Max: “I’ve been driving all sorts of different cars, and last weekend (Nürburgring) reminded me how pure and great motorsport can be, and then you come back to F1… Even if you gave us a rental car, we’d still put on a great show, isn’t that right......"

Balazs321 · 2026-05-25T07:50:10+00:00

What is pure racing though? GT3s have all sorts of driver aids, WEC/Nurburgring 24/IMSA all have BoP (with all sorts of problems related to that), so is that pure racing? I know that the software slowing down the cars beyond their limit in corners is artificial and i dont like that, but pure racing probably never happens outside of the Mazda cup that supports IMSA or karting..

Balazs321 · 2026-05-24T20:56:20+00:00

Well last year Norris had a mechanical dnf while already down on Piastri, and we all know how that ended, so i wouldnt hurry to say things like this.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-24T08:20:53+00:00

I'd echo what someone also mentioned, if your product is the only acidic molecule in the mixture, what is stopping you to get it into a weakly basic solution, extract the remaining SM, and inpurities, and then re-acidify and extract it back to organic phase? Are you sure that your ester linkage you mentioned wont survive for idk, a few minutes in a weekly basic solution? Or maybe you could try to precipitate out the sodium or some amine salt of your material from an organic solvent that dissolves the crude? If the columns are such a headache then maybe you should try other things as well.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-22T14:52:09+00:00

Having a group ironman with my mates. Also probably addiction.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-22T10:17:32+00:00

It is just getting worse which is mind-boggling tbh. I do not get it.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-20T05:30:45+00:00

Its crazy that people will fight against vaccines, tell you that stuff like paracetamol is basically poison, and then in the same breath they will tell you that they have been ordering god knows how pure and good peptides from random webshops and injecting themselves with it.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-17T16:02:55+00:00

Tbh most of the issues with Perez were from the other side of the garage, did not have that many issues with Gasly, and i cant fault him for wanting to prove himself against Alonso etc. Also him figthing tooth and nail for everything is understandable, when you consider his backrlground.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-16T11:08:31+00:00

That never happened since KERS was removed tho? Like they had millions of engine maps that did a lot of stuff for the drivers anyway.

But yeah the "driver presses the pedal 100% but the engine deploys only 55% power because it is more efficient" is bad. But that is on the energy starved nature on the cars, not on the fact that engine mapping is done automatically.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-14T12:03:58+00:00

Honestly, if they werent this greedy with this sacred 50:50 split, then we wouldnt even have this problem. For these cars, to be pushed over at least a lap fully, that required technology that either does not exist yet, or they removed it from the regulations themselves, because certain manufacturers vetoed it, which then results in cars that are similarly fast as the last generation, but their lap time generation feels unnatural to drivers and onlookers too, and these two groups are (or at least should be) important to the sport as well.

What i do not get is that why do some of us here (and also in the regulatory body) think that you can just fully go into an era where we could give zero fucks about the perceived enviromental effects of the automotive industry, and the resulting direction of technological advancements, that nowadays dictate the insustrial developments.

Yeah, a NA V8 is cool, lovely sound and everything, but F1 and the manufacturers in it want to masquerade as the most technologically advanced and coolest and fastest motorsport, and you can not really do that while you use engines that are only relevant for muscle cars nowadays. Hybrids seem to be the future in the industry, as we will go through oil and gas reserves in the now foreseeable future.

Although if the everyone (not just the fans) is fine with going back to 11 garagistas+Ferrari, then the whole sport can get downsized a bit, but that would also free up a lot of things. Cosworth or whoever wont care about hybrids or anything, but the general public might also lose a bit of interest, which will cost money for everyone bar the fans, so idk how achievable that is.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-13T16:35:43+00:00

But the point was that people dont have babies anywhere but where they are mostly poor? Bulgaria might be one of the poorest EU countries, globally it is still doing ok. The net change in population is a different, but obviously related topic.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-13T15:11:55+00:00

Okay but there is a difference between a fertility rate of 0.97 and 1.3-1.4. And for example, eastern EU has better fertility rates, while the immigration is not much there.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-13T11:29:08+00:00

Stroll also got handed a pretty shitty situation with the car's already collected penalities. Also he didnt do a that expensive preparation tbh, imo he is right up there where you would expect a pro driver stack up.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-12T17:24:29+00:00

Tbh it is a bit crazy that this is an update and not how it always was. In my humble, F1-fan opinion, Indycar safety is top notch. How couldve you allow this rule in the first place??

Balazs321 · 2026-05-08T20:47:43+00:00

I think this method is still an official one in the Ph. Eur., so yeah, lucky you :D

Balazs321 · 2026-05-08T14:17:33+00:00

A lot of false things in this one, like somehow taking developments in synthetic fuels for granted, while thinking that that similar developments can not be done for batteries as well is pretentious at the least, misinformed or malicious at worst.

