2018 F1 Season

All drivers have now been announced, I'll try to do a table with all of them when I have time.

 

Getting the constructor predictions in early

1) Mercedes
2) Red Bull
3) Ferrari
4) McLaren
5) Force India
6) Renault
7) Haas
8) Williams
9) Sauber
10) Toro Rosso

Could see a 3-way battle for the driver's title between Hamilton, Vettel and Verstappen while Ricciardo does enough over Kimi to put Red Bull 2nd in the constructors. McLaren with a Renault engine will be a massive improvement with their chassis which will make them better than the Renault works team and Alonso will do enough to put them ahead of Force India. Assuming Haas have a reliable car I put them ahead of Williams who have a weak driver lineup. Toro Rosso at the bottom with a weak driver lineup and a Honda engine while Sauber will have 2018 Ferrari engines and LeClerc.

 

Weird timing. And good luck with your Honda lawn mower power units. 2018 is setting up to be a potentially awful season for Torro Rosso.

 

I am....not expecting much from that Williams lineup.

I dunno. Maybe the car and Lance can take a big step forward but I certainly wouldn't bet on it.

 

Changes in aero for advertising, not better racing. Great!

 

Not huge news but F1 has announced they're doing away with grid girls etc.

Feels like the right move.

 

Tbh I didn't have a problem with it after they moved to the girls having more regular clothes on (2007-2009-ish maybe?), the short skirts & bikinis were obviously a thing of the past and should be left there. Moto GP for example still does that, I think.

I remember reading last summer when this was brought up as a rumour, that a lot of the girls weren't too happy about it. Worldwide TV coverage is probably pretty important for modeling careers and such.

 

Can't wait for Bernie's enlightened comments on this, right?

 

I tended not to tune into races until between the national anthem and the start of the formation lap so I didn't see much of the grid girls anyway so it's not the end of the world though they were nice to look at.

Liberty Media have obviously decided it doesn't fit in with their values and what they want for the sport going forward, making it more attractive to young people rather than sticking with the Bernie method of milking dry the traditional demographic of middle-aged men.

As for the girls, well I'm sure they can find other jobs. They have different ones in every country so it's only a once a year thing at best, right?

Lots of sleazy men are outraged on Twitter but I'm sure they'll get over it and they're not going to stop watching because of this, and F1 will become more attractive to progressive types so it's the right move from a business point of view.

 

Ugh. I just want the season to start already.

Bold Prediction Time: Max finishes, at worst, 2nd in the driver's championship.

 

First 2018 reveal. The black Halo kind of disappears. Weird that they just dropped this today without any advance warning since most everyone else had announced a reveal date.

 

It's a good way of getting all the attention from the F1 media.

The one thing that still bugs me about the halo is, that it's going to ruin the TV cam (or at least make it worse). I really hope the next F1 game has a visual option where you can turn it off, I'm sure the PC version is going to have mods for it.

 

I've been a Williams fan since the early 90s and I'm really disappointed in their driver line-up this season. It was much better when the team didn't sell their seats to the highest bidders. I'm not expecting much from Williams F1 this season, and that stinks. At least they still have the best livery in F1 though. Those Martini stripes are glorious. Too bad that they'll be at the back of the pack and won't get much TV time.

I think my only hope for them this year is that they found some sort of magic with the new car and it's so good that even I could pilot it to the front of the grid.

 

That's beautiful and I wish they would keep it.

 

Paddy Lowe says they're targeting a "step change" for 2018, but you're right, that driver lineup is a step below. What would they have to gain on the field with those drivers, a net 1.5 seconds or something? Lowe is good, but it would be extremely difficult to pick up enough time just through the car to balance out the weakness of the drivers.

 

At least bringing Wehrlein back from the DTM should be possible if someone wishes to improve their lineup during the season.

 

Yeah the Williams lineup is bad but let's not act like it was fantastic last season. You would hope that Stroll can take a step forward or at least gain some consistency.

One week he's driving his ass off and I think he's legit and the next week I'm not even sure how he has a ride.

 

With only 4 sponsors to please, Sauber could afford a bit more Alfa. It's like they got 1/3 of the livery done and went home, never getting back to it again.

 

It's ten times better than their previous blue livery though.

 

Maybe, I'm not a fan of dark blue F1 cars, it usually doesn't look very good on television. Red Bull disagrees and makes their 2018 edition worse as highlighted above:

 

Sauber is gorgeous. That Red Bull is terrible.