November 19, 2013

F1 Update!: United States 2013

A remarkably warm day (for November, not for Texas in general) greeted the two longhorned Red Bulls (see what I did there?) as they led the rest of the thundering herd (get it?) to the starting line at the Circuit of the Americas.  Would head cowboy Tom Landry 4Time Vettel become the first driver in F1 history to win eight consecutive races in one season?  Or would rival drover Mark Webber say goodbye to America with a win?  Perhaps gardian Lettuce Grosjean would break through with his first victory?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2013 United States Grand Prix!

*WELL, NO:  For all intents and purposes, the race was over by the time Vettel climbed Phil Hill and made it through Turn 1.  In fact, not only had he locked up the win but Lettuce Grosjean, taking advantage of yet another Mark Webber Lousy Start®, slotted into second place... which he wouldn't relinquish either.  So, yeah, there's the race writeup, right there.

*BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE
:  Over at Chizumatic, Steven finally watched his first F1 race.  He's absolutely right that DRS is, as he calls it, a hack.  Before it came around, we saw practically zero passing; now we see regular passing, but usually only in certain locations.  We here at F1U! like DRS about as much as we like Bubonic Plague, but it has done what the FIA wanted it to do.  Steven also talks about the pitstops, and how even a "slow" one looked fast to his eyes.  During the race, someone (Button?) had a four second long stop, and we were going "wow, slow" around the three second mark.  But then, Mark Webber had a 2.3 second stop that Red Bull is claiming was actually a sub-two.  Whatever, guys.

*STILL MORE:  The "official language" of F1 is supposed to be English.  All radio conversations are supposed to be in English, but Ferrari continues to speak to HWMNBN in Italian, particularly for sensitive messages.  For the most part, the Red Team has been playing it straight this year, but every now and again, you'll get things like this that remind us why we despise the Scuderia.

*NO REASON, JUST A COOL SHOT:

click for bigger version

*ENOUGH OF THAT:  Look, if you think you're disappointed with this writeup, imagine how we here at F1U! feel.  This is what we do, and we just don't have it in us to do anything more than this.  Maybe we'll do something better for our least favorite race, Brazil, this coming weekend.  It's the last one of the year, after all.  See you then.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:20 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 439 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Maybe Brazil will have intermittent rain. That might make the parade interesting.

Posted by: jon spencer at November 19, 2013 10:48 PM (RtbUg)

2 Are all of the drivers on the same radio frequency? In other words, when a driver is talking to his pit, can everyone else hear?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 19, 2013 11:05 PM (+rSRq)

3 No, they all use separate frequencies... but there's nothing saying that you can't have a scanner in the pit lane.

Posted by: Wonderduck at November 19, 2013 11:14 PM (Izt1u)

4 But the other drivers can't hear, then. That was what I was wondering about.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at November 20, 2013 09:33 AM (+rSRq)

5 The F1U driver quotes were the best.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 20, 2013 12:39 PM (RqRa5)

6 Was calling Mark Webber a drover deliberate or accidental?
Also, in World of Warcraft, sometimes when you click on a male Pandaren NPC, he will say "Enough of that."

Posted by: RickC at November 20, 2013 02:03 PM (A9FNw)

7 The other drivers can't hear directly, but their race engineers can (and sometimes do) relay the information to their drivers. It's not particularly unusual for a driver to report tire problems and then the guy right behind him gets told that the guy in front of him has tire problems...

So anything you tell your driver, or that he tells you, is essentially public information. Thus, sometimes they'll make mysterious references ("Fail two two") rather than say what's going on ("the bloody KERS just packed it in again").

Duck, maybe the 2014 cars will shake things up a bit, hey?

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at November 20, 2013 06:18 PM (pWQz4)

8 RickC, it was deliberate.  The beginning concept was to call all the drivers whatever their local version of "cowboy" was.  Please note Lettuce being called a "gardian", for example.

Av, they might do.

Steven, I'd LOVE to have the drivers be able to talk to each other during the race... particularly when one of them does something really stupid involving another one.

Posted by: Wonderduck at November 20, 2013 08:36 PM (Izt1u)

9 Oh, to be a fly on the... er, Windshield.

Posted by: Mauser at November 21, 2013 02:37 AM (TJ7ih)

10 'Duck, I knew you were making cowboy puns, I was just wondering if that particular one was intentional, because it would've been a funny typo if it were accidental.

Posted by: RickC at November 22, 2013 04:32 PM (A9FNw)

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