The Motorsport Thread 2014

Lol...not surpised. I can't seem to post links on this website anymore. I can very easily on JMA (and facebook and the like)...silly PA...

But yes indeed. It was the wreck. Made the front page of MSN.com when it happened. Only thing that alerted me to the 24 hours happening. Thanks for the 24 hour news as well.


Interesting thing with the Red bull. Too early, I think, to really be worried for them. And at least Ferrari seems to be starting on the right foot this year. We shall see how long that lasts.

Massa ended the last day fastest for Williams, whilst Mercedes were the first team to start running race simulations. In terms of preparation I think Merc are miles ahead of everyone. Red Bull completed a grand total of 21 laps for the four days, whilst McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari all did over 100 laps today alone. I've read a lot of comments about cars getting sideways under power out of corners, I think we could be in for a wild start to the season. 

Austin Dillon grabbed the pole today for next Sunday's Daytona 500, with Martin Truex, Jr. (now in the 78) starting on the outside pole.  I think he's the 5th rookie to get the pole for the 500, too.  I just hope we don't have to hear about the fabled "3" all week now, but I'm sure we will.  Anyway, those two are locked into their respective spots (barring a crash or something in the Duels on Thursday), while everyone else has to race on Thursday to determine where they start.

Hopefully someone hits the track dryer again.

Congrats to Dale Jr!! 

Edited by JJLehto - February 23 2014 at 22:55

Yeah, twas a good race.  Would've preferred Gordon or Kyle Busch, but oh well.  Jr. seemed pretty happy after that one. 

So they finally got the 500 going, last I saw off it the track was waterlogged.

F1's second test finished on Saturday in Bahrain. Rosberg was fastest for the week, less than a second from his poll lap from last year, and with more pace expected to come, completely blowing out of the water the myth that these cars were going to be slower than GP2 (unless you have a Renault engine, in which case your f**ked). I'm going to say it now, Vettel will not be champion, at this point it's going to be a real challenge for Red Bull to reach the end of races.

I'd say the fight will be between McLaren and Mercedes for the title, though I don't think Ferrari have pushed on for lap times yet so who knows where they will be. Williams are looking very good as well, they're so far along with their development program that they're even doing pitstop practice, most other teams could only dream of being in that position. 

Not so much, they packed up halfway through yesterday's testing as they were overheating the car again and Ricciardo was only 0.7 faster than Bianchi's Marussia. I can see them winning races in the second half of the year but by then they'll have lost too much to remotely have a chance at the title.

Williams have been very stop/start in recent years with a good 09/10, terrible 11, good 12 (that would have been better if Senna could qualify and Maldonado didn't harpoon everybody) and dreadful 13. Time for another good year but they've gained sponsorship from Martini, Petrobras and Banco do Brasil, have Massa and Bottas as drivers and have hired Pat Symonds and Rob Smedley on the engineering side, so they're definitely looking up quite a bit.

In other news, Villeneuve has signed up for the Indy 500 with Schmidt Peterson, the first time he would have raced on the oval since he won it in 95.

It's been a long time since they were genuine front runners but I can see them and Force India getting several podium finishes this year.

I feel like things are going to shake up quite a bit this year in F1.  That could just be wild hope on my end, but it seems like Red Bull aren't completely on their game right now.  That, or their just playing mind games.