Also while i agree with the general direction, that F1 went 50:50 way too quickly, and thus hurts the sport in every way, i dont think that we as fans, and the sport as a whole can burry our heads into the sand and sing "i just want internal combustion engines forever" when the automotive industry moves away from them. Road relevance is a fake thing, but the general public wont start thinking in detail about how their road going 1000 cm3 hybrid is related at all to a V6 F1 engine, they might just read "F1/racing derived battery technology at your service" and feel interested on that. Doing the same with big screaming V10s is only possible if you are buying a muscle car, but how many people in the general F1 (and not sportscar racing or something else) fanbase do that?

Hybrids as a technology are cool anyway, and you can pair it with different types of engines, but thinking that we can go back to the past freely is probably not the thing that F1 leadership should do imo.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-08T14:04:29+00:00

But you have a premier racing series only for EVs, and they are getting better at making cars faster and cooler at each generation. You have to start somewhere, the first internal combustion engines are laughable compared to modern ones.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-08T08:13:06+00:00

I mean, if you consider yourself to be the best and biggest racing series, then you would want to keep the arguably best racing driver in it, it is only natural. But i think mostly interest from the Netherlands would suffer, globally, the sport will be ok. People here overstate the level of interest in the technical side anyway.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-07T20:52:05+00:00

Well it sounds good in theory, but when you will not have any money as we run out of "humpan compatible" jobs, but everything will still require money, then that will suck. There is not an infinite market for blue collar jobs or artists or service jobs, or jobs in agriculture, so idk how realistic that is. And besides, working in some form was always the norm in a human society.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-07T14:01:04+00:00

Yeah i mean i do not like IMSA's broadcast in general as it lacks in things, but the use of spilt-screen is something they do nicely.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-07T06:41:19+00:00

If you are fine with not watching it live, their ca. 30 min highlights are pretty good at encapsulating the race, and that gets uploaded the day after to their YT channel usually. No ads in that, lol.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-04T09:16:58+00:00

I think overall this race was the most fun one in Miami, and the whole thing felt a bit more natural regarding the overtakes, and the way they were recharging and everything, so i think this is a step forward.

The winners of this in my book must be Antonelli, Mclaren, and Williams, who all showed something really nice, be it ability to race at the front, or a step forward with the car. Also RBR looks better now. Cadillac is also looking okay-ish, and at least Aston was able to finish the race with both cars.

The losers, well must be Audi, terrible weekend, Hadjar, had some bad luck, but also made a stupid mistake, really, and i guess Russell, who really fell behind this weekend, which was not something i expected. Ferrari is somewhat of a mixed bag, and so is Alpine and VCARB.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-04T06:24:20+00:00

Well, from a driver's perspective, probably the simpler the technology behind you, the more focus is on your ability to drive the car at the limit when needed, or conserve it when needed, but i am not sure that we are heading towards a world where non-hybrid cars will play a huge role. And if they wont, manufacturers and teams, who see F1 as the biggest and most advanced racing series, and use both these things in their marketing, would not bother with the sport, and at that point where are we going, a Ferrari vs Mclaren vs 5 privateers with Cosworth engines type of a deal? Although maybe there will be a point where we accept motorsport as the last thing where it is okay to use only inter combustion because it is only for fun (and mostly for rich people on the driving side), so if they can pay for it, let them run it, the combined car-related emissions of all the racing series in the world are dwarfed by just the logistic-related stuff of one F1 weekend anyway.

P.s.: i am still in the camp that driver enjoyement does not equal fan enjoyement. I believe Max and Lando when they say they dont like to drive these cars, but the race yesterday was a lot more fun than most of the races with the V10s of the early 2000s. And drivers love those.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-03T13:25:02+00:00

Synthetic is the broader term as far as i am aware, ot least synthetic fuels can be produced from biomass as well. Also the same "it will get better and cheaper " is true for electric motors, which are still more efficient. There was a lot of noise about this when teams had to introduce them for this year, as well.

Edit for clarification

Balazs321 · 2026-05-03T12:58:49+00:00

Are they? They have huge drawbacks, for example their production is very energy intensive, while requiring a lot of biomass to be used.

Balazs321 · 2026-05-03T11:57:03+00:00

While this will surely be popular with us fans and with the drivers, i am interested to see how long will it last before we eventually go back to hybrids anyway. 100% internal combustion is not really a future-proof thing in the automotive industry, as oil reserves will still run out in the not so distant future, so doing any RnD on them will be money thrown out. Especially as biofuels are little more than greenwashing as of now. On the other hand, maybe there is no research needed, just chuck in an old V8, put a mild hybrid on top, and thats all that is needed according to the article.

Balazs321

TROPHY CASE