Vandoorne ‘very close in performance’ to Alonso – Boullier

33 comments on “Vandoorne ‘very close in performance’ to Alonso – Boullier”

1. 

   Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
   1st July 2018, 2:08

   I had no idea about Archie Scott Brown. What a fascinating story… I have to say I shed a tear reading about him, my girlfriend is disabled and it’s so nice to see that things are so much better now because those brave men and women fought against adversity for everyone in their situation.
   1. 

      Aapje (@aapje)
      1st July 2018, 9:28

      He did not achieve anything for disabled people though. Apparently the analysis of his fatal accident resulted in the conclusion that disabled people could not safely operate the cars of the day and resulted in a many-decade ban.

      The development of power steering was probably far more important for disabled drivers than what he did. In general, I think that there is a strong tendency to attribute change to individual heroes/activists that actually came about due to technology or increased prosperity.
      1. 

         anon
         1st July 2018, 11:08

         @aapje, in the case of the analysis of his accident, it looks like those investigating it wanted to use his disabilities as an excuse to ban disabled drivers from motorsport.

         After all, reading reports of the time, it notes that his loss of control was firstly down to the fact that the corner he went off at had been hit by a sudden rain shower, before his car then struck a road sign that, according to Paul Frère (who was taking part in the same race), he’d told the organisers to remove because it was dangerous (a warning that they ignored because it was cheaper to leave the road sign in place).

         There was nothing in the way that the accident occurred that was specifically down to the fact that he was disabled – if anything, it could be said that the investigation used it as a way of shifting the blame for the accident from the organisers onto the one person who could not answer back.
      2. 

         Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
         1st July 2018, 20:26

         @aapje you underestimate the fact that these people run with a disadvantage and still try and do it against a lot of problems… if he had not raced, no one would’ve given disabled people more opportunities. It’s like women racing, they create a path for others to follow.
2. 

   Phylyp (@phylyp)
   1st July 2018, 3:20

   Re. COTD, I disagree – I view the team and driver as one, especially when it comes down to driving standards. Good to see a driver higher up in the WDC penalized for blocking someone lower down, as a message that’s very effective (and irrespective of whether the blocking had any impact on the eventual quali outcome). It is also a good signal to drivers to either get their mirrors fixed, or stay off the line if not on a hot lap.

   Teams pay attention to cars on track to find the right gap for their own cars’ hot laps, so it’s not to much to ask for them to pay heed to others hot laps as well.

   That said, wouldn’t mind seeing Ferrari lodge an appeal contrasting this to Canada, if anything to send the point back to Charlie and the stewards for consistency. That was such a rolling roadblock that I chuckled on seeing the replays.

   Now let me go quell my sorrow at Vettel’s lowered starting position.
   1. 

      Robbie (@robbie)
      1st July 2018, 12:55

      Sounds like it was just a bit of an anomaly though. Usually teams and drivers get it right in terms of getting out of the way. There’s no way Seb did this intentionally, and he simply couldn’t see CSj at that particular moment due to the way they have to all position their mirrors. Bit of a perfect storm for that snapshot in time.
3. 

   ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
   1st July 2018, 4:19

   Yes. Brand as environmental friendly, as the future engine, helps electric cars and motorsport gain women attention.

   Roaring exhaust and big turbocharge must be too muscular too most women.
   1. 

      Sush meerkat
      1st July 2018, 7:11

      Roaring exhaust and big turbocharge must be too muscular too most women.

      Not to mention they can’t smell each other’s perfumes from the smell of the exhausts.
   2. 

      Joseph (@bigjoe)
      1st July 2018, 11:18

      Interesting that men use and become emotional about muscular looking and sounding cars to extend their egos, feel good about themselves and seek attention. Sometimes to the point of a mating signal. Yet women just aren’t interested. Women are only interested in men with these cars if they also happen to portray wealth.
      1. 

         Sush meerkat
         1st July 2018, 11:44

         Interesting that men use and become emotional about muscular looking and sounding cars to extend their egos, feel good about themselves and seek attention

         Also interesting that almost every man and woman petrol head I’ve ever met describe fast cars as female.
4. 

   Mashiat (@mashiat)
   1st July 2018, 4:44

   I was recently reading an article in Autosport that talked about how Vandoorne’s driving style is very similar to Vettel’s, and hence, he struggles similar to Vettel in 2014 and 2016 when the car isn’t very balanced, but when it’s right, they can have high peaks. Would be interesting to see how Vandoorne would perform relative to Alonso if given one of the top 3 cars. Alonso is generally believed (even according to himself) to not maybe have an exceptional peak, but his strength rather is being able to extract a lot from a car regardless of balance, downforce etc.
   1. 

