I was hoping he'd partner Kimi in the Alfa. I'm still hoping that happens pretty soon.

It’s entirely possible that Checo preferred to take a year off rather than racing for Haas. It's not a good team.

Would Checo really want to race for such an awful team though?

It’s all connected!

The other odd thing about that image? The car is clearly a restomod (in the main image, the wheels are larger and the tyres lower in profile than anyone available at the time, they don’t match the ones on the car in the action shot, and I doubt they had a picture of the engine bay on any of the posters).

He must not like that jacket (or his hand) the way he's resting that suppressor on his sleeve/holding it.

He cut across Kvyat, as far as I could see, which is consistent with reports about the crash:

All good points (apart from your parenthetical about potential energy). Allowing the rest of the car to continue down the road reduced the stresses on the survival cell considerably.

The removable shoulder piece is part of the head protection system - it’s a piece of impact-absorbing foam that acts in concert with the helmet to minimise head acceleration and neck rotation in side and rear impacts (the HANS device only works for frontal impacts). It’s difficult to redesign it to be less obtrusive,…

They are, and I'm not a fan. I like the balloon tyres in F1. The 18s look odd.

The front is a very clear callback to the F1:

They’re appealing in places you could buy them too (Japan and Australia, for example). A lot of it is to do with their dominance on track:

You can get a shitty truck for a lot less than $50K though, and that achieves the same thing...

At least the Italians are consistent:

Wheels too big. 1/10 would not drive.

Walking between the grandstands at the end of the front straight at Phillip Island for the first time as a MotoGP bike (I think it may have been ridden by Cal Crutchlow) ripped past at 340 km/h. The bikes sound harsher than an F1 car (especially now - I’ve only seen a V8 F1 car live, but the bikes seemed harsher even…

When Vandoorne first started in F1 he was definitely considered a future star - he rose quickly through the junior ranks (he won his first FR3.5 and GP2 races, in his rookie GP2 season he was second to a four-year veteran of the category in Jolyon Palmer, before winning the championship in his second season). He then…

Both Fred and Kimi have handily beaten their younger teammates in their most recent seasons. I expect that to continue next season.

Even if they were just competing for their own trollish glee, I'd be perfectly happy for them to continue doing so. If the kids can't outcompete them, too bad.