these rules until into the European leg but I'm not sold on them so far.

I'm not the biggest fan of Peter Windsor but he says much of what I feel far better and in more detail than me, and aside from his slightly ridiculous analogy around COTA, pretty much nails it all in the first 25 minutes of this interview.