F1 MSC CRUISES JAPANESE GRAND PRIX 2024

[Everso Biggyballies]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Battle for 7th between Piastri and george is gettinfg a bit frisky. Bit of contact and did George force Oscar off track.. Its been noted.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Stroll isnt catching Yuki which is good so hopefully Yuki becomes the first Jap to score a point at Suzuka since Koyayashi in 2012.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Last lap.

Shit. George got past Piastri with DRS


Max wins from Sergio and Carlos.


4th consecutive 1-2 finish (albeit 1 for Ferrari. First time ever apparently to get 4 in a row,


Yuki gets his 10th position. Crowd very happy. As am I.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Carlos keeps his 100% races started podium finishes this year.

[Everso Biggyballies]

POS DRIVERGAP TYRE PIT
1 Max VERSTAPPENLEADER 3
2 Sergio PEREZ+12.535 3
3 Carlos SAINZ+20.866 3
4 Charles LECLERC+26.522 2
5 Lando NORRIS+29.700 3
6 Fernando ALONSO+44.272 3
7 George RUSSELL+45.951 3
8 Oscar PIASTRI+47.525 3
9 Lewis HAMILTON+48.626 3
10 Yuki TSUNODA1L 3

11 Nico HULKENBERG1L 3
12 Lance STROLL1L 4
13 Kevin MAGNUSSEN1L 2
14 Valtteri BOTTAS1L 3
15 Esteban OCON1L 3
16 Pierre GASLY1L 3
17 Logan SARGEANT1L 4
18 GuanyuZHOU
19 Daniel RICCIARDO-- - -
20 Alexander ALBON-- - -

[erwin greven]

Yuki gets his 10th position. Crowd very happy. As am I.

Me too. He deserves that point.

[erwin greven]

Carlos keeps his 100% races started podium finishes this year.

And keeps on embarrassing Leclerc and Ferrari.

[Everso Biggyballies]

CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS AND POINTS

Drivers

Max extends his lead, Sergio back to 2nd...... 2nd - 4th is close with a gap from 4th to the two McLaren boys in 5th and 6th, followed by. George and Fernando . Lewis now, with a DNF last race, gets himself into double figure....just, and jumps Lance Stroll in the process for 9th overall.

POS DRIVER NATIONALITY CAR PTS
1 Max Verstappen NED RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 77
2 Sergio Perez MEX RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 64
3 Charles Leclerc MON FERRARI 59
4 Carlos Sainz ESP FERRARI 55
5 Lando Norris GBR MCLAREN MERCEDES 37
6 Oscar Piastri AUS MCLAREN MERCEDES 32
7= George Russell GBR MERCEDES 24
7= Fernando Alonso ESP ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 24
9 Lewis Hamilton GBR MERCEDES 10
10 Lance Stroll CAN ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 9


Constructors

Red Bull obviously the benchmark with 3 Maximum points weekends out of 4 Ferrari not too far adrift thanks to their AGP Maximum and Red Bulls relative failure there, but the gap stretches from 4 to 21 between 1st and 2nd... A gap back to McLaren, and then an even bigger gap to Mercedes, with Mercedes just a point ahead of Aston.... as they were after Albert Park.

VCARB consolidate their best of the lower midfielders position with another point, but Haas failed to add to their AGP score.
Still Williams Sauber and Alpine yet to trouble the scorers this year.

Interesting to look at the constructors after 4 races last year.... then it was Aston second (to the Bulls) by not far off a hundred points, with Mercedes and Ferrari roughly 10 and 20 points further back .

It also shows that McLaren are the biggest improver in relative performance. this yer over last This time last year they were 5th but had just 14 points ..... this year a very respectable 3rd place and 69 points.


1 RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT 141
2 FERRARI 120
3 MCLAREN MERCEDES 69
4 MERCEDES 34
5 ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES 33
6 RB HONDA RBPT 7
7 HAAS FERRARI 4
8 WILLIAMS MERCEDES 0

[White six]

Carlos keeps his 100% races started podium finishes this year.

And keeps on embarrassing Leclerc and Ferrari.

Don't worry, Hamilton is on his way, he always beats his teammate

[erwin greven]

[Everso Biggyballies]

Carlos keeps his 100% races started podium finishes this year.

