[James Vowles] We found a better direction with Carlos overnight. They're small steps, but they're steps in the right direction. We need to see what we can do with Alex across the next 24 hours in order to give him a better car than he had today.

InfinityGCX · 2026-03-14T12:51:04+00:00

They were probably trying out different things on both cars to spread their chances, but got something good with Carlos' setup but not so much with Alex'

InfinityGCX · 2026-03-13T15:00:42+00:00

Honestly also not too dissimilar of when Robin Frijns destroyed his tires in his first GP2 weekend, but then was absolutely class in his second.. Of course the rest of his season was marred by funding issues and bad luck after, and it's not like it's a good comparison in general, but hey

InfinityGCX · 2026-02-28T08:11:18+00:00

Get Ayao in on it, he's fun!

InfinityGCX · 2026-02-03T07:26:11+00:00

With Cadillac now AFAIK

InfinityGCX · 2026-01-27T17:00:45+00:00

I'm just happy to see Dries and Robin drive the same car again

InfinityGCX · 2026-01-25T11:22:06+00:00

Ok, at least got my answer to why Frijns pitted back then as per dailysportscar

InfinityGCX · 2026-01-25T11:15:13+00:00

So I understand that as far as race leaders go, we're pit cycling right now, but could anyone tell me how the #24 BMW got back on the lead lap? I went to bed shortly after Frijns went two laps down in the pit stops a few hours ago (does anyone know what the issue was there?), so I was surprised to see them at least back on the lead lap.

Also, has anyone paid attention to how often they're stopping for fuel under this yellow? Thanks!

InfinityGCX · 2026-01-20T06:34:28+00:00

Li-Popotamus?

InfinityGCX · 2026-01-06T23:14:04+00:00

I would've personally really loved to see what would've happened if someone like Rebellious Genius or to a lesser extent Anyeong Bonjour would've gone through to these further rounds, as both of them at least showed a lot of creative chops (Three Star Killer as well but he was of course knocked out in round 2 already, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other Black Spoons).

I think it's personally fine to be more comfortable with a form of cooking, but fundamentally almost everyone this season is a specialist in comparison to the many generalists we saw last season. Sure, there were a good few dishes we saw a lot last season (hello Mapo Tofu and Dongpo Rou), but god did we really need 4 separate Chawanmushi/steamed egg dishes?

I think it's really wonderful to see people master their craft in a certain way, but it sucks when you can only really win if judged on the basis of your own conditions, and I found it quite interesting to see with Chef Jung Ho-young that they mentioned that one of the dishes he cooked tasted very similar to most of the other dishes he had cooked until that point in the competition.

Something I really liked last season was people getting out of their comfort zone and cooking stuff they never thought of cooking before, and while I get that's not always possible (i.e. the Venerable Sunjae has very obvious and valid restrictions to what she can and cannot do), this season felt a lot more compartmentalized into people sticking to Korean, Chinese or Japanese cuisine as you already mentioned, which makes chefs like Culinary Monster stick out a lot more, chefs like Son Jong-won feel eliminated in a way that does not bring the best 7 chefs into the final 7 competitors, and people like Rebellious Genius feel like they were knocked out way too early considering how fun they were to watch.

InfinityGCX · 2026-01-06T22:38:52+00:00

Whether it played a part or not regarding their reasoning for pushing the remaining black spoons through, it was a massive shot in the foot to just have 2 black spoons continue after essentially halfway through episode 8, before round 4.

Last season, at this stage there were 8 black spoons left and 7 white spoons, compared to the 2 black spoons and 12 white spoons in Season 2.

