In the round-up: Fernando Alonso questioned why brake marker boards were not replaced in time for the start of Formula 1 qualifying after a crash at the start of the Formula 2 race.
In brief
Alonso puzzled by missing brake markers
After Alonso was eliminated from Q1 in yesterday’s qualifying session, the Aston Martin driver questioned why brake marker boards on the approach to Tamburello were not replaced after they were damaged in the crash at the start of the F2 sprint race.
“I think in qualifying, after the F2 incident, there are no boards of braking for turn one on the outside, which is a little bit strange why we are allowed to do qualifying with a different track at the moment than the free practice,” Alonso said. “But [it was] the same for everybody.
“Obviously I was lacking laps today. We put the fuel in the car for qualifying and just to be able to do some pit stops. Eventually I did my best lap on the very first lap with a lot of fuel in the car. So I think there is more pace. But one of those days.”
Verstappen ‘gave fan the finger’
Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix pole winner Max Verstappen described how he made a rude gesture to a fan after the end of qualifying.“A lot of people were clapping, then one guy, he was doing some different things to me,” Verstappen explained. “So I gave him the finger.
“Then the next time I came around, he was clapping. So, they learn. It’s easy to be not nice to drivers, but I can also be not nice to you, you know! After that, I guess he appreciated it. But the fans in general here are very passionate. They love motorsport. Of course, naturally, there’s more support for Ferrari here, but that’s absolutely fine.”
Antonelli escapes Safety Car penalty
Mercedes junior driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli avoided a penalty in the F2 sprint race for driving too fast under Safety Car after the stewards determined he had maintained safe driving throughout.
The Prema driver was summoned to the stewards after yesterday’s race after he was shown to have been under the minimum delta time for 25 consecutive sectors under the long Safety Car period. However, F2’s technical delegate confirmed that sensors on Antonelli’s car had failed, leaving the driver with a faulty and unreliable delta which left him unable to accurately gauge his speed relative to the delta. The stewards decided that given then, he had fulfilled he requirement of driving safely and reasonably at all times and took no further action.
Antonelli will start today’s feature race from fourth position, behind pole winner Gabriel Bortoleto, Prema team mate Oliver Bearman and Isack Hadjar in third.
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Links
Motor racing links of interest:
Max Verstappen snaps at critics after signing up for second race on Imola F1 weekend (Mirror)
''I expect four of us to 'sit' on the car. Probably I'll do two stints between two and four hours. No, not at night, of course. I do have to go to bed on time and catch my hours to start Sunday well rested. Whether I had to ask permission? No, in the end I decide what I do. Nor can I decide for other people what they do on a Saturday night. People can go somewhere to eat or drink and go crazy. It's my free time. I am professional enough to see for myself what can and cannot be done.''
Barnard disqualified from Imola Sprint Race (F2)
'Following the conclusion of the FIA Formula 2 sprint race at Imola, Taylor Barnard has been disqualified due to a technical infringement. According to the technical delegate’s report, car 25 did not engage the start set-up procedure as required. After the driver and team representative appeared before the stewards, it was ruled that car number 25 was in breach of the rule. Barnard is subsequently removed from the race results. Invicta Racing’s Kush Maini is promoted up to eighth position and earns the final point in the Sprint Race.'
Minì: ‘Consistency paying off’ with move into joint-Ccampionship lead (F3)
''This year is another way of doing things, I’m trying to be careful but still be aggressive. In the overtakes, last year I would have sent it a bit too hard, or I would’ve made a big mistake on a qualifying lap trying to do 110% all the time. This year I’m trying to show that for the moment, gaining points all the time will work. It has worked so far, but we know that some DNFs are completely out of a drivers’ hands. We just have to keep working on being quick.''
The Yorkshire farmer who treats his cows like Formula 1 cars (Yorkshire Post)
''They’re like Formula 1 cars. You get out of them what you put into them. We want the best traits. Good feet, good udders, capacity to eat, we use genomics to look at all of that and we create our own custom index. We then look at the appropriate bulls that are available through AI to breed with those cows. It’s about production for me. It gives me a kick to see a really good cow giving a lot of milk.''
The iRacing 24 Hours Nuerburgring (iRacing via YouTube)
Live coverage of the iRacing Nurburgring 24 Hours, where Max Verstappen is competing for the number 20 Team Redline BMW.
