Inside The Box

            The Canadian Grand Prix has been a mainstay on the calendar for decades, and since 1978 the home of the race has been in Montreal. the Track was original called   Île Notre-Dame Circuit, but it was renamed to Circuit Giles Villeneuve in 1982 after Villeneuve's fatal crash at Spa. The track is one of the driver's favourites and it is most well known for the "Wall of Champions" which is a very close wall after the last chicane that leaves no room for error and has cost drivers some race wins and erased qualifying sessions, including Jacques Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill in Qualifying in the same year. It is a great track, but it wasn't the first track that F1 raced on in Canada.     Mosport (now known as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) is a racetrack located in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada. Jack Brabham won the first race here in 1967. One of the mopre famous races was Jackie Stewart winning in 1972 in a Monsoon that caused several drivers

     The greatest driver of all time in F1 is up for debate. Obviously. Lewis and Schumacher will get a lot of votes because they are tied for driver titles with 7 each and they are 1 and 2 when it comes to career wins. Ayrton Senna is many peoples pick for the GOAT, he won 3 titles before his untimely death in 1994, it's hard to say but a lot of people think he would be right up there in stats with Lewis and Michael if he had continued on for another decade of racing. Now, even though he is still relatively early in his career, Verstappen looks like he will be the next man up gunning for the greatest driver ever title. He will have a lot of people arguing against his case as well.        We all know the circumstances surrounding Max's first drivers title. There will be a segment of F1 fans that will be mad about that outcome for the rest of their life and will not acknowledge that he won in 2021. I'm sure Max couldn't care less about what they thing. Last years title w

       It hasn't taken long for McLaren long to shake things up after their brutal start to the 2023 season. On Thursday we learned that McLaren and technical director James Key are parting ways.     This doesn't seem like too much of a  surprise, being as we have seen massive technical issues with the technical development of the McLaren. There was a distinct downplaying of expectations during the care reveal and the first two races have confirmed how far behind the team has been on their car development. These problems had fallen squarely on James Key's shoulders and it was only a matter of time before there was a change within the team.     Not sure how much of an impact his will have of the team this season. I doubt anything they do will catapult them into contending for points every race, but maybe getting both cars to perform consistently throughout every weekend with no avoidable problems compounding the teams performance issues. I guess one good thing for whoever co

        The 2023 season is only 2 races long but it seems like there is a big talent gap on the grid. Most years there or 2-3 teams that are considered contenders, 3-4 teams competing in the midfield and 3-4 teams bringing up the rear. The contenders are the teams that will scoop up most of the top 8 positions each race, the midfield are teams that will fight for those two remaining point positions and the bottom tier teams are lucky to get points for the entire season. With the early sample size we have seen in Bahrain, it looks like the competitive balance has shifted.     Red Bull is in a league buy themselves. There isn't another team that you can put in the same category as them and say they have a realistic shot at the constructors or driver  championship. I would lump Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari in the same tier, but teams 2-4 aren't usually considered the mid field.     McLaren is an utter disappointment this year, but there are a few other teams this year I don&

    F1 cars are amazing machines that look like beautiful rockets, and a great livery will enhance that even more. There has been some great, and not so great, liveries throughout the years. It was hard to narroe it down to just 10 but here is my list for the Top 10 FF1 liveries of all time. 10. Williams FW19       I had to have this one on the list because of Jacques Villeneuve. I was 9 when he won the drivers title in 1997 and that Rothman's livery on the Williams is one of my earliest memories. Sure, the FW18 the previous year was more dominate with Damon Hill at thew hell, but the FW19 is part of the reason why I am such an F1 fan. 9. Brabham BT52      I have always loved the look of this car. I was never really a fan of the heavy downforce, boxy looking F! cars. This car was slick and angular and the beautiful blue and white Parmalat livery is a car that pops into my head when I think of a great livery and I never even watched it race. This was the car that Nelson Piquet drove

             It was a weird ending to the Saudi Arabia GP. While Verstappen, Sergio and Alonso were dousing themselves with champagne, George Russell was on his way to take the third place trophy that he was just recently notified was his.     Alonso had a 5 second grid penalty that we all thought was successfully served during his first pitstop. Apparently, that was not the case. The back jack has touching the car before they were allowed to work on the car. No advantage was gained but as per the letter of the rules, this was in violation of the rule of "working on the car". It was around the last lap when the broadcast said that Alonso could be hit with another penalty because of these actions.     It turns out that the pit crew was in the wrong and they were hit with a 10 second penalty which dropped Alonso off the podium. Tough but fair, Russel takes the last spot on the podium, we'll see you in two weeks in Australia.     Well, we all thought that was the end, but ap

