Verstappen and Red Bull have saved F1 from “bore-fests” – Horner

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In the round-up: Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says F1 should be grateful for the excitement Max Verstappen has brought to the championship recently.

What they say

Horner said Verstappen has enlivened F1 by taking the fight to Lewis Hamilton:

Thank god for Red Bull and Max Verstappen for Formula 1 at the moment because otherwise it would be a pretty boring show. But I think it’s great that races like today, even though we didn’t come out on top. I think for Formula 1, that’s what the fans want to see.

I think the last four races in reality have been great races after the bore-fest of France. Hopefully with tracks that we’ve got coming up there’s exciting races to come.

If the grid does concertina, if we can have Max racing against Lewis and the Ferraris up there as well, it’s bright for the future.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

McLaren have impressed many of you with the turnaround in their form with two new drivers this year:

I had somewhat reserved expectations for McLaren this year. Before the season I did not rate Sainz that highly and Norris was a big question mark. Alonso was driving very well and I expected the loss of Alonso would have hurt McLaren a lot more than it has.

Both of the drivers have been delivering good performances and clearly the car has taken a step forward as well. Sainz being just five points away from Gasly’s sixth position and McLaren being 4th in the championship with considerable points margin also prove it is not a fluke but result of consistent performance.

It is an upward trend and the thing F1 needs more than anything else is more cars in the ‘division one’ and with this trend McLaren is on the road to be there in couple of years. The Renault engine is going to hurt them when they get there and while the technological race for 2020 is too soon the upcoming big rule change could put McLaren into very good position now that they have their technical team in good form.
@Socksolid

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On this day in F1

  • 20 years ago today Luca Badoer became the first driver to lap the remodelled Zandvoort circuit, driving a Ferrari F1 car during the Masters of Formula 3 meeting

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33 comments on “Verstappen and Red Bull have saved F1 from “bore-fests” – Horner”

  1. Horner. Agreed. Palmer (BBC article). Agreed. CotD. Agreed.

    1. Have to agree with Horner here.

      1. Couldnt agree more.

    2. Agree on all account.

    3. I mostly agree with Palmer, but am surprised he’s not listed Williams under losers. Instead, it gets a passing mention under ‘The British rookies’ winners.

      It’s hard to believe that it’s the same team that beat RBR in the WCC in 2015 by a decent margin, i.e. the same PU era.

      1. @phylyp I guess it’s because they actually seem to show (at least the start of) an upward trajectory compared to the start of the season.

        I’m quite doubtful that it will continue, but here’s to hoping!

      2. @phylyp Williams almost missed the first week of pre-season testing. And when they finally arrived they were 5 seconds slower than everyone else. So, probably, they’re actually seen as winners now after making a bit of progress that enabled Russel to scrap it out in Hungary with the likes of Stroll and Gio.

        1. @gechichan @losd – while I agree that Hungary looked promising, and I’m happy that Williams might finally be bouncing back, I feel its too soon to call, hence my surprise. That article is a retrospective on the ongoing season, and to ignore Williams struggles till date (including the pre-season tests) is – in my opinion – giving them too much leeway.

          1. @phylyp Yeah, for sure we’ll need to see more from them.

            Oh, one plus point is that they seem to be in a much better financial situation than they’ve been quite some time. That should also help them drag their car forward.

      3. @phylyp even stranger though is that he mentions the British rookies as winners, while the best rookie so far this year is Albon…

  2. Agreed…

    It makes you wonder why the likes of Ferrari, with the lion’s shared of the F1 spoils, can’t provide legitimate competition to Mercedes, without bending the rules.

    This is why F1 will go the way of capping spending, and why more of the spoils should go to improving the performance of the mid placed teams.

    1. Lions share of the spoils but it doesn’t mean they’re spending the most. Honda increased its (company-wide) R&D budget by roughly $700million USD last year… I can only (purely speculative) assume that at least some of that were for the F1 program, which by all accounts was already extremely well funded. Given their rapid rate of development compared to last year we might just be witnessing the flex of a billion-dollar collaborative team. MercedesF1 have inputted huge amounts of resource into there R&D for almost 6 years now, with yearly budgets constantly in excess of $400million USD, Ferrari much the same. It’s amazing that Renault has been able to produce an engine that has won on merit with the right package given how comparatively small their $320million USD budget is.

      Personally I don’t agree with Renault’s way of doing business in F1, it should be all in or nothing. Maybe if they took a back seat and spent their entire budget fitting a PU to the back of a McLaren we would have a show…

      1. Those are some interesting numbers. Look at Honda now, some consider it #2 engine ahead of Mercedes!!!

        Renault is taunting 1000 bhp number, but either McLaren is still crap, or 1000bhp is not there in the races, or other teams have way more than 1000bhp on maximum settings.

        Mercedes was at 990 range few years back, they should be around 1050bhp by now. It is Ironic they spend so much money for so little advantage.

        With that kind of money and effort they could solve world hunger, put a man on the moon again or something.

        RedBull are well poised to take advantage of the new Honda PU, Mercedes might crumble if they get any serious advantage or Hamilton retires.

        1. I doubt the hype, the PU has won 1 race on merit and Mercedes were barely there over the weekend in question due to heat issues. The Honda qualy mode does seem to be quite powerful, it gave Max a .9sec bump during the race.

