kiroquai

Indeed! A true legend in his own windmill lifetime.

It is worth mentioning that in @Meers, myself and @mexos were racing against a furious Dutchman almost a decade before it became the ‘cool’ thing. Thankfully I never punted him off the road, else he’d have broken my fingers over Xbox Live just by shouting.

Womens' football has already kicked off like you said. Great Britain currently playing Chile. Can watch it live on the Beeb website if you've got all the relevant accounts etc.

Delph played against Blackburn on Saturday, apparently.

I believe in the case of Korea 2010, Mark Webber had binned it and wiped out Nico Rosberg. Not sure if that contributed to the red flag or not. EDIT: looked, turns out that this happened after the red flag. @JPR is thus correct! India I actually quite liked as a circuit. The long back straight was really wide, as was the entry into the hairpin at the end. The long right-hander at the end of the lap was cool too. Valencia was... er... well, it was a track. Funnily enough I was always pretty decent around their on the F1 games, but I didn't particularly enjoy it.

Yes! The Malaysian Grand Prix. I think a few people might have spun into retirement on that one though

Hmm - I mean, I can't 100% remember if there were any crashes at the 2011 Canadian GP at the point it was red-flagged... maybe? Wikipedia suggests that the 1950 Indy 500, then part of the World Championship, was also red-flagged due to rain but no crashes. Ditto the 1971 Canadian and 1974 Brazilian Grands Prix.

The moment people started using social media. Not just F1, really - it’s divided pretty much everyone in every way possible.

hey @Meers are you getting an itchy spreadsheet trigger finger yet?

That’s the main thing. Two cars touching wheels in the middle of Copse at 180mph could have had much, much worse consequences, not just for the drivers but also the spectators in the grandstands and on the bank.

Bit sad for Leclerc but, jeez… Lewis was a man possessed. Spellbinding stuff. We have basically just had a race containing a Senna/Prost moment and a Mansell/Piquet moment all in one.

One interesting note is that with budget caps and the like, this might impact Max moving forwards. Doubt there will be much salvageable from the rear end of that car.

My basic thoughts: Lewis could have backed off, he didn’t. Max could have given Lewis more room, he didn’t. We are at a point now where both drivers realise they are on a proper title fight and the gloves have come off. One thing is for sure: no driver, even peak Senna, would have purposely caused an accident there. Once those cars collided it was a close-your-eyes-and-hope deal. Important thing is that Max is okay. Given that’s the case, this is properly going to add needle to the championship battle.

Looked like Lewis got enough inside to me. I’d say it was 50/50.

Actually, whilst I am still off on a rant: they need to stop suggesting this Sprint is the result of kids having shorter attention span these days. There is, perhaps, an element of that and it’s been accelerated by other sports being accessible online etc, but overall it’s bollocks to think kids can’t be interested in something more than 20 minutes long. The main reason that kids aren’t watching your sport is because since the 2000’s you’ve been doing everything you can to price people out of your content. Live races are now almost locked entirely behind an ever-increasing paywall in a lot of countries, including the one country that is home to 80% of the grid’s teams. You only need to see how cricket has plummeted into total irrelevance despite being one of our national sports to see how much damage this can do. Tickets to even practice days are ridiculously high, and if they are anything like Silverstone you’ll then turn up to find you aren’t allowed to sit in at least 50% of the grandstands unless you have a full weekend ticket. The product sure as hell isn’t perfect and the racing could stand to improve, but F1 is an amazing thing, both in terms of spectacle and what goes into making it work. Why not strengthen interest in young people by funding educational initiatives, inviting school kids to come to your teams’ factories and generally making them want to watch the sport and be involved in it when they are older? Basically, do something. Anything. But don’t go offering what is basically the sporting version of a Fun-Sized Mars Bar and then say ‘hey kids - this is for you because we thought you’d like it more’ when they’re going to be painfully aware that it’s an exactly identical thing to a bigger Mars bar, just less fulfilling. Oh, and one last thing: if you say changes are because kids and new young fans’ attention spans are shorter, you’ll just make existing fans feel more bitter that their favourite sport is being taken away because of other people. It increases gatekeeping. Younger or newer fans trying to engage online will end up walking away because they’re being used as the excuse for a sport having to change because it got greedy and as a result are not being made to feel welcome. Pisses me right off. One of my favourite things I’ve seen in this thread is @SeanR’s kid’s level of love for F1. That was me when I was that age. It was countless other people at that age. With some of the steps above, it’ll continue to be plenty of kids into the future. Sprint races, though? That’s not going to be a reason why.