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Really interesting race. Hamilton will feel he was robbed or at least unlucky, but Vettel was close enough, fast enough and good enough to prevail. Red Bull not as quick as they hoped and Alonso back to being competitive. Looks good for the season.
But what is going on at Haas, wheel nuts on both cars!
Most of the finishing order was not determined by driver skill, but by grid spot penalties, unusual events, serendipity, and the near impossibility of passing, even by Bottas who, with the far superior car, couldn't pass back-markers.
Terrible TV presentation by ESPN.
Liberty Media wants to make F1 a big thing in the United States and gain a lot of young fans. Good luck with that. How could any young, new potential fan make sense of what is going on?
I'm willing to give Liberty/Sky/ESPN a little slack on the first go-around, but that wasn't handled well. At least the race was aired on the channel listed at the time listed. Really annoying the whatever happens on commercial breaks doesn't get recapped, though.
The front wings this season are ridiculous.
Of course, ESPN will never prioritize F1 over a ball-related sport and I think this will be a theme for the season.
And, hey, the grid kids were cute.
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I so miss Hobbs, Matchett, and Varsha, I doubt there's aver been a better broadcast team in any form of racing. I'm not optimistic that F1 will keep me interested much longer.
Liberty is planning their own feed, so the use of the Sky feed is temporary - not sure if that is true for all the feeds in a weekend, like all practices, qualifying as well as the race. Not sure if the graphic on the left side of the screen during qualifying and the race is fed directly from Race Control or if it is Sky's graphic, but it lacks a bunch of useful info - who is on what tire, how many pit stops, what the delta is. Of course, in Australia, most everyone was one the same tire and had the same number of pit stops, so that probably wasn't as useful as it is at other races.
Martin Brundle is fine (although I dislike his "pit walk" - or what I saw of it, thanks to ESPN truncated showing - as much as I disliked Will Buxton's). REALLY dislike Croft, although he wasn't quite as bad during the race as he was during qualifying. I'd really like someone from the engineering side of things commenting as well. DiResta was fine but not used nearly enough and he is sort of a "newer" Brundle, commenting more from a driver's perspective.
Buxton is on a weekend preview show that Liberty Media puts up on their Youtube page
I miss Hobbs and Matchett as well. Liked Varsha far more than Leigh Diffey.
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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
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My fear is Liberty will seek to make F1 a 'happening', it won't surprise me if we start seeing more time given to what 'celebrities' are in the paddock than to what the teams are up to. If they ever take points away from a driver earned on the race track for something they said as NASCAR has done, that will be the end of my F1 interest.
Mercedes is blaming a software glitch for Hamilton's loss. My view was that Hamilton was rleatively harder on his tires than Vetel, while not gaining a large advantage before the first pit stop. Vetel made the most of it and sojourned on for another number of laps before he pitted, making up the lead and coming out in front of Hamilton...and staying there. Hamilton did get close, but tire ware (or his own furstration at not being able to get close enough to Vetel to engage him) finally beat him in the last 4-5 laps, and he slowed. This isn't the first time it's happened.
The wheel lug mystery, what a tragedy! Without this, Magnusen and Grosjean would have figured to finish 4 and 5 (in any order). Look at the problems Red Bull had overtaking both of them.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frihed89
Mercedes is blaming a software glitch for Hamilton's loss. My view was that Hamilton was rleatively harder on his tires than Vetel, while not gaining a large advantage before the first pit stop. Vetel made the most of it and sojourned on for another number of laps before he pitted, making up the lead and coming out in front of Hamilton...and staying there. Hamilton did get close, but tire ware (or his own furstration at not being able to get close enough to Vetel to engage him) finally beat him in the last 4-5 laps, and he slowed. This isn't the first time it's happened.
The wheel lug mystery, what a tragedy! Without this, Magnusen and Grosjean would have figured to finish 4 and 5 (in any order). Look at the problems Red Bull had overtaking both of them.
For me, overtaking is an issue they've failed to address for far too long other than instituting the gimmick of DRS. Looking at the complexity of today's front wings OI have to wonder how much they contribute to the dirty air stymieing following cars? IMO they need to take a hard look at changing the aero rules so dirty air is not such a hindrance to overtaking.
Well that was frustrating. I was thrilled for Haas then suddenly I see them both out of the race and have to figure out what's going on because of poor coverage from ESPN. With the amount of flack they're getting on social media though, I'm hoping they will change it. I've even seen some people mention that watching coverage on Spanish stations was better than what had been offered from ESPN. Can't blame SkySports, they're not broadcasting to tailor to the US audience.
Also - the length of the commercials. I felt like they were much longer than what we've seen in years past.
Overall though I'm excited for the season. First, Hamilton lost. Second, and more importantly, Haas looks extremely promising. If they can keep the Red Bulls behind them again that will be incredible.
We've started watching Formula E though because it's got both Matchett and Varsha. All they need is Hobbs and we've got the original team back in action.
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Can they get things sorted out before race time? 
