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.