‘No tricks, no politics’ in championship run-in – Vettel

F1 Fanatic Round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Sebastian Vettel says he wants a trouble-free final four races and won’t concern himself with trying to influence what happens to his championship rival Lewis Hamilton.

Social media

Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:

So Fernando…, you are staying then??😂😂 #Team #2018 👏

A post shared by Stoffel Vandoorne (@svandoorne) on

Comment of the day

Rick thinks Renault deserve praise for their approach to F1:

I have to say that I think Renault is probably the most sportsmanlike of all engine suppliers/works teams. A couple of things I’ve come to know about them:

1. They’re not afraid to supply engines to customer teams that might outperform their own team, even in the long run. This was the case with Red Bull and is now the case with McLaren for 2018 and beyond.
2. They supply equal engines to all teams and don’t keep advantages or priorities in their own team. Last year they even provided Red Bull with an engine upgrade before one of their own cars.
3. They’ve openly admitted they might’ve been too conservative with oil burning when looking at Mercedes and Ferrari having that edge on performance, but also said they want to win fair and square and oil burning doesn’t belong in the sport. In hindsight this might be easy to say since they’re the ones behind on performance, but it also takes guts to take such a stance in a world that’s primarily all about winning ‘no matter what’. I think they’re doing the right thing and this only emphasises their commitment to a greener cars, both in F1 and with their road cars.

Apart from that, I also think that even though especially Verstappen has had his fair share of reliability problems this year, Renault have made huge steps in recent years, especially taking into account they always need to supply six engines.
Rick (@Addvariety)

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Danthorn, Shaggymike, F1Yankee and The Abbinator!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is via the contact form or adding to the list here.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

27 comments on “‘No tricks, no politics’ in championship run-in – Vettel”

  1. I for one don’t care what anyone says, Hartley’s waaaay prettier than Rosberg ever was. But seriously tho, dat hair, this guy’s got a line on some shampoo sponsorship like nobody’s business.

    1. shampoo? How about Rogaine?

    2. 80’s hair rock style. Again, I’m happy for him, RB did away with him but RB wasn’t afraid to bring him back either, he deserves it.

  2. FOM doing a deal with Netflix makes a lot of sense. One would suspect it would be similar to the NFL-Amazon deal where a number of games (10?) are broadcast on the online platform.

    It would be good publicity, would expect a spike in viewership for the races that are shown live on Netflix.

    This is a good move. The future of sports broadcasting is certainly on platforms such as Netflix and Amazon. The traditions TV platform will have to evolve to match these.

    1. Does Netflix stream real time content? I can’t remember of anything like that. I usually watches e-sports on Twitch.tv and I think it’s the best streaming service by far.

      1. No they don’t. apparently they are developing a live streaming service, but its a different delivery system to on-demand media.

        I agree with Twitch, can you imaging the Twitch chat after a crash or some strange incident…

      2. While real time is better, it doesn’t have to be. As long as the delay isn’t significant then it could be useful.

    2. It will be country limited, as are some things already. Expect the paying TV lobby to still stand.

      It feels like a deal for the US only

    3. @jaymenon10 I am pleased to see Liberty adapting to the newer and changing content providers, it’s imperative for reaching and attracting new viewers to F1 with the right packaging of the content to suit – I don’t expect that packaging to include live races initially with the pay-tv contracts in place.

      However as fan who has a Sky F1 subscription, unsurprisingly that service provides a high quality and content rich package.

  3. Agree with Vettel on those silly reprimands.

    Ever since the Perez, Ocon and whoever else was involved in last year’s reprimands.

    1. If drivers think waiting in line for the toilet qualifies as a reasonable excuse to be late for something like this then the reprimand is perfectly reasonable. He could have gone well before the ceremony instead. Who does he think falls for this nonsense excuse anyway?

      The original story was that he was helping out with his car being fixed. Which would make some sense, although that would mean a competitive advantage where a reprimand also sounds reasonable really.

      What is really silly is that they seem like a bunch of kids coming up with excuses why they didn’t do their homework.

      1. You think being late to a ceremony deserves a sporting punishment? Give them a monetary fine and be done with it.

        1. In F1 these days, fines automatically come attached with reprimands, if a driver rather than a team is its recipient.

      2. The total time from pit opening to the national anthem is 18 minutes. If you drive at a typical speed round the formation lap and don’t need to come by your pit for any reason, you have 14-15 minutes (depending on where you are in the pit exit queue) to do anything necessary. It’s difficult to say how long the queue would have been for the toilet – yes, there would be multiple toilets, but they’re for the use of the entire male pit staff, not just the drivers. However, Sebastian shouldn’t have been needed to help Ferrari repair the car, and had he not done so, the long queue for the toilets wouldn’t have mattered.

