Motorsport

He's a legend. Hopefully it spurs on more drivers to follow suit.

Agreed, I don't really see how any sport can take place there and it shouldn't need the participants to take the lead. Good on Seb.

You'd have to assume Haas are a bit worried too. Bad time to be funded by a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin.

Yeah agreed. The whole Haas project is weird frankly.

I get Gene Haas wanting an F1 team as he's a motorsport guy, even if (I believe) he started racing to promote his tool business. You'd think their strength was being American and leaning into that market for sponsors and drivers.

However they got Dallara to make a chassis in Italy (whose track record at F1 isn't great) based the race team at Banbury and have their HQ in North Carolina. For a few years it seemed like they had a plan and then it just sort of petered out and they've never made the step to being a 'proper' independent team.

It's felt like about 3-4 years since Gene Haas gave a toss. Seems like he wants to sell but no one wants to buy, which isn't that surprising given they'd need so much investment in implementing an infrastructure that makes sense that a serious manufacturer entering to win would likely prefer to start from scratch or choose a more centralised team.

Surely it kills him to see his name on a car with a Russian flag and Mazepin driving it? I guess business is business but still, he doesn't need the money. I guess it's just about keeping people in jobs and muddling along.

F1 bottling it again thus far. They are 'monitoring' the situation in Ukraine. Genuinely, appalling attitude.

What exactly are you waiting for whilst monitoring? Russia to say it was an accident and apologise?

I would be willing to bet that haas as it is will not be starting the first race. Unless someone stumps up the same or similar cash.

Sounds like they've fucked off the Russian livery at the very least.

I've got a lot of time for Romain, but this is classic Grosjean:


I guess he'll never lose that capacity to occasionally do something utterly stupid behind the wheel.

I've barely watched it since season 1. I'd imagine WWE wrestling portrays men fighting better than DTS does Formula 1.

While he's clearly a bit of a cunt and isn't a good enough driver to justify being in F1, I do have slight sympathy as it's a really unfortunate way to lose your seat. He was just collateral, really.

Then again there are plenty of better drivers who have been dropped from teams without a care in the world, so maybe I'm just getting a bit too sentimental in my old age.

After this and the Rich Energy fiasco, you'd hope they are switched on enough from those experiences to do a bit of due diligence at any title sponsor offers that come in.

So definitely some NFT/Crypto startup they never see a penny from then.

He had enough talent to compete at F2 level, where the cars are more even so I don't think his brief F1 stint is entirely a fair reflection of his ability. I've never liked the guy because of his behaviour and personality but he's far from the worst pay driver in F1 history.

It's better to judge him from F2 where he was mostly midpack, with the occasional stand out performance. Absolutely did not deserve promotion to F1 ahead of about 10-20 more talented guys in recent years but it wouldn't be fair to say he had nothing about him.

If you want to see what zero talent actually looks like when they buy a seat in elite Motorsport, search Mahaveer Ragunathan on YouTube.

Yeah I'll have to avoid the thread for spoilers, keen to see how Gardner goes as well.
I generally watch it late at night and maybe over a day or two.

Bt sport, or the app has a video pass. You may need to vpn when you buy the pass, you can't buy in UK but if you vpn from German it is 50 euros or so. Then you can watch from UK through the app.

Thanks. Not having BT Sport is one of the main reasons I stopped watching. The other is that with FE, F3, F2, F1, Le Mans and the occasional BTCC and Indycar race it's hard to adequately explain to my partner why I need to watch even more.