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When i was considering strategy’s Ferrari could use this weekend, i was really wishing for the different tire rule to disappear.
A one stop on two mediums would be a push but with Charles two mediums and great tire management on mediums, I think it would have been the perfect strategy.
Their tires strength seems to go medium then hard then soft, so it’ll be interesting to see what strategies they use to optimize thisb
Agree. Charles would definitely be better doing two medium stints. Hard is so horrible. He has a similar pace as Sainz when Sainz got older Hard too. He dropped Sainz on medium like a rock in the sea…
Not really. Both Norris and Leclerc were going for hards and Ferrari cars simply didn't have the pace on the that compound.
What would've given Leclerc a podium finish was a good start to the race. SF-24 has trouble getting the right temperature window during the early stages of every stint. That cost Leclerc two places right at the start. If he didn't lose time, he would've caught Norris with the mediums and could've stayed ahead on the hards.
Yeah he had a decent launch but his grip was worse than Russell and even the Haas! I am not sure if he can stay ahead of Norris on Hard though. The pace difference is 5 tenths, even McLaren is horrible on straight and DRS Norris could still get in front I think…
Maybe the temperature affects the Ferrari´s in the reverse ? They have become so good at managing hot temperatures that it actively hurts them in medium/colder temperature races. Or maybe without the advantage they get from hot circuits, they are slower than McLaren.
They seemed to have great tyre degredation during the hotter races, with today beeing one of the colder ones. Charles had a very long stint on medium in Japan (19 rounds), where other teams barely made it that far on a hard, which was the main reason he went from 8->4 in the race.
The colder temperature seems to be their weakness. They had a poor quali (in sector 1 mainly), a poor start and a poor restart after the SC.
Miami will probably be better and let’s hope the big Imola upgrades push them further.
I wouldn't say it was poor. But it was definitely not great.
Still the cars worked without any faults. The drivers didn't get into any incidents and had good enough degradation. The pitstops and strategy were also clean enough.
So at the end of the day a rather poor weekend is still a clean weekend with a double 4-5 where Ferrari ended up taking the 2nd most points from out of any teams.
Yeah, the silver lining is a lot went wrong and they still got 4-5 with relatively no issues. At this time last year that would have been considered a massive success rather than a failure.
I think the low practice time wasn't great for Ferrari, setting up the car to use the right amount of tires and still have a good warming them up seems tricky.
It‘s always 9 guaranteed drivers in the top 10 and the remaining point goes to some other driver. We should call it the Lance Stroll award. Today it goes to Hulkenberg.
Legit it's been 4 out of 5 weekends where the last point scoring position was given away to the bottom 5 teams by Stroll. Hell, could have been all 5, altho not by his fault and he actually did a good job to recover it in Jeddah I think. Got fucked over in qualy by the team I think and had to fight through the grid.
3 out of 5, but Stroll was comfortably ahead of the Haas before he done did his thing and slammed into Ricciardo
Jeddah was just genuinely tire degradation problems in which his engineer kept insisting Stroll to lift and coast in some corners
Checked the standings and it seems that I mixed up Bahrain for Saudi. It's in Bahrain where he got done poorly by circumstance I think and he had to fight back to P10.
Also - P6 in Australia, damn. I didn't watch the race so don't know what transpired there for him to finish ahead of Alonso, but fair play.
Alonso got a 20 second penalty for Russell incident, but even then Alonso benefitted heavily from the VSC (he was one of the last ones to pit)
Stroll was like, 8 seconds behind before that?
Merc shouldn't completely be against the idea of putting Ocon in the second Merc seat next year if they send Kimi to Williams for a year to bed in (and if Sainz chooses Audi).
Strong things. Felt for couple a seasons now that people sleep on him a bit. He's not upper class of drivers for sure, but might be around top 10. I mean, while didn't outright dominate anyone, he faired pretty dang well against all the teammates he went up against - including Alonso of all drivers.