        While I think the whole “thou shalt be at the front of the grid for the national anthem” is ridiculous, I also think the behaviour Sebastian displayed wasn’t the sort that could reasonably get an exemption.

  4. Drivers should get reprimands and or penalties for driving infringements only.

  5. Great helmet by Sainz. I guess it makes sense but it’s a little weird to see that Red Bull there on a Renault driver.

  6. COTD
    4) Offer jobs to unemployed ex FIA staff.

    1. Or rig the 2008 Singapore GP…

    2. What’s wrong with hiring someone who is unemployed?

    3. COTD couldn’t be more wrong. Renault is as always trying to be in f1 for the least amount of money, as most manufacturers are, what they want is a championship winning engine, RB started to win, they pulled the plug, if RB or McLaren are going to be competitive then the manufacturer is going to pull the plug again, every manufacturer (not Ferrari) tries to do the same, it’s up to the racing team to try to justify their expenditure, the racing team at Brackley cannot have another strong team with their engines because the Germans might consider pulling the plug on them, Mercedes only came back because the people at Brackley sold them the idea the project and the rewards, McLaren wasn’t cutting it so they came in, but if by any chance they either start losing or, some other team makes a better chassis they might leave, it’s not like signing Hamilton didn’t save the team, Toto and Lauda saved the team, they convinced the board to stay and they’ll keep convincing the board to stay as their job depends on it.

  7. @Vettel: Oh please shut it. You are the nr 2 (after Alonso) most political & dirty tricks driver out there.
    @Kvyat: They don’t owe you anything. You should be glad you are still getting chances
    @Callum: Good luck. Go get ’em!
    @Hulkenberg: You bet! Exciting times ahead. I think Nico will do well on consistency of performance
    @Hamilton: Sorry this is still an issue mate.

  8. As it stands any deal with netflix would likely not include full races.

    FOM have there own stand alone service in the works for that, Although contracts are proving an issue as more than 90% of current broadcasters are vehemently against such a service which would likely rob them of viewers, subscribers, advertisers & revenue.

    You already saw a few weeks ago that NBC pulled the plug based on the prospect of a competing service with ESPN been given the rights essentially for free as they don’t want to spend any money on it which is why they will be taking the Sky broadcast (With no pre or post race content) rather than producing there own. This deal also done by Liberty to push people towards the OTT platform if they want any extra pre/post session content.

    As it currently stands any online platform be it from FOM or Netflix would be very limited in terms of availability & content.

  9. I would be more than happy if Netflix just made a collection of season review documentaries available. Making the history of the sport easily accessible seems to me an obvious way to generate viewer interest.

    1. That would be great actually!

    2. +1. Lord knows some of these “fans” could really use the history lesson, & the real fanatics can never get enough good F1 related content.

  10. You know what Vettel or better yet Ferrari needs? Ricciardo. Yes Ricciardo. He has proven to out-perform Vettel a whole season without shenanigans. Vettel choked this year. If Ferrari has the chance next season to snatch Danny out of a poor performing RB, and Danny can at least equal Verstappen in the quali-battles, they should do it. Ricciardo out of sight this year had a very stable handling of the car and race-pace, puts much work into the set-up and isn’t that risky as Verstappen might be with Vettel. If the guy gets his old quali-prowess back combined with his stable handling he would be a very tough guy for Lewis in similar 2017-like conditions.

    I just don’t see Vettel defeating Lewis and Verstappen in a three-way-battle. He didn’t learn anything mentally. Lewis learned from his Alonso and Rosberg years. Max learned being paired with a quali-pro. Bottas learned very quicky for the time he was given although his max potential is questioned. Even Kimi learned being paired with Montoya. But only Seb stays this bipolar kid. Ferrari should take the gamble if they want to win the WDC.

    1. Vettel fears Ver not Ric – last year’s on & off track battles showed that Ver’s is no respecter of his elders. So unless Ferrari loses faith with Vettel, don’t expect to see Ver in that car anytime soon. Vettel can probably forseee that Ver will be his biggest rival and will def get in the way of his dream of his Schumi legacy pursuits. He’s also realised that it’s going to take a lot more to beat Lewis.

      I don’t think Ric’s a better driver than Seb – that last RB year was an anomaly unlikely to happen again. So Ric might go to Ferrari as a #2 and will be reliable but not threatening to Seb.

      Ham is already making retirement noises and I expect he will move on in 2020/21 or even earlier. He’ll be happy with 4/5 WDCs (this Mercdes drive really exceeded his expectations, there’s no way he could have foreseen how dominant they would be) and will enjoy the 3 way battles to come. I don’t think Ver’s has gotten under Ham’s skin to the extent he has with Seb although that might change if they become teammates. Personally think Ocon is a more likely team mate; Bottas whilst a reliable #2 isn’t as strong as Rosberg so can’t consistently deliver 1&2s that Mercedes want.

Comments are closed.