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Social media
Notable posts from X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and more:
These aged well 😂 Fun while it lasted pic.twitter.com/zvKOCcyAJ8
— Oscar Piastri (@OscarPiastri) May 18, 2024
|@PierreGASLY was furious at the end of final practice and accused @AlpineF1Team of favouring his team mate @OconEsteban with their running order after the late restart.#F1 #EmiliaRomagnaGP #RaceFans pic.twitter.com/MTzUdXannX
— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) May 18, 2024
Look who's leading the iRacing 24h Nürburgring… BMW M Team Redline and Max Verstappen! #iRacing pic.twitter.com/Wg2NHJMI7y
— BMW M Motorsport (@BMWMotorsport) May 18, 2024
Lots of talk on social media re: food prices at the Miami GP.
Here is a list of prices within the park at Imola. pic.twitter.com/mNeq4ZIGLh— Ben Hunt (@benjhunt) May 18, 2024
Really enjoyed the safety car Grand Prix 👍🏼 #ART #F3 #safetycar
— Christian Mansell (@CMansell_Racing) May 18, 2024
"I can't believe it, I can't BELIEVE it!"
Heartbreak for @AgustinCanapino, who was trending in the top 5 before slowing dramatically.
📺: #Indy500 qualifying on Peacock pic.twitter.com/EfFSYiTRKN
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) May 18, 2024
From Honda: “Honda has no control which team/driver gets a specific engine. Every engine produced by both manufacturers is assigned a serial number, and IndyCar tells us which engine # to give to each, so that no manufacturer can play “favorites.”’
— Jenna Fryer (@JennaFryer) May 18, 2024
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- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Comment of the day
After Oscar Piastri lost second place on the grid after a penalty for impeding Kevin Magnussen, Red Andy is unhappy with the current state of the rules…
A slam dunk penalty under the rules, but another incident that underlines how deeply stupid the current rules are.
Finding enough space for a clear lap should be part of the challenge of qualifying, and drivers should take responsibility for doing so. Impeding should only be penalised if deemed to be deliberate or reckless. In this case the stewards acknowledged that Piastri himself was essentially blameless but penalised him anyway.
Red Andy
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to David Craft and Laurie Gregg!
On this day in motorsport
- 40 years ago today Mike Thackwell triumphed in the fifth round of the Formula 2 season at Mugello
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
19th May 2024, 0:36
Re-CoTD I don’t know how you could put full responsibility on the drivers who are on their laps to find a clear lap. They don’t know how fast every driver on track will be lapping while prepping for their own laps, and will inevitably catch and have to pass them at some point on the lap. If that happens and the slow driver is daudering on the racing line at an inconvenient place, then there is nothing they can do about it and their lap could be ruined.
From this instance, it seems that Oscar wasn’t given enough notice to be able to get himself out of the way, so this is mostly his team or engineer’s fault, but the penalty has to be applied to the driver and team.
Roger Ayles (@roger-ayles)
19th May 2024, 3:20
@keithedin Drivers managed to find themselves gaps and get clear laps in perfectly fine for decades before team radio, gps tracking etc..
It used to be considered a core driver skill and managing the traffic, reading it and getting through it without losing time was once an art that separated the great from the good.
Ayrton Senna for example was a genius at finding a gap as well as been able to read any traffic he did come up to and get by them in a way as to not lose time. Was always amazing to see.
Tristan
19th May 2024, 5:53
Be real, qually was heaps different back then. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
S
19th May 2024, 7:45
The biggest difference back then was that the drivers collectively had no desire to impede or be impeded, and the teams weren’t seen as being responsible for the drivers while they were on the track.
It also wasn’t considered the end of the world to lose a tenth or two coming across another car – but these days, one driver will immediately cry for a penalty while the other will be just as keen to make it known that it wasn’t their fault and there was absolutely nothing at all they could do about getting in the way.
Add the dynamic of drivers happily dawdling around the track at a clearly unsafe speed when not on their own push lap, and it’s inevitable that this is the outcome. Too much reliance on the radio has directly lead to this, and that won’t ever be going away, unfortunately – F1 continuously proves that they don’t want to solve problems with actual solutions.
Having said that – the FIA do need to penalise this more harshly. The consequences of this behaviour can range anywhere from a minor irritation to an enormous crash causing severe injury to multiple parties – and the line between them can be very fine indeed. Take it seriously.
