Max Verstappen and Lando Norris

Verstappen and Norris to team up in iRacing Bathurst 12 Hours

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In the round-up: Max Verstappen and Formula 1 newcomer Lando Norris will share a car in the iRacing Bathurst 12 Hours with Team Redline team mates Nicky Catsburg and Atze Kerkhof.

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Comment of the day

Hamilton’s performance last season should have won over his doubters, reckons Matteo:

Once a champion like Hamilton retires, people rooting for his opponents can start letting go their feelings and truly see him as the star he was.

That being said, if someone who follows F1 can’t admit after 2018 season how strong as a driver he is, that person won’t be able to admit it even when he’ll retire. I was one of those that until the first 2018 races considered Hamilton one of the best drivers but also a lucky one and a bit overrated. I changed my mind after the impressive work he did after.
Matteo (@M-bagattini)

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Keith Collantine
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37 comments on “Verstappen and Norris to team up in iRacing Bathurst 12 Hours”

  1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
    9th February 2019, 0:17

    Regarding COTD, I do agree Hamilton has been really good this year. But if so, surely Bottas has been really under rated by many. It seems many don’t rate him at all now. Just because Hamilton has been extremely good (possibly his best ever season) doesn’t mean Bottas has had a poor season overall, especially if you look at his early part of the season. The fact that Bottas was better on several occasions and was close in others surely indicates that he is better than some think given how much of a challenge Hamilton will be.

    Not saying @M-bagattini thinks this, but there does seem to be an awful lot of praise for Hamilton being amazing this season (can’t disagree with that, he does deserve it) But it seems to result in Bottas being heavily criticized for not being close. I’m not convinced Rosberg or many other drivers would have done much better at all actually. He rarely looked that strong in the races other than when the Mercedes pair just drove off into the distance.

    I do think Hamilton has taken advantage that Bottas doesn’t put quite as much pressure on him as Rosberg which has possibly helped him get better results.But this has made Bottas look worse than he is IMO.

    1. @thegianthogweed When you are often struggling to be within 30 seconds of your teammate at a lot of races, that simply isn’t good enough, even if that teammate is Lewis Hamilton. I think another frustration is that there are better drivers than Bottas out there who are in worse cars who people would rather see be pitted against Hamilton.

      1. But how do you know Mercedes want a better driver than Bottas? They could have employed Ricciardo but chose not to, so they are happy with their current drivers.

      2. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        9th February 2019, 9:38

        To be fair, there were 6 races where he was over 30 seconds behind Hamilton.

        Australia, France, Hungary, Belgium, Singapore, Abu Dhabi. But if you think about it, Australia was a mistake in qualifying which effected his race and wasn’t really a true reflection of how he was comapred to Hamilton. France wasn’t his fault at all. He looked ok at the start of Hungary, the contact with Vettel had them both to blame really, but it lead to the Ricciardo clash, which I have to blame Bottas for.

        In Belgium, it was heavily down to having to start right at the back that made him finish this far back, so I don’t think we should really count this one.

        Singapore and Abu Dhabi, he wasn’t good so i can’t disagree there. But that is only 4 which are fair to judge which I wouldn’t call a lot of races.

        In the other races, I think the worst was 24 seconds behind, but usually was less than that. Can’t say he’s had a great year, but I don’t think he was worse than last year. And I do think that Hamilton being so good has made the gap look bigger.

    2. As a person, I’m sure he’s a bit of a wally, I can’t imagine him going more than 10 minutes before saying something profoundly stupid; as a driver, he’s been imperious of late, a notch above everyone else. I can’t picture Ocon or anyone else getting closer to him than Bottas did.

      And after that 2012 season, and the period where he just kept driving into Massa, it’s kind of nice to see him come to fruition, even if he is probably a plonker.

      1. well, i don’t think Ocon could, but Vettel, Verstappen, Ricciardo and one or two others I think could be closer than Bottas, but I do think it is hamilton being so good that is making Bottas look worse rather than the other way round. Beign able to sometimes match or beat him should be considered really impressive from Bottas.

