In the round-up: Daniil Kvyat describes his year away from Formula 1 after being dropped by Toro Rosso late last year as his chance to “regroup”.
What they say
Kvyat spent a year as Ferrari’s simulator driver before being recalled to Toro Rosso for another season with the team.
First of all of course I’m very pleased to be back. It’s what I wanted and I’m really thankful for this opportunity to Red Bull and obviously also Ferrari. It was a great year for me working for them. I had the chance to regroup everything together and now I’m back where I want to be. It’s going to be an exciting 2019 with Toro Rosso.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
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Social media
Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:
First time for me in Japan. Impossible to not think of what happened here 4 years ago. We miss you Julio, I'll push to make a good week-end for you ❤️ @julesbianchi17 pic.twitter.com/xYQ3CAZZCL
— Charles Leclerc (@Charles_Leclerc) October 3, 2018
Flew from Sochi straight to Suzuka for another run in this on Friday ✌🏼🇯🇵 pic.twitter.com/mrbFkNEcZK
— Lando Norris (@LandoNorris) October 3, 2018
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Links
More motor racing links of interest:
International Court of Appeal - Hearing November 1, 2018 (FIA)
"Appeal brought by Haas F1 Team against the decision No. 42 dated 2 September 2018 of the Stewards of the 2018 Italian Grand Prix counting towards the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship."
Williams 'intensively evaluating' driver line-up (Sky)
"There is so much hard work going on at Grove, and work you might not expect - it isn't just about bringing performance to the race car, although that is a critical point, but there is a lot of work going on around culture, structure, to make sure we are a team fit for purpose next year."
Renault: Don't single us out over Ocon's plight (Autosport)
"Esteban is currently in the middle of a situation of a very adverse set of circumstances, and I think Renault is only a small factor in all of that."
Russian GP struggles to bring in the viewers (The F1 Broadcasting Blog)
"The combined average audience of 2.31 million viewers is the lowest for Russia on record, down 4.1 percent and 2.4 percent on 2016 and 2017’s average audiences. Whilst not a good number, the audience figure is not abnormal for Russia, either."
Inside Mercedes' 1999 Le Mans (Motorsport magazine)
"The fact that Mark then went out and the car went up on the out-lap… that would have been my first-ever lap. That’s just a scary thought."
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Comment of the day
Did Mercedes intend to put Hamilton in front of Bottas through the pit stops in the Russian Grand Prix?
The transcript confirms Mercedes was trying to engineer an ‘overcut’ for Hamilton on Bottas without telling him that was the strategy, seemingly so he could maintain some plausible deniability about the whole thing.
I have no problem with team orders, but this makes invoking Hamilton’s blistering as the justification ring a bit hollow. He was only vulnerable to Vettel because they screwed up their first attempt at trying to swap them around.
@Markzastrow
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Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
4th October 2018, 0:29
Great COTD! @Markzastrow had not though of that possibility
BasCB (@bascb)
4th October 2018, 7:31
Yeah, thanks @markzastrow for mentioning it (and thanks Keith for picking it as the CotD).
Tommy C (@tommy-c)
4th October 2018, 0:48
Make that 1967 for Hulme’s championship win!
frood19 (@frood19)
4th October 2018, 9:50
any fans of Grand Prix Legends will know this well!
Ed
4th October 2018, 4:50
I wonder what will be of this guy if he underperforms again. It’s too much time on a subpar level receiving support.
Marko said that Vandoorne isn’t fast enough to be on F1, but i just remembered that he scored more than twice as points as Kvyat last year with a much lesser car.
socksolid (@socksolid)
4th October 2018, 6:27
I just looked at the 2017 points for the drivers and found a thing that surprised me a lot. Vandoorne had 13 points compared to alonso’s 17 points. Alonso had just 1 more retirement. Not bad for his first season. Comparing kvyat to vandoorne the latter had 1 more retirement. The most worrying thing for kvyat is how clearly sainz beat him. Compared to kvyat’s 5 points in 14 races sainz collected 55 points during the full season while also having more retirements during the same time frame they were both driving the cars. From all that it really seems kvyat just deflated completely after losing the red bull drive. I don’t see the comparison of kvyat to vandoorne making much sense. But the fact kvyat was beaten and totally destroyed by his team mate in the same car tells the full picture.
Ed
4th October 2018, 13:01
Helmut marko said vandorne wasnt getting the seat at TR because he isnt fast enough.
Sundar Srinivas Harish (@sundark)
4th October 2018, 4:58
Cyril Abiteboul makes a good point about Ocon’s situation and Wolff’s, frankly, childish reaction to the issue. Mercedes assumed stewardship of Ocon since his F1 debut, and according to the news, they were contributors to the FI rejig. Wolff can’t expect Reanult to wait and see how everything would pan out before settling on a driver lineup for next year. Mercedes shouldn’t be pointing fingers at anyone but themselves.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
4th October 2018, 5:37
@sundark – yeah I agree, never thought I’d be here agreeing with Cyril, but honestly, this is a competition, and Renault has to do what they have to do when it comes to driver recruitment.
This is the story of a Wolff who cried like a boy.
bosyber (@bosyber)
4th October 2018, 5:57
Well, mostly @sundark,@phylyp, except that next time whenever another driver’s manager asks not to pursue a seat, as Renault apparently did here (the sainz deal), that won’t fly,and that probably won’t be pretty. That’s to me the only thing Wolff has a right to feel aggrieved about with Renault.
Sundar Srinivas Harish (@sundark)
5th October 2018, 0:40
Clearly, the benefits of signing Ricciardo outweighed the demerits of losing a bit of trust in the paddock. Although I’m not sure there was much trust in the first place.
socksolid (@socksolid)
4th October 2018, 6:41
That burn tho.
t3x
4th October 2018, 8:18
Williams ‘intensively evaluating’ which driver will bring the most money…
Martijn (@)
4th October 2018, 8:55
Cyril Abiteboul seems an even bigger political snake than Alonso. I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing business with Renault unless you are a F1 driver at the moment they (if ever) have a race winning car. Snake pit this team.
ColdFly (@)
4th October 2018, 9:40
Why, @mayrton.
Toto is the snake. He failed to finalise the contract with Renault; he failed to find another seat when Ricciardo signed with Renault (he has influence over Force India, Williams, Mercedes); and now is failing to release Ocon so Red Bull can pick him up.
5 teams and Toto failed Ocon on all of them.
Paul (@frankjaeger)
4th October 2018, 10:29
It’s funny, I had almost no desire to watch the Russian GP. Boring track, boring time in the Championship, Russian foreign policy is disgraceful as usual. I didn’t watch it and it seems I won’t regret it
Biggsy
4th October 2018, 18:53
What the…?
Despite being nonsense comment, I struggle to see how is it relevant in the first place.
Jere (@jerejj)
4th October 2018, 10:46
What’s the use? It was a clear-cut case that they broke the rules, so, therefore, the DSQ was entirely justified, and thus, they don’t have a realistic shot at getting the 6th place back, so why even bother wasting their and the FIA’s time with this pointless appeal. Just accept it and move on.
– I agree with the COTD.
OOliver
5th October 2018, 12:47
Mercedes were not trying to get Hamilton past Bottas through the pitstop. If they were, it would have been through a target Laptime. What they didn’t want was Bottas giving Vettel too much of a gap such that he could increase his speed massively relative to Hamilton.Bottas stopped 3 laps before Hamilton, there was no way Hamilton was going to come back ahead of him.