Gonna be the team rivalry of team rivalries--EPIC...

I'm the #1, no I'M the #1, NO, I'M THE # 1!......... lol

Sensational news. So much for media speculation that Kimi wouldn't return since it would be an admission by Luca di Montezemolo that he was wrong to let him go in the first place.

I imagine tifosi worldwide, like me, are celebrating.

This more than compensates for having to listen to the neutered bleat of a V-6 next year.

Still, I feel badly for Massa. He wasn't the same after losing the driver's championship on the last lap in Brazil and then his nearly career ending injury. Maybe they can find a seat for him on the sports car side.

It will be VERRRYY interesting to see Kimi and Alonso together in their fight against Vettel!

If Ferrari doesn't get their act together mechanically and Newey makes another space ship, it will be another season of Vettel out in front with everyone else fighting for table scraps and in no real contention. Red Bull's wonderboy will go completely uncontested by his new junior teammate, but I wonder how Ferrari team orders will play out when they realize they'll be taking points away from eachother for WDC.... Or maybe they won't care because they'll actually do very well for WCC....?

Without a few DNF's from Vettel, this snooze-fest of a season is more or less done. Hopefully 2014 will have some actual competition.

Massa will be on the grid next year. Lotus will pick him up if they dont grab Hulkenburg. And if they do then Sauber will take Massa. Thats my lil prediction anyway.

After FP2 at Singapore, it looks like F1: The Vettel Show is on fast track to keep being as boring as 2011.

I hope he crashes Sunday.

The engines should throw everyone off balance for at lest the first few races, god the first half of 2012 was amazing. I want that again, but for a whole season.

Would not have guessed Kimi back to Ferrari, would have thought staying at Lotus, going to Red Bull or Mclaren before that. Though with the engine reg changes it's the safest bet during a transition series considering none of the other engine manufacturers are "true" works teams.

I expect Ferrari and Mercedes to start off as the quick teams next year and *maybe* RBR.

The reason for F and Merc is that they are ALL in-house. They develop the chassis/engine/trans all in house. There's some engineering advantage to that. But then again, Adrian Newey is after all, Adrian Newey.

This four part series was mentioned during this morning's practice session:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFJ3ta-0O5c"]How To Make An F1 Car: DESIGN AND R&D (Part 1) - YouTube[/ame]

The REAL making of an F1 car... lol

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...YrgP7QhbFWPHkL

If that were true, Toyota would own multiple Constructor's Championships, lol. Toyota spent enough to award each of 350,000 American employees a $1,000 bonus yet never won a race over eight seasons.

What channel and time is Qualifying on

NBCSp 10:00-11:30 PM PST.

Right, but it still obviously doesn't guarantee a winner--only what goes into making an F1 car lol

And, DAMN the Yahoo front page spoiler headlines--DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went to NBCSN's website because they mentioned streaming video, I thought they might have the full feed on demand online. Nope. Just spoilers and post-quali interviews. I wish they would just give Vettel the damn trophy already and just skip directly to 2014. At least I already canceled my trip to Texas for the USGP this year so I wouldn't have to sit through a disappointing and ultimately meaningless race. Championship will probably be decided by Suzuka.

Here's to 2014.

WTF is up with Red Bull and Webber???? Car catches on fire literally 30 seconds away from the finish line. Alonso had a great and ballsy race doing 36 laps on one set of tires. And Kimi.... from 13th to 3rd! I think he should stay with Reno instead of moving to Ferrari. I like the underdog stories more.

Congrats to Vettel for a spectacular race. Singapore always brings out the best in F1.

Webber to Ricciardo: "Don't get your hopes up, they won't let you finish half of the time anyway."

I lost a bit of a respect in Rosberg when he complained about having to "push it". Man up, you're racing. If you don't want to be pushing 100% of the time as a natural instinct, you don't belong in a race car. I think Merc should ditch Rosberg for Hulkenberg.

