Grand Prix 2020 Turkish Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

On moves the F1 circus this time revisiting what is a lovely circuit in the country of Turkey. The Turkish Grand Prix circuit is something of a masterpiece on 3 fronts:

1 - it's produced such good races and has such a nice layout that no of the Clarkson purists are saying "Why are we going to bloody Turkey? We need to go to more traditional circuits" anymore.

2 - The design was perfectly laid out to suit the driving style of Felipe Massa who pretty much won all the time here.

3 - Everyone is so happy to be racing here that everyone is ignoring the fact that Turkey is a country in the grip of the Covid pandemic (400k case, 10k deaths and 2,500 cases just today), in the middle of a war with Syria, and has questionable human rights issues towards its Kurdish population.

I'm not and expert on these issue so can't preach about it but I am aware of them. I went on holiday just outside Bodrum once. It was lovely.

But what can I say about the actual race? Well nothing really because I've actually stopped watching F1 this year and just read about the races in my Google alerts. The whole thing is a big back slapping posh off excuse for an advert at moment. It's a real shame because the greatest F1 driver of the modern era is at his peak. The big business manipulation of the sport leaves him open to the "he only wins because of the car", "Anything could win in his position" and "he's not Jim Clark" comments which inevitable follow any mention of him on the internet. I'll be honest I doubt Lewis Hamilton watches F1 anymore. I really hope he walks away from the sport and goes to do something different.

So, despite there being nothing left to race for and everything being won, F1 will plod on for a handful more races to fill it's TV contract obligation and give not one hoot about a global pandemic, carbon footprint or that the amount of money spent on one simple advert logo in a spot unseeable on a car could feed a huge amount of starving families having to visit food banks right now.

Enjoy the race.
 
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This is the only thing I can ever seem to remember about any races ever at Turkey.
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vettel crashing into his teammate rather than let him overtake. im so glad he learnt that lesson & never did that again ;)

i can agree with RasputinLives we really do feel like we are just waiting for 2021 2022 for F1 to return & its huge stakes because F1 can not afford this to fail. if the racing is still in this dominance then. done have a intra team fight then i fear for F1. because look at Le Mans & how much Toyota has dropped the prestige of it
 
Hamilton doesn't need to finish ahead of Bottas at Turkey to be WDC.

There are 4 races remaining, which is a maximum total of 104 points.

If Hamilton finishes second and gets fastest lap, he gets 19 points, which added to 282 makes 301

Even if Bottas wins all remaining races and gets the other three FLs, he will only be on 300 points.

Hamilton can also finish behind Bottas and not get FL and still be WDC, if Bottas doesn't score at least 8 points more than Hamilton this race.
 
thinking about how abnormal this period of F1 is. F1 usually has a close inter team title battle at worst every 3 years at best most years. by close title battle i mean penultimate race or finale. F1 will have gone 9 years without 1. the last this happened that wasnt just teammates was 2012.

can you imagine at any point. after hunt v lauda in 76 waiting til 1985. or after prost v senna in 1990. having to wait to Hakkinen v Irvine in 1999. its a huge generational thing. Bottas is almost a veteran with 8 seasons. Turkey will be his 154th race. he has never driven in a season where 2 teams battling went to the wire
 
yeah it was weird many drivers like riccardio, verstappen & norris saying they wouldve preferred it to be wet. as there would be more grip. & 11 seconds slower than the lap record. weirdly grosjean was 6 seconds quicker in GP2 in 2011

but i dont know why they had resurfaced the track very recently, & that when F1 was at imola, turkey was resurfacing & the big difference compared to portimao they say, is that that was 4-6 weeks prior to F1 also had many cars racing on the track releasing the oils. in those 10 days in turkey they had nothing & F1 were the 1st
 
the race could be fascinating because seemingly only mediums work at this circuit today. hard tyre is like ice & takes a very long time to warm up. then the soft are according to leclerc "so so so bad, because of the graining" & according to sainz "my front right is ripping apart"

so its going to be interesting to see what cars use on the 2nd stint. because either dreadful graining or cold tyres
 
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