Moshambles (@moshambles)
19th May 2024, 8:54
Senna was also a huge critic of back markers who didn’t jump out of the way of a driver on a lead lap, as were basically all top drivers back then. You can find numerous examples of drivers like Senna and Mansell, and commentators being absolutely outraged by “disrespectful” back markers. Also, qualifying was held over 2 days, with unlimited durable tyres. Cars weren’t crawling around the circuit with very limited windows to get a lap in. I feel bad for drivers who get done for impending, because it’s very difficult to go that slowly and stay out of the way at every moment, but at this stage in F1, it’s more of a safety concern than simply a blocking offense.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
19th May 2024, 9:09
@roger-ayles Finding the perfect spot to overtake a slow car during a qualifying lap without losing any time is literally impossible, because any variation from the racing line will lose you time. So what you’re suggesting from the driver on the flyer is that they are able to predict the exact position of where each car will be when they catch them before they start the lap, then start their lap at the perfect time to hook up all those different passing spots on the lap.
There just has to be some compliance from the drivers on slow laps. I doubt this wasn’t an issue in decades past even if there were not strict rules penalising those who obstructed qualifying laps, though it is probably a bigger issue nowadays due to the short qualifying windows and the extremely sensitive tyres which have to be warmed up precisely on very slow outlaps to get them into the operating range for the flyer.
What you’re taking about with Senna sounds more like the skill of passing lapped cars during a race while minimising the loss of lap time, which is definitely something the driver has some control over. But in qualifying, that isn’t an option when the difference between pole and tenth can be half a second.
anon
19th May 2024, 9:51
@roger-ayles firstly, as others note, you seem to be intentionally ignoring the differences in the regulations back then that meant qualifying was significantly different.
Secondly, your comments about the absence of “team radios” seems to be a bit of an idealisation of the situation. We know that Chapman was experimenting with two way radio sets in the late 1970’s, with Brabham regularly using that technology by 1984. For most of the time that he would have been active in the sport, Senna was using two way radio communications with the pit wall.
S
19th May 2024, 13:22
But not to anywhere near the extent that they use them now, of course – neither in terms of quantity of use, nor in depth and detail of information/instruction.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
19th May 2024, 0:36
It’s as if dairy farming’s been farmed out to a bunch of F1 race engineers…keeping cows indoors all year? World’s gone mad.
Talby (@maichael)
19th May 2024, 12:17
Drinking the milk of another animal’s mother is mad. Feeding farm animals while people are starving is mad. It’s the whole system that’s the problem, Bullfrog.
Jay
20th May 2024, 8:54
Blaming farmers because people are starving around the world is mad! World hunger could be fixed but its not profitable. Blame economics, not farmers! Enjoying a glass of milk right now, in your honour.
spoutnik (@spoutnik)
19th May 2024, 1:46
About COTD judging whether it is deliberate is probably opening a can of worms. But surely some kind of proximity sensor, a flashing light for fast approaching cars should not be a big ask in 2024.
Jere (@jerejj)
19th May 2024, 5:43
Well, the left-hand size 150, 100, & 50 polystyrene markers were still in place.
How could he realistically even notice a single person’s gesture from a non-stationary (even if not driving flat-out, but moving nevertheless) position in the first place?
COTD: Because he didn’t avoid the racing line as much as possible, which is always a driver’s responsibility in the end.
PT
19th May 2024, 10:34
Alonso complaining about the braking marker boards, but no one else had any problem with that. Is Alonso saying that the absence of marker boards was the reason he went off-track?
Talby (@maichael)
19th May 2024, 12:14
“It’s about production for me. It gives me a kick to see a really good cow giving a lot of milk.”
People don’t realize how callous and perverse animal farming is.
If we needed milk, we’d be drinking it from our own mothers even into adulthood. If that notion seems perverse to you, why does drinking milk from another animal’s mother not strike you as obscene? It’s absurd what we are led to believe.
These mothers are violated each year so that after nine months they can watch their child be taken away from them. Three months later, she’s put through the same ordeal again, until her body can’t take it anymore and she’s killed.
We can get all the relevant nutrients from plants. We choose to pay for violence and cruelty.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/
“It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes. Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage. “
D
19th May 2024, 15:57
RE: COTD
There was nothing wrong with Piastri’s penalty. Compared to normal racing speeds, he was basically parked in the middle of the corner. It was up to his team to inform him of a car closing on him. Since F1 is a team sport, penalty is OK.
Problem with that situation is something that FOM and FIA don’t want to (or know how to) correct.
Qualifying sessions are getting ridiculous with slow driving just to keep Pirelli’s in optimum condition.
Is it that difficult to produce tires that can handle being pushed for three laps (out lap, push lap and in lap)?
Also, ban live telemetry. Leave it to the drivers to take care of the tires.