He remembered the last time Kimi’s car got into contact with the pit crew and didn’t wan’t to break a leg.

I see the guy remembered the last time a car Kimi drove had an altercation with a pit engineer.

Looking at it through championships alone doesn’t show the whole picture. For most of that period, McLaren Mercedes were consistently part of the top three teams on the grid.

Bu Mercedes power plants are way better than Renaults. Racing Point just came out of administration, and Williams’ problems are due to their own lack of money (something that isn’t as big an issue with McLaren).

Well, there are rumblings that Alonso may want to come back to give his career a fitting end. If not, I’m pretty sure either Vettel or LeClerc are not going to be at Ferrari by that time, though I doubt Seb would want to work at another team where another young upstart has a chance at upstaging him.

there’s no real guarantee that Mercedes will still be making the most competitive power unit,

The problem is that Williams is in an even worse state.

Racing Point will probably have to look for a new engine supplier.

Could be worse, at least it’s not Andrea Moda.

GL1800 has reverse.

The problem is that the era when we had refueling represented the point where on track overtaking was at its lowest. However, taking it out had the immediate effect of increasing the number of on track overtakes beyond what the sport used to have (as shown by this graph from cliptheapex).

Now we have a place where we can conclusively show that “the good old days” weren’t exactly as good as we think they were.

With refueling, we’ll have more teams resorting to using refueling strategies to overtake cars off track instead of on. We actually had less on track overtaking during the years we had refueling, as compared to when it was taken out. Say all you want about drivers being unafraid to push the car, teams are still going…

It’ll also result in less on track overtaking as teams start using refueling stops to overtake instead. Statistics show that we had less overtaking on track during the years when we had refueling.

Except multiple examples time and time again have shown hat “formula libre” doesn’t work. Costs just end up spiraling and the series dies once teams start to pull out.

Just have the drivers come out in reverse order based on the last race’s results. This way, the midfield and backmarker teams get to come out once there’s more rubber on the track and can set faster times.

Talk of reverse grid in open wheel series has been getting a lot of as of late as many lower formula/series have been considering it. W Series even actually tried it out. You can watch their (non-championship) experiment with it here.

Refueling results in less overtaking. The years when we had refueling and it was an important part of race strategy also saw a significant dip in on track overtaking.

Except refueling actually tends to result in less overtaking with teams doing more to overtake in the pits. And we have the data to prove it. As the following chart from cliptheapex shows, overtaking dipped to an all time low during the years where refueling was a big part of the strategies used by the team.

Formula E has the correct idea for qualifying, split the grid into groups based on performance during the last race (or standings in the previous season), and have the top guys run out first. This way, there’s more rubber on the track when the slower teams come out, giving them better chances of setting faster laps.