          If Renault says they’re producing 1000Bhp they probably are, they have no reason to lie, in fact, the opposite given their current standings, but the cars they’re in are rubbish compared to the top-flight teams.

          1. renault might be producing 1000bhp at a very specific combination of one point in the rev range, the electrical power at its peak, and the fuel flow at its max. it’s highly likely that this is not sustainable for even part of one lap, so (i imagine) their claim is weasel words, if not bunkum.

            now, just talking about qualifying (the races are totally different), if these cars were producing 1000bhp consistently for a whole lap, with these tyres (wide tyres, i question whether the pirellis are actually any good performance-wise) and aero packages, they should be absolutely flying – i realise they are setting track records almost everywhere, but they’re hardly blowing the 2004 cars out of the water. perhaps the ~140kg extra weight is an important factor here.

          2. @frood19 Indeed. The peak is determined by fuel flow, hybrid systems and what not. I have the feeling that Honda produces less horse power at the max, but is able in the race to run in a high mode longer than some other engine suppliers.

          3. @frood19 engines only produce max power at one point in the rev range… The tyres, just because they’re wide doesn’t mean they’re any more capable of transferring 900bhp to the ground for an entire race. These tyres are extremely temperamental and have to be coaxed into performance through careful manipulation. Pirelli was given a mandate of degradation and that’s what we have. In 2004 they could throw qualifying lap after qualifying lap at the tyres and they would still hold up. Not to mention the fuel limitations we now have, these Power units are absolute monsters compared to the 2004 units. They’re operating at 50% thermal efficiency, which was underheard of in 2004 and producing 850-900 hp from a 1.6L ICE without revving up to 20,000rpm, which is genuinely amazing. The extra weight is a massive deal, 140kg on something that weighs 740kg… Given the restrictions that have been placed on these cars, it is truly outstanding that the engineers have been able to keep peak performance anywhere near what it is, nevermind record-breaking.

  3. Not too sure. Extreme heat took Mercedes out one week and rain took Mercedes out another week. This past week doesn’t really count as a trend. I do hope he is right and I also hope Ferrari can figure out who is destroying their equipment because I am starting to think they have a saboteur in their ranks.

  4. It’s not really a thank god for Max, it’s more a matter of thank got we got the chassis right a lot earlier this year. RBR has made a habit of not starting the season well (especially 2017) and then getting their chassis sorted after the summer break.

    This year they did it earlier and have a half decent PU. That’s what the difference is.

    As for Ferrari – they’re right there with Renault as a team in disarray- good drivers, awful teams.

    1. You still need an exceptional driver to pull it off.
      Look at Gasly in the same car.

  5. ” thank God….” lol Horner has a way of making himself his team look like legends. its only a bore fest when your team is not winning…. when the red bulls were winning i dnt recall him saying its a bore fest.

    1. Partially because it takes a pretty exciting race for Mercedes not to win. Well sometimes even exciting race is not enough.

  6. I had the brightest idea to save f1: instead of basing the counter of the laps on the first driver on track, the counter is based on the last driver on track. So nowadays the race will be based on 300km traveled by KUB.
    See I saved F1.

  7. As I pointed out in the previous article: What about Bahrain’s claimed/reported veto, allowing them to block another country in the same region from joining F1? Yes, Abu Dhabi did get to join the championship back in 2009, but I have some doubts another one could have an easy time getting in. Furthermore, if a Saudi-Arabia GP ever were to happen, then it’d definitely have to take place close to either Bahrain or Abu Dhabi due to the climate. March, April and November are more or less the only suitable months for racing at that part of the world out of the nine months (March-November) during which F1 races take place.

    1. that was a handshake deal with Bernie.

  8. He’s right but I’d much rather have the rules tightened up so that we have three or four teams fighting for the championship, than leaving it to chance.
    F1 has a habit of thinking everything is fine after a couple of lucky good races.

    1. F1 also have a habit of thinking everything is rubbish after just one race.

  9. F1 needs better media, Ferrari haven’t massively under performed, they were never quick, they had a couple of chances, in bahrain they had 2 sets of the medium for the race which gave Leclerc a big enough buffer to win. Germany is a good track for Ferrari but it rained like last season, that’s that.

  10. Typical Horner, doing what he always does best, as STIRRER-IN-CHIEF and with intention to downplay Merc/LH’s roles in the fight. One can say that no thanks to Red Bull for failing in their strategy. No thanks to Max’s lack of skills in tyre management that the fight was not even more exhilarating, but no, fair minded fans celebrate both drivers’ effort. Not Horner though! Until it’s proven, Horner, not just imagined, that Max is better than LW, let’s just celebrate the opportunities for this fight and hopefully more. Only the inferiors need to stir and deliberately overlook someone else’s greatness.

    1. The fact is that max scored more points in the last 4 races then any other driver including ham.

  11. Red bull and horner are making f1 boring and god help us if Red bull make a dominant car it would be worse then vettel at red bull

  12. Now, if only we could stop Horner from banging his own horn.

    He may be right, but he comes across as a twit saying it.

  13. Good comment by horner, he completely gets it, the last 4 races were definitely above average, true he may be biased as a red bull team principal and 2 being red bull wins, but silverstone was also a great race if only lacking a bit of competition for the win after the first laps, and hungary was also a great race, surely for its standards of track where it’s hard to overtake.

    Monaco was also relatively good, and canada was great too, though these are not part of the last races.

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