Yep, he was my driver of the day too. It's insane how Alonso can just keep going. I know he's not old, per se, but I saw a YouTube short last night showing how long other drivers' careers would have been if they had stayed in F1 for the same length. I think there was something insane like Prost would've retired in 2006, Niki Lauda in 1997 and Jacques Villeneuve in 2022. All daft, I know, but it's insane nonetheless!
As long as Stroll is in the other Aston Fernando can just keep chugging away as he will always beat his team mate
A classic 'it's not over until it's over' happened in the World Rally Championship last weekend.
Nice to see some people with driving skills getting a mention in this thread!
Great pictures!
Have you seen the number of buttons on steering wheel. These F1 drivers are bred with extra digits!
it is over. The gap between Antonelli and the others may decrease but he could almost give up now and be champion. Russell will start the next GP from the back due to an engine change
A reminder of how easy it was to get close up to the action in those days, you'd never be able to take pictures like that today. I still have a T-shirt from the last GP I saw in person, the Grand Prix of Europe held at Brands Hatch in 1983 (the British GP was at Silverstone I think).
Most road-car engines these days are turbos and have some degree of hybridisation - F1 isn't going to go back to plain naturally aspirated engines nor should they.
How? The people in charge understand the issue and solution on the day, and hear from the teams who don’t want the past. There were huge amounts of electronics in the 90s, a supposed golden era.
The big downside as a spectator was the chaos getting to and from the track on the first two days, along with some problems inside the track in terms of inadequate catering and water supply (after stripping everyone of any food and water on the way in).
I think the Formula E effect we are currently experiencing in Formula 1 is woeful, to say the least. We have cars that are anti-racing, with drivers losing power/speed due to clipping and even stories of the cars getting "lost", such as Valtteri Bottas at Baku and then having either no brakes or sudden energy deployment dumps. Then there's the constant need to introduce street circuit after street circuit. I know Monaco is not a fan favourite, but it is the original. It's pretty unchanged since the 1920s. Since then, no other street circuit has come close to sticking on the calendar for any similar length of time. Dallas, Phoenix, Long Beach and Adelaide are the others that spring to mind, and only Adelaide really became a favourite.
Melbourne seems to be well received.
Cars in the 90s were just as "anti racing" - with many, many, many boring racing in the 90s - we just rose tinted view them now. A cars performance was never "just" dictated by the drivers foot.
There's no rose-tinted nonsense when I look back at those races. I'd take four or five genuine overtakes instead of this pathetic instant gratification nonsense of over-inflated DRS/boost assisted overtakes. Drivers being able to use tyres and fuel levels to their liking, resulting in a field spread of one, two or even three stoppers (Schumacher in Hungary '98 springs to mind), was and will always remain the golden age of the sport for me. Yes, there are those that will say the 70s and 80s were great too, and it was. But in the 90s you seemed to have that balance between small constructors like Jordan, Simtek, Larrousse and Pacific buying an engine, making a basic chassis and going racing and the sport steadily expanding. At one stage in the late 80s and early 90s, entries were so high you needed a pre-qualifying session and later the 107% rule.
Oh, I have many still preserved. I used to record each race live or as highlights as a child because I couldn't convince my family to let me skip boring weekend family events to watch all the races. Only with snooze fests can you really appreciate the exciting races. If you have NASCAR, where every race seems to have "the big one" and a ten-car pile-up followed by a punch-up in the paddock, then it would soon lose its fun. I'm the sort of F1 fan that will happily watch a 1999 Spanish Grand Prix-style race with two or three overtakes and know that the next thriller could be just around the corner. This instant-gratification malarkey really grates on me. Imagine watching a 0-0 draw in football and going "we need more excitement, blindfold the keeper or add a second ball". Drive to Survive also hasn't helped, implying every moment is action-fueled calamity.
I agree about the purists in the 70s watching the 90s and not enjoying it. Funnily enough, a family friend got me into motor racing. He was Pete Page, and raced 500cc Formula 3 cars in the 40s and 50s with Stirling Moss. He hated the 90s, but still eagerly watched every race, and I remember him really enjoying the '98 battle between Schumacher and Hakkinen.
And this I also agree with. But I simply loathe the current set of regulations. Cars "super-clipping" and then FOM changing the graphics so we can't see the exact speeds at the start of the season. I entered the season with an open mind to the new regulations, after entering 2014 with a real premeditated dislike. But it didn't last long. Oscar Piastri's crash on the way to the grid in Australia made me think "hold up", and then Bearman's shunt in Suzuka firmly made me go "nah, rubbish".
