Nico Rosbourg has retired....

[Wes1000]

Not knocking Jenson but I think he has had his day. He doesn't need to win and has made his money. I can't see him being offered the place.

 

[Octopus]

Stopp it's killing me.

No that's the hair do and moustache doing that !

 

[Midwest]

My monies on Boris driving for Merc's. Lets face it, he convinced u's guys over Brexit.

 

[westward10]

Joking aside I obviously don't see the appeal in F1 so what is it that grabs your attention about it.

 

[Midwest]

Joking aside I obviously don't see the appeal in F1 so what is it that grabs your attention about it.

Racing I suppose, see who can be first. F1's a bit like Marmite

 

[Octopus]

Joking aside I obviously don't see the appeal in F1 so what is it that grabs your attention about it.

I've followed F1 since the mid 1980's when Nigel Mansell started winning - and its just stuck with me..... the issues these days are :

1. The idiot 86 year old in charge (Bernie you know who you are)

2. The sport signing race contracts for the money and not the track / the racing

3. Selling the TV rights to the highest bidder (Sky is a fxxxing rip off)

4. The regs are too one sided - not one of the Mercedes "customer" teams can get close to them - so do they get equal treatment with the engine & drive train - I don't think so. And when Red Bull asked Mercedes for engines they got turned down - purely, I suspect on the basis that Mercedes didn't want to be beaten by a customer team.

 

[Midwest]

Think Bernie's days are numbered, and he 86 after all. For sure the sport is driven by contracts, sponsorship and whose willing to invest in new tracks, but how else would you fund such an expensive sport, where even just the drivers are paid millions. They have tried standardising the cars, Formulae E does or did it, but it's just a bit boring (ok so is F1, philistines!). They might as well drive round in 'Reasonably Priced Cars'. A teams dominance only lasts a few years, until some other one hits the mother lode. Perhaps this is Mercs last.

There's no doubt Sky is expensive, but so's my wine bill at Fortnum & Mason

 

[Midwest]

I'd been reading about father & son Rosberg, and about the fact that Keke won his championship, with only winning one race. I've watched F1 since the late 70's, but couldn't remember Keke winning in 1982.

It transpires it wasn't one of the best years. Started off with a drivers strike. Gillies Villeneuve was killed during the closing stages of qualification for the Belgian GP, after striking another car, his went airborne and he was thrown from the car, cartwheeling into the catchment fence. Italian Riccardo Paletti crashed into a stalled car off the grid at the Canadian GP. As they later tried to extract him from the wreckage, the vehicle caught fire, taking some time to put out the flames. He later died. There are of course, disturbing videos of these incidents.

After surviving a serious crash at the French GP, Jochen Mass was a lucky man to hobble away with minor burns, but such had been the impact of Villeneuve's death on the German, that he took his own accident as a sign that he needed to quit the sport. He would never race again in a F1 GP. Towards the end of the season, it was looking as if Didier Prion would win the championship, but a massive crash in the German GP, meant he never raced again.

So Keke Rosberg went onto win the 1982 F1 Championship. If Villeneuve had lived, he may have won that year, then it would have been his son, Jacques, who would have been the second father son champions in 1997.

I think we do forget how dangerous motor sport is, but with vast improvements made on safety & construction of the cars in the last few years, fatalities are not so common. We only have to look at Alonso crash in Australia this year to see that, where he walked a way with just a few bruises.

So perhaps I do understand why Nico Rosberg has decided to call it a day. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt.