Motorsport thread

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Famous Mortimer
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Motorsport thread

Post by Famous Mortimer »

Any Formula 1 fans among you? Nico Rosberg, who won the world title on the final day, has just retired from F1. Good on him, really, that place seems crooked as hell, but he went out on top and I'm looking forward to his tell-all book about what really goes on behind the scenes, and how it must have been tiring for him to be in a sport where seemingly everyone involved wanted someone else to win.

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thrill
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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by thrill »

I'm not a huge Rosberg fan but he has eaten a monumental amount of [expletive] from Hamilton and Mercedes the last few years and seeing him win and then drop the mic was pretty damn funny.

I doubt he's gone for good though. It would be a pretty great life though. Retire with the title, a bunch of money and then just do fun stuff at lower levels. Maybe do LeMans. That kind of thing.

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Famous Mortimer
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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by Famous Mortimer »

One of my favourite racers, Mark Webber, did pretty much that. Raced to an extraordinarily high level with Red Bull for a few years, took [expletive] from his team who wanted the other guy to win, and while he never won the title, retired, took his hopefully massive paycheque and then went into something else. He did Porsche-specific racing for a while and now he's a commentator for Channel 4 in the UK.

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thrill
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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by thrill »

Famous Mortimer wrote:One of my favourite racers, Mark Webber, did pretty much that. Raced to an extraordinarily high level with Red Bull for a few years, took [expletive] from his team who wanted the other guy to win, and while he never won the title, retired, took his hopefully massive paycheque and then went into something else. He did Porsche-specific racing for a while and now he's a commentator for Channel 4 in the UK.
Now he's just a stunningly handsome, Australian millionaire/former F1 driver with a jawline and chin that could smash rocks into bits.

Poor guy.

TBH, I hated Vettel when he was with RB for that reason (clearing out a competent driver to set up an owner favorite for titles), but I've really come around on him since he's settled into the role of 4 time champ who says whatever he wants and makes fun of the other drivers for being so [expletive].

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Famous Mortimer
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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by Famous Mortimer »

Agreed. Webber, you magnificent bastard!

And agreed on Vettel, although I rather liked him at the time he was destroying the field as well. He seemed to take it a little less seriously than the Ferrari automatons. I never liked Lewis Hamilton either, despite that almost being a crime over here.

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cardinalkarp
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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by cardinalkarp »

I just picked up a 3 day pass for the F1 Grand Prix @ The Circuit of the Americas in October....I'm fired up!! I've just become a fan of F1 in the past few years and this will be my first ever major race I've attended.

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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by thrill »

The next few races are going to be key because if Vettel keeps finishing top two and Bottas keeps smoothly inserting himself ahead of Hamilton every time he slips up, Lewis might flip his [expletive].

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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by tlombard »

I love cars, the technology and the idea of racing but I just can't seem to get into any particular series. The actually televised racing part bores me to bits with the exception of pit stops and wrecks. I don't have the patience to watch Nascar for hours just for a few exciting passes here and there.

That being said, I watched a large chunk of the Formula E race in NY this past Saturday and I found that really interesting and will watch again if I happen to see one. What really got me interested was all the time they spent talking about the different strategies and technologies involved in the cars. Plus with the lack of screaming engines, you could hear so much more of tires squealing and when there was contact, you could just hear thousands of dollars in carbon fiber being destroyed.

I know there is fuel strategy in other races but it just seems so much more interesting to me with the electric cars because they can't just pull into the pits and top off. They literally switch to a second car sometime in the middle of the race and if they can't make it to the end in that second car then they are just done. They also only use one set of tires the entire race weekend so there aren't pit stops to swap tires. Other than swapping cars, it is just straight racing for the entire 50 laps (at least the NY race was 50 laps). They also talked about the power regenerating technology and systems and how they change the braking characteristics of the cars so that they have to brake differently based on whether they have the system is turned on or not at the time.

Currently the cars top out at around 140mph since they are restricted to power limits but they accelerate extremely well and the course was tight and twisty so it was just fine. As the battery technology improves, I think that series is going to get more and more interesting for sure.

I will say that the idea of giving one or two cars the ability to have a short power boost at some point in the race based on fan voting was interesting but I'm not sure how I feel about that. It seems they literally have a fan vote where the winner(s) get the ability to use extra power to the motors for a short period of time.

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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by cardinalkarp »

thrill wrote:The next few races are going to be key because if Vettel keeps finishing top two and Bottas keeps smoothly inserting himself ahead of Hamilton every time he slips up, Lewis might flip his [expletive].
This past weeks race in GB didn't have a ton of action as Hamilton took the pole and cruised to a win never giving up 1st position, but was able to move within 1pt of Vettel

Although, the last few laps sure were costly for the Ferrari team w/ both Vettel and Raikkonen having front tire blowouts.

Tlombard, I was the same way until I actually committed myself to watching some of the F1 races. I still don't watch all of them, but I always enjoy the ones I do catch.

I just simply can not watch NASCAR....the races take forever, ovals bore the ever loving [expletive] out of me, and the # of cautions is infuriating.

F1 has it beat in every facet (other than there aren't really any drivers from the United States). The race this past weekend was over in less than 2 hours, I enjoy seeing the legendary tracks, and the fact they actually have to make something other than left hand turns keeps things exciting plenty exciting.

I'll watch some Cup racing (GT3 and whatnot) here and there just to see the modified Ferrari's, Lamborghini's, Porsche's, etc race....but I never watch those from beginning to end; it's hard to keep track of the different classes all racing at the same time.

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Re: Motorsport thread

Post by thrill »

cardinalkarp wrote:I'll watch some Cup racing (GT3 and whatnot) here and there just to see the modified Ferrari's, Lamborghini's, Porsche's, etc race....but I never watch those from beginning to end; it's hard to keep track of the different classes all racing at the same time.
I DVR Indy and watch the caution incidents and then like the last 15 laps.

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