Motorsport

1. It's also just guesswork at this stage.

2. I'm not team anyone, I just want close racing with multiple teams able to win any given week.

I'd love a season where Red Bull and Mercedes spend the majority fighting for lower points. Both the team principles and the fans of those teams could do with a little bit of perspective. It says a lot when the drivers involved in the battle have been the most mature people about it.

Ferrari Vs McLaren Vs Williams plz. Just for nostalgia's sake.

The big fear is that they do what they did last year with the engine and smoke everyone even if their chassis is a little behind. The loophole that allows for a lesser grid penalty with more engine changes beyond the first 10-place drop should have been closed the second the cars crossed the line in Abu Dhabi. It goes completely against the spirit of the rules and what these engines were supposed to represent.

I'd imagine the first few races might have a few surprises that aren't indicative of much in terms of pace as well. Reliability is probably going to be a huge factor for at least the first 2-3 races.

Lewis possibly changing his surname to Hamilton-Larbalestier after his mum. Which is A) really sweet and B) going to be hilarious hearing Crofty try to belt that one out every 5 seconds.

Well that's no fun, he should demand it's pronounced in full every time for my own amusement. Along with the 'Sir'.

Well. I'm certainly pleased that they've indirectly acknowledged that the Abu Dhabi 'interpretation' was not right and taken moves to prevent it happening again.

Still a complete farce that the stewards and FIA opted to pretend that what Masi did was fine and undermine the integrity of the sport rather than just accept it was a collosal mistake.

Can't help but still be angry, but this helps a bit in terms of restoring some faith lessons have been learnt.

Yes, no idea why they didn't politely move on after being told "it's called a motor race".

As I said before whether the sport can move on depends a lot on Red Bull and whether they'll accept that they can't have their cake and eat it. i.e. they got to keep a win that never would have withstood any impartial legal process, have the decency not to poke the wound.

I don't really care if Horner wants to moan about the legality of Merc side pods or any other topic. Moan away about new stuff if you must.

Just stop pretending Masi did nothing wrong, was unfairly treated, and that Merc did anything RB wouldn't in their position. We know they don't genuinely believe it, they know how the rules are supposed to work and aren't idiots. Surely Max's ego also isn't so fragile that he needs everyone around him to block out the reality of his win. It's just a pathetic and patronising attempt to reframe things that they need to stop.

Much like with refereeing in football, there's no transparency or accountability. Everything has to be seen to be the "right" decision. They would all have much more credibility and respect of they acknowledged that people are human and make mistakes. Masi was in a very high pressure situation, made a call which was not correct. It happens. But don't try and hand wave it away.

I know Drive to Survive isn't very popular in here but man that Haas episode is something else. Mazepin is such an unbelievable arsehole to everyone, safe in the knowledge that his dad has their very jobs in his hands. You can sense the tension in every radio message.

I hadn’t watched it before, but binged the latest series over the last few days. Yes, I’m sure there’s dramatic license aplenty, it is TV, but it was really interesting. Am going to go back through the previous ones now.

Need to be a bit careful with whataboutery as multiple things can be bad.  I think it's better to resist simplification and appraise every season in more detail, rather than say loads of bad stuff has happened over the years so we may as well accept all Championships are equally valid.  Even though I like Hamilton, I don't mind people disputing 2008, I don't agree it's tainted but it's certainly open for debate.

Assume you are referring to Singapore 2008?  That should have be annulled or at least Renault DQ'd, but Massa retired anyway due to a Ferrari refuelling error so Hamilton may have extended his lead by more.  Or perhaps Ferrari don't make the mistake rushing after the SC so Massi wins, we'll never know.  Of course there was still a chunk of season left so there was still plenty of scope for many different hypothetical scenarios so calculating the impact on the Championship is very speculative.

Abu Dhabi was quite different because there was so little time and variables remaining between the incorrect procedure being implemented and the end of the season.  It was literally one illegitimate lap and unusually, we know exactly the order the race would have finished had the correct procedure been followed.

If anything, better parallels are Brazil 2003 and Canada 2018, both occasions that the official result was declared then belatedly amended when it emerged a procedural mistake had been made at the end of the race.  Both times it was confusing, but the right outcome prevailed because rules are rules and sport isn't sport without them.

Max, Red Bull and Honda are all worthy champions.  They built the best all round package, and Max drove superbly (awful race craft aside).  Max personally is worthy of winning an F1 title, unfortunately, and through no fault of his own (but definitely some fault of Jonathon Wheatley for directly pushing for an incorrect procedure) he didn't win the last one in sporting circumstances.  I don't have any issue with him celebrating it immediately after either, he wasn't personally at fault as you say. 

However it's somewhere between tone deaf and active trolling for RB personnel to discuss Abu Dhabi and Masi rather than refer to the season as a whole, which is much less shaky ground.  By all means claim they deserve titles on balance, I disagree, but it's certainly a valid argument to make.

The FIA still hasn't published it's own report (which is pretty damning), but has fired Masi and changed the wording of the specific rule, which is not the behaviour of a governing body that has investigated itself and satisfied that everything was above board.

Yes it's a pity Merc didn't push things all the way but given there was apparently no certain route to a hearing under in an independent court of appeal, I'd say they've perhaps got more impactful change through than they may have done if they'd embarrassed the FIA as much as possible.