F1 - Season 2013 *Spoilers*

[Trigger Happy]

Bianchi is guaranteed, its Chilton who isnt

You're right. Also Sutil repeats to reporters, that has a contract too. On other hand if e.g. Perez could give enough money to team to pay him out ... we shall see.

[cocney]

I would like to see Perez in Sauber or Force India, in cars which aren't so strong and need more sacrifice and risk to drive good races and get good results. Hulkenberg would be perfect for Lotus but... Kovalainen is great driver but has no financial support, pitty.

[1nsane]

I know I gave a lot of flac on the marshalls in... Korea(?), but what we saw during practice in USA is just hilarious. First the FP1 gets delayed because of fog. The fog is cleared but after 10 minutes they realise that "oh wait, the helicopter is not there". 30 minutes of red flag as the helicopter waddles to the location.
Then in FP2 they manage to beach the recovery truck to the sand trap.
As a hint for the organizers, borrow the marshals from Nascar next year.

[Trigger Happy]

I'm glad to know only one race remains until end of the season, so he won't need to show us anyhow having 11th in a row.

[The Noose]

All I have to say is: Huge congratulations to Vettel. Whether you like it or not, we just witnessed history.

[AleksiNir]

Interesting fact: assuming that Kovalainen will drive for Caterham or some other team next year, there will be 4 Finns (if you count Rosberg who has Finnish nationality) in F1. If Germany, which has the most drivers this season, had as many F1 drivers per capita, there'd be 58 of them.

to Bottas. I hope that next season Williams will have a better car.

[DuklaLiberec]

All I have to say is: Huge congratulations to Vettel. Whether you like it or not, we just witnessed history.

So come on guys, let's be fair this time.

@Ivo: At least we can enjoy watching ski jumping this week at last. And above all, I don't consider Austria to utterly dominate the entire season plus the Olympics and Ski Flying WC.

[The Noose]

Webber's final lap in F1.

[1nsane]

Thankfully this season is finally over. It sure was cool to witness history of Vettel just dominating the season. I wonder if he could have won them all if they used the 2012 spec tyres the whole season... But let's be honest here, it was quite dreadful to watch. Yes, I'd rather have watched Spain type of races for the whole season. But nope. Rain? Nope. FIA being sensible even once? Nope.

Anyways, once again congratulations to Vettel, no one else even got close. They could have just booted F0.75 after the summer break for the other drivers and let Vettel race in F1 alone.

Anyways, while the extremely interesting race in Brazil was going on, I did a personal ranking of the drivers this season with an extremely short reasoning.

Code: Select all

1.	Vettel	||	Dominating
2.	Hamilton	||	Pushed the car higher than it should havee been possible to go.
3.	Räikkönen	||	Kept on coming back and stayed in the fight until the end. Would have been third in points if not for surgery
4.	Alonso	||	Was claiming the car was bad, while it was the best of the three contenders, lost motivation at the end of season
5.	Webber	||	Bad luck bingo continued rolling this season, although with the car as dominating as it was he should have been higher…
6.	Rosberg	||	Seemed to have more trouble with the tyres than Hamilton. Beginning of the season looked good but he faded away towards the end.
7.	Grosjean	||	Was slow at the beginning as he was trying to get the grasp of how to drive cleanly. Got the hang of it towards the end and was the fastest driver of the rest.
8.	Hulkenberg	||	Had some excellent results as the tyres changed and the car got better.
9.	di Resta	||	A typical bland season for di Resta, although lost many points due to team messing up the strategy and everything else possible.
10.	Button	||	Did what was possible with the car, although complained too much about it.
11.	Perez	||	Managed to do what was possible with the car and somewhat matched Button.
12.	Massa	||	8th in second or third best car, over 100 points behind team mate is just not allowable, flashed those good results but also flashed some bad results.
13.	Bottas	||	Kept his head cool through the season and ended up beating the team mate. Although the starts were very bad sometimes.
14.	Ricciardo	||	Nothing too special. Beat team mate in qualifying.
15.	Bianchi	||	Best of the last 4 drivers, had some good drives at the start of the season. His results fell because of the car getting slower.
16.	Sutil	||	The team just kept on messing it up at the start of the season. But having just half the points of the team mate is not good.
17.	Vergne	||	Had the best result of the team, but clearly just lost the motivation towards the end. Nothing to write home about.
18.	Maldonado	||	Drove badly and blamed the team for it.
19.	Gutierrez	||	Beat the team mate in qualifying just once during the whole season and was slower during races. Not good.
20.	Pic	||	Well… Put as better of the two Caterham drivers as he is ranked higher in the results.
21.	vd Garde	||	Well… Put as worse of the two Caterham drivers as he is ranked lower in the results.
22.	Chilton	||	Celebrates the fact he finished every race this season. Although it would have been impossible to hit anything consider how slow he was.  0,5 seconds slower than team mate.