Heh... Ferrari IS an underdog lol

Good for Vettel & RBR (sans Weber)--bad for the rest of the teams/drivers & us fans.

Vettel just can't escape the boos--no matter what country he's in (other than his).

Forza Alonso--the people's champ, but unfortunately not F1s...

All I can keep thinking about is the 7 points over two years that would have made him a four-time champion. And how Shumacher gifted Vettel a free championship in Brazil by letting him pass. And how RB struggled in the early 2013 season until the tire changes, after they are absolutely unstoppable. It's like the Pirelli, the FIA, the collective F1 execs, and apparently other drivers just want him to win everything.

When a car gains 8 seconds in the first five laps, something fishy is going on with that car. Wonder if they have more tricky illegal bits like they did in 2012 (which they never got penalized for). Horner and Newey are no strangers to bending and breaking the rules for an advantage... Kind of like the Bill Belichick of racing. Hopefully next year (maybe the end of this year?) it will all catch up with them... just like it did the Patriots in 2007.

THEY NEEDS TO STOP DOING THE INTERVIEWS ON THE PODIUM!!!!

I really hate booing crowds. I think respect needs to be shown, however I hope the crowds DO continue to BOO until they hold the interviews in the proper interview conference room like they used to.

Agreed!

I'd boo Vettel all day. Him and Newey are ruining F1. I'm probably not even going to watch Korea because it will be another pole start and 45 second lead by the end. Why even bother?

But back to the point, fans have plenty of reasons to boo. To quote a poster on another forum:

Numbers 1,2,4 and 5 are no reasons to Boo him but #3 sure is hell is. The whole point of the sport is to win, and winning in F1 is a monumental challenge. If anyone is to be boo'd it's all the teams who just can't get their shit together well enough to challenge RBR.

I'm still ABV though.. Anybody but Vettel.

He ruins the spectacle of the sport, he's kind of a jerk, he's a sore loser, and he clearly has absolutely no respect for his teammate or his teams orders if they aren't in his own best interest. He is a whining brat who makes excuses when things don't go his way (like in the beginning of this year) and now that Pirelli have gifted him a free pass to finish 2013 with another title after tire changes, everyone is mad about it. It's as bad as Schumacher's domination of the early 00's, which had its own fair share of questionably legal cars. It's not fun to watch and I feel bad for people who probably spent thousands of dollars and a weeks time off work to see a race decided by the third turn of a 2 hour race. As someone originally planning on attending the USGP in Texas, I'd have boo'd him myself if I were there.

At this point, all the other drivers have thrown in the towel and focused all attention on 2013. The tire change had all-but solidified Vettel's win several races ago and the teams feel like why bother? Ferrari has been fighting an uphill battle and Alonso himself said on the podium when asked about his crazy strategy something like "we aren't in contention for the driver's title, so what did we have to lose?"

Seriously, let's get to 2014 already. Or let's see a magic mystery fire on Vettel's car instead of poor Mark, who has everything in the world bad happen to him.

I don't agree with all of that but at this point I feel that defending SB or RBR is less desirable than getting a root canal in a third world country by a blind man with epilepsy.

Don't mind me, I'm just grumpy. :( At least last year saw an exciting battle to the last race (even if Shumy let him pass, giving him the position he needed for WDC...). I just want to see good competition, and Vettel in Newey's RB9 is just untouchable on these new tires. It's not even in the same racing league... Everyone else might as well be driving an Indycar.

i have a theory about the webber car always having problems, ok here goes:

so they have to design the car to webbers weight, so they have about 20kgs of ballast to play with to make vettels car so much better balanced than webbers

&

vettel is always up front he doesnt have to fight through the field like webber does each race putting so much more strain on the gear box and engine than vettels and its clear that the red bull cars are designed to lead and not race, everytime vettel has pressure on him and cant just cruise the car falls apart, and because he is better at qualy and starts than webber he doesn't have the extra strain so his engines last the race.

