Formula 1

This season in Formula 1 has produced quite a lot of interesting, tense and nerve-racking moments in almost all of the races so far. I must say I haven’t seen all of them from start to finish, but what I have seen, has been really thrilling. And so we come to the idea behind this post, showing you what I think of the sport, how I see it and everything surrounding it. I won’t go into Formula 1’s history that much, since I’m not that old, I will write about the things from the past that I remember. First of all, and don’t hate me for this, I have to say I am a big Ferrari fan, so the post might be a little biased, but I’ll give credit to the other teams and drivers, where it’s due. Before the last race in Germany, my opinion of Lewis Hamilton wasn’t that good, his reaction after what happened to him at his home Grand Prix (GP in short) at Silverstone, and in qualifying this time in Germany, I kinda see him a little differently now.

As I already started talking about Lewis, let’s continue with that first. Since 2014, when the regulations in the sport changed and teams started using V6 turbo powered engines, or power units as they call them, Mercedes have been almost unbeatable for quite some time, others have managed to win just a handful of races here and there. Last season already showed that the gap between them and the rest of the teams, especially Ferrari and Red Bull, has subsided, so this season, Ferrari is usually the team to beat again. Which is a good thing for me! 😀 When Nico Rosberg was still racing, and had a lot of duels with Lewis, I was always on his side, already explained I didn’t really like Lewis back then. Last year and this year, so far, Lewis has been battling with Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) for the World Champion title, and of course I disliked him even more because of it. But now, I have changed my opinion of him a little bit, after reading his words regarding these last two races and what he managed to do during those races, starting from the back and always coming to the front of the grid.

You might remember me writing about other sports here on my blog, and saying that my parents aren’t really into sports that much, but Formula 1 has always been a sport that my father watched, and still does now, when I remind him that there’s a race on. 😀 Slovenian TV stations didn’t broadcast races for a few years, so it was a little harder to watch them, either finding a good streaming site or watching them on Austrian national TV, since my German isn’t that good, I didn’t really understand what they were saying. But this year, Formula 1 races are back on Slovenian TV as well. It is better to watch them in a language we all understand at home, but sometimes, it does make me wonder whether it would be better to turn the sound off anyway, because of the commentators.

As you can see on the picture above, even just one year can make a lot of difference on what the cars look like, let alone comparing the cars today with the ones from 20+ years ago. The cars change accordingly with the changes in rules and regulations of the sport, of course, so it’s nothing unusual that they look and sound different. Even though these changes make cars faster and faster, breaking track records all the time, engineers also have to think about the drivers’ safety, and that has come a long way. We have seen some very dangerous crashes, but there has been just one death (Jules Bianchi) at a Formula 1 race since the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna, which happened 24 years ago. I am just briefly mentioning this to show my point about the safety, won’t go further into this sad part of the sport.

There are a few iconic race tracks on the current Formula 1 calendar, including Monaco, Spa-Francorchamps, Monza and Hockenheimring. There have been a lot more of them, but the growing costs of hosting a race made some tracks stop hosting them and dropping out of the calendar, unfortunately for the fans, since some of the tracks were pretty spectacular, at least on TV. The last race was a German GP, held at Hockenheimring, and it was one of the most thrilling ones this season. For me, at least until Sebastian Vettel crashed during a very perplexing conditions on the track.

At one point, we had drivers with every single tyre compound available to them for that weekend (medium, soft, ultrasoft, intermediate and full wet), which I don’t believe has ever happened before, if there’s anyone that knows that for sure, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. 🙂 In the end Lewis Hamilton won the race, after starting in 14th place, in front of Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Räikkönen, taking the Championship lead from Sebastian again.

We are just over halfway through the season, and it has really been an amazing and interesting season so far, let’s hope for more action and drama on the tracks that are left till the end, but I still hope Seb and Ferrari will win this year’s Championship. 🙂