      Robbie (@robbie)
      1st July 2018, 13:00

      Fair enough but I think it can only go so far. I think all drivers do better with a well balanced car, and then the exceptional drivers can deal with a less balanced car…but only somewhat. Extracting ‘a lot’ is relative, as a bad car will still greatly hobble even the very best drivers.
5. 

   Exediron (@exediron)
   1st July 2018, 4:59

   Re: the Byron Young tweet…

   Say what you will about the races, but if he doesn’t think *qualifying* is exciting, he may be better off just sticking to his electrifying spectacle of guys in shorts running around on the grass kicking a ball. Qualifying is as good as it has ever been; we had pole decided by just 19 thousands of a second, and customer cars mixing it with the Big Three and even a stunning lap from Grosjean displacing a Red Bull.

   Ross Brawn doesn’t need to fix qualifying.
   1. 

      Urvaksh (@thedoctor03)
      1st July 2018, 5:29

      +1 COTD for me!
   2. 

      Phylyp (@phylyp)
      1st July 2018, 5:46

      Big +1 to your comment, @exediron , couldn’t have summed it up better.
   3. 

      bosyber (@bosyber)
      1st July 2018, 6:36

      Well said @exediron, he’s entitled to his opinions I suppose, but that doesn’t make him right.
      In this case, FRA-ARG didn’t really start being good well after q3 was done, when France was 2-1 behind and decided they didn’t want to lose.(I normally don’t care, but you know, Twitter was full of football, and TV not needed for RTLde as I have F1TVpro now on PC… )
   4. 

      Ryan
      1st July 2018, 7:10

      What’s even better is the fact that the World Cup match started as Qualifying finished, there was maybe a 1-2 minute overlap at most if even that much.
   5. 

      Jere (@jerejj)
      1st July 2018, 7:33

      @exediron I couldn’t agree more with you. COTD material.
   6. 

      Patrickl (@patrickl)
      1st July 2018, 9:32

      @exediron I don’t know who Byron Young is, but up to a point I agree that the qualifying format is sort of boring.

      The whole thing takes an hour or so, but in reality only the last 2 minutes are what counts.

      Personally I think that’s excitement enough, but to be honest I also barely watched Q1 and Q2. I just have that German/Austrian babble going on in the background while doing other stuff.
   7. 

      Hugh (@hugh11)
      1st July 2018, 9:40

      Also, I missed the first 2 minutes of the football by watching qualifying. So they didn’t even really overlap. So his point is completely invalidated even before you go into what you were saying.
   8. 

      BigJoe
      1st July 2018, 10:36

      @exediron

      “guys in shorts running around on the grass kicking a ball.”
      _

      is that supposed to be a smear? There are footballers surprisingly close in speed to 100 meter athletes. F1 drivers were very late in establishing themselves as ‘athletes’
      Bernie Ecclestone was always jealous of football, he could never work out why F1 didn’t demand the same audience and massive economical growth. The answer is called ‘competition’.
      In tournament football nobody knows who’s going to win and games can swing. Every group stage throws up surprises with big teams often being outdone. This simply doesn’t happen in F1 unless it rains, and even then relies on people being caught out or drawing short straws,

      Football cares considerably more about its fans than F1 has ever done. Look at how well the Russians have organized the World Cup compared to the farce at Paul Ricard. Let me repeat. F1 has cared very little for the fans over the years. Hence why we too often see empty seats and a gradual fall in audience.
6. 

   Calum Menzies
   1st July 2018, 5:15

   It was possible to watch the F1 and the World Cup football on tv yesterday and miss nothing. I think he could just be moaning for the sake of moaning on that one!
7. 

   ColdFly (@)
   1st July 2018, 6:51

   The real question for McLaren is how well their managers are performing compared to even the lowest of benchmarks!

   PS: No idea who this Byron guy is. Why publish his tweet on this platform?
8. 

   bosyber (@bosyber)
   1st July 2018, 6:56

   About the COTD, sure, the way F1 nowadays works, it would have been up to Vettel’s engineer (Ricardo Adamie, I think @keithcollantine named him as in the race pre-analysis?) to tell him because he knew where people were, and mirrors are half useless. However, impeding is still a driving infraction and has been penalised as such.

   So it is still up to the driver, Vettel, to not sit slowly on the racing line in turn one (two officially?) if he wasn’t certain that wouldn’t impede anyone.

   Or perhaps the FIA needs to look at how to fix the problem of mirrors not being much of a help. Get rid of multiple mirror stalks too, at the same time?
   1. 