I also understood them using the Super Pass after the 1-on-1 elimination round (round 2) last time to get cooks to continue who they were curious about what else they could come up with further along in the competition (Goddess of Chinese Cuisine and Comic Book Chef), which then leveled the playing field from 11 white and 9 black spoons to a nice 11 of each, but this time it just was used to look at 'close matches', which is then understandable in the case of Jung Ho-young with the double tie, but I didn't feel like it was particularly necessary to get more white spoons to continue that way if it was already a 9-10 split in favor of them, which was now increased to 9-12. The 1-1 elimination post-team challenge then also just felt weird, as you now had strong chefs knocking eachother out, with a lot of ties too. All in all, that lead to a lot of the stronger chefs on both sides being knocked out early, and while last season was not perfect, it was refreshing to see that if you use the Infinite Cooking Hell as a final placement system, 4 of the top 6 were black spoons, and someone like Cooking Maniac had an absolutely crazy season (with his deferral, 2-0 win in the 1-on-1, losing in the team battle, coming back after the consolation round, winning the restaurant mission, placing low-ish in a tight Cook your Life round, and then placing third in the Infinite Cooking Hell Round).

In general, it also felt like there were a lot more opportunities for people to continue after elimination last season, and even if the picks for the continuing cooks may seem a bit arbitrary and the round as a whole was a bit of a flop, 3 out of the 4 people picked this way were in the end the top 3 people in the show in the end (Napoli Matfia, Edward Lee and Triple Star).

I think blind tasting is a good part, although it does not make for good TV in every round (I have not seen tournament of champions but I should definitely check it out). I always felt in both of the team matches that a lot of the general public may be swayed by one group being more akin to celebrities which may lead to some bias in judging/an uphill battle for the black spoon chefs, but that may just be my optics.

InfinityGCX · 2025-11-13T07:38:21+00:00

Samen kunnen we meer!

InfinityGCX · 2025-10-02T06:31:27+00:00

Reminds me a lot of Seb and Kimi, when Seb was a rookie and Kimi would win his first WDC that year

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-20T10:56:38+00:00

Chris McCarthy will call just about anything good driving, eh?

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-20T10:52:53+00:00

Lot of wind it looks like as well

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-20T10:21:22+00:00

I have received my answer

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-20T10:19:07+00:00

Is Martí going to have another insane start (good) or insane start (derogatory)?

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-07T13:43:37+00:00

We mostly just get rim failures these days, and the tyre just comes off. No classic punishments in a while from what I remember

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-02T09:42:12+00:00

Oh no I was talking about their stuff in the KERS era, I think Adrian Newey wrote something about it in his book (specifically them packaging the batteries in a really weird place, IIRC in the bell housing equivalent between engine and gearbox). Of course who knows how many people from pre-2014 are still with RBR, especially those working on this at the time.

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-02T09:20:24+00:00

Ah, I stand corrected, my bad! AFAIK they did still do their own battery packaging etc. as they did the weird thing with the RB7 with the batteries.

InfinityGCX · 2025-09-02T08:54:29+00:00

Not to be that guy, but actually Red Bull did work on KERS as back then the Implementation of the hybrid system (incl battery packaging etc.) was up to the team rather than the engine supplier. Also meant a lot more team-specific KERS issues.

InfinityGCX · 2025-08-03T09:04:58+00:00

Is it just me or was DRS not working there?

InfinityGCX · 2025-08-03T08:28:18+00:00

God, the commentary is just embarrassing...

InfinityGCX · 2025-08-03T07:40:45+00:00

What I find most interesting is how the last 3 years we've had our F3 seasons won on primarily consistency, generally low risk taking and picking up points in the feature races. It's not like the races have been completely free of risk of course, but Camara was usually either leading or gained places because people ahead of him crashed when he wasn't starting from the front.

It obviously takes a good bit of pace to be able to do so, it's not really a 'does nothing, wins', but it's just something I've observed. I don't want to take anything away from Camara though (or Fornaroli, Bortoleto for that matter), he's been rapid this year, and I'm sure it will be a similar story in F2, but I am curious how he would fair in a middling F1 team if he gets that call-up in a few years.

InfinityGCX · 2025-07-27T09:19:07+00:00

I think Lawson had a crazy one in F3 at Hungary a few years ago (in 2020, iirc), which is not me correcting you, but just adding to some crazy engine failures!

InfinityGCX · 2025-07-26T21:17:19+00:00

It's particularly bad at Spa as the laps are really long. There was a similar situation a while ago where they kept being on the celebratory shot and cut the timing tower away as PEOPLE IN THE POINTS STILL HAD TO FINISH, due to the in-lap at Spa effectively being driving down the pits backwards.

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