[Lukeno94]

There is no way the Ferrari was the second or third best car. The Red Bull, Lotus and Mercedes were all clearly and comfortably quicker cars; the Ferrari was little quicker than the McLaren.

[Mad Dan]

Finally this season is over . I hope next year will be more interesting....not only for records statistics nerds. I wish cars had worse aerodynamics and we would be able to see more crashes .

[FRUKIScze]

F1 2013 season summed up in 9.16 seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EtRPxw01mI

[bduddy]

Let's just hope that some of the non-Red Bull teams saw this coming and started on their 2014 car a long, long time ago...

[The Noose]

First half of the season was good until Pirelli decided to change the tires. Although the other half was good if you didn't pay any attention to Vettel and his fifty minute lead.

[Trigger Happy]

What do you, guys, think about the sound? I like it.

[Lukeno94]

The F1 car will obviously sound a little different to that, due to the different exhaust locations, and the fact that an F1 car is a lot lighter, but it's not as bad as a lot of people expected - and I've never been a massive fan of the current V8s' sound anyway (the V10s were far, far better).

[1nsane]

Well, the engine itself doesn't sound that great in the video, although as Lukeno said it's most likely going to change since there will be no mufflers or bodywork silencing the sounds. I just liked the smoothness of V10 and the growliness of V8. But it's that turbo whine that I just love and it's something I'll happily trade V8's with.

Also, Maldonado to Lotus. Kinda boo, but I guess it's better than having a fake company as sponsor and having no Lotus at all.

[Trigger Happy]

Well, wait for the 3rd drivethrough in end, that's what I like. The first two are like in pace to warm up the car. Otherwise sure, in open wheeler it's going to sound bit different, but surely it's closer, better to get a frame image, than PR studio sound revealed officially by other constructors.

[Crowella]

Also, Maldonado to Lotus. Kinda boo, but I guess it's better than having a fake company as sponsor and having no Lotus at all.

I'm very happy with this. I was absolutely annoyed listening to Brundle talk with the "owner" of "Quantum" because all I could hear was the words money and investment which made me sound like it was a scam. Maldonado might not be the best driver for Lotus for points, but it'll keep them in the competition.

[The Noose]

Well, Nico Hülkenberg confirmed for Force India. It's a shame that Hülk couldn't get a better seat. It annoys me to see that 30 million dollars and 1 point is better for Lotus than 0 dollars and 51 points.

[Trigger Happy]

And what next? Perez to join Force India too, Sutil with Sirotkin or Gutierrez in Sauber and di Resta out?

[1nsane]

I kinda have a feeling that Perez might end up going to Sauber. He already knows the team and the team knows him, so it would be easier to go there. The performance gap between the teams isn't really that big, especially since Force India is known to mess up everything possible, when they might get a good position. And Sauber needs the money more so they'll try to do everything to get Perez in.

So if this happened, then it would propably be Sutil to stay at Force India, or they bring in someone random. Gutierrez gets dropped and Sirotkin or someone else with a lot of money and at least some skills gets the second seat.

In the event of Perez going to Force India it's propably going to be like you said, with Sirotkin being the more likely one to get the second seat. Although I can't really see Sutil there either. He is the Force India guy so it's propably FI or out for him.

[Trigger Happy]

On the other hand if not Perez, Sauber needs another decent driver capable to score points and to tell what's going on with car and a German driver (again) in the Swiss team can be good choice. I'd rather like to see there di Resta, unlikely, I know.

[1nsane]

That is true too. It's pretty much a coin flip on who gets which seat.

Next year's calendar was also confirmed. http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2013/12/04/2 ... confirmed/

Basically it's Korea out and India on hiatus for the spring race in 2015. Austria and Russia in. Melbourne is the starter, Abu Dhabi is the finisher. Might be some other shuffles too on the schedule but nothing major.

By dropping Korea and India the schedule becomes pretty good IMO. The replacement races should be pretty good too. Austrian GP is pretty surely going to be boring one (I can't remember anything from the previous races than the Barrichello - Schumacher incident and a couple of first lap crashes). The Sochi GP layout also hints a bit towards as interesting races as we saw in Valencia. But the surroundings for the track are just so good they should provide a nice atmosphere for the race. It is also held mid-October so there might be a bit higher chance of rain.

[Trigger Happy]

If e.g. Silverstone would be removed with end of Bridgestone era, you'd think same about its return now. It'll be fine.

With only 19 races in-fact-known for several last months I'm only disappointed how nothing is happening with return of French GP. Truth is same like case of Red Bull Ring, Nevers Magny-Cours is up to date and can host the event immediately, if there would be genuine interest to return to France.