    3. @thegianthogweed no, I don’t think it: I think Bottas is a great driver and we can’t ignore the fact that his season has been heavily affected by his team’s decisions (I don’t want to factor “luck”, I’m not that kind). One can’t be recognized as a great driver when his team literally prevents him to win.

      In my opinion, F1 drivers are incredibly close in terms of pure speed. Just think about it: they lap several km of tracks with differences of milliseconds. They all, everyone there, are extremely fast. We have to look elsewhere for how those milliseconds became hundreds of championship points. Obviously different cars. What when they are in the same car? First driver status, sometimes. And then? I think the key is consistency. As a super Ferrari and Vettel fan, it’s kinda weird that my first COTD is a prise to Hamilton, but again, the “hammer” nickname goes beyond those terrific laps he’s able to nail. He was able to deliver consistently, race after race, session after session. That’s why I’m not even mad after the collapse Vettel and Ferrari had after Spa. Even with a good final part of the season, the one delivered by Lewis would have been hardly reachable.

  2. don’t agree with honda here because if you close off all the grey areas then you may as well just give them all a spec engine as it’s often the grey areas that lead to clever solutions which give advantages which is kind of what the sport is supposed to be about.

    i don’t think the oil burning should have been banned, i don’t think whatever trick ferrari found with there battery/deployment should be banned because these are clever solutions within the regulations that provide a performance advantage. rather than close these things off (to level the playing field) it should be upto the other engine supplies to figure out what’s been & find there own solutions to try and catch up.

    people have become far too obsessed with equality, with stomping out any advantage because somehow somebody doing there job at finding a performance advantage over the rest & winning has become bad when it used to be & indeed should still be the aim of the game & purpose of the sport.

    colin chapman never designed the lotus 49 around the ford dfv in the way he did for the benefit of the show, he did it because he wanted an advantage & wanted to dominate. same with the lotus 78/ground effects, he didn’t put that on the car to create closer racing he did so because he wanted to win by as large a margin as possible because that is what the sport is meant to be.

    somebody winning by a large margin or a team dominating a race/season/period is only ‘dull’ to those who don’t understand the purpose of the sport. it was never supposed to be ‘a show’, it was supposed to be a showcase of the auto industry and bravery/skill of the drivers. that people ended up finding it entertaining was a byproduct, it was never the purpose and it’s the push towards changing the ‘purpose’ that has done more harm to the sport than anything else (circuits ruined, new circuits terrible, artificial gimmicks, cars slowed down among more) and is the primary reason for it’s decline and will be the thing that eventually ends f1.

    1. Extremely well said. Please forward this to FOM, FIA, and especially to Ross Brawn.

    2. You’re missing the link between entertainment and business, it is the ruthless stripping out of revenue that demands regulations to homogenize the cars and reduce team budgets.

    3. Domination sounds like a cool thing maybe 10 or 20 years after it happened. I think these mercedes years will be remembered like a giant achiement in the same way we remember the red bull, ferrari, mclaren or some earlier successes. But when you are there watching it unfold as it happens it is the most boring thing ever.

      The huge issue with these engines is how absolutely unequal it has made f1. You are either engine manufacturer with your team in f1 willing to spend insane sums of money to finish guaranteed first and second. Or you are a team who is unable to build their own engines which means you have no chance to compete ever. Or you are honda or renault who hope the regulations change and others drop down to their level. In other words it is all about politics.

      When ford and lotus had the dfv engine they did not refuse to sell it to others because they were afraid of competition. How things have changed. Wikipedia quote:
      “Hayes concluded that Ford’s name could become tarnished if the Lotus were to continue winning against only lesser opposition, and that they should agree to use the unit in other teams, and hence potentially dominate Formula One.”

      Meanwhile mercedes and ferrari are using every trick in the book to force midfield teams on their side, stall and moan when any talk of change is heard while enjoying the biggest advantage in f1 in years.

    4. Allowing oil burning (to use just one of your examples) is ridiculous when at the same time limiting fuel flow and size of fuel tank.
      Oil burning is no clever technical development but rather plain cheating.

