2026 Japanese Grand Prix - Suzuka, March 27 - 29

[zibby43]

“F1 is slow now.”

Kimi: “Hold my FP3 time.”

That Merc is a literal spaceship

I don’t think they got the setup right either. I know they didn’t with George. He was dealing with an oversteery car and having to drive around it without cooking his rears.

[Artur Craft]

embarrassing
https://www.directupload.eu[/url]

I´m sure there will be people here claiming this is nothing but a conspirancy and it´s just a random cut coincidently happening at that particular time, just like there was in China when they froze the telemetry on the super clipping part towards the middle of the back straight

Anyway, all Mercedes customers took a big jump in performance here. Mclaren confortably overtook Ferrari (eventhough Leclerc seemed to have a poor Q3), Alpine was easily the 4th car this time around and Williams were finally able to fight with the others after being so far behind on the previous tracks.

Bottas and Hamilton ate the dust of their team mates again, I can just wonder how much they miss that mighty dominant Mercedes seeing Andrea Antonelli and Russell on the first row again

[Artur Craft]

Any thoughts of Redbull and how they could do better here? I don't think we need to really think about the Mercedes and Mclaren's being way up there in the front.

Red bull will be very solid here. Likely nipping at Ferrari's heels and definitely ahead of McLaren.

Man, sorry, I don´t want to pick on you but, on hindsight, your comments looks hilarious as Red Bull is eating the dust of Alpine and Audi

[PlatinumZealot]

Can we have a dedicated thread going forward for all the complaining about the current regs?

I miss these threads actually being more about the event. I get the fact that some other folks miss Verstappen winning 19 out of 22 races in 2023 - a banner year for excitement and close racing in F1.

Yeah. The whinging needs to be super-clipped!!

[PlatinumZealot]

embarrassing
https://www.directupload.eu[/url]

I´m sure there will be people here claiming this is nothing but a conspirancy and it´s just a random cut coincidently happening at that particular time, just like there was in China when they froze the telemetry on the super clipping part towards the middle of the back straight

Anyway, all Mercedes customers took a big jump in performance here. Mclaren confortably overtook Ferrari (eventhough Leclerc seemed to have a poor Q3), Alpine was easily the 4th car this time around and Williams were finally able to fight with the others after being so far behind on the previous tracks.

Bottas and Hamilton ate the dust of their team mates again, I can just wonder how much they miss that mighty dominant Mercedes seeing Andrea Antonelli and Russell on the first row again

Every thead you re so focused on Hamilton! Wow

[bananapeel23]

Btw, got to know how much David Croft understands the regs. At the beginning of Q, he was telling Button "they have reduced the battery charge to 8MJ for quali, the extra 0.5MJ would have made the car too heavy" , to which Button said something (don't remember exactly) as if he was agreeing to it.

Sky is pathetic. The commentators don't understand the 'bottom basics' about the formula and are just using a word salad with random use of terms like 'recharge/deploy/clipping' etc ; seemingly not even having made an attempt to ask someone to explain what MJ means, what KW means etc.

Yeah I always hate it how heavy my phone is after charging.

Does he literally mean heavy and not just that the car both looks and feels heavy and slow when charging the battery?

I know that people hate Crofty, but he’s not stupid. I’m also sure that Button would’ve corrected him if he didn’t understand what he meant.

Crofty also did a pretty good job of explaining the ERS behaviour during the Australian GP, so he clearly understands how it works.

[AR3-GP]

F1 is claiming that Antonelli's onboard footage could not be shown in the pole lap due to telemetry error:

Kimi Antonelli's Pole Lap | 2026 Japanese Grand Prix | Pirelli

and at the same time they show the full onboard of Antonelli's lap in the ghost lap comparison:
Not only that, but people are showing screen caps of his lap from F1TV.




Everything that F1 has done in the last 3 months reflects their belief that f1 fans are not very bright at all.

and downshifting on full throttle at 130r is shambolic. This is not a complaint. This is a fact.

[F1Sara]

Yellow-Yellow-Yellow pole

[Artur Craft]

Every thead you re so focused on Hamilton! Wow

Just like you. The only difference is that you mainly post just to hype him while I express my reservations concerning his driving ability.

Have I ever told you to stop downplaying Verstappen or Alonso, for instance? You love to downplay Hamilton´s rivals and hype him as hell, can´t I do sort of the opposite ?!

If Hadjar manages to keep outqualifying Verstappen, I think you should bring that up and point it out here(mock him or his fans or whatever). Nothing wrong with that. Why can´t others do the same with Lord Lewis ?

[gearboxtrouble]

F1 is claiming that Antonelli's onboard footage could not be shown in the pole lap due to telemetry error:

Kimi Antonelli's Pole Lap | 2026 Japanese Grand Prix | Pirelli

and at the same time they show the full onboard of Antonelli's lap in the ghost lap comparison:
Not only that, but people are showing screen caps of his lap from F1TV.




Everything that F1 has done in the last 3 months reflects their belief that f1 fans are not very bright at all.

and downshifting on full throttle at 130r is shambolic. This is not a complaint. This is a fact.

