2014 f1 gp.

[Isitme]

Now that the 2014 season is under way, time we started a thread about what we think of the new set up, drivers, cars and regs.

Personally the biggest disappointment to me was the noise. Reminded me of an old pedal operated sewing machine, The squeal of the types helped a bit, but you hear that all the time when driving around town, it can't replace the roar of a V8 in full stream.

Very disappointed to see Seb, loose his dummy and leave the track half way through the race. As a champion it was his place to stay and cheer on his team-mate. Maybe proves what many have suspected, that he is not the nice chap they make him out to be at all. It is a great pity Daniel lost his place due to a technicality, I hope it is overturned on appeal.

With regards the new regulations I think they have tried to do too much too soon. The regulations have made it very complicated and too prone to break downs. It could also cause bad accidents when a simple thing like a sensor not getting the right message can stop the car in the middle of the track, as demonstrated by Hamilton's Mercedes, not in the race fortunately. Kobayashi's crash out on the first corner was apparently due to a simple failure which left him without rear brakes and the extra low nose almost flipped Massa over.

Anyway, well done to Rosberg, Ricciardo and Magnussen for great driving of almost impossible to drive cars.

[Hughfraser]

Hi, just working my way through the first race, have to say the noise of the engines aren't as snorting as they were last year but these new ones are growing on me already.

My biggest gripe is with sky as last year we got it for free, this year we got an offer of £11 for 6 months, but I only want to watch the f1 channel not football, rugby or golf just f1 thank you very much, what ways are there online to watch it?

[Isitme]

F1 is still free with the full HD pack, if you transferred to EE+ you will not get it unless you take the Sports pack.

There are plenty of places where you can watch on line, but I don't know how good they are. Just Google for 'f1 online free'.

[Hughfraser]

Cheers


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[146Kg]

I have it with the HD pack, but I can't watch it "on demand" as I don't have the sports package.
That came as a surprise (I had the sports package last season).

[Isitme]

I am not sure about the reason for that. Is On Demand shown in HD? If not, that may be the reason. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer BBC iPlayer - Formula 1: 2014: The Malaysian Grand Prix I am not sure what other races will be covered by iPlayer.

[146Kg]

To get back on topic, I think that aero and engine technology has changed F1 forever. By that I mean that "back in the day" you took some wing off to go faster down the straight because you would hit your absolute top speed, and you lost grip in the corners, now on most tracks you never hit top speed, they run out of straight because of power and aero progress compared to decades ago.
You have to have the power or you lose the spectacle and the attraction, maybe it is rose tinted glasses but it was interesting when 6 wheels, fans, ground effect then turbos came along for the first time.
A lot of the restrictions are to do with safety and hats off to them for that, but the more the more they regulate the more the cars are becoming similar and we could watch a lot of motor sport where the cars are equal(ish) and it is just down to the driver.
It was exciting when you had a choice of turbo or not - has he burnt too much fuel - will the engine make it to the end of the race etc and the non turbo cars were chasing the turbos down towards the end of the race.
But not when the ground effect cars just won every time by a large margin.
Now the most exciting technological changes between races is a new shaped nose or similar.
The DRS is great as now similar cars with similar performance can get to overtake, but as for this years regulations, the racing hasn't changed except for the reliability, just the cars are a little more eco than they were.
Better than pre DRS but the same as the past few seasons that had it do you think ? And that is not a problem, I enjoy every one of them (except Monaco which is a lottery).

[Isitme]

At the moment it looks like Mercedes are going to run away with it. Not only because they were first and second, but there were 7 out of the top 9 Mercedes powered and maybe more significantly, every Mercedes powered car that started, finished the race. They seem to have got on top of the technology a lot quicker than their rivals. Ferrari and Renault have a lot to do to catch up.

Kudos to Max though, he finished again, probably with his highest ever position, even if he was last.

As for the new power packs, they are going to make the drivers work really hard. The problem is that there are so many little things that can go wrong, races are going to be won and lost by very small faults. Cue Hamilton's withdrawal down under due to a split in an 80p bit of tubing.

Looking forward to Bahrain, at least it should not be messed up with rain,

[bubblegun]

I have it with the HD pack, but I can't watch it "on demand" as I don't have the sports package.
That came as a surprise (I had the sports package last season).

You should complain about this since you should get the on-demand that corresponds with your subscription.
If enough people complain then they will have to fix this.