And keeps on embarrassing Leclerc and Ferrari.

Don't worry, Hamilton is on his way, he always beats his teammate in the silly clothes and hair challenge.

Fixed.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Another chassis headache for Williams.

Williams to send Albon's chassis back to UK for repairs before China

This is all getting a bit déjà vu........ the Williams chassis crashed by Alex Albon on the first lap of the Japanese GP is being returned to the Grove factory for repairs and then whisked off to China to be back in action in time for the weekend after next..

The chassis suffered damage to the front-right when Albon speared under the tyre wall after making contact with the RB of Daniel Ricciardo. Hopefully nothing too serious in terms of a fix, and is more the use of jigs and autoclaves for the carbon fibre repairs is the reason for the round the globe trip.

The team, which will be without a spare until the Miami GP, remains confident that it can be repaired successfully and shipped to Shanghai for the Chinese GP.. They have less than two weeks to get the job done and fortunately China is not a back to back weekend job. With the travel time and fact it will nee to get through customs and cleared, it will need to be back in China within 8 or 9 days to give them time to build up the car again.

FWIW Alex Albon says he was thinking about Williams' spare parts situation even before he hit the wall while crashing out of he Japanese GP
puts further squeeze on Williams in terms of spare parts production and Alex said the thought of damaging his chassis went through his mind even before he hit the wall.

"Immediately. Before I even hit the wall," he replied when asked when the spare chassis situation played on his mind.
"It's exactly what we don't need. The impact itself was relatively low speeds, but it's the way that I hit the tyre wall. Normally, we have this kind of plastic barriers, the Armco. But this was much more dug in and it really stops very violently.
"They're the questions I'm worried about, not for me, [but] for the car, because that's where you can do damage.
When asked for his view of what happened, Albon said he was trying to back off once he realised he was in Ricciardo's blind spot, but couldn't help avoiding the contact.
He didn't see me, clearly. I tried to back out of it last minute. "But I was almost too far alongside him and he still was coming across, I couldn't avoid it."
"There was a moment where I realised he hadn't seen me here, the way he's pulling across, so I hit the brakes and tried to get out of it.

I bet all teams will think twice about taking the no spare chassis for all races risk next year. Im glad I am not picking up their airfreight bills for this year!

[Everso Biggyballies]

Danny Ric cleared.... judged a lap 1 racing incident.

Danny dodged a bullet there.... The Suzuka stewards have opted to take no further action over the incident involving Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon that caused today's race to be red-flagged.

Danny cited Sroll on his inside being a distraction. Stroll was long out of the way by the time Danny moved across on Alex. I dont see it as a relevant excuse.

The stewards heard from both drivers and their team representatives and also reviewed the positioning/marshalling system data, external and in-car video evidence.

According to the stewards, the explanations of both drivers were aligned as to the facts of the incident in that on the approach to Turn 3, Ricciardo noticed Lance Stroll on his left and stated that he wanted to give him sufficient room. He stated he then looked to the apex of Turn 3, but did not see Albon on his right.

Albon stated that he thought he could overtake the RB on the outside, into Turn 3, but then suddenly realised that Ricciardo had not seen him, applied the brakes but could not avoid the contact.

The Stewards did say that if the incident had occurred on a subsequent lap, or without the presence of the third car, a different determination would have been made.....

Danny was very fortunaate there.

[DoubleFart]

I don't buy it. I fully blame ric and think he moved without having any awareness, which he should have checked given how poorly he exited the corner prior.

He got what he deserved. I feel for Alex, for Williams and probably for Logan since he's probably sweating on those repairs.

[SBan83]

I just don't know where Albon was hoping to go with that move anyway. The space would've closed up even if Ric hadn't moved and Albon would've had to back off anyway. Ric was trying arch it out for a better line into the lefthander in order to fend off Stroll and I guess he didn't think anyone would go where Albon went. Glad it's been deemed a racing incident but a really pointless move from Albon in my book, esp. given the parts situation of his team.

[PTRACER]

Eh I don't understand everyone's reaction? Whether to look left or right is a split second decision. I guess Ric might have been expecting a car on his left but not on his right, and nor would you as you took a left handed. Racing incident with such huge cars on a narrow track.