      ColdFly (@)
      1st July 2018, 7:22

      Exactly, impeding is always the drivers fault, @bosyber.
      Don’t take the responsibility for something this important – awareness what’s around the driver – away from them.
   2. 

      Jere (@jerejj)
      1st July 2018, 7:34

      @bosyber ”turn one (two officially?)” – No, it indeed is T1 ‘officially’ where this incident happened, LOL.
   3. 

      BasCB (@bascb)
      1st July 2018, 16:13

      exactly @bosyber. it is the drivers’ job to stay out of the way (could have been pretty dangerous there too), but off course the teams try to support their drivers to make that easier, that doesn’t mean it’s not the driver in control.

      If Vettel cannot see out of his mirrors, let him make it a GPDR issue to enforce rules that make them more usefull! Or just tell his team to improve them. Surely positioning and their form is more about trying to gain an advantage than about the mirrors being usefull.
9. 

   Jere (@jerejj)
   1st July 2018, 7:39

   I disagree with the COTD to a certain extent. If a driver on a slow lap isn’t informed about an approaching driver behind on a flying lap nor can see whether someone’s behind him or not from the mirrors, then the best most recommended option would be to stay off the racing line. If you aren’t entirely sure whether someone’s behind or not and can’t find it out yourself then better stay off the racing line just in case there is. The same applies to the similar Vandoorne-Hamilton incident in one of the practice sessions last time out in France.
   1. 

      joac21 (@joac21)
      1st July 2018, 8:59

      Leading drivers always act as they own the track. This happens in all types of racing. And sometines including F1
10. 

    Patrickl (@patrickl)
    1st July 2018, 9:24

    The COTD makes no sense on all accounts.

    Penalizing the driver is what punishes the team most. Just making them pay some petty cash out of their half a billion budget is useless. The only reason they started doing that for “unsafe releases” is because they also agreed that, if it got worse with those unsafe releases again, the penalty would also go back to the drivers again.

    Besides, don’t give me this “the mirrors don’t work”, because they can see each other just fine when racing. The mirrors do however only “work” when you actually use them.

    It’s ridiculous to pretend you are doing nothing wrong when driving around at a snails pace on the racing line while not paying any attention whatsoever to your mirrors. Especially when, by his own account, he knew that another driver could be just behind on a hot lap.

    Or even more ridiculous how Vettel claimed that he was actively looking in his mirrors and yet at no point Sainz was visible in the mirrors. Already unlikely that they cannot see cars straight behind, but even so when vettel turned in for that corner, his mirrors would have sweeped the straight showing Sainz at some point.

    If Vettel had paid any attention at all to his mirrors he would have seen Sainz coming. He was napping or otherwise busy so much that he didn’t even notice Sainz until he suddenly appeared next to him. Come on, you cannot blame that on the mirrors.

    I can understand he would be mostly assuming the team would warn him about upcoming cars from behind, but then he shouldn’t make up a story about how he was actively looking for Sainz in his mirrors when he clearly wasn’t at all.

    It’s also not about intention, but when, just like in France, Vettel can produce a whole list of things he should have been taking into account … and then didn’t. That’s negligence.

    Besides, like the stewards said, it’s consistency. Magnussen got the same penalty (form one of the same stewards) for an impeding offence that was caused even more by the team. They told MAG that Perez was on an out lap. So MAG didn’t move out of the way even though he did see him coming. 100% team error.

    In this case Vettel was clearly to blame too. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made up that story about his mirrors not working at all.
    1. 

       Joseph (@bigjoe)
       1st July 2018, 11:07

       “patrickl

       nothing has ‘made sense’ to you this weekend, are you ok?

       ‘Vettel was napping’ ‘Alonso has lost his marbles’
       1. 

          Joseph (@bigjoe)
          1st July 2018, 11:08

          @patrickl
11. 

    Joseph (@bigjoe)
    1st July 2018, 11:00

    Byron Young is a first class t### but I don’t think he’s hoping that Ross Brawn sorts qualifying in particular.
    Like most people who don’t wear an F1 badge on their sleeves, he just wants to follow a ‘sport’ that has actual competition.

    The Football World Cup commands attention because it is not in the slightest bit predictable. Always throws up surprises and drama. The quality of the athletes really matter too.

    Bernie Ecclestone was always jealous of football. He could never work out why F1 didn’t demand the same audience and massive economical growth. The answer is called ‘competition’.

    Football and its teams also cares considerably more about their fans than F1 has ever done, athough obviously suffers from similar greed.

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