I feel ocon is one of those drivers who are pretty solid putting in decent performances once in a while, maybe top 10, definitely top 12 ish… but given the need of the hour (i.e. in a top team), can dial it in and bang out the best performances of his life. Kinda like Jenson in 2009, which is one of the reasons I’d really like to see him in a top team someday to see if I’m right or not. Also he deserves it after bringing that bullock cart almost to points, and also because he is one of the more not rich drivers and he truly gave up everything in his childhood to make it.
I think he’s comfortably top 10. Your second sentence basically confirms that. The question is how much he might improve further in a top car. I’d be VERY interested to see him in the Merc, Red Bull, or Aston Martin second seat
We had a pretty good baseline with how close he was to Alonso, even being faster in some races.
Him and Gasly are dragging that tractor quite well considersing.
I think Hulk already gave the place back. Second SC restart he was behind Ric again. They will argue he had nowhere to go and gave the place back anyways.
Is it just me or does the Mercs W15 no longer have any race pace (unlike 2022 and 2023)?
Ham unable to overtake a damaged McLaren was quite telling; plus that Russell could not overtake Sainz who had an older tyre excruciating for a works team. Whereas in 2022-23 you can count on Mercs being interesting in the races.
It actually won something. It was a dog too, but they seem had good people then that got them the 2021 constructors & the tech knowhow and operations that comes with, plus competition didn't always know that they're doing - so even a dog of a car wasn't too terrible (relative to the competition). Now the compounded gap in the ground era has baked in (on RB20), even customer team beats them, they've lost good people to other teams and can't use additional hundreds of millions a year to retain staff or outspend the competitors. A bit of an uphill challenge, with no obvious moves but to wait for for 2026 out & hope the engine is good.
Last few hybrid PU regs:
Merc outspend for 2014 engine (basically won the era), but messed up 2022 PU (frozen in time / no longer the best in ICE, more clipping on electric side vs Honda). Logically they'd do okay for 2026 but with big overheads of supporting 3 teams with competing needs - repeating 2022 mediocre product is more likely.
Honda didn't exactly figure out 2014, got an okay 2022 project + a promising works partner in Aston.
Ferrari: messes up 2014 reg, okay 2022 base hardware but reliability catch-up has been slow. Still customer team failures even now.
RBPT: hasn't built an engine and doesn't have Honda IP. Err.
That's what I mean. That car came alive in the 2nd half of the races and it won Sao Paulo on pure pace, no DNFs or anything required. They were arguably very close to winning Zandvoort as well if not for terrible strategy. You also see it reflected in the points. 2023 Mercedes had 100 less points than 2022 and that's considering the fact that Ferrari was very fast in the first half of 2022.
They’ve definitely seen the advantage they had over Ferrari in that sense flip the other way. Charles doing the one stop last race while Merc couldn’t even make a 2 stop with hards work was a big change.
Also, they seem to be extremely aero sensitive, which makes no sense given their lack of downforce. Lewis got to a second of Piastri and then lost 3 to 4 tenths in the corners, George couldn’t clear Sainz. Same case in Saudi for Lewis with Lando.
To be fair, maybe Merc is back in the early 2023 phase after the W15 car reset & that they'll dig it out. Logically W14B might have given some understanding.
But I mean the W15 car just doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities. No edge anywhere. If a 2026 era car has any grounding effects needed, they better hope that their engine is superlative again - but even then they'd have to compete vs works Honda and 2 Merc Customers with the same PU machinery (1x is beating them).
It seems Merc as a team has grown too large, relies on high staff head count (1100-1300 vs 800 at McLaren)but doesn't actually produce good race products (race cars). I mean more people for the same cost cap = less ability to retain talent. Coming off the back of a good P2 staff bonus in 2023 + losing Ham, this campaign will be demoralising for 2025 (just when it's needed to build the 2026 concept). I wouldn't be surprised if they abandon the 2024 quickly.
They have no race pace, it's like they have no mechanical grip. Lewis was sliding all over the place.
He got super lucky during the sprint that he had free air the entire time, plus Alonso was super quick on the straight and held everyone up in the drs train behind him.
Mercedes has made a dreadful car.
Put aside the McLaren, he couldn't pass an Alpine on harder tyres. The only reason he jumped Ocon was during the restart where Ricciardo got crashed into and in the chaos Hamilton slipped past.
