Formula One 2017: Hungaroring

The best news- this is the last race before the summer break and we’re going to take 3 or 4 weeks (I could look it up but I’m too damn lazy) off. Formula One is serious about this, you can’t even send email and I have 3 words for them- “Team Orders” and “Radio”. They have never been able to enforce any rules about either one and this is no different.

I’ll add for you Computer Racers the Ryzen Threadripper, a supercomputer for your desktop. For a mere $5K or so (including chip, motherboard, graphics, 1 Terabyte of RAM and as many SSDs as you care to throw at 16 cores and 32 threads of 64 lane Gen 3.0 PCIe goodness) I’d send every engineer home with one (falls in the rounds), all the data we’d collected so far this year, and tell them to shut up (Moscow Rules) and come back with a plan.

Anyone sporting a tan except the talent is fired.

But it works perfectly with my agenda since I’ll be traveling and have appointments (if you ever find the content sucks more than usual it’s probably one of those and were it any of your business I’d write about it). September will likely be even worse and October/November will mark a transfer to Stars Hollow North Lake (where you have to pump the holding tank) or Stars Hollow By The Sea (which has no shower). Fortunately for you we don’t post in Smell-o-Vision.

Hey, the Europeans tolerated it for a thousand years though it was a primary cause of the French Revolution.

Notre révolution m’a fait sentir tout le sens de l’axiome qui dit que l’histoire est un roman ; et je suis convaincu que la fortune et l’intrigue ont fait plus de héros, que le génie et la vertu. (Robspierre, 21 December 1792)

Speaking of chance and intrigue, the Halo system (which don’t work, the center pillar obstructs vision and it’s totally useless against the Massa springs and Bianchi stuffs it’s advertised to protect against) is going to be mandatory next year.

Jules Bianchi drove his whole car under a crane Seven Ups style. You don’t walk away from that unless you’re Roy Scheider.

You fix that by firing Crane Operators, Safety Crew Workers, and Track Control Officials because it’s a system failure, not a car failure. Yeah, I wish he was still alive too.

Bits of debris (admittedly a big bit) like Massa picked up the open Halo framework doesn’t even attempt to solve, just like it can’t do anything about the inner ear infection that will keep him from starting today. I’m as pro safety as the next guy, maybe more, but this is simply stupid. Like all truly bad ideas (neoliberalism) they’re looking to propagate it so it seems fashionable and inevitable.

Sauber is staying with Ferrari engines instead of moving to Honda which is probably a wise move given Honda shows no signs of improvement. On the other hand they will be getting ‘B’ equipment, you can’t fool me Maranello.

In other news from North Italy is that Scuderia Marlboro is looking racy, they’ve taken the first row in Qualifying. It’s not that I’m a Hamilton fan but I actively dislike them and Red Bull (McLaren, Williams, Sauber, Lotus/Renault I like) and Vettel is objectively the biggest asshole on the circuit now that Rosberg is gone (you might have had an argument about Rosberg though I would have still picked Vettel). Anyway it’s significant in that Hamilton starts a mere point behind in the Drivers’ Championship. I hope for a DNF from a gentle electrical failure at the far side of the track so Vettel has a long walk.

On offer are Super Soft, Soft, and Medium. Hungaroring is a tight track and while you might try a one stop I would think two (Super Soft, Soft, Super Soft) will be the strategy most teams will pursue.

The bad news- I’ve had nothing but trouble with my formula1.com subscription this year and it is beyond doubt my cookie will time out and I’ll have to re-login which is entirely painful. It sucks to be me and I demand all of your false sympathy for my plight. I bought a case of the world’s tiniest violins on Amazon and I invite you to take one, on the house.

My tiny trombone collection is stuck somewhere between here and China so you’ll have to wait to make whaa-whaa-whaa-whaa noises.