Gasly says he Ocon, Leclerc, Norris, Russell are F1’s “new generation”

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In the round-up: Pierre Gasly says a new generation of talent is arriving in Formula 1.

What they say

Gasly says the recent influx of new talent into F1 is good for the sport:

I think honestly we had a pretty good generation with Charles [Leclerc], Esteban [Ocon] because we raced together since 2005. So the fact that we kept racing each other every year, I think it was useful for all of us trying to extract the best of ourselves and it kind of raised our game for all of us. It was a really good thing.

We see also some new guys like [Lando] Norris coming and [George] Russell. Kind of a new generation coming into Formula 1. Probably for the people that didn’t follow the F1 in the last five years [who] will start follow again either next year or in two years the grid will change quite a lot.

But I think it’s a pretty good thing, fresh people in Formula 1, I think we have a lot of ambitions, all of us, we know what we want and it’s great. We’ve been growing together in the lower series and now we are at the top of motorsports still fighting and hopefully will keep going for the next few years.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Is it unrealistic to believe F1 can enforce a cost cap?

The cost cap alone isn’t going to work, funds needs to be distributed more evenly, that’s the only way it can sort of work, obviously this is easier said than done.

A cost cap will not work. It will be impossible to police. Big teams like Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull (which buy all their engineering resources from Red Bull Technologies) will have so many ways ‘hiding’ expenses in different parts of their huge companies. So status quo will remain.
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41 comments on “Gasly says he Ocon, Leclerc, Norris, Russell are F1’s “new generation””

  1. Lenny (@leonardodicappucino)
    18th November 2018, 0:25

    Interesting that Gasly names himself and Ocon among F1’s “next generation”, but not Verstappen, even though Verstappen is younger than both Gasly and Ocon… Probably shows how people often forget how young Verstappen still is.

    Also find the quote from the Northwich Guardian very interesting. Personally, although I do respect him as one of the greatest drivers of his generation, I dislike Hamilton because of his moaning on the radio. Taking myself back to Austria and how Mercedes had to get James Vowles to throw himself under the bus completely to calm Hamilton down about the strategy mistake.

    1. Out of interest who’s your favourite driver @leonardodicappucino

      1. Lenny (@leonardodicappucino)
        18th November 2018, 3:43

        I see myself as a fairly neutral viewer, but, being Dutch, I do have some affinity with Verstappen.

        1. I think Tom might have thought you may be an Alonso fan :P I certainly wondered if that was the case, because while Hamilton is a bit of a whiner, Alonso takes the cake every day of the week.

    2. @leonardodicappucino I dont think he forgot how young Verstappen is.

    3. Lenny – you write “I dislike Hamilton because of his moaning on the radio”. Succesful, top-flight racing drivers are obsessive perfectionists. They are strongly motivated to win. What you see as moaning, they will see as pushing for the best; a concern to get even the smallest of detail right. Hamilton is arguably the most succesful driver of his era. That is no accident. He achieved what he has by hard work and pushing those around him to deliver their very best.

      1. Still what he is talking about aint exactly a highlight of Hamiltons career. Its very poor form.

        1. Gabriel – We only get to hear a small sample of the radio messages. The teams monitor each others traffic. Do you think it possible that some anodyne “whinges” might be code? Do you prefer to hear expletive laden threats to do violence to other drivers if they meet them after the race?

      2. Lenny (@leonardodicappucino)
        18th November 2018, 3:51

        @gnosticbrian I do understand that Hamilton is a perfectionist, it’s one of the reasons Hamilton is so successful, as Bottas recently alluded to, even when he is already fastest, he strives to find any way to be even faster. What I dislike more is specifically that Hamilton often gives radio messages that just seem like complaining without giving any real feedback on what is wrong and/or how they could solve the problem, and especially his critique of strategy calls. I feel Vettel and Alonso have similar traits. They sometimes give these radio messages that are not beneficial to anyone at all, and sure sometimes these are legendary (“GP2 ENGINE!”) but it just is something that I dislike in elite athletes.

        1. @leonardodicappucino
          I do agree but also you have to understand that all but the “tasy” radio messages are filtered out for us. It doesnt give a fair view of what he actually says.

          1. It should also be noted that just as every Hamilton statement is scrutinised because he is wdc the same doesn’t apply to others. I can guarantee you they all “moan” just as much be we don’t get the coverage of it.

        2. Lenny – Might Lewis have a valid reason to question strategy calls? Has his team ALWAYS served him well in that regard?