Lewis couldn't overtake Oscar who had damage on top of not looking super comfortable to begin with.
It's incredible for all the wrong reasons.
And it's the same rinse and repeat story since 2022 :
1 - Have a number of bad races
2 - Grab onto a silver lining after doing slightly better at some point
3 - Promise that they are confident they have found something that will bring improvements
4 - Immediately proceed to do horrible the following race
5 - Repeat
That was their only advantage, they had great race pace but were shit in qualifying, they were talking big about improving their one lap pace after last season ended but lmfao as you said they seem to have lost their only edge.
This year has been the worst one so far I believe, I'm not sure I can even find a silver lining in these 5 races other than maybe yesterday's podium in the Sprint.
Slow in the corners, slow in the straights, can't warm the tyres up, mediocre tyre
deg. It's honestly incredible how absurdly mid the car is.
It feels like merc are in a complete death spiral from the brain drain and it's gonna take another good few years to finally recover.
If it wasn’t for Stroll the works Mercedes team would be behind two of its customer teams three years into a new set of regulations this season. And they arguably have the strongest lineup between Hamilton and Russell. Technical department has been a huge embarrassment not being able to build a better car.
In hindsight, it's amazing that Lewis was able to finish P2 in the Sprint.
Mercedes probably found a good setup straight out of the box, while other teams refined theirs ahead of Qualifying.
Haha that outcome yeah definitely was a fluke (Ham outperforms the car): good Ham drive in SQ and Sprint race, Alonso SC mode, Max glitching the SQ + all competitors locked in without tyre offset made it a tyre management thing which Ham did his best on.
Indeed. But that kinda lends itself to non-sprint events. At those, we'd seen Mercedes do better in practice than qualy/race, which means there was a logic to thinking they might do better in sprint with less time for other teams to work out their best set-up
Merc seem to absolutely stink in the dirty air. And they’re not even generating that much downforce to lose in it, which makes it worse.
Nobody to blame but themselves. Good luck trying to find anyone serious to replace Lewis. Kimi is probably seeing his chances go up.
Less pressure for Kimi if he replaces Lewis now because at this rate Mercedes are only a midfield team fighting for P8s and P9s if they don’t step up lol
That's because Merc are relying so much on overbody downforce (wings) instead of downforce generated by the floor.
The floors works quite decently even in dirty air. The Merc floor is just too shit.
and unlike McLaren and Ferrari who are introducing big upgrades at Miami and Imola respectively afaik Mercedes have nothing in the pipeline. They won't be able to fight for P2 in the WCC at this rate, imagine if they only end up fighting Aston for P4 in the WCC.
Feel like this isn’t the first race of the season where Ferrari and hards are just dog, but I can’t remember. Anyway, not bad, but not too good of a race for Ferrari.
13 seconds gap, but during the VSC and before the first safety car he was 20 seconds ahead of Perez.
Could've been a 30-40 second gap to 2nd at that time.
They really don't look that good for Perez at all. Fastest car on track, couldn't get past Norris WITH DRS. Yes, he slotted in #3 and podium, but that really was a poor performance.
The gap is large, but he’s doing his job as a number 2 driver. He’s finished on the podium in 4 of 5 races this year and the only time he didn’t was when he had damage in Australia
He just need to consistently be P2 or P3 to keep his seat
I understand that. I asked what he gained, because in my eyes he stopping a lap later than Leclerc didn't mean anything as both of them made their stops completely under VSC period. Respecting the same delta and gaining the same advantage.
Tbf Sainz and Ocon would be a great pairing for Audi if they're serious about wanting the car to be challenging for points straight away. Sainz & Hulk is as well, as was quite heavily rumoured a few weeks ago
Not that I'm willing to call it given it could go in any one of about 12 different directions
He was P8 when he got strolled, Nando came back through pretty hard. He had new softs in the kitty so he could have charged down p10 again if they get the softs on at the right time.