     It seems like the constructors championship has already been wrapped up. I know there have only been 2 races but with this small sample size it looks like Red Bull may have this thing in the bag by the summer break. That's not to say there won't be some entertaining battles in the rest of the top teams. Alonso has turned into Aston Martin into a threat to win races if the Red Bulls happen to have an off night. Mercedes and Ferrari seem like they will be chasing each other on track all year, it will be a very close margin between 2nd and 3rd in the Constructors. It looks like Alpine will be top of the mid field, everything would have to break their way and have a few drivers retire from a race for them to sniff the podium but they have an exciting drivers duo with Gasly and Ocon, both race winners. Other than Alpine, it is going to be tough fo any other mid field team to score points this year. I really want Sargeant to get some points with Willliams but it will take a perf

          Don't get me wrong, just making it to F1 means you an amazing driver. However, there are so many extremely talented drivers that won't even get a whiff of being able to drive in F1. With that being said, there are clearly different levels of greatness in the small subset of athletes that get to call themselves an F1 racecar driver.     There are a lot of stats in other sports, especially in North American sports, that can help determine how good a player is. In the NBA, the main definer of greatness is Rings, how many championships did you win? But there are gall of famers, all time greats (Barkley, Dominique, Nash), who do not have a ring. For those players that don't have a handful of rings there are a number of stats you can point to to determine how good they are. Points, Rebounds, Assist, Field Goal percentage, 3 point percentage, blocks, steals, usage rate, PER..etc.      With F1, there aren't too many things you can point to, mainly Driver Championships

Jeddah doesn't have a long history but the 2 races that we have seen have both been extremely entertaining. There was the insanity of Hamilton/Verstappen battling each other in 2021 with the drivers championship on the line, and there was a great Verstappen/ Leclerc fight for the win last season with Max taking it. A qualifying session yesterday that knocked Verstappen to 15 and a grid penalty landing Leclerc in P12 to start the race. The stage was set for a fantastic Saudi Arabian GP Alonso got of to a great start, taking 1st place by the first turn, unfortunately, he got a 5 second penalty for improper starting position, he was too far to the left in his grid slot. Perez rebounded from his slow start and took back first place from Alonso on lap 4. Alonso had another great race and finished with his 100th Podium taking home 3rd. Piastri made contact with Gasly at the start and needed to pit at the end of the first lap to change his front wing. Lance Stroll caused a yellow flag on

          I love F1 night races, seeing the sparks fly under the lights is beautiful. This is the 3rd time F1 has raced at this track in Jeddah and the previous 2 times have been eventful and entertaining. I like this track, it's a fast street circuit that allows for overtakes, what else can you ask for.  Q1       Q1 was ugly for a few drivers. De Vries and Alonso both spun out on their first attempt at a time. Alonso was able to get a lap together to get into Q2 but De Vries was knocked out. Logan Sargeant caused a brief yellow flag after losing a time for exceeding track limits. Logan ultimately stopped on track with his last attempt for a time and was knocked out of qualifying. Norris failed to get out of Q1 after hitting the wall on turn 27 and couldn't get back out on track to get another lap in. Piastri made it out of Q1 for the first time in his young rookie season after missing in Bahrain.  Q2      The biggest story of Q2 was Verstappen slowing down on track with an app

                  (Sky Sports) I have been a McLaren fan since the Mika days in the 90s. It has been a while since their last driver championship, Hamilton in 2008, but I don't need to have a Mercedes style dominance every year for me to enjoy watching one of my favourite teams. That being said, it has been REALLY hard being a McLaren fan for the better part of a decade, and the past 2 years have been unimaginable.    Danny Ric is smiling while he collects $18 million to NOT drive McLaren's boat. It has been impossible to see what they have in Piastri because reliability issues in testing and Bahrain has left use seeing very little of what the rookie can do.    Lando Norris performed the best he could with the disappointing car he was given last year, and we all saw the disastrous 6 stop race in the Bahrain premiere. But with all the problems we've seen, Norris hasn't been as demonstrative towards McLaren in the media that I believe a lot of other drivers would be. Who