2025 Formula 1 Season Thread

[FLAMESRULE]

Originally Posted by 3thirty

Nor
Ver
Pia
Rus
Lec
Hulk
Ant
Sai
Hulk
Alo

Lucky for you I noticed Hulk in twice...

[speede5]

Nor
Pia
Ver
Rus
Ant
Had
Lec
Sai
Bea
Hul

My predictions if people keep their wits about them. Unfortuntely I am expecting a shunt in T1 and controversy amongst one or two of the top three.

[fleuryisgod]

1. Ver
2. Pia
3. Nor
4. Ant
5. Rus
6. Lec
7. Sai
8. Alb
9. Ham
10. Alo

[Fuzz]

Nor
Ver
Pia
Rus
Lec
Ant
Ham
Bear
Hul
Alo

[DoubleK]

WTF Yuki?!?!?!?!


Good riddance, moron!!!!!

[powderjunkie]

Hopefully Oscar can be crazy aggressive into T1 (per McLaren tradition!) and then he and Max can scrap it out. Lando will want to be cautious but thats a good way to screw things up. But I also wonder if George would rather Lando win than Max and not attack Lando too hard.

It is never not annoying to see MBS in parc fermé.

[dammage79]

Lando will win the WDC. Any podium and he's the champ. He's got this. Hopefully McLaren has their ducks in a row strategy wise.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

To keep it simple this is just between Lando and Oscar. While I think these all broadly fall into 'we went motor-racing, Toto', I think its also reasonable to speculate what the most 'fair' outcomes would have been without outside influences:

Stewarding. -22 from Oscar
Brazil -8, Silverstone -14. (people are free to disagree but I think these were two of the worst penalties in the history of f1)

Team Reliability -24 from Lando
Zaandvort -18, Vegas -6 (just to Oscar of course)

Team Strategy -18 from Oscar
Between Hungary and Qatar Oscar should have had 50 points and Lando 33, but it ended up Oscar 36 to Lando 37

Net all of those and its 16 points in Lando's favour, which is exactly the current margin.


And then we have incidents without a clearcut 'fair' outcome: Monza, Singapore, USGP sprint (perhaps some others but I think these are the main ones). Net outcome was 12 points in Lando's favour, but there's lots to dissect there. In 'fair' toto-racing terms I'd say Monza and Singapore should have offset each other one way or another (Oscar obeying team orders should have made Lando's Singapore bang beyond the pale; or if Monza switch didn't happen then Singapore would have been A-okay with me). USGP probably meant a 2pt swing between them had they both finished.

So my fairness time machine would probably have Oscar up by about 4 pts right now (and Max out of contention).

I came across one more point to appendicize to my fairness compendium above. In Canada Norris was given an inconsequential 5 second penalty for crashing into the back of Piastri. Which wasn't an unreasonable decision, even though it was obviously outcome-based (and probably competitive WDC-based). But it's totally incongruent with the draconian penalties Piastri received in Silverstone and Brazil (for me any penalty in either case was absurd, but more than 5 seconds made them double absurd).

So if you game out a 10 second penalty for Lando in Canada, it's a 3-grid spot penalty in Austria, which bumps his awesome poll lap back to 4th and likely means the McLaren 1-2 ends up in the reverse order.


But it was interesting to go look back at Austria overall. I think it was some of the only good wheel to wheel stuff between OP/LN all season. Oscar was on his gearbox for the whole first stint including a few lunges and swaps right at the start. On lap 19 Oscar made a late lunge, locked up, and narrowly missed Lando. Lando pit the next lap and had a 3.1s stop, while Oscar had a pretty fast lap despite his flat spot, so the overcut may have been on with a good stop...but they failed to pit Oscar on that next lap to the surprise of the commentators (one of whom immediately wondered if it was to neutralize for Lando's slow stop).

Oscar's strategy ended up being pretty dumb and he his first stop was 3.4s anyways, but with hindsight this seems a pretty clear example of Oscar having an inferior strategy team and/or the team protecting Lando (which I don't even think was the wrong call here, but exposes just how farcical papaya rules have been).


