Wouldn't the other Mercedes customers have a chances of making ground? Should they figure out the right aero and driving combo, then they should be able to get closer to or on par with Mercedes.
I know it’s early but if this is another 2014 I predict the beginning of the end of the F1 renaissance since DTS exploded.
Drivers hate the regs. I don’t see max, Lewis or Alonso sticking around. George is gonna win 4 championships in a row and I don’t think the sport can survive another 2014-2018 era of having the season over before the first race starts.
No one’s gonna wanna watch Merc lap the whole field.
Not unless they can do something to alter the Merc dominance but I don’t see how. This can’t just be the engine compression trick. There’s rumours Mercedes aren’t even showing their actual pace. Which also happened in 2014.
Not unless they can do something to alter the Merc dominance but I don’t see how. This can’t just be the engine compression trick.
Agreed. None of the other Mercedes powered cars have looked anything like the works team. Almost makes you wonder if the compression ratio was a bit of a red herring to distract the competition while Mercedes were doing working on something else.
First 10 laps were kinda interesting I guess, but blow-by passes always feel pretty hollow to me. Time well tell if battery mgmt passes feel any better than tire+DRS passes.
Starts should at least be very interesting for a while. Especially if unreliability leads to some red flags and standing restarts.
Mercs seem unstoppable in clear air. Since they double stacked it seems like they were committed to stop under VSC1 no matter what. Would have been interesting if Ferrari stopped LEC to see how long the squabble played out.
RUS consistently did 122.6-122.9s until LEC pit (so having burned 10-25 laps of fuel on fresh hards).
LEC was within a tenth or so of 123.0 on fresh hards having burned off 25+ laps of fuel.
Ferrari lap times were actually very competitive down the stretch, but the Mercs were probably coasting (and a lot more lapped traffic than we're used to so lots of lap anomalies)
The story of the race was definitely LEC doing 123.4s on old mediums while RUS took over a half a second per lap off him on fresh hards.
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Huge props to FOM for finally taking my suggestion and keeping the tower graphic only to the tenth of a second. This removed 44 points of useless data from the screen. It made it very easy to watch George so rapidly bring his gap down 9.5 9.4 9.3 9.2 9.1 - seemed like he was gaining a tenth every 5 seconds for a while there.
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Felt like the first 10 or 20 laps had a tremendous amount of wheel to wheel racing and phenomenal passes. Things seemed to settle down around lap 25. Not a ton of action after that.
I feel like there’s a good chance things will settle down a little bit as drivers become more effective at managing their batteries. So I don’t think every race is gonna be chaos like this at the beginning. But I definitely think we’re gonna see more action than we did last season in the early stages of races.
Very curious about the Mercedes pace. Hard to tell if they would’ve been under pressure if the VSCs would’ve worked out differently. Certainly seemed like they had a lot more pace that they weren’t showing.
Some speculation that Ferrari will have an advantage at slower tracks like Hungary and Monaco. Somewhat similar to Red Bull during the Mercedes dominant years.
Reliability being a factor is something we haven’t seen in a long time. As long as the championship isn’t to run away, and it very well could be, we could see a few surprises this season.
I've mentioned earlier but I am a new fan just getting into the sport. I've dabbled before but this is my first season as "a fan". I don't like the battery management aspect of the sport. I think this is pretty new? I'd like to hear from some longtime F1 fans what they think of it.
I've mentioned earlier but I am a new fan just getting into the sport. I've dabbled before but this is my first season as "a fan". I don't like the battery management aspect of the sport. I think this is pretty new? I'd like to hear from some longtime F1 fans what they think of it.
It is new but batteries have been around for a while in F1. While a significant change it’s also an evolution of previous hybrid technology.
Like a lot of F1 fans in a perfect world we’d have much simpler V8 or V10 engines that are loud as #### and produce that wonderful sound that harmonizes with my soul.
Since we can’t have that, my number one priority is entertainment. It’s only 1 race but that was fairly entertaining, especially the first half of the race. If the current formula produces entertaining races, then I could care less how much battery management is involved.
That being said, battery management feels like it takes away from the pure driving aspect of F1. Except the 2014 hybrids had batteries. Cars since 2010 had KERS. Not to mention tire management and fuel management have been part of F1 forever. To me, what the driver is managing doesn’t matter all that much. It’s part of the job.
Some drivers have said the cars aren’t fun to drive and the battery management takes up a disproportionate amount of time and effort. Lando said he didn’t notice Kimi’s cooling fan on the track because he was staring at his steering wheel. Once again I sympathize a bit and would love pure racing but let’s not pretend that these steering wheels and cars weren’t already massively complicated.
Fans have pointed out this lame that the cars lose power at the end of straights and have to harvest but any change to prevent it would involve limiting energy output and would slow down lap times, which are already much slower than the last regulation set.
At the end of the day, it’s not the formula I would have designed but as long as it’s entertaining then I don’t really care what’s involved for the drivers.
Reduce electrical power output, keep it as is, I don’t really care what’s involved I don’t even care that the cars are always faster than the last gen. My enjoyment isn’t based on lap times being 3s or 5s faster. F1 is the pinnacle of Motorsport by a decent margin and being a few seconds slower won’t change that.
If they race good, look good and sound good then I’m happy. Right now they look great, sound ok and race….? Not sure yet.
And just for fun here’s the chainbear video explaining what changed in F1 this year. Great for understanding how the battery changed and how the drivers use it.
Last edited by Cecil Terwilliger; 03-08-2026 at 04:24 PM.
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