Bitesized: Flames, Unicorns and Tears

Hello Everybody and welcome to another Bitesized!

Firstly I’d like to say that SMB is 1 Year Old today! Thank you to everybody who has read, liked, commented and subscribed to my blog over the last year. You guys are awesome!

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So much happened last weekend, with F1, F2, SuperGT, Indycar, Blancpain in action as well as the WEC Prologue at Paul Ricard. I can’t possibly talk about it all in length in one post, so here are the highlights!

F1: Mercedes started the weekend on the back foot, as Hamilton got a grid penalty to replace a gearbox and Ferrari locked out the front row in qualifying meant they had to make it up with strategy. They came pretty close, and capitalized on Ferrari’s gruesome pit stop that forced the retirement of Kimi’s car and a hospitalized crew member, Mercedes ended up with a 2-3. Vettel managed to just stay ahead of Bottas at the line to take his second straight victory. Also Gasly in the Toro Rosso HONDA finished in 4th…overall…on merit! Way to go Honda!

F2: First time mentioning F2 on this blog, but it was seriously awesome (I’d seriously recommend finding the race streams and watching both). A new car unveiled with a V6 Turbo that spits flames like it’s at a circus show, and sounds INCREDIBLE to boot. F1, take note.

SuperGT: The 2018 Opener at Okayama was exciting as it always is. Honda prevailed over the Lexus’ to take a 1-2, with Jenson Button’s #100 Raybrig NSX taking P2 on his full-time debut in the series. Jenson himself was a solid “meh”, but Naoki Yamamoto cruised to the middle step and nearly took the overall win after the winning Kehin NSX did the best Unicorn impression I’ve ever seen. It picked up some carbon fibre bodywork late in the race and slowed down the pace a bit (see below picture). GT300 was another awesome race as there was a 4-car battle between a Nissan GTR GT3, Audi R8 GT3, Toyota Prius JAFGT300 (you read that right) and a Mother-Chassis Toyota 86. It ended up being the 86’s victory in one of the best GT300 races I’ve ever watched.

WEC Prolgue: LMP1’s in hybrid and non-hybrid form took to the track for the first time this year and we had some interesting developments. Toyota decided not to run in it’s Equivalence of Technology (read BOP) configuration, opting to stress test their new cooling systems and performing a myriad of potential troubleshooting situations that could happen during a race. This included driving back to the pits on 3 wheels…on purpose…Either way, for Toyota’s sake, let’s hope they get their stuff together come Le Mans. We’ll have to wait until May to see what the true race pace of these cars together are, as Toyota was 5s faster at the Prologue.

PWC: As I mentioned in my last blog post, PWC is hurting in their GT category. With 13 cars slated for Long Beach this coming weekend, the organizers decided they needed to do something for the show (where they will be competing with IMSA at the track at the same weekend). What I mean by “doing something”, was to invite 6 GTS cars to run along side the GT cars to fluff up the field. Yup. This is happening now. The GTS cars are there for show, not even competing for points. LAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEE.

Well that’s it for me for now. I will be debuting a brand new segment later in the week, and I hope you enjoy it!

Once again, thank you for reading this post and my blog over the last year. If you are new here and you like what you see. Please support me by liking, commenting, subscribing to my blog, and sharing my posts with others!