          Top line, highly experienced drivers like Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton KNOW what their car is doing from how it feels / sounds. But, driving at the limit, they really don’t have the time to compose an errudite engineering thesis. They distil matters down to the essentials – remember Jenson’s perpetual “I can’t find the balance” or “there’s no grip”? And their engineers know their drivers so well that the finest nuance of expression tells them a lot.

          The post practice / qually / race debrief will go into the fine detail [with no risk of the opposition overhearing and gaining an advantage] and driver and engineers get to understand each other all the better.

    4. Interesting that Gasly names himself and Ocon among F1’s “next generation”, but not Verstappen

      In the quote he only names Noris and Russell as the ‘next generation’.
      The others including Leclerc (Stroll) must be the ‘old guard’.
      @leonardodicappucino

    5. I dislike Hamilton because of his moaning on the radio

      .

      I find that interesting, given you go on to state your support for Max. Max moans on the radio alot- especially about self inflicted penalties like in Monza, Japan (vs Kimi) and obviously most recently with his aggressive diabolical behaviour towards Ocon.

      Out of curiosity, what do you make of Alonso’s conduct? Or Vettel for that matter?

      1. aggressive

        You do understand that the race leader like others is allowed to defend his position.. Do you?

        1. He means the shoving.

          1. The diabolical pushes. Ahhhhhh.

          2. @ Bart- please do share how “well hard” you are, and what you would have done to Ocon, given you think the ‘pushes were diabolical’.

            Just to be clear- I think Verstappen’s post race conduct should be condemned (and has by large quarters of the F1 community).

    6. @leonardodicappucino
      I think it’s pretty obvious why Gasly does not mention Verstappen.
      He is already an established driver, with wins etc.

      As for the rest, for your own sake, please do not bother to reply to blind and one-sided fans. Using just a single word, with which they were “offended”, they’ll divert the whole thing and drag you down exactly where they want.

  2. I disagree with cotd. Budget can work but it will never be a perfect system. Even with its faults it can be better than what we have now.

    All top level motorsports have basically the two exact same issues. High level of technology and complexity that is hard to police. And high costs. And typically these are connected. How do you limit technology and complexity in motorsport? You make spec parts, you limit materials, you put limits on cfd and wind tunnels, you put hard limits on technologies you don’t want and you invent huge number of tests and rules to prevent anybody coming up with anything new, innovative and expensive. How do you limit costs? You really just do those same things. Tech is expensive.

    Cost cap allows motorsports to reduce many of those limitations. With limited budgets the cost-performance ratio is the new king. Not simply how much money you have for essentially researching unlimited list of more and more smaller and more expensive performance additives. It is not a perfect system. It comes with its own issues. There will be controversies and bad decisions.

    But is it worse than now when the top three has been locked down in their current order for 10+ years? I don’t think it is. Because the horrible engines are staying we need something else to fix the issues. Cost cap won’t fix the high downforce-dirty air issues, it will not fix the expensive, complicated, overweight and political engines but it can fix the high costs and at least partially fix the flawed price money distribution. But just like everything else there is no magical bullet. F1 faces many complex issues. Some are technical, some are financial and some are political. Budget gap is just one piece of that solution. In perfect world we’d get new aero package with 30-50% less downforce (still clearly more than 2014), we get 80% cheaper and 50% lighter engine, we get better tires, we get more equal price money distribution, we get a way to watch f1 races that is not an outdated idea from 2012 and we get a budget gap that makes it possible to have the best of both worlds. High technology without morbidly high costs.

    1. Agreed.

      Cost cap won’t be perfect, some will find ways to hide costs and get around certain things. But at the moment, the big three spend 3 to 4 TIMES the amount of the smallest teams. No team of accountants could hide that amount of disparity.

      In thoery the cost cap will even the playing field completely. In practice it won’t, but it will still even things significantly compared to what we have today.

      1. Agreed. They have to at least try, no? The alternative is to continue to deny it is possible, which will harm F1’s future endeavours. How many inventions, businesses etc etc would we not have if everyone just stuck to assumptions that ‘it will never work. End of?’ They need to try it. They’ll likely need to tweak it. But doing nothing is no way to advance.

        1. Agree also. We all know it won’t work properly. But everyone from the top 3 down probably won’t be effected at all as they are already under the budget cap, so no change there. The top 3 will be affected. While they will find clever ways to subvert the rules, they will still be effected and that is good.

          Just because something doesn’t work perfectly, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work at all. We have an issue. Not trying to fix it because it is hard, guarantees that it won’t be fixed. And just because it doesn’t work in 2021, doesn’t mean that they can’t refine the loopholes in the future and make it work. Well… work better. They will always find a way.