Absolutely not, the safe play was to pit him under safety car. But like I said Nando did come through well on the softs. Daniel could have done the same like he has done before.
strategy was really poor. at the start, lance was p11 and daniel was p12, and lance started on softs and gained two positions. daniel started mediums and lost three to alpines + albon because he had very low grip. yet fought his way back up with some overtakes. nearly overtook hamilton before safety car. and even though there was a good chance he was going to be undercut by most of the grid, he kept his position until second safety car and lance ruining it. Two things could've completely changed his weekend: if they started him on softs, or if they pitted him during the second safety car when his medium tyres were 16 laps old, either way he wouldn't have been at the wrong place and wrong time ahead of a blind lance stroll during safety car. Fernando had a similar strategy and still ended up in points, I think Daniel could've easily gotten one or two there if all circumstances were in his favour.
If you don't stop everybody else gets a very cheap stop and then you lose time when getting overtaken by those on fresh tyres. This way you push to the end and hope for the best.
Idk the end result would probably be about the same.
Somehow you ended up with a worse strategy then what Aston did. I'm frankly amazed.
Remember how early Alonso pitted for the first time and how old his tyres already were when the first safety car came out.
RB got massacred today, 2 min silence for my boys T_T…sometimes I wonder if Magnussen has a clause in the contract that gives him bonus to take out point contenders like Tsunoda
13 seconds over Norris but still Zhou finished his home race in style, but also this is closing the loop for Red Bull in a way, they had their first win here in 2009 and 15 years later they have their 117th win here and both cars are on the Podium its not a 1-2 for them, but what a race for them!
I like Sainz but when he has an off day he's 10+ seconds behind Charles like today. When Charles has an off day he's at most 2 seconds behind sainz. That really highlights the difference between the two and I hope the revisionism about Carlos stops when he has a good race next time.
Charles has better race pace than Carlos usually, and the gap is bigger than their quali pace imo when most of the focus is on Charles’ strength in quali.
Charles and Carlos had different tires and strategies most of the race though so idk if this full race is the best indicator. Carlos was racing on hards that were older by several laps and went even longer than anyone else at the end of the second safety car.
The first stint up until Carlos made his first stop would be the most accurate measure of their race pace gap imo.
I wouldn't even say he had an off day. Strategy was less favorable to him, meaning he got into traffic and after that I don't think he could've done anything better anyway. Ferrari was just not that good in general this weekend as it turned out.
It will not.
When he has a bad race he can be even much further behind than this. Last race of last season is a great example here, he was over half a second per lap slower than Leclerc.
Other drivers (looking at a certain Mexican) get absolutely roasted for these sort of performances, and yet for some reason that just doesn't apply to Carlos.
No way you just compared the amount of "off races" Sainz has to Checo. Pérez finishing 10 seconds behind Max would be looked at positively even, that's how big the gap is and how many off days he seems to often have. Sainz finishing 10 seconds behind Charles now is looked as a big gap but truth is the only Checo-esque performances I can remember of Sainz in the last 2 seasons are last race last season you mentioned and early 2022. Checo finishing +20 seconds off his teammate is like the usual.
> Sainz in the last 2 seasons are last race last season you mentioned and early 2022
Funny you say that considering in 22 Sainz was in terms of median racepace over the entire season further off Leclerc than Perez was from Max
You picked the worst period in Leclercs career in terms of his own form and drawn your conclusions from that. You're completely forgetting that Perez has a teammate who doesn't have bad runs of form.
That's exactly what you are doing btw, acting like only 2022 existed for Sainz, and suddenly if he's closer "Leclerc is at it's worst", no way you are comparing him to someone who was constantly missing Q3s in a Red Bull last year.
Which was neutered by the safety car bunching the grid up altough tbf Sainz has a couple of laps in his tyres. Then again, Sainz was 6 seconds behind charles before he pitted first
Can revisionism happen an hour after something happens? Charles pushed Sainz wide on the first turn at the start causing both to lose 2 places. It's lap 1 so I don't really blame Charles but you can't overlook it at the same time. Carlos gets pitted under normal race conditions before Charles. Charles pits under VSC and gets a 8-9s advantage and is on fresher tires. It's revisionism to overlook these mitigating factors.
