French Grand Prix - Paul Ricard

[Carl]

Jun 25, 2018 1:18:25 GMT mikael said:

On another note, it's disturbing how much these large runoff areas spoil the original atmosphere. They give the impression of a track laid out on a large parking area (à la Caesars Palace, Las Vegas) and merely outlined by paint. Hopefully the remaining traditional racetracks, like Spa and Suzuka, will be allowed to live on as they are.

Exactly right, Mikael!  Martin Brundle noted more than once that the blue paint plays tricks on the eyes.  It's like a vertigo inducing kaleidoscope. 

All of the optical distortions made sense when the idiot savant Hermann Tilke was interviewed and claimed credit for the redesign of Paul Ricard. 

[mikael]

Carl, now that you say it, it even looks as if they've taken some inspiration therefrom ("Vertigo")!

[chrisb]

actually the Vertigo poster makes me think of Dali on acid, but then remembered he was involved in another Hitchcock's films, spellbound, sadly not what the GP was,

some good drives, some mediocre ones and some dreadful ones, it really is better listening to this on the radio now,

[René]

The painted run-offs looked horrible and having watched the Indycar race at Road America later that evening the contrast was even bigger! Road America is what a proper race track should look like.

Anyway, the racing was so-so (at Paul Ricard). Hamilton was flawless and so was Max who is on a good run since his Monaco drama. Vettel made a mistake but recovered well. It was an error of judgement but to my eyes one that could have happened to others as well in that situation. That doesn't take away this could cost him dearly, certainly combined with his Baku mistake. In both cases over ambitious where patience would have served him better.

Charles Leclerc drove a good race to score another point. Did this wake up Kimi? At least a fine result for the Iceman.

[charleselan]

I couldn't watch the race live as I had urgent repairs to attend to at the "ranch" so then having heard the result was undecided to watch the highlights at some ridiculous hour. Never liked Ricard and held the same view on it as Jenks and the colour "coding" looks absolutely horrid, as do the runway like run off areas. Apparently the spectators were, to put it crudely, royally screwed in more ways than one,; with terrible access and car parking that left many a seasoned UK spectator opened mouthed with its horrors. So much for a venue owned by a man who had the audacity to slate Silverstone!!

To be honest the UK C4 highlights coverage was poor, and Coultard & Edwards really got up my nose with their stupid comments, particularly about when were Ferrari going to pull Kimi over for Vettel as championship points were vital; heaven save me!! The overtakes on the straight via "DRS" were rubbish and displayed little or no skill.

Vettel had one of his usual brain fades but the slating he is getting leads me to believe that all those who do so, forget the amount of times Bottas has ruined Kimi's races at the start on numerous occasions, and without any penalty. I do not feel that Sebastian is likely to win the championship, especially with moves like that, and the impending arrival of Charles Leclerc should seriously worry him, this kid seems to have everything.

I did watch the Qualifying live via S*Y, before Chris thinks I have sold out, it was free mate . It hasn't improved in presentation and most of the presenters are none too likeable, for this traditionalist. One thing I did note with interest was the presence of one Jean Eric Verne in the Red Bull garage chatty very amicably with Ricciardo and if my eyes did not deceive me Marko, interesting!!

I did want to watch it yesterday as they had a good looking piece on Didier Pironi which would have been excellent to see.

[Carl]

Slating, a province of the Welsh Slates, is normally done with careful forethought.

[charleselan]

Jun 25, 2018 17:20:53 GMT Carl said:

Slating, a province of the Welsh Slates, is normally done with careful forethought.

Apologies my good friend for using such a grand word as Slate, in reference to such poor circumstances.

Slate is a superb word, and the material itself is truly magnificent.

[Jamie]

A so so race I suppose, best bit for me was the , albeit short, feature on Didier Pironi which I really enjoyed. It was respectful and poignant and at the end was a short talking head section from Giles Pironi, Didier’s son who is working as an engineer at Mercedes which was a lovely touch at the close of the piece. When it was mentioned that poor Didier never met his own son.....well, that was a very real reminder of how much of a thrill seeker he was, it was a very different time....

[Carl]

Jun 25, 2018 17:33:49 GMT charleselan said:

Jun 25, 2018 17:20:53 GMT Carl said:

Slating, a province of the Welsh Slates, is normally done with careful forethought.

Apologies my good friend for using such a grand word as Slate, in reference to such poor circumstances.

Slate is a superb word, and the material itself is truly magnificent.

We Slates enjoy seeing our names and faces in most conceivable contexts (outside of public loos) and I did in fact harshly apply the slate to Vettel's backside in an earlier comment, so rest assured that no offense is taken.  

In earlier times along the Welsh border, the fear of being slated kept the English at bay. 