          I will point out one thing to everyone. There are real people involved in this decision. Budget caps mean people lose their jobs. F1 needs to be sensitive to that. Ferrari, Merc and RB are likely to cut 50-100 staff each. That is real people with real lives and dreams that we are talking about. I am not suggesting we don’t do it. I am just pointing out that it is hard.

  3. A bit premature I’d say.
    They will only be a part of F1s new generation if they prove to have what it takes and they won’t get a lot of time to do it.
    LeClerc looks promising but how he competes against Vettel be more telling.
    Way too early to judge Norris and Russell.
    Gasly himself will be on a short leash with Marko and VES will only add pressure.
    Don’t get too carried away Pierre.

    1. Yeah, good point. A year or two ago, people might have been waxing lyrical about how – for example – Vandoorne is part of the next generation, but two years in a McLaren probably put paid to that.

    2. +1 to this. Do I sense some cockiness already in GAS? Even though Kvyat is back his example should serve as a caution.

      1. I don’t sense any cockiness from Gasly. Isn’t he just saying what goes without saying? These lads are part of the next generation. Yeah it’s true they have everything to prove yet, but I can understand Gasly not dwelling on that for the sake of the comment he is making. Maybe a few of them won’t make it, or won’t make it to a top team for a while or what have you. There are many possible eventualities for them in the future, all dependent on what moves teams will make which we cannot possible know about right now.

        What I look forward to is a new F1 of closer racing so that ideally we will really see what these blokes are made of in what I hope and expect will be more of a driver vs driver formula. I’m sick of how limiting the tires have been for drivers in cars that struggle to make the tires work, and thus leave them handcuffed most of the time.

  4. I agree with Gasly although he perhaps should’ve included Max as well since he’s also part of the same ‘younger’ generation.
    – I entirely agree with the COTD.
    – That close call incident on the Baja 1000 event, though. How on Earth did someone manage to get through to the road used for a stage supposedly closed for normal traffic during the event?

    1. There’s another, even more nail-biting, video of the Baja 1000 incident on Rossi’s Instagram. Black SUV dude was lucky to survive, he could’ve had a windshield full of Rossi’s truck.

  5. Early mental games against his new young teammate in Max, but I see where he is coming from, these guys are newer into f1, while max has been here a while.

  6. And Gasly act like he forgot about Stroll.

    1. Cause is not a the mix. He is only racein cause he has a rich daddy.

  7. Instead of promoting a cost cap, why not conduct a proper analysis of what consumes the most money in F1. A team spending $20M to develop a coat of paint, is their own personal problem, but if money is needlessly wasted redesigning gearboxes or wheel hubs and trying to meet a certain design regulation, then standardize those areas and have several teams produce those parts to the required standard. And them teams can select parts out of the pool.
    F1 needs a reset, but the solution is not to make everyone poorer but to make everyone potentially richer.
    What is the minimum required for a team to be competitive, anything extra will only add a very small performance advantage. Then design the regulations to limit the effects of extra funding. So if a team gets extra sponsorship, then they use it to buy gold plated rims or diamond studded overalls.

    1. Nothing but standardised cars wil achieve that. Its the same issue as the never ending tyre discussion. You can never make tyres with a wide operating window because 500 engineers in the topteams will find a window within a window where the tyre operates 1% better.

      1. You don’t need to standardize everything, because it destroys our perception or competition.
        You can have F2, and F3 championships for standardized racing, but let the premium class have a lot of diversity of concepts.

      2. @rethla, arguably, not even standardised cars will bring about that sort of situation.

        After all, if you look at many other series with standardised cars, it is still the richest and best resourced teams that tend to dominate. Go into series like Formula 2, and really those series are dominated by a couple of teams – ART, DAMS and Carlin – whilst in Formula 3 Prema have been particularly dominant.

        Go over to IndyCAR, meanwhile, and in that series the three richest and best resourced three teams – Ganassi, Andretti and Penske – are the ones that utterly dominate proceedings, taking about around 75-80% of the wins per season and with the championship winning drivers for the past 16 years in a row coming from one of those three teams (half of those have come from just one team – Ganassi – in that period).

        Even a series like NASCAR, which in many ways uses its regulations to try and force greater variability into the series, still sees a situation where the biggest teams are the most dominant ones too. They might try and portray a “good old guys” attitude, but a team like Hendrick Motorsport is a $325 million corporate business entity – even Haas’s more modest team clocks in at $175 million.

  8. So the explanation of sauber great form is they secretely use a v8
    Or does this test driver does not know the difference between a v6 and v8.
    Not sure..

    1. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
      18th November 2018, 10:19

      It’s their 2013 car is all

      1. Ah.. Did not see that. Thanks.

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