Also these cars ARE incredibly unpredictable from outlap to outlap which results in wild swings of single lap pace and it just robs qualifying of feeling like it's building up to the One Lap. Again, this'll probably get better, but right now it's garbage
I expect this'll get better as teams learn to balance the demands of prep laps with these cars but right now qualifying isn't worth watching. It feels random and it kills the tension of having several cars on hotlaps because one of them might just eat shit in one sector suddenly
Since the 2026 regulations are a hot topic, I like the racing and hate the qualifying. The main thing I hate about qualifying is how random it feels, where cars can go purple, purple, yellow and end up several tenths off pole. This was particularly bad in Australia.
I thought it was at 5am my time, not 4 😭😭
Completely missed the sprint. Oops.
painted a dude
#battletech
I've worn a lot of impractical shit for this hobby but this coat may take the cake
i think the worst part about stomach ulcers is that the pain goes away when you eat, but then once you get hungry again the pain comes back a thousand times worse
Andrea Stella openly complaining that HPP won't share their homework with the customer teams. Throwback to last year when McLaren fans were parroting McLaren's propaganda about "near works status" and "a seat at the table" at me.
George Russell navigates a difficult start to F1's new era, as Ferrari have another minor honsing, and Aston Martin's chickens come home to roost.
I found a way to get a DRR out. Have a read. ^_^ www.motorsport101.com/dres-race-re...
Antonelli was also driving a car that wasn't nearly as well done on setup as Russell's after his FP3 crash and the rush to rebuild it, so he was quietly the driver of the race for me
DH101 is superclipping all the way into turn 9
haha yes topical joke
also some food for thought; Russell is already on his last battery for the season
Ok I do: Cadillac were slow but at least one of their cars ran normally and didn't finish 15 fucking laps down doing endurance style consolation stints
I've got nothing to say about Aston Martin.
And to wrap it up, the teams I haven't mentioned:
Haas just keep quietly putting together solid cars. Ocon is looking real sketch, though, as much as I hate to say it.
Cadillac are quite a bit slower than I was expecting but I don't reckon they'll be too fussed at this stage.
Thank you, I'm really trying, I knew my horrendous diet at cons was gonna bite me in the ass one day and it finally happened this week 😭
Biggest surprises for me were Audi, Lindblad and Hadjar. Yes, Hadjar's car gave up, but he qualified fantastically and doesn't look nearly as out of his depth as his predecessors. Lindblad points on debut, a joy to watch wheel to wheel, no notes. Audi have done a respectable job with their engine.
Biggest disappointments of this race for me were the three Merc customers. Alpine tossed 2025 the minute testing ended last year and got handily beaten by VCARB and Haas this race. Williams look unreliable and very slow. McLaren got utterly hammered not just by Mercedes but by Ferrari too.
Ok this stomach ulcer really hurts so some more thoughts
Also the first third of this race was really good and the rest was very boring. Bedtime for me.
Hot take but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion for Mercedes yet
I am surprised by how competitive the Ferraris are on long run pace, honestly
awake at 04:46am dealing with a stomach ulcer to watch a race I know is extremely likely to be shit. doing it for the love of the game
cautions breed cautions or something
None of this to devalue Russell's actual performance or anything, I just hate these cars
It all feels really meaningless and empty, like the facsimile of racing I do with other people on track days where we're all actually just coasting well below the ultimate limit of our cars, just for different reasons
I watched quali and Russell's onboard and I wasn't blown away by an amazing qualifying performance, it all just looked and felt like Russell pressed the right buttons at the right time, like QTE based racing
F1's always been a technical sport but it's also shown that the driver is ultimately the differentiator. Look at Verstappen's dominant years and where Perez was putting those all conquering cars in comparison. These cars just fundamentally aren't like that
The laps feel meaningless. I don't feel like Russell did an amazing job or whatever, it just feels like he told the buttons the eggheads at HPP told him to press the best out of anyone. It sucks, it's not interesting, it looks and sounds awful on track
