wood

1. I love Barcelona.

So the series owner's own team was caught cheating. Oof. Newgarden and McLaughlin disqualified from St. Pete results for using PTP on starts and restarts. https://www.indycar.com/news/2024/04/04-24-stpete-penalties

Still not getting tired of watching that save ...

I thought about this, too, after seeing the lack of any apparent reasonable logic in the application of penalties in China. He's not wrong. Why risk it? 'Better not to race' in Sprints – Alonso https://racer.com/2024/04/23/better-not-to-race-in-sprints-alonso/

Yeah I thought at the time it was a bad call to go to softs, but since then I've been told they did it because they didn't have any hards left for him and didn't think they'd make it to the end on mediums. So they put soft tires on to take advantage of the field being bunched up for the restart. Makes sense, but I could have sworn some of the others went with mediums to the end. I could be wrong though and haven't bothered to go back and check. That second incident happening so quickly really screwed their strategy on the softs. What's most striking to me about that save, as mentioned above, is the reflexes it takes to do that. Especially at his age, and especially for a guy who many have said for years is too old to do this at a high level. Not only is he doing it, he's still doing it at an elite level, even among F1 drivers.

Yeah but the one on the odd man rush wasn't offsides. Amazing that they blew that call. Strange, one might say.

So ... - Alonso gets it wrong and bumps wheels with Sainz in the Sprint, with no consequences to Sainz, and ending his own race. He gets 10s and 3 points on his license, for something we've frequently seen not even get investigated or go unpenalized in GPs. - Sainz completely ignores the apex en route to causing a collision with his teammate. No penalty. - Stroll drives into the back of RIC in the GP because he wasn't paying attention, ending RIC's race and damaging another car. 10s and only 2 points. - KMag literally drives all the way across the track and ends Yuki's race when he had all the room in the world. In the GP. 10s and 2 points. How does any of that make any sense? Oh, and KMag is just bad. That collision late was particularly terrible. People talk about taking seats from guys like Fernando or Lewis to make room for young new drivers, lol. I would suggest they're looking at the wrong end of the grid. Then you have Sargeant getting to the safety car line a millisecond after Hulkenberg but passing him on pit exit. Penalty: 10s and 2 points. The fact that he got the same penalty as Magnussen and Stroll for something that wasn't his fault (no way he would have seen it, the team needed to tell him) is a joke. What a shitshow.

There have been loads of DRS trains for years that haven't involved him. It's just a couple recently. DRS trains aren't usually really the fault of the guy in front though. They're a symptom of having DRS. I.E. everyone has DRS, so they can't get by each other. If the 2nd guy (who has DRS) can't get past the guy in front who doesn't have it, then that's not on the guy in front. And the guy leading the train, who can't keep up with the car in front, is usually in that position because his car is too slow in race pace and he qualified it higher than it would normally be positioned, for one reason or another. But in the GP today I don't think he really caused a DRS train. For example as soon as Checo started putting pressure on him, he just moved over and let him past because his race really wasn't with Checo anyway.

In other news, man, Aston Martin should have put Fernando back on medium tires during that SC, but his run on mediums at the end was absolutely epic and almost covered that mistake. He was a rocket, and the save on the front straight ... just wow. Should have been a Code Brown moment, but Fernando didn’t miss a beat. Immediately pressed the DRS button and got after Lewis.

Not to my knowledge. He's always had an edge that many people don't recognize though, imho.

Still hasn't recovered from The Split. IndyCar was right there with F1 before that.

Yeah I noticed that yesterday after the sprint, too. One day when he goes to WEC or whatever, he's gonna be a beast. He and Alonso are talkiong about doing WEC together on the same team. Think about that for a second.

Ah, ok. Ain't nobody tryna win a Pullitzer up in the Surl. ; )

JPM sounds like a Simpson's character. Aight. I'm out. I could watch this tonight, but then I'd be a veg tomorrow. I'll watch it with my kid tomorrow. Y'all enjoy!

It's simple. Alonso's moves to Renault from Minardi, to McLaren in 2007, Ferrari, and Aston Martin have been great moves in terms of predicting who's going to be fast. Alpine wasn't awesome, but what else was available to him when he returned? Availability is a huge factor, of course, and over at least the last 15 years, the teams with the top cars weren't looking for anyone to challenge their #1 drivers. ... They can do it if it's a repair/replacement of like for like parts and they get it approved.

Which part are you confused by?

Yeah in like the 70s or early 80s. This guy is such a tool. Still bottles my mind that so many people fell for and are still falling for his shit. P.T.Barnum never stops being right.

Seriously. What a fucking moron. The Navy retired F-14s almost 20 years ago.

NSIAP. Fuck Elmo & Tesla. 'Environmentally Friendly' Tesla Is Trying To Skirt Austin Pollution Laws. https://jalopnik.com/tesla-the-environmentally-friendly-ev-maker-is-trying-1851422743?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=jalopnik_twitter Apparently, Austin won't let Tesla pollute the Colorado River as much as it wants to.

So, 2 closers who can't close. Awesome.

LOL two different purples for TCU's unis & helmets. Weird.

OK, let's not get all crazy now ...

Just like most drivers. He's just been around a lot longer than most and has had a lot more options than most would have. None of them have a crystal ball. Since 2010, there have been 4 drivers sharing all of those WDCs. Vettel, who was a Red Bull junior driver and fell into a dominant car. Lewis, who was unhappy at McLaren and was looking for a way out after 2012. He had one decent alternative, and that was Mercedes, where Michael had decided to hang up his shoes. And Mercedes had just one elite driver available, and that was Lewis. Nico was already at Mercedes for four years before they got their PU advantage. Max had been at Red Bull for five years before winning. Only one of those guys made the move into a WDC-winning seat, and he had nowhere else to go. Since Alonso's been in F1 (2001), the only drivers to move to a new team and win WDCs quickly were Alonso at Renault, Kimi at Ferrari (and only because McLaren botched it), and Lewis at Merc.

A big 'Gracias!' goes out to Carlos Sainz for demonstrating how tracks should enforce their own limits.