Not sure Nico cracked under pressure. Just one of those fark ups that happens once in a while. Remember Lewis forgetting to close his DRS & almost taking himself out of the last race while trying to pass Nico? I think turn one lures driver's in because it looks nice & wide, but really isn't. Had Nico manage to maintain his great start the race may have been very different, but we'll never know. Nico did well to climb back up to second place, never thought he could do it. If you get a chance watch the GP2 race. 10 times better than the F1 race.
F1 to trial new speed control system for yellow flag zones in Austin | James Allen on F1 More at the link. re: The Sochi race . . . . . . . . meh.
I had forgotten about Lewis' comments about closing his DRS. I remember wondering why there wasn't more made about that comment because it made me think that he was out of the DRS zone when he did close it because of the issues with the turn.
Can someone explain to me how what Rosberg did was any different from what Alonso did a couple of races ago when he passed both Red Bulls, then went wide at the corner and only had to give back one place, not both? If Alonso didn't have to give them both back, why would Rosberg have to give it back to Hammy? Not that it would have mattered anyway since he ruined his tires, but.....
If you gain an advantage by exceeding track limits, then you have to give up the place. As to why Alonso only gave back one rather than two, ask the stewards. My personal independent speculative analysis is that the stewards have been told to be a bit more lenient on handing out punishments and allowing the drivers to "just race" and that's why the lenient handling of Alonso's two car pass.
I also think it has something to do with self-policing because I think in both cases the driver's gave back the positions before they were told to by the stewards. I really didn't think that Nico gained an advantage because he was already past and didn't appear to exceed the track limits (seemed to have plenty of time to brake properly and still stay in the lead). I was surprised when the team told him to give the position back to Lewis.
I believe the team told him that because to wait for the stewards to tell them would have could have cost much more than one place.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you or the NBC announcers, but I think that's an interesting perspective. Remember when the most likely criticism of Pirelli's tires was they had too much effect on races because they were all subject to too much degradation? I guess it took a while for people to get used to it so now when they provided (accidentally, because they didn't correctly predict the track characteristics) a compound that lasted, attention turns to how much more interesting the race might have been with less cautious compounds. I was happy with the tires situation. Not because I necessarily want them all to last full races, or nearly so, but because I like that it was an unpredicted and unexpected factor. The teams knew the compounds before the weekend started and got to practice on them and still didn't know what was going to happen half way through the race! Admittedly, that's really almost entirely because the track was unknown but I'm still left wishing that, instead of carefully trying to match tires to each individual track, Pirelli would produce 4-5 compounds per year and then choose the pair of compounds for each track randomly. Either that or provide all the compounds at each race and let each team decide which two they want to use. And maybe make them choose in advance but keep the teams' choices secret so you don't have one team second-guessing based on what others are doing. Yeah, I'm over-thinking this.....
Honda is trying to attract some attention. They don't really have much to show, though, so it seems a bit sad to me to make a hype video. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXYu6IJfbic"]Honda: Development F1 power unit for 2015 season - YouTube[/ame]
Wow! I expected to see more issues near the end of the season caused by the limits on power unit replacement, but this plan seems ridiculous. Vettel looks set to start race from pitlane in Austin (grandprix247.com)
On the contrary, the plan seems perfectly logical. What is ridiculous is the restrictive engine allocation in the very first implementation year of the new turbo V6. FIA is now sleeping in the bread they buttered. I wonder how many Vettel fans had been planning to enjoy watching him put his car through the paces on the Austin track on Saturday...
Vettel's done some remarkable runs from the back of the grid. I expect that he'll still finish pretty well, despite having Webber's car.
New Tilke images reveal narrow Baku street track - F1 Fanatic The portion of the track on the left has a lot of elevation change, sort of Monaco-ish. More images at the link.
A fan-made video of the Baku track. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LYykMFtB3Y"]Baku, Azerbaijan Formula 1 Circuit Flying Lap - YouTube[/ame]
Too bad that new motor won't sound like that, just another lawnmower soundtrack like the rest of them.
Baku looks a lot like Macau where I don't think F1 has ever raced, though many of its drivers have. And if the twisty bits look a bit scary in this World Touring Car, bear in mind that several classes of motorcycle race there too.... [ame=http://youtu.be/Nqp4tfAesjQ]FIA WTCC 2009 Tom Coronel 1 lap at Macau - YouTube[/ame]