    5. Ambrogio Isgro
      9th February 2019, 16:00

      Well, think also that before in f1 things were changing fast from one year to another, that the fragility of the cars and the tyre wars make races unpredictable, that the cars were more hard to drive and you spot the big difference between the good old years and now. Add that most of the money go to the top team and you have the other part of the problem. The layout of the circuits didn’t help, with less variety for cars and drivers to emerge as specialists.
      Even during the second half of the ’80 with dominant forces as Honda with Williams and Mclaren, you saw outsiders nailing the perfect day… Leyton House with Capelli, Minardi with Martini, Tyrrell with Alesi and so on… Plus Benetton, Ferrari and Lotus able to wins gps.
      Today money and engine technology create a gap impossible to recover with the current conditions (same tyres for all, lame circuits…)

  3. “Verstappen and Norris to team up in iRacing Bathurst 12 Hours”

    Thought it was April fools come early…Great stuff, can’t wait!
    Shane van Gisbergen’s one of the other drivers in a two car team, maybe Fernando’s got a trend going, get Lewis a Car for Daytona!

    1. Yeah I set an alarm to remind me about that, really looking forward to it especially after last weekends race.

      1. I’d be more impressed if they got out of the Sim and did it in reality. Pretty Meh

        1. i should have put on my glasses! Faceplant….

          1. Those i- and e- prefixes are sneaky :-)

    2. After that they’re playing MarioKart and Tekken. Lots of pizza and premium energy drink. Top night in! :-)

    3. @budchekov it’ll be an easy night in for SVG with brakes that work and presumably an air-conditioned room to work from. Just hope he’s recovered from that cramping.

      Would love to see F1 drivers tackle it for real but can’t imagine their contracts allow for such excitement. Alonso was unusual in that manner.

    4. It says a lot when F1 drivers aren’t really interested in the sport’s own simracer, but chose another.

      But no surprise. Having Codemaster’s F1 as the official sim is almost putting the sport in disrepute.

      Brawn or whomever should realize what’s up and get iRacing do the official F1 sim.

  4. Max starting his 5 th season and is just 21 years old, , amazing !!!

  5. Verstappen Is incredibily good in iracing

    1. Verstappen Is incredibly good in real racing

  6. This image interpretation on the Philip Morris article are far worse than ‘everything triangle is illuminati’ meme. I’d like to have what they are smoking.

    1. Zak’s brother is doing the marketing at Ferrari; such an Angelic car with Demonic logo.

      1. Why is that remind me of Baby Face persona in Red Devil.

    2. What other purpose does it serve? Of course it’s Marlboro advertising….

    3. @ruliemaulana – LOL, reminds me of the time I got a big lecture from a well-meaning older relative about Hotel California’s lyrics and its connotations :-)

      1. The best one I heard is, it was actually a hotel owned by cannibals in Scotland :D

        1. Damn! You’ve got that playing in my head now!

          Marlborough have got away with it for a very long time.
          They, like everyone in F1 will always bend, go round, or find holes in the rules; just as the accountants will if ever there is a cost cap .
          F1 is complicated by no two teams being the same, something Bernie took delight in exploiting, whereas Liberty are trying to get everyone to be the same and nobody wanted to watch A1GP did they?
          A cost cap wont ever work, or at least if ever it is imposed it will make F1 FUBAR

  7. One Brit amongst three Dutch, LOL.

    In response to the COTD: I agree that he indeed should get more praise than he has.

    The Red Bull RB5 I also feel is quite underrated as well. Yes, it mightn’t match the likes of RB6 or RB7, but it was still a very decent/competitive car in its active season as well.

    A Nice sound from the 2019-spec Mercedes PU although my personal favorite thus far is the Honda sound.

    1. my personal favorite thus far is the Honda sound

      i hear they developed a revolutionary new External Combustion Engine (ECE)

      1. ECE Yes the turbos used to do that a lot in the old days when the Formula was switched from 3 Litre to 1.5 Lit Quite spectacular it was.
        Good to have it back again!

  8. On a serious note I wonder how much of a threat iRacing is to the real thing ?
    Last year I happened on what I assumed was a TV rerun of a MotoGP race from Italy… It wasn’t but looked pretty darn real..

    1. For the driver very close, the only thing is the G-forces (depending on your rig max. G-force is 0,99) but for the rest it’s very real racing wise.

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