Esteban Ocon, Force India, Circuit de Catalunya, 2018

Ocon aiming for better start to season after “struggling” in 2017

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In the round-up: Esteban Ocon targets a better start to his second full F1 season.

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Comment of the day

Robert offers a view on the role simulators are playing in helping the next generation of racers hone their skills:

There is definitely a space in the entertainment industry for eSport and motorsport lends itself well to it.

If people think that someone can become an F1 race winner from using a simulator alone, they are very mistaken. However I do believe that there is a strong chance that a future champion could be one that combined an equal share of real racing and online sim racing.

Ultimately it will get to the point where if you’re not practicing 16 hours a day, you’re going to be left behind.
Robert Hart

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28 comments on “Ocon aiming for better start to season after “struggling” in 2017”

  1. COTD forgot to mention the abyssal state of sim-racing. Sim-racing was even a dead genre during the Schumi era. It has come back with the advancement of PC gaming, but even with proper training and a solid player base, it is haunted by crashing players, broke development studio’s and too much internal competition, high fees and manic developers. Either Liberty buys ISI/Iracing or sim-racing ends up like the FPS-genre after twitch came in and realistic games disappeared in favour of…brrr, streamers.

    Todt, well…
    Todt needs to address F1 first. WEC, F2 can all wait, how sad that may be. He has to sit down with Liberty and tell them this all-parties-must-agree stuff has to stop.
    We are set to watch 2s quicker cars, with one stop extra per race, with even more ridiculous aerodynamic disturbance in a year that will be decided in which driver gets to not having to use their rich mix too much.
    In a few months Ferrari & McLaren fans will say next year™, RBR will actually be supporting Honda, and I’m expecting certain folk to say I’m way too early, but Todt should bluff them out like Bernie did in 2009 with FOTA (75% of people need to google that name now, because Bernie made them turn on each-other when it mattered.) Where is Ferrari gonna go, formula E? They stayed here after, V6s, the barge-board scandals, test-gate, spy-gate, Pirellis dangerous tyre-incidents, the double diffuser, crash-gate etc etc etc .. etc.
    They’ll stay. (Just like Piquet jr. stayed in the business and became Formule E champion like nothing happened.)

    1. In a few months Ferrari & McLaren fans will say next year™

      That cracked me up, particularly since it’s so true. Particularly the trademark, @xiasitlo

    2. Todt needs to address F1 first. WEC, F2 can all wait, how sad that may be. 

      No F1 is being adressed by Liberty and many others. Main action for Toad is to fix WEC and the LMP1 category first.

      1. @jeff1s, I would say it’s not Todt’s responsibility to fix the WEC or the LMP1 class – I would say that it is Gérard Neveu’s responsibility as the head of the ACO to look to that, as the ACO is the organisation that sets the regulations for the WEC.

        The FIA’s name might be in the title, but the FIA’s main involvement has been in safety related matters (for example, helping the ACO develop new crash protection measures after a spate of spinal injuries for LMP1 drivers a few years ago) and with the circuits that the WEC races at, which are sanctioned by the FIA. The process of writing the regulations for the cars, organising the calendar and promoting the series lies with the ACO, not the FIA.

    3. Yeah, the problem with simracing as an eSports is that it is a niche of a niche. While other games have no real life counterparts (well, you could compare FPS games to paintball or something) and are mostly played with a mouse and a keyboard, simracing tries to emulate something real.

  2. Rb is so confident, I really am worried, they are the type of team that makes no mistakes.

    1. @peartree
      Aren’t you expecting Danny and Max will clash heavy now with actual WDC pressure?

      1. @xiasitlo Aren’t we all, we’d be disappointed otherwise.

        Say RB is fighting at the front, they’ll invariable choose the one that’s Red Bull to the max…. And RB will enforce it they don’t mess around, they can’t afford to dnf their own car just to get the victor of their liking, so no broken peddle, glitchy steering wheel, unexpected blow up

        In short Ricciardo/Ferrari 2019. Ferrari only signs drivers when they are past their best.

