What's new
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

Motorsports 2026

Hocevar has hands. Blaney took a couple Ls last night.
The Blaney on-board with audio is unintentionally hilarious.

Spotter: "Still there. Clear. Clear."
*Blaney drifts up*
Spotter: "Take it. Take it. Take it."
*Blaney drifts down*
Spotter: "Crossover, inside"
*Blaney continues to drive down and collide with Hocevar."
Spotter: *frustrated* "INSIDE."
*car spins*
 
The first four or five laps were intriguing, then it was a real snooze fest until the safety car. Rough, rough day for McLaren. Colapinto ruined a lot of people’s day as well.

The Red Bulls certainly had the straight-line speed today. Mercedes better in the corners.
 
What a statement race by Russell. Toto won't be beating the allegations of favorites with his absence this weekend so he couldn't "sabotage" George's car. 😂

I feel like having this good, clean, title battle, makes it more fun than if Kimi just ran away with it.

And we got a T-pose in victory lane. No "Yabba-dabba-doo!" on the radio though.
 
Can’t believe they didn’t go with at least a VSC at the end when Bottas is sitting on the track stuck in the wall. I know they’re trying to end fewer races under yellow now, but Max basically started the attempted overtake in the same corner Bottas was at because the next green flag sector was so close.
 
What do you mean Toto that George can either have a cooling suit OR upgrades to the car because you're at the finance cap?!?

A cooling suit needs "development" and would be charged to car development?

🤨

Toto isn't beating the favorite child allegations.
 
Red Bull looks awful quick at Sepang. First pole for Max this season. Lewis with a strong lap, too. Should be fun. An actual circuit with multiple lines and the ability to move through the field.
 
And a rough track surface which could lead to two or three stop strategies. And the threat of rain. This might be fantastic weekend.

Seeing memes about the Ver Ham front row giving 2021 vibes.

Also, Aston Martin seemed to have figured some things out. 😲
 
Newey is at Aston Martin and this was a redesign year. I thought that meant they were going to dominate? (They're 10th of 11).
 
Their engine supplier (Honda) did them no favors to start and they've been playing catch up the entire year.
 
Saw a lot of reaction that that race was exactly what’s been missing and Sepang is an awesome track that needs to come back, but it seems it was entirely the weather that played into that.

Tire strategy burned some drivers early and that’s what caused all the excitement. Hamilton was at the bottom because he rode out the slicks, but he would have been ruined had Bottas not crashed just as the first pit window opened.

Then a full safety car after the VSC came out bunched up the field again late in the race that got Hamilton over the hump into the podium. Before it went to a full safety car I’m still not sure what Mercedes was doing giving up the lead pitting Kimi. He wasn’t likely to hold Max off and it worked out as they went to a full safety car, but they gave up what was initially a five second lead for no apparent reason.

All that is to say the track location does bring on different weather which makes it exciting, but if it had been completely dry, I think we saw what would’ve happened with Max running away. There weren’t too many overtaking points on track, it just so happened the faster cars got caught behind the slower teams due to strategy.
 
Drama in the Silver Arrows camp.

After watching the power unit in George Russell's car grenade itself in Malaysia, Mercedes has outfitted his car with new parts. But it exceeded the season limits, and Russell will have to start from the back of the field. (Rumor was the components were almost a 60+ grid drop, which if my math is right, he would have started the race from their headquarters parking lot in Brackley.)

Then there was some reporting that Mercedes was late arriving in Singapore, and weren't able to apply all the new components, so George may have to take another grid drop again this season.

Mercedes also confirmed that the new aero package they brought to Malaysia was "inconclusive" in gains, with both drivers complaining of issues despite the potential double podium before George's PU puked. So the team opted to split the upgrade giving Kimi the newest aero package for a second week, and George will revert to the Azerbaijan package.

Turns out, George might have been right, and the new aero package is (relative) trash.



What an interesting twist to the season.


Oh, and James Vowles went and said the cost cap is why Williams sucks this year. Despite being there for three years now.
 
Heard that they also basically used George as a guinea pig for PU reliability. Knew it was going to go belly-up soon and let it happen. He’d been running it since the Hungaroring.

Honestly, that makes sense to me though. You certainly wouldn’t experiment like that with the driver ahead in the points.
 
I went and did a deeper dive, and maybe I phrased it a little more sarcastic and maybe a little biased after hearing Otmar Szafnauer's take on it. Vowles does have good points, so maybe this is a good launching pad to get the middle and back teams some additional spend before the new engine/regulations in 2030.
 
Toto roasting Kimi on the radio after the race:


Max did Max things. I only caught the last half. Lewis apologized for his race strategy failing and falling to 6th. George rebounded to scrape some points, but it appears Kimi can (mathmatically) clinch in Austin.

While back in the western hemisphere, Cadillac needs to call up Ray Evernham and the old 24 crew who put T-Rex together and have them pour over the F1 rule book to find some creative tweaks to test.
 
Toto roasting Kimi on the radio after the race:


Max did Max things. I only caught the last half. Lewis apologized for his race strategy failing and falling to 6th. George rebounded to scrape some points, but it appears Kimi can (mathmatically) clinch in Austin.

While back in the western hemisphere, Cadillac needs to call up Ray Evernham and the old 24 crew who put T-Rex together and have them pour over the F1 rule book to find some creative tweaks to test.
Smokey Yunick is a way better option:
As with most successful racers, Yunick was a master of the grey area straddling the rules. Perhaps his most famous exploit was his #13 1966 Chevrolet Chevelle, driven by Curtis Turner. The car was so much faster than the competition during testing that they were sure that cheating was involved; some aerodynamic enhancement was strongly suspected, but the car's profile seemed to be entirely stock, as the rules required. It was eventually discovered that Yunick had lowered and modified the roof and windows and raised the production car's floor (to lower the body). This car has many legends about it, and they were definitively debunked by the 2019 Dinner with Racers episode on Amazon Prime TV. Since then, NASCAR required each race car's roof, hood, and trunk to fit templates representing the production car's exact profile.

Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank by using 11-foot (3 meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 US gallons (18.9 liters) to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said, "Better make it ten," and drove it back to the pits. However, the story was not true It is also claimed that he used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race.

Yunick also used such innovations as offset chassis, raised floors, roof spoilers, nitrous oxide injection, and other modifications, often within the letter of the rule book, if not the spirit. "All those other guys were cheatin' 10 times worse than us," Yunick wrote in his autobiography, "so it was just self-defense." Yunick's success was also due to his expertise in the aerodynamics of racing cars.

In another incident, Yunick showed up for a race with stock fender wells still installed on his Chevelle, even though the rules stated they could be removed. After the car qualified well due to improved aerodynamics, fellow competitors complained. Yunick replied, "The rules say you MAY remove them. They don't say you HAVE to." After qualifying, Yunick promptly cut out the fender wells. After further complaints to NASCAR, Smokey said, "The rules don't say WHEN I can remove them."
 
Back
Top