Anyways, that's probably enough screaming into the void on behalf of a 24 year old Australian who I'll never meet. At least for tonight. This season feels hollow to me, but at least we'll have lots of off-season toxicity!

[Bagor]

Tsunoda being a proper little prick. Good riddance to him.

[devo22]

so how will McLaren eff this up?

[dammage79]

Lando!!!

[dammage79]

This is right. Seeing the Norris family revel in Landos championship win is amazing.

[FurnaceFace]

I think I may have out Maxed, Max. My quick calculation says Flamesrule got 12 points and I got 14 meaning he pips first by 1 point. I'm still shocked I was in the mix at all!

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I’m surprised Red Bull didn’t try anything to back up the pack. At least it added some interest to the later part of the season.


Now onto the mystery of the 2026 regulations. And Cadillac. And Audi. Kind of sad to lose Sauber.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Why is crofty mentioning the 2 points from Qatar? Piastri was 2nd. Those 2 points were meaningless.

[Ironhorse]

Congratulations to Norris.

Cool down room was interesting and I think a bit telling. Piastri looked pissed off. Max seemed to be chill and OK with it. Lando looked awkward and appeared a bit embarrassed. I think he was lucky that there wasn’t another race left to go.

[woob]

Glad Norris got it done with a safe but consistent race. Well deserved. Was awesome to see how emotional he and his family were. And the Carlos congratulations was amazing.

I bloody hope McLaren figures out their pitwall for 2026. Let the drivers drive and stop with the unnecessary management.

[dammage79]

Question is, who's going to have the edge with these new ice units and 2026 car regs?

This may have been the supreme one off for McLaren.

[BagoPucks]

Congrats to Lando. Well deserved and he has evolved to be a driver who doesn't make mistakes or questionable calls behind the wheel.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

I’m surprised Red Bull didn’t try anything to back up the pack. At least it added some interest to the later part of the season.

Ya the time to do it would have been for Max to pit right after Piastri did. I think the problem is that Norris would have DRS to defend himself. I'm not sure what tires Max had left to use? If he had to go to another set of hards then he'd be vulnerable to Oscar on fresh mediums. Lose the lead to Oscar and then Norris blows up and Max loses.

Backing up is a low % play in the DRS era. Even if Lando lost one spot then Oscar could still give it up at the end .

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Why is crofty mentioning the 2 points from Qatar? Piastri was 2nd. Those 2 points were meaningless.

Lando would have had to win directly based on team orders. Which actually would have been quite a fitting way to end.


I wonder how many times full-blown final-stint position swap orders have been the difference in a WDC (not necessarily in the last race)?

I don't think Kovalainen ever had to pull over for Lewis in 08. Same with Perez/Max in 21

Kimi was actually behind Felipe in the standings for most of 2007; Ferrari had quite a few opportunities to swap them either way but I don't think they ever did. Massa was on pole and lead until the 2nd pit stops, but wiki tells me that he made a mistake while Kimi did a legit 3 lap overcut (which was quite powerful back then).

I don't think Michael's teammates were ever in front of him in 94/95. He only won by 2 points in 2003, but Rubens never finished directly behind him. Rubens winning the last race over Kimi in P2 helped secure the title for Schumi, who still would have won on count back, but he finished 8th in the last race by just 0.7 seconds.

In 1999 Mika was 2 pts behind Irvine in Spa (rd 12/16); Coulthard was 20 pts down - he overtook Mika (with light contact apparently) on lap 1 and won the race 10 seconds ahead of Mika in P2. And this was when P2 was only worth 6 pts compared to 10 for the win. I feel like DC did have to pull over a few times in his career, but maybe it was 2003 for Kimi. I wonder when the failure to do team orders has been the difference in the WDC (as it nearly was in '99)?

Frentzen never finished 1 spot behind Villeneuve in '97.

TLDR: Pretty sure Monza 2025 is the most overt team orders that have made the final difference in the WDC since at least 1993 (and tbf there's lots of grey in that situation).