First Qualy down, what are we thinking??

[Philbe]

I'm of 2 minds with the current cars. They're pretty fast and they look cool with really advanced tech..
                         BUT...
Does the really advanced tech take away from the excitement that should be F1.
I don't know.
The synthetic fuel thing is something I can get behind...BUT...the price for the fuel is approximately $640–$1,100 per gallon. Not good.
The battery tech is obviously the future that the overlords are requiring us to use  BUT...as we've seen in qualy it doesn't work in a race environment. By that I mean it is causing the drivers to not drive the cars to their max but the the cars needs. And what happens in a crash, we've all seen runaway battery fires. Not good.
I'm looking forward to the race and the rest of the season...go Audi..go Arvin and of course my boy, Carlos.

[Jericoke]

Usually in a revision of the formula the first few races are chaotic.  For me, the number of incidents was lower than I expected.

Also, they can now do two 'hot' laps in a row!  Such a big change that the Sky announcers had no idea Colapinto was on a fast lap at the end of Q1 and wrote him off, even though he got through.

The cost of fuel is mostly a matter of scale.  If it really is good, it'll become available, if it's not, then hopefully they ditch the experiment.

As for the batteries, yes, there's danger, but if you remove the battery and replace it with fuel, that's plenty dangerous too.  I can't speak to which is 'more' dangerous.

I am impressed with Audi, and I thought we'd see a little more from Cadillac, but cant really be disappointed the new team is performing like a new team.  (Besides, I'm a Blue Oval girl, so if GM faceplants... oh no...  ) 

[John S]

Guess the biggest surprise for me is that Merc have been sandbagging us fans, well me anyway
Couldn't really see it until FP3 although most pundits were giving them as favorites from first Bahrain test. 

I find the unpredicability of the re-gen the most impactful thing of build up to the main race, some shunts can be directly attributed to mishaps from integration of normal & re-gen braking.
Also plenty of weird stoppages from system failures causing cars to randomly come to a halt, some cars from teams affected seem to get going again yet team mates remain stuck causing red flags - is it similar problems, or incidents just look the same to us?

Apart from certain areas of the track, before turn 6 especially, the cars appear to be as on the limit as usual and the visual impact so far of super clipping is not too intrusive. This may all change in race of course.

Wonder how many cars will actually finish the race, Ant Davidson on Sky thinks half the field may succumb to fatigue of one sort or another.

Lastly I can't wait to see how the Ferraris get off the line. will a flying start from them negate the front row won by Merc? 

[Philbe]

Yeah John, I agree. While the cars during testing seemed to be very reliable there is some odd ctrl alt delete moments that are concerning. Who was it that was rolling on the racing line and Lewis was on a flyer. The closing speed from the in-car camera was wild.
I hope Cadillac finishes, probably last but a finish is a win for them. Williams has no power and Lance might not start, so we will see.

[Andy B]

One of the reasons they changes the engines was because they were so complicated and expensive now we have these which are more complicated and expensive but also us the fans have no idea what's going on!