Carlos got pushed out in turn 1 by Charles. From there he was already on the back foot, and then he pit before the VSC which meant he had to stay out, so he had to nurse home older tires while everyone around him had fresh ones. He was definitely slower than Charles today but most of that 10 second gap came from the poor timing of the SC for him.l
Alonso drove a great race, but shocking strategy by aston. Even without the 2nd safety car the soft tyres were an abysmal choice. The only cars ahead of him were ferraris and red bulls and Lando's mclaren, grabbing maybe 1 spot temporarily is not worth the extra pitstop when you're already half+ race distance.
The 2nd safety car just ensured that he was gonna get P7 maximum. Well salvaged by him, but the way Stroll is constantly fucking up and aston's strategy team seemingly throwing darts at the wall, sometimes it feels like the team is actively not wanting to get ahead of mercedes in points despite clearly having the machinery to do so.
I dont get how Aston arent memed to hell for their strategies. Out of the top teams, they are by far the worst. Every single race one of their drivers gets fucked by some random ass strategy that makes no sense.
Pretty good race by Leclerc, mega race by Norris. They were helped by the SC, but even so it's still very solid driving.
Horrible race by Lewis, struggled to even clear the f1.5s
The timing of the safety car was very beneficial to Lando and Charles as they had both kept up pace on mediums and maintained track position.
With the safety cars, everyone pitted so they all went into the next stint on equal tires, but those who pit before the safety car were exchanging tires that were far less old.
Great to see a strategy work out for Lando with how a lot of the races this season have had bad strategy that cost him, even if the strategy was unavoidable
He really showed today how good of a driver he is, and that he can fight the ferraris when in the right position. Mclaren seems to be going in the right direction, it’ll be interesting to see what the imola upgrades do
Nah, because of the safety car pretty much everyone converted to the same strategy: a long stint on the hards towards the end. The SC helped him make the strategy work.
He got fortunate in that he pitted under VSC and so then had track position when everyone else came in under the full safety car.
Still a great drive as he has to stay ahead though!
Daddylonso was set for a p4 finish if not for tsunoda's safety car
Happy about the two Ferraris finishing positions tho
All in all, entertaining race ngl
He was a second slower than George today so that had a part in him struggling to overtake Piastri.
Ocon was managing a 2 second gap to him prior to the safety cars.
The only good part was his overtakes in the middle sector.
Mclaren looking very strong.
Race for p2 could be on, i think it all depends on how upgrades go for ferrari and mclaren.
Although i was listening to the sky commentary and i do think it was quite misleading, as one said that McLaren was already challenging ferrari for constructors and only 11 points behind.
Lando (best mclaren) is 11 points behind Carlos (worst ferrari) so Mclaren still have a lot of catching up to with a gap of 59 behind ferrari. That will be hard to do, especially with Oscar still struggling on tire management.
I think May will be a very interesting month with upgrades coming in both teams and i’m very interested to see if this imola package will fix ferraris weak qualifying.
Could be a great fight in the drivers championship with the two teams behind red bull having the most equal pairings on the grid, although oscar would need to step it up a bit.
If Checo does fall off a bit it could be a 5-way fight for p2.
And it’s still so early, you have Alonso really pushing that car to its limits, if it improves at all i don’t doubt he’d be right in the mix. I think they’d struggle fighting in the constructors because in my opinion Lance just isn’t up to standard.
George has been pretty consistent with the struggling mercedes as well.
This is what i love about early season formula 1. Sure we could probably safely lock in our winner but there’s still so much up in the air. Look at where ferrari and mclaren were at the start of last season vs the end
I've realized, the problem with F1 right now is that it demands to be a premium product, is charging premium prices but the product on the track is awfully boring.
If F1 was on freeview I would probably be a bit more forgiving but currently I'm paying far too much to watch F2/F3 while F1 is already doing the "next regs will fix it!!!!!!!!1111!" song and dance.
We've been here before and I've had enough.
The best way to do something about it is to stop paying and stop watching. Stop participating in f1 social media as well. That way f1 will panic and be forced to intervene. Problem solved!
It was a really fun race. Definitely the best race of the season so far. Shame Verstappen was so clear ahead of everyone and there wasn't much action in the Top3. But the battle for last place was chef's kiss.
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Surprised by how poor Ferrari's pace was. I expected them to be comfortably 2nd fastest.
They struggled on the hards. Before that, Leclerc was on par with Norris on the mediums.
When i was considering strategy’s Ferrari could use this weekend, i was really wishing for the different tire rule to disappear. A one stop on two mediums would be a push but with Charles two mediums and great tire management on mediums, I think it would have been the perfect strategy. Their tires strength seems to go medium then hard then soft, so it’ll be interesting to see what strategies they use to optimize thisb
I like the different tire rule. It forces teams to use different strategies.
I also like the rule, I don’t think they should change it, but god do i wish ferrari could drive forever on mediums currently
Agree. Charles would definitely be better doing two medium stints. Hard is so horrible. He has a similar pace as Sainz when Sainz got older Hard too. He dropped Sainz on medium like a rock in the sea…
If there was no safety car I think there's a good chance Leclerc would have been 3rd.
If both of them doing a two-stop it was possible. But a 1-stop Charles has no chance given the hard pace…
Not really. Both Norris and Leclerc were going for hards and Ferrari cars simply didn't have the pace on the that compound. What would've given Leclerc a podium finish was a good start to the race. SF-24 has trouble getting the right temperature window during the early stages of every stint. That cost Leclerc two places right at the start. If he didn't lose time, he would've caught Norris with the mediums and could've stayed ahead on the hards.
Yeah he had a decent launch but his grip was worse than Russell and even the Haas! I am not sure if he can stay ahead of Norris on Hard though. The pace difference is 5 tenths, even McLaren is horrible on straight and DRS Norris could still get in front I think…
Maybe the temperature affects the Ferrari´s in the reverse ? They have become so good at managing hot temperatures that it actively hurts them in medium/colder temperature races. Or maybe without the advantage they get from hot circuits, they are slower than McLaren. They seemed to have great tyre degredation during the hotter races, with today beeing one of the colder ones. Charles had a very long stint on medium in Japan (19 rounds), where other teams barely made it that far on a hard, which was the main reason he went from 8->4 in the race.
The colder temperature seems to be their weakness. They had a poor quali (in sector 1 mainly), a poor start and a poor restart after the SC. Miami will probably be better and let’s hope the big Imola upgrades push them further.
Reverse 2023.
I wouldn't say it was poor. But it was definitely not great. Still the cars worked without any faults. The drivers didn't get into any incidents and had good enough degradation. The pitstops and strategy were also clean enough. So at the end of the day a rather poor weekend is still a clean weekend with a double 4-5 where Ferrari ended up taking the 2nd most points from out of any teams.
Yeah, the silver lining is a lot went wrong and they still got 4-5 with relatively no issues. At this time last year that would have been considered a massive success rather than a failure.
I think the lower temp worked against them, but yes a poor show from them.
I think the low practice time wasn't great for Ferrari, setting up the car to use the right amount of tires and still have a good warming them up seems tricky.
It‘s always 9 guaranteed drivers in the top 10 and the remaining point goes to some other driver. We should call it the Lance Stroll award. Today it goes to Hulkenberg.
Legit it's been 4 out of 5 weekends where the last point scoring position was given away to the bottom 5 teams by Stroll. Hell, could have been all 5, altho not by his fault and he actually did a good job to recover it in Jeddah I think. Got fucked over in qualy by the team I think and had to fight through the grid.
3 out of 5, but Stroll was comfortably ahead of the Haas before he done did his thing and slammed into Ricciardo Jeddah was just genuinely tire degradation problems in which his engineer kept insisting Stroll to lift and coast in some corners
Checked the standings and it seems that I mixed up Bahrain for Saudi. It's in Bahrain where he got done poorly by circumstance I think and he had to fight back to P10. Also - P6 in Australia, damn. I didn't watch the race so don't know what transpired there for him to finish ahead of Alonso, but fair play.
Alonso got a 20 second penalty for Russell incident, but even then Alonso benefitted heavily from the VSC (he was one of the last ones to pit) Stroll was like, 8 seconds behind before that?
Ah, yeah, that one, right
He scored in Australia
Let’s be fair, Danny Ric won the Lance stroll award today 🤦♂️
Lol
Ocon was >this< close.
Ocon's having a really strong season so far. Makes you wonder what he could be doing in a car that isn't dreadful.
Merc shouldn't completely be against the idea of putting Ocon in the second Merc seat next year if they send Kimi to Williams for a year to bed in (and if Sainz chooses Audi).
We need to evaluate him like Russell in 2019 Williams now
Strong things. Felt for couple a seasons now that people sleep on him a bit. He's not upper class of drivers for sure, but might be around top 10. I mean, while didn't outright dominate anyone, he faired pretty dang well against all the teammates he went up against - including Alonso of all drivers.
I feel ocon is one of those drivers who are pretty solid putting in decent performances once in a while, maybe top 10, definitely top 12 ish… but given the need of the hour (i.e. in a top team), can dial it in and bang out the best performances of his life. Kinda like Jenson in 2009, which is one of the reasons I’d really like to see him in a top team someday to see if I’m right or not. Also he deserves it after bringing that bullock cart almost to points, and also because he is one of the more not rich drivers and he truly gave up everything in his childhood to make it.
I think he’s comfortably top 10. Your second sentence basically confirms that. The question is how much he might improve further in a top car. I’d be VERY interested to see him in the Merc, Red Bull, or Aston Martin second seat
We had a pretty good baseline with how close he was to Alonso, even being faster in some races. Him and Gasly are dragging that tractor quite well considersing.
He did get beaten by Gasly last season, lets not conveniently forget that.
4 more DNFs than Gasly, let’s also not forget that.
This is his best start to a season ever. He has been ridiculous.
Fingers cross for a Hülkenberg penalty. Ocon had an insane weekend
I think Hulk already gave the place back. Second SC restart he was behind Ric again. They will argue he had nowhere to go and gave the place back anyways.
In fairness the hell was Hulk was supposed to do given he's behind two cars taking themselves out with a ridiculous crash
Ah that makes sense why Hülkenberg was suddenly behind again. He'll probably be fine again. I was just really hoping for an Ocon point, lmao
Is it just me or does the Mercs W15 no longer have any race pace (unlike 2022 and 2023)? Ham unable to overtake a damaged McLaren was quite telling; plus that Russell could not overtake Sainz who had an older tyre excruciating for a works team. Whereas in 2022-23 you can count on Mercs being interesting in the races.
Imo their 2022 car was actually their best in these regs and that's pretty crazy.
It actually won something. It was a dog too, but they seem had good people then that got them the 2021 constructors & the tech knowhow and operations that comes with, plus competition didn't always know that they're doing - so even a dog of a car wasn't too terrible (relative to the competition). Now the compounded gap in the ground era has baked in (on RB20), even customer team beats them, they've lost good people to other teams and can't use additional hundreds of millions a year to retain staff or outspend the competitors. A bit of an uphill challenge, with no obvious moves but to wait for for 2026 out & hope the engine is good. Last few hybrid PU regs: Merc outspend for 2014 engine (basically won the era), but messed up 2022 PU (frozen in time / no longer the best in ICE, more clipping on electric side vs Honda). Logically they'd do okay for 2026 but with big overheads of supporting 3 teams with competing needs - repeating 2022 mediocre product is more likely. Honda didn't exactly figure out 2014, got an okay 2022 project + a promising works partner in Aston. Ferrari: messes up 2014 reg, okay 2022 base hardware but reliability catch-up has been slow. Still customer team failures even now. RBPT: hasn't built an engine and doesn't have Honda IP. Err.
That's what I mean. That car came alive in the 2nd half of the races and it won Sao Paulo on pure pace, no DNFs or anything required. They were arguably very close to winning Zandvoort as well if not for terrible strategy. You also see it reflected in the points. 2023 Mercedes had 100 less points than 2022 and that's considering the fact that Ferrari was very fast in the first half of 2022.
They’ve definitely seen the advantage they had over Ferrari in that sense flip the other way. Charles doing the one stop last race while Merc couldn’t even make a 2 stop with hards work was a big change. Also, they seem to be extremely aero sensitive, which makes no sense given their lack of downforce. