All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Santino Ferrucci lands the No. 14 at Foyt. They'll still suck but at least be entertaining about it. A.J. turns 88 in January. That team last won in 2013.

 

Alpine could be interesting. Gasly and Ocon supposed despise each other. They were friends as kids and had a major falling out in their karting days.

I suspect Danny Ric is done. He'll probably get a reserve driver role but I don't think he'll be offered more than that.

 

If I were Sky, I would kidnap the guy and tie him to a chair next to Crofty. Except he'd probably say "nutsack" or something worse on the air.

 

Ricciardo will be back on the F1 grid in 2024 at the latest, I believe. He has basically said he doesn't want to drive for a bottom tier team such as Williams or Haas, but he also isn't calling it quits, right? That leads one to believe that he (and/or his agents) think he is in play for a 2024 seat among some of the other midfield teams.

Alonso signed a multi-year deal at Aston, but age is undefeated and he should probably be considered year-to-year no matter where he is. Bottas won't be around much longer. Tsunoda is so mistake-prone, it's unbelievable. Ricciardo would be an upgrade, albeit a stopgap solution. He'd also be a similar upgrade over Zhou at Alfa.

The question is, I suppose, if none of the midfield teams were to offer him a drive, would he prefer to drive for a Williams/Haas-type team, or would he retire to the broadcast booth? I suspect he'd take a lower-tier car over retirement. I think the main reason he isn't in play for the lower teams right now is that he thinks he'll get another shot at the midfield in 2024.

He'd be a fantastic broadcaster, I believe, but he seems like he needs to get a lot more laps out of his system before he's ready to pick up the mic.

 

Daniel Ricciardo seems likable and genuine, and I love the shoey celebrations on the podium. But to your point, UCP, he has said the c-word more than once on "Drive to Survive." Not convinced he wouldn't let one of those fly on a hot mic.

 

I could be wrong about this but I think this is Ricciardo's last season in F1 as a full-time driver.

He's not good enough to be a consideration for Ferrari, Mercedes, or Red Bull. RB won't put him at Alpha Tauri. Alpine had no interest and now has their lineup locked up for the next couple of years. He just washed out at McLaren.

That leaves Haas, Sauber/Alfa/Audi, Williams and Aston Martin.

Aston Martin has Alonso and Stroll. Alonso has a two year deal and Stroll's dad owns the team. (And honestly, I'm not sure Ricciardo is an upgrade over Stroll.)

Sauber has Bottas and Zhou locked down for another year.

Haas is the likeliest spot on paper and seems to have no interest at all. They'd rather have Hulk.

Williams has Albon and an open second seat. I think they want to put Logan Sergeant in that one.

Bottom line: I think he'd be very lucky to get a back-of-the-grid seat in 2024. If I had to predict, he gets his ass kicked in NASCAR for a year or two and then does WEC or Supercars.

He's kind of an entertaining guy, and seems like a nice dude... but I think I'm being charitable when I say he's been flat-out awful for two years now. He's also 33 years old. If I'm running a team and have a choice between someone like Jack Doohan or Felipe Drugovich, who are young and tearing up F2, or Ricciardo, who has stunk the past two seasons.... it's an easy choice.

 

PC covered most of my concerns, but honestly it basically comes down to diminishing returns both for him, and for any team that would want to employ him.

He left Red Bull because he didn't want to be Max's sidekick. I'm not sure how he thought Renault was going to be an improvement, but it wasn't. As rough as the whole McLaren thing has gone, he's won in the papaya car, which is something Lando, Fernando and Sainz never did. I don't think he's been great, but McLaren have mostly botched this transition. So when the dust settled, Ricciardo did end up being a sidekick to a young kid, it just happened to be Lando and in a worse car.

But he's 33 now. He's never gonna be in a championship contending car, and he wouldn't have had that chance even if things at McLaren were going as well as they were last year. He's won eight Grands Prix (oddly enough, never at the same venue twice), which is more than Gilles Villeneuve and Keke Rosberg. He won at Monaco, which Jim Clark, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Mario Andretti did not. By the end of the season, he'll have started more Grands Prix than all but 12 other men, including Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet, Mansell and all Australian drivers. He's had a great career. He's hit his ceiling and it's a really fucking high ceiling.

I believe he's a pretty serious Americophile. Could be the perfect person to be a face of the sport from the other side, he can go back to LA after the weekend, maybe screw around in some truck races and have a good life. To him that might sound like settling but other than getting to race on the Strip, there's nothing out there for him.

And no, I don't think he'd say the C word on the air. In fact, there are times I wonder if the DtS antics were a deliberate attempt to get screen time and build the brand. Besides, they used to have James Hunt on these broadcasts.

 

Looks like we're going inters or maybe even full wets around Suzuka tonight, which is probably the best track on the whole damned circuit. I'll be staying up for this, if they actually race.

 

I'm here for it, too. What is it about rain in Japan?

 

Williams off on lap one and it's not Latifi, so there's an upset.

Sainz is into the barrier, Vettel spun in turn one and Gasly is pushing a billboard. Rain races rule.

EDIT: It appears Albon broke. And we're stopping. Why do we even bother?

 

Why do they bother bringing rain tires?

EDIT: eh, just saw the standing water on the track. But my point kind of stands.

 

FIA trying to get the race in ... though the rain has intensified. One thing for a wet track and drizzle. Another for heavy rain - supposedly for the next 10 minutes - than it might taper down.

Vettel's was a dumb move. Sounds like the Williams' transmission failed. The other two were rain-related.