I can confidently say this is the worst engine formula I've ever seen on track in my 35 years of watching F1. Its a disgrace to the sport and makes a mockery of racing when driving the cars to the limit of what is possible in a corner is actively punished in laptime. The driver should be the sole decision maker car speed - full throttle should be the full 1000hp at all times and there should be no loss of speed without driver input. I don't care what they have to do to make it so that the only harvesting you need is in braking and all other harvesting is banned. I don't care if the cars are 10s slower for the rest of this season because fuel flow increases aren't possible in time. They need to act now and do whatever it takes to get back to 1000hp on demand without the MGU-K for 2027 even if it means a 80/20 split.

[search]

I can confidently say this is the worst engine formula I've ever seen on track in my 35 years of watching F1. Its a disgrace to the sport and makes a mockery of racing when driving the cars to the limit of what is possible in a corner is actively punished in laptime. The driver should be the sole decision maker for car speed - full throttle should be the full 1000hp at all times and there should be no loss of speed without driver input. I don't care what they have to do to make it so that the only harvesting you need is in braking and all other harvesting is banned. I don't care if the cars are 10s slower for the rest of this season because fuel flow increases aren't possible in time. They need to act now and do whatever it takes to get back to 1000hp on demand without the MGU-K for 2027 even if it means a 80/20 split.

I see your point of course, but in some way it probably needs to be taken into account that overtaking will likely be almost impossible with less energy.

[AR3-GP]

I can confidently say this is the worst engine formula I've ever seen on track in my 35 years of watching F1. Its a disgrace to the sport and makes a mockery of racing when driving the cars to the limit of what is possible in a corner is actively punished in laptime. The driver should be the sole decision maker for car speed - full throttle should be the full 1000hp at all times and there should be no loss of speed without driver input. I don't care what they have to do to make it so that the only harvesting you need is in braking and all other harvesting is banned. I don't care if the cars are 10s slower for the rest of this season because fuel flow increases aren't possible in time. They need to act now and do whatever it takes to get back to 1000hp on demand without the MGU-K for 2027 even if it means a 80/20 split.

I see your point of course, but in some way it probably needs to be taken into account that overtaking will likely be almost impossible with less energy.

The overtake mode would still work as long as you keep the power ramp down in the normal mode (which would now become inclusive of the ICE output). The difference would be that instead of cars running out of energy in literally every condition (qualy, race lap alone), they would maybe only stretch the battery when overtake mode is used, which would allow them to keep a certain yo-yo element that seems popular... while also having bearable qualifying laps.

[gearboxtrouble]

I can confidently say this is the worst engine formula I've ever seen on track in my 35 years of watching F1. Its a disgrace to the sport and makes a mockery of racing when driving the cars to the limit of what is possible in a corner is actively punished in laptime. The driver should be the sole decision maker for car speed - full throttle should be the full 1000hp at all times and there should be no loss of speed without driver input. I don't care what they have to do to make it so that the only harvesting you need is in braking and all other harvesting is banned. I don't care if the cars are 10s slower for the rest of this season because fuel flow increases aren't possible in time. They need to act now and do whatever it takes to get back to 1000hp on demand without the MGU-K for 2027 even if it means a 80/20 split.

I see your point of course, but in some way it probably needs to be taken into account that overtaking will likely be almost impossible with less energy.

We don’t really have overtaking now anyway. It’s just fake bs driven by state of charge deltas, not driver skill. The only genuine racing we’ve seen were between identical cars running identical energy management algos. I’d rather go back to drs trains, strategic differentiation and no passing than this pantomime act we have now. Heck if the battery was limited to 150kw then you could easily have a 50kw electric overtake because the cars would no longer be energy starved. The drivers would at least you know “drive” the cars instead of the energy software developers.

[AR3-GP]

Something is confusing me. Did Antonelli do the pole time with all yellow sectors? I don't think I've ever seen that before?

[search]

I can confidently say this is the worst engine formula I've ever seen on track in my 35 years of watching F1. Its a disgrace to the sport and makes a mockery of racing when driving the cars to the limit of what is possible in a corner is actively punished in laptime. The driver should be the sole decision maker for car speed - full throttle should be the full 1000hp at all times and there should be no loss of speed without driver input. I don't care what they have to do to make it so that the only harvesting you need is in braking and all other harvesting is banned. I don't care if the cars are 10s slower for the rest of this season because fuel flow increases aren't possible in time. They need to act now and do whatever it takes to get back to 1000hp on demand without the MGU-K for 2027 even if it means a 80/20 split.

I see your point of course, but in some way it probably needs to be taken into account that overtaking will likely be almost impossible with less energy.

The overtake mode would still work as long as you keep the power ramp down in the normal mode (which would now become inclusive of the ICE output). The difference would be that instead of cars running out of energy in literally every condition (qualy, race lap alone), they would maybe only stretch the battery when overtake mode is used, which would allow them to keep a certain yo-yo element that seems popular... while also having bearable qualifying laps.

maybe, yeah, but 20% would only roughly be what we had last year, so not much to play with for overtake mode