[Deleted]

My 'remembrance' of the old days at the Paul Ricard was obviously tinted with nostalgia - summer holidays in Switzerland, winter testing filled with anticipation of the new cars for the following season - and particularly the mighty Mistral with the fearsome Signes and the end (fearsome: ask Jochen Mass after his 'coming together' Mauro Baldi - both true Le Mans legends, btw). There is - I saw - a video on the tube of the early '70s with the cars shown from behind at the entrance of the Mistral, the straight ahead of them almost a desert mirage, so long it was.

Hughes is right:

When it was introduced, the Circuit Paul Ricard represented the high-gloss, glammed-up, safer F1 that was coming; more superficial but less barbarous than racing on a public road alongside cliff faces and sheer drops at Clermont-Ferrand. But naïvely, without knowing where that would lead.

I have never watched a GP at Charade, I have only been there once retracing the track on the public roads, it must really have been something racing there. L'Auvergne in the mid-late '70s, when I went through there, had places which looked as if the war had been over only yesterday.

Simon Arron recalls Jenks in 1972:

“Throughout the two days of practice and the race, the words of praise that were showered on the circuit were almost embarrassing. ‘Magnificent, terrific, superb, the best in Europe, marvellous, beautiful’ were all expressions heard continuously from drivers, professional followers and the elite of Grand Prix racing’s inner circle. Charade has always been all these things, it is just that some people were new to the scene.”

[Deleted]

Jun 25, 2018 17:43:05 GMT Jamie said:

A so so race I suppose, best bit for me was the , albeit short, feature on Didier Pironi which I really enjoyed. It was respectful and poignant and at the end was a short talking head section from Giles Pironi, Didier’s son who is working as an engineer at Mercedes which was a lovely touch at the close of the piece. When it was mentioned that poor Didier never met his own son.....well, that was a very real reminder of how much of a thrill seeker he was, it was a very different time....

Didn't know Gilles Pironi is an engineer, working for Mercedes. Very good.

Real, real shame Gilles and Didier never met their father.

[chrisb]

Lucio - there is a really good clip on u-tube of the 1965 French GP at Clermont, someone once described it as the 'mini-ring wth stones- but what it did do was show off a person's talent

that is a real tragedy that they never met their Father and all the knowledge they have is what is shown or written.

[robmarsh]

The comparison to Paul Ricard and contemporary F1 to Road America and Indycar comes down heavily in favour of the latter. I don't know how much slower Indycars are to F1 but they looked fast enough on TV for them to have a big accident if they ran off the road but yet I only saw a couple of gravel traps and one tarmac run off area. The track and it surroundings are beautiful especially the grass that borders most of the track, so nostalgic.

Really F1 is looking more and more like a pack of spoilt kids who have overly engineered everything and subtracted from racing in doing so. One of the things I like about Indycar is the lack of tyre blankets and that a car coming out of the pits is comparatively slower than rivals on warm tyres, something that is not really apparent in F1 anymore. It used to be a skill to go fast on cold tyres after a pitstop, Piquet being one who was particularly skilled at doing so. F1s love for finding a technical engineering solution to everything has removed that skill from the equation and hence dumbed down the sport. I could go on.

[Deleted]

That turned out to be an interesting race to watch.
Ver-crash-en went a complete weekend without making contact with anyone - amazing!
Kimi making some serious passes. So nice to see him going forwards for a change.
Vettel putting together a great recovery drive after that first corner blunder.
Bottas with a not quite as effective recovery drive after being clipped - floor damage I guess.
Grosjean brilliantly setting things in train to take out his two French rivals on lap one., He's probably fantastic at snooker too.
Some delightful close racing all through the midfield, it was great to see the Renault, Haas, Force India cars mixing it up. Though seeing Vettel and Bottas sythe through put their pace into perspective.
Nice to see Hartley make his way up and down the rear end of the field.
Lots to enjoy about the first French GP for 10 years, even the main straight chicane was great for overtaking.
So sad to see Williams and McLaren continue to struggle so much.
I saw the two F3 races, and one of the F2 races, they were great too, very close racing and some mental passing.
And its all on again in Austria next week!

[charleselan]

With regard to Clermont Ferrand there are as Chris points out some great films available of racing there. The 1965 GP being one of the finest which illustrates Jim Clark at his absolute finest, winning by a country mile in a third string car as his number one and two cars were suffering serious mechanical problems in practice.

There are some pretty good French films of later races and one guy actually posted a B&W TV coverage of the 1972 race with Amon in his absolute pomp driving the fabulous Matra MS120D.

There are other earlier films available of racing there in the 1950's, one I was reluctant to watch as it showed graphic scenes of poor Ivor Bueb's fatal crash, or more unsavoury the aftermath where his dead body lay at track side, horribly callous times in retrospect.

That aside it was a truly stunning circuit and Simon Arron writes a nice piece about it on the MS Forum. One thing all these modern "scribes" fail to mention is the large refuse tip that part of the circuit navigated around; DSJ didn't fail to mention it however .