Posts made by mclaincausey

Some good sips last night. The Luneta was amazing peppery and vegetal.

I’m in my Casa Bonita livery today

Very pleased for Norris!

IH neck down today.

@Daysleepers @anodyne 1000%

Lost Blues and Other Songs is my favorite of his so far. "West Palm Beach" and "Horses" on there always gives me epic feels, and "Ohio River Boat Song" is a great opener. I love how unvarnished the whole thing is.

@popvulture were you in Mississippi when he played Jackson (Martin's) and Hattiesburg (Thisty Hippo) in 2004? Those were fun.

Speaking of the UT… my first GAB piece lives nine. Thanks @Mizmazzle !

@Bridger yeah that’s an artifact of the timeframe starting in 2020. If it went back further you’d see Kimi go way up.

I one day will update my retrieval script to get more data. Maybe like go back to 1980 or something. It would be really cool to compare the greats of past eras to Max. I think I’d need to adjust the model though to account for differences in the sport when going back that far.

No problem @WhiskeySandwich ; I agree that the model results mostly don’t surprise, which is one thing that makes me think it is solid. I didn’t try to fit the outcome in any way to what i think but it came out close.

@WhiskeySandwich

• F1_Model_Documentation.pdf

• F1_Race_By_Race_Details.xlsx

• F1_Driver_Performance_2020-2025.xlsx

• F1_Driver_Performance_By_Season.xlsx

And before anyone asks--yes, I am currently unemployed and thus had time to put this together

I can’t remember if I shared it here but I built a model of F2 driver performance from 2019 to Brazil this year that controlled for differences in equipment, strategy, and pit performance to assess qualifying and racing performance. When I plotted that out it was Max on his own in both categories, then a cluster of elites including Charles, Lando, and Russell, with Lewis on the cusp of that tier because of the shit seasons he’s had of late. I don’t think he’s there anymore and Ferrari did their thing where they destroy WDC champs. Sadly, I think Merc did too because they wouldn’t listen to him about the car until it was too late and he’d resolved to leave. I really hate what the teams and to some degree probably age have done to him.

McLaren has built a great car but handicapped it with poor strategy. Red Bull’s car suffered for a while but they’ve always excelled otherwise. Ferrari is a dumpster fire.
I think Lewis is done and it’s really sad what F1 did to him screwing him out of a WDC, and teams did to him after that. The only way I see him getting back to form is if he sneaks over to A-M and Newey nails the 2026 regs.

Yeah. That reminds me in need to start supplementing vitamin D

When you’re a good as Max, I presume you benefit from a car that is extremely responsive. When you aren’t, it amplifies your imperfection.

It seems to me they don’t need to tailor the car to the greatest driver in the world. Just make it within 5% of the field and the guy will win and his teammate might get some points too.

Clearly you want there to be a conspiracy for some reason but I am not aware of any hard enforcement. I found this “recommendation” and the gravel didn’t meet it: “They are normally about 25cm deep and filled with spherical gravel stones of a diameter of between 5 and 16 millimeters.

These specifications have been drawn up because they have been calculated to give the best frictional resistance possible, needed to stop a skidding and out of control F1 car.”

Let me ask: what would be the rationale for the conspiracy anyway? To make a bad circuit even worse for what? An even more processional race that is less entertaining?

@WhiskeySandwich they didn’t find out about it until looking at the tires after sprint qualifying. Pirelli said the cuts were very deep if not quite to the belts.

Anyway Qatar isn’t an F1 quality circuit and it shouldn’t be on the calendar in the first place. But I’ll take Occam’s Razor here. I think the same idiots who had too sharp kerbs are also dumb enough to have gigantic, sharp rocks as “gravel.” The pictures of the “gravel” were shocking, they fill the palm of a hand and are jagged, not tumbled in any way.

It’s a garbage track but I see no reason to disbelieve the gravel narrative.

@WhiskeySandwich the rationale for it was that the circuit has these huge pieces of "gravel" that are very sharp and they found slices in the rubber of the tires. This was an unexpected development so they added that rule late as a safety measure. It's not like they could reformulate the compound or add kevlar belts at that point, so I think it was the right move.

Stella said something like “we didn’t expect them to pit under the safety car” as though that was a valid excuse. Like dude, incident at lap 8, 25 lap tire limit, 57 lap race. This shit isn’t hard. As @Bridger said, “do the math.” The fact that Stella said that out loud like it wasn’t something to be incredibly mortified about is wild to me and makes me think he isn’t team principal caliber. They built a great car, maybe he should move to tech leadership because he clearly doesn’t have a handle on strategy and it seems like a TP should understand everything at least at a high level.

At least they’ll have Courtenay next season when it may be too late if they don’t nail the regs but Singh and Stella just don’t get it. And papaya rules are idiotic.

The pattern with McLaren strategy, and I’ve now seen enough that I’m confident about this pattern, is that they are too conservative, they don’t cope with changing conditions, and they are terrible under pressure.

Another disaster class from McLaren strategy.... The trend is being so cautious not to appear to be favoring a driver that they wind up fucking them both over. It's really laughable at this point that they are keeping Max in this thing. Think about what Lando will have to overcome should he secure P3 or better next race:

At least 40 points lost this season that weren’t his fault, mostly can be tied to the team: bad strategy here (3-6 points), bad qualifying run plan plus poor pit stop at Baku (4-6 points), DSQ from Vegas due to a needlessly aggressive ride height setup (18 points), mechanical DNF at Zandvoort (18 points). I’m not counting the collision with OP in the ATX sprint but you could argue to do so, and you could also argue Max cost him P1 Miami running him off the track—so this is pretty conservative.

Should he get P3 or better next weekend to seal WDC, I think it will be a remarkable display given how handicapped he was this year. Hopefully Will Courtenay will turn around this mess of a strategy operation next season.

@Giles but you’re spot on. I was replying to @Tago-Mago ; Pirelli is more than capable of making tires that could go much longer than theirs are going (say, a 40-lap Medium for example) but FIA (and presumably MBS) won’t allow it. They said as much when Pirelli took over in 2011: they had eliminated in-race refueling, and wanted tire replacement to drive pit stops. Since it is a team sport, to make sure that the strategy and pit stop aspects of the sport were tested, gracefully degrading tires was what Pirelli were expected to deliver.

I get that, but getting tires that degrade in the right way per track and conditions to spice races up is not an easy task. I think part of Pireli’s responsibility as the supplier of tires is to take the heat for FIA’s decisions about tire compounds and degradation when they don’t work out.

Pirelli would make better tires if F1 allowed them to.

But no matter how good your tire, giant sharp rocks as “gravel” present a challenge.

Saw this on a Netflix movie The Thursday Murder Club. Bunch of terrific actors in that one. Fun murder mystery.