        1. Ferrari only signs drivers when they are past their best.

          That’s brutal @peartree 😆

          1. @phylyp Along with the ”Alonso-rule” (or curse) it is one of the most classic rules F1.
            But I must admit: surprisingly I erupted in laughter too when I read that last line @peartree

        2. Like Schumacher, the first Raikkonen, Massa before the incident or Alonso, right?

      2. Pennyroyal Tea – Looks to me like RB has made mistake after mistake since the hybrid era started. I think that they have FINALLY got it right and I look forward to them being in the chase this year.

  3. I wish they’d use the Yas Marina Circuit as the pre-season testing venue for a change at least once since it’s yet to be used for this particular purpose while The Bahrain International Circuit has already been used for this purpose more than once before.

    1. @jerejj I think teams would prefer a European venue as it is close to their home bases allowing them to quickly ship out any parts, replacements, etc. The Middle East will become an overnighter for anyone trying to ship something.

      Of course, if they can’t run or gather data due to weather conditions in Europe, then it’s a moot point and they’d gladly opt for a drier climate.

      1. @phylyp Yes, I’m aware that the travelling logistics are the primary reason the teams prefer a European venue for pre-season testing, but still, though, I wish they’d use the Abu Dhabi GP venue at least once for this particular purpose as the temperatures in that part of the world are far more ideal for F1 at this time of year than anywhere in Europe.

  4. Wait… Ocon was struggling?

    1. Food for thoughts for Stroll then

    2. Tango
      The boy is self critical. He can only improve with that attitude. We should all like that.
      Unlike daddies money boy.

    3. @tango

      He’s taking a little jab at Perez already. This season is going to be awesome between the 2 Force India drivers.

  5. I don’t believe any sane person wants to see drivers get hurt, but I think we all want to see them using their sublime talent to manage risk in a way you or I never could. That is the thrill of the sport.

    from the Motorsport Magazine article.

    1. How to they manage a tyre aimed at their forehead, what kind of talent is that?

      Dtiver “a lot of debris on track”
      Engineer “just use your talent and miss them”

  6. I suspect it’s the halo were a performance part, if a team had discovered a loophole to place aero bodywork in its position that was solely performance based and equally as inelegant people wouldn’t complain anything like as much. Most parts on an F1 car are really awkward looking when it comes down to it with wings and flaps and visually challenging shapes.

    Let’s be honest, people are miffed that it’s for safety because the idea of safety is less romantic than danger.

    1. *if the halo were a performance part

      God damn the lack of edit or delete feature on this site!

  7. re COTD

    Greger Hutu, a top tier sim racer was immediately competitive when put in an real f2 car, although he got sick after 3 laps from the physical effort.
    this racing talent was honed on racing, a great pc game/simulation, imagine what he would have done if he was in shape and trained on one of the real f1 sims

    https://www.topgear.com/car-news/gaming/geek-rebooted

    1. “three seconds off a solid time around here”

      It depends on what you mean by competitive. The language is a bit fuzzy, they’re saying “a solid time” so not even the fastest time. No doubt he’s way quicker than I and probably you would be. And possibly if he’d had the start in life Max Verstappen had then he’d be a real contender.

      I could well imagine a top sim racer getting within a second of a top F1 driver, but that just isn’t good enough to make the leap to F1 unless you have the kind of money Stroll has, in which case you wouldn’t be a sim racer.

      And F2 car? The article says Star Mazda racer.

      1. @philipgb, it has to be said that the test with Greger Huttu was flawed though, as he’d normally have been fine with the physical exertion required. The real reason why Huttu was being physically sick was reportedly because he was quite ill when he undertook that test – I believe that he’d come down with food poisoning just before that test and was still suffering from the after effects, which was the main reason why he was struggling in that test.

  8. You’ve got to hand it to Fernando, he really nailed the press in that post spin interview..

    Love how all the part-time pundits have the season nailed already. Why aren’t they ruling the world with forward vision like that? The mystery of life is simply that nothing but nothing is written in stone. If it is, then it’s a mistake.

  9. If someone is practicing anything for 16 hours a day then they have no life.

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