Some questions:
What is the point for the lower tier teams and drivers? Like I have seen excitement for Force India and Haas as well as for Hulk and Grosjean in general, but why? What is the point of spending millions on building a car and being out there with automatically being out of the top 6 places for the most part...?
Same as any sport really, whats the point in finishing bottom of the league in NHL or NFL or NBA or Football? You take part because you want to compete and want to win. Nobody is going to win straight away, so the hope is that this year you do better than last year, and certainly don't do worse than last year.
Force India for example have gradually managed to claw their way up the Constructors Championship over the last 9 years since they started in 2008 (though this team was actually formed in 1991 as Team Jordan, most teams have changed hands a few times!). This has been in part helped by Mclaren dropping way back, Renault dropping back, FI having the Mercedes engine and generally doing a solid if not spectacular job. In 2008 they finished 10th in the table out of 11 entrants, of which, one pulled out of the championship after just 4 races and went into administration.
Contrast that to FI currently being 4th in this years table, finishing 4th last year, 5th the year before, 6th the 2 years before that, then 7th, 6th, 7th and 9th in the years before that.
Hulk and Grosjean are just generally liked I think, they are decent drivers that have shown hints of what might be if they had a better car thought I don;t think anyone would expect them to be close to Vettel/Hamilton levels. Grosjean endured a tumultuous start to his F1 career after making the jump from GP2, not in his actual debut season with Renault so much, but more with when he returned after a year out to the Lotus (used to be Renault, and is now Renault again) team. He caused/was involved in many accidents and so was called Crashjean around these parts.
What do you guys mean by quali trim and race trim? Do the cars really change that much in 1 day?
The car itself doesn't change at all, no. This is because as soon as the car leaves the garage in Q1 on Saturday, the car is in "Parc Ferme" which means they can only change specific things like front wing angle, tyre pressures and a few other bits. They can't change the rear wing angle, they can't change suspension geometry etc.
What they do change however will be a collection of settings on the steering wheel which will do all sorts of things to the car to do with engine modes, diff settings, brake bias etc. You can go very fast for 1 or 2 laps, but it wouldn't work for the whole race as the engine would use too much fuel (105kg limit), or tyres would degrade too fast, parts would wear too fast etc.
Quali trim is basically "Turn everything to 11".
Race trim is "Use setting 8 and use 10 if needed during the race"
Has a driver ever been fired mid-season? Like if Stroll keeps crashing would they bail on him?
Yes. Just last year Red Bull dropped Kvyat after just 4 races and put Verstappen in his seat. It was a demotion/promotion scenario as they swapped between Torro Rosso and Red Bull.
Like I said last page I am 3 races in and really loving it. I had to get my car serviced today and while there picked up my first F1 shirt. Expensive but now I have something to wear for the next meetup!
Glad you are enjoying it, a great year to start with a fight for Lewis and Seb looking to be a good one all year. Cars are looking mighty fine too!
Did you manage to watch that Grand Prix the killer Years documentary by the way? or the Senna film or Rush?
Saw Schumi testing the car in Fiorano ( i live near Maranello ) ... Nice memories...