On a lighter note...

I've been loving the song in the new Rolex commercials that air during the F1 races. I knew it was Oasis... It rocks

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeGfLf5cnuw"]Oasis - The Shock of the Lightning - YouTube[/ame]

I keep hoping Mark will leave with a big FU Seb and RB and crash Vettel out of a damn race.

I'm looking forward to 2014 and Ferrari

Just like old times... lol

F1 should establish a weight penalty system for race winners like Super GT. That would keep things interesting!!!

I really don't like the idea of punishing or handi-capping the successful teams/drivers in a series like this.

In a production car series it's a little different since you're working within an already created chassis/design but in F1 it's "blank page development" to a specific rule set. Those that do it best should be allowed to dominate even if that bores the hell out of the fans.

I think they should focus on rules that limit downforce and increase mechanical grip. When aero is a lesser factor and mechanical grip is a greater factor the delta between teams is narrower, the racing is better and it's more a driver's sport as opposed to an engineer's sport.

Aero could easily be capped with a simple "go" in the wind tunnel at a given air speed. Every car submits a computer model of their aero packages to be tested in CFD (Computational fluid dynamics). If a team is physically protested then the FIA can take a real world car and test it in a real world wind tunnel and measure the given downforce to make sure it doesn't exceed the "cap". That's just a thought.

But then again... F' all that. I want to see F1 go back to being pure badass development platform especially regarding engines. Give the teams a cap on energy/tires/aero and then say... have at it.

Cap aero with total downforce that can be produced at 150mph
Cap tire by doing what they are doing now: spec tire with multiple compounds
Cap energy by limiting teams to consuming a specified number of BTU's (or some form of unit of energy).

Open engine design and fuel. You can run all electric, diesel, turbo, hybrid, hydrogen... you name it.. but you can only use the specified allocation of units of energy for the race. Now THAT would have a great deal of "relevance" to the market IMHO.

Just saw "Rush" yesterday.

It was awesome! Highly recommend the extra $3 to go see it in a Regal RPX theater. The audio system is crazy powerful and the screen is gigantic and crispy digital. It was loud as shit and sounded glorious during the racing sequences with those V12's.

Loved the movie! Ron Howard did an excellent job keeping things accurate and the casting director needs an award because the cast was spot on!

Go see it!

I'm seeing it on Friday!

Also, anyone else see that New Jersey and Mexico are provisionally on the 2014 calendar?

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlin...3/9/15021.html

Agreed w/ ATL--Rush was fantastic & extremely correct in just abt every facet. Wish I was a fan back then--although there was essentially zero TV coverage then.

Without giving anything away, I think the hitchhiking scene was my favorite--too cool!

The actor that played Lauda did an outstanding job, absolutely brilliant.

It doesn't give anything away, the scene when Nikki meets Marlene could be it's own short and I'd pay to have a copy. Great movie and easily the best part.

To be fair they both did great jobs, there's some comparison gifs of the interviews between Hunt and Moss, Hemsworth pretty much nailed the bravado.

It's gonna be a wet one... Tropical Storm "Fitow" headed for South Korea.

http://www.wunderground.com/hurrican...Fitow?map=5day


"We are renaming the Tropical Storm to 'Sebastian Fitow' after the F1 superstar, because like him, this storm is destined to ruin the race for everyone." -rice_classic - posing as fake announcer.






:bellyroll:

LOL

Good--let it pour, so maybe somebody else will have a chance...

Aaaaand another Vettel pole position. So what are we going to see tomorrow? 5 second gap by lap 3? Lead every lap again? I'll probably watch the first 10 minutes and promptly turn it right off.

Finally saw Rush though! What an epic movie! That's what racing is about! A clash of characters fighting to the last bit against all odds! I wonder what Niki over in AMG now thinks of Vettel's snooze-fest dominance the last four years....