Grand Prix 2018 British Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

After trips to 4 continents & a sub continent Oceania, Middle East, Asia, Europe, North America in opening 8 races. whether its 4 in Europe & 1 in Asia or 3 in Europe & 2 in Asia depends where you classify Baku. We are home, & doesn't it feel nice, although everyone at the 11 teams will be delighted for the week off after the very draining im assuming 1st ever triple header & not only are we home but so are Formula 1 as everyone knows the 1st ever Formula 1 race took place in 1950 at this very circuit.

Definitely taking inspiration from cider_and_toast because i wouldnt dream of blatantly nicking ideas.;) LOL thought I might give a bit of history lesson as well. Silverstone does have 1 of the best circuits in the world but its layout was only stumbled upon by accident. because RAF Silverstone was opened in 1943 but in a classic world war 2 triangle layout which brought the perimiter roads. Also the 1st ever motorsport event to be held at the Silverstone airfield as it was then was a extremely low key event in 1947. & was organized by a guy called Maurice Geoghegan. he lived in nearby Silverstone village and was aware that the airfield was deserted had been for a while (of course world war had ended 2 years prior) so he & 11 other of his friends got to together & raced over the 2mile circuit, although his race was ended prematurely when a few sheep had wandered onto the airfield & Maurice hit 1 of the sheep, which killed the sheep & wrote the car off. in 1948 The Royal Automobile Club took a lease on the airfield, to set out a more formal racing circuit. they hired An ex-farmer,giving him just 2 months to turn the site from a wartime airfield & farm into a race track for the inaugural RAC International Grand Prix On the 2nd October 1948 an estimated 100,000 people flocked to see Luigi Villoresi beat a field of 22 in his Maserati. the 1st 2 races were organized & held on the World War 2 runways, with long straights separated by tight hairpin corners, the track only defined by Hay bales & ropes that also protected crops in the middle of the circuit. Then the royal automobile club decided to move racing to the perimeter track for 1950 & 1951 F1 races. 1950 1 of most known winners of an F1 grand prix. which even though it was widely known as the British GP Officially it was the 1950 Grand Prix d’Europe & it was significant occasion for another reason as King George VI & Queen Elizabeth (queen mum) were in attendance, which is still the only time a reigning monarch has attended a British motor race, then in 1951 BRDC took the lease from RAC who didnt want it & rest they say is history

The drivers are going to get a shock with this heatwave, because like Belgium all the drivers turn up here most years expecting cold & wet weather. but we have been experiencing temperatures in the high 20's for a few weeks & with the forecast it looks like it going to continue all next week as well. but im probally biased but this is 1 of highlights of the season up with Belgium & Monza. because such a great atmosphere with stands are packed from FP1 & full of fans with great British humour down the years. always some of the best celebrations because when Brit wins at Silverstone its on a par with a Ferrari win at Monza. But unfortunately this is the 50th & potentially penultimate British GP. very nearly the final in its traditional place in July, because Sean Bratches has all ready confirmed that it was the 1st choice for hosting the 1000th grand prix in April 2019. but then someone told him about Easter 2000 & he was put off for some reason haha but as i said this the penultimate British GP because of the Mexican standoff between Bernie's contract, Silverstone's owners & Liberty Media. after BRDC confirmed the rumours & triggered the break clause in their contract on day of the 2017 grand prix all because of unsustainable 5% fee escalator built into the deal by Bernie, after the Donington park fiasco. which means that what was a estimated cost of £12m - 2010, became £17m - 2017 17.9m - 2018 19m - 2019 ,& by 2026 if clause hadn't been invoked would've been in excess of 27m

thought i would give some historic Silverstone facts. that you may or may not know & I couldn't shoe horn in
  • sundays race will be 50th race on 14th different configuration
  • the priest that ran across the Silverstone track at Hangar Straight in 2003. ended up being jailed for 2 months
  • 1955 was the 1st time a british man won a the british gp
  • the startline has moved counties in 2011, as half the track is in Northamptonshire & half In Buckinghamshire
  • Silverstone Annually on Race day, annually becomes the busiest airport in Britain
Evolution_of_Silverstone_Grand_Prix_Circuit_1949_to_present.png
 
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Apparently Vettel missed part of FP3 due to a neck issue. It's going to be a long race for him tomorrow if that doesn't clear up.
 
Not the first time that it's happened to a Toro Rosso driver.

Here's the clip of Hartley. The guy has had a massive amount of bad luck this season.
 
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Bit alarming to see the car take off as it crossed from the asphalt to the gravel runoff. I remember in 2008 the bumpy outfield caused a few problems, but I thought the circuit improvement work had ironed that out.

The lack of a wheel was probably a factor too!
 
Actually a pretty entertaining qualifying session. Ferrari is much more competitive than I expected. It could be a very interesting race tomorrow.
 
Ruslan I think that Mercedes will have the upper hand especially considering that they will be using tyres designed to suit their car, that should give them an advantage, but yes Ferrari is pretty close. IMHO tomorrow Mercedes will be ahead followed by RBR and then Ferrari. It will be interesting to see what happens in Germany when, if I'm not mistake, they will switch back to the standard tyres that have given so many headaches to Mercedes when the weather is warm
 
That is what surprised me. I expected with a new engine and the thinner wall tires, that Mercedes would have a comfortable advantage. Hamilton barely out-qualified both Vettel and Raikonnen and Bottas was not in the hunt.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Germany. It will also be interesting to see tomorrow 1) how the start goes, 2) whether the Mercedes has a higher tire wear problem than the Ferrari (the reason for the thinner wall tires was because of the wear issues, so this should not be an issue this race...not that I really understand how this works), and 3) whether the Mercedes has resolved all their reliability problems from last week.
 
Should be lively down to Abbey on the first lap tomorrow, I'm looking forward to it.

Big gap between the Red Bulls again, Max is really hitting his stride.

Also notable that 5 of the 6 Ferrari-powered cars made it to Q3. Christian Horner commented on the C4 coverage that he believes that to now be the benchmark engine - on this evidence you'd have to agree.
 
whether the Mercedes has a higher tire wear problem than the Ferrari (the reason for the thinner wall tires was because of the wear issues, so this should not be an issue this race...not that I really understand how this works)

when the tyres overheat the inner part of the tyre releases some gasses that move towards the other part of the tyre (sorry if I used such a simple language but I don't know all the technical terms in English), basically little bubbles of air move towards the surface of the tyre and when they are expelled from the tyre they create lacerations of the surface of the tyre reducing its foorprint and making it less even (ie. you lose grip), that's blisterting. The thinner tyre is useful if you overheat your tyres because there is less "mass" and on the one hand the temperature on the inside of the tyres is generally fractionally lower (= less hot gasses moving towards the outer side of the tyre).

when you know that you are going to have some blistering what people normally do is use softer compounds because when the tyre wears out it evens the surface and so the blistering loses some of its negative effects (last week, as you'll remember, they had some issues with blistering mostly with the soft compound, ie. the harder available to them)

I hope that this simple explanation was helpful, I realise that the language is a bit basic...
 
it was a brilliant lap at most needed time. i think the old Mansell adage was right about the crowd giving you a few tenths. as vettel looks like he had it sown up. with a better car in this hot conditions that horner says hes never seen track temps of 54c at silverstone but lewis found it from somewhere with a lap he could probally never repeat. for me he is 1 of the best british sportsmen under pressure because he rarely buckles

id like to say more but i was preoccupied with sporting event that F1 overran into LOL
 
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I thought that it was a rather lap by Vettel which didn't help the Ferrari cause. So now it all depends on who gets off the line first, Hamilton has to make sure it is him as he can't defend in both directions.
 
Yea, on Hamilton's previous qualifying lap he went wide on a corner and was running along the outside part of curb for a bit, losing him some speed. His time was 1:25.993 compared to Vettel's 1:25.936. On his final qualifying lap, he did not make this mistake. On the other hand, on Vettel's final qualifying lap, he looked like he made a mistake. Hamilton's time was 1:25.892 compared to Vettel's 1:25.988. If Vettel had run a clean lap, would he have out-qualified Lewis? I am guessing so. The difference was only 0.044 seconds
 
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I thought that it was a rather lap by Vettel which didn't help the Ferrari cause. So now it all depends on who gets off the line first, Hamilton has to make sure it is him as he can't defend in both directions.

Vettel has had the better starts of late, of course now I've said that..... I am hoping he'll do it again today, though I know that is not necessarily the popular view here.

Leclerc got that Sauber into Q3 again, he really is a star.
 
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