The Motorsport Thread 2014

Can anyone remember when was the last time Penske won the title, it's been a few years?

Ed Carpenter and Sarah Fisher have merged their teams so it'll be Carpenter Fisher Racing for next year. Conway wont do ovals again, in fact he's got a good chance of getting in with Toyota's WEC team as he's been their test driver this year and was very impressive in LMP2 last year. Newgarden is obviously talking with them as is Hildebrand.

Yeah, that was the year I was thinking of, it's amazing that it's been 8 years since the last Penske title in Indycar, and I'm willing to back JPM for next year.

Thats a point, though I don't think there are many drivers in that series treating it as their main area of competition as most race in other series.

Damn! Nice man!

Thanks guys.  I still want to edit some more from that day and trust me, there's a lot to sort through.

Looks like it could be a good weekend for McLaren, Button and Hamilton were swapping fastest times for a while, though Jensen was swapped onto used tyres early and couldn't respond to Hamilton's best. Still, it's only FP1 so Mercedes have plenty of time to pull clear and Williams always run heavy on a Friday. There's 23 drivers as Perez and Juncadella shared their Force India. Not looking good for Lotus, it took most of the session for Maldonado to clear the Marussias! And Kobayashi will be in the Caterham this weekend, Merhi just gets FP1.

Pos	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	Total laps
1	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1m26.187s	-	25
2	Jenson Button	McLaren/Mercedes	1m26.810s	0.623s	27
3	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m26.995s	0.808s	26
4	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1m27.169s	0.982s	23
5	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren/Mercedes	1m27.228s	1.041s	30
6	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull/Renault	1m27.271s	1.084s	27
7	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1m27.493s	1.306s	27
8	Sergio Perez	Force India/Mercedes	1m27.687s	1.500s	13
9	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m27.741s	1.554s	33
10	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India/Mercedes	1m28.112s	1.925s	23
11	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber/Ferrari	1m28.114s	1.927s	21
12	Valtteri Bottas	Williams/Mercedes	1m28.148s	1.961s	20
13	Felipe Massa	Williams/Mercedes	1m28.150s	1.963s	21
14	Jean-Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m28.300s	2.113s	30
15	Giedo van der Garde	Sauber/Ferrari	1m28.429s	2.242s	19
16	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull/Renault	1m28.487s	2.300s	12
17	Daniel Juncadella	Force India/Mercedes	1m29.192s	3.005s	10
18	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus/Renault	1m29.512s	3.325s	24
19	Max Chilton	Marussia/Ferrari	1m30.017s	3.830s	25
20	Jules Bianchi	Marussia/Ferrari	1m30.081s	3.894s	27
21	Charles Pic	Lotus/Renault	1m30.125s	3.938s	23
22	Roberto Merhi	Caterham/Renault	1m30.704s	4.517s	29
23	Marcus Ericsson	Caterham/Renault	1m30.948s	4.761s	16

Edited by sleeper - September 05 2014 at 05:50

I haven't read anything so far but it's been noted that RB is definitely down in the speed traps.

EDIT: After a little more digging around, looks like Red Bull had some DRS problems early on and then Ricciardo had some sort of failure that ended the session early for him.


Edited by sleeper - September 05 2014 at 07:44

McLaren did quite well beating Alonso, it's clear that the engine power is important at this track, it will be interesting to see the fight in the race between the 3 of them and the Red Bulls. Disappointing Raikonen.

Excellent race with some brilliant racing throughout the field. Great to see Lewis coming back from a bad start, passing Massa and Magnussen and then scaring Rosberg off the road! Amazing passing by Bottas and Ricciardo and the Button/Perez battle was hugely entertaining and very fair.

Provisional calender for next year with 20 races.

March 15 - Australia (Melbourne)
March 29 - Malaysia (Sepang)
April 5 - Bahrain (Sakhir)
April 19 - China (Shanghai)
May 10 - Spain (Barcelona)
May 24 - Monaco (Monte Carlo)
June 7 - Canada (Montreal)
June 21 - Austria (Red Bull Ring)
July 5 - Britain (Silverstone)
July 19 - Germany (Nurburgring)
July 26 - Hungary (Budapest)
August 23 - Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps)
September 6 - Italy (Monza)
September 20 - Singapore (Singapore)
September 27 or October 4 - Japan (Suzuka)
October 11 - Russia (Sochi)
October 25 - Mexico (Mexico City)
November 1 - United States (Austin)
November 15 - Brazil (Interlagos)
November 22 or November 29 - Abu Dhabi (Yas Marina)


Edited by sleeper - September 07 2014 at 09:44

Seemed like a solid race, I was pretty tired when watching it thanks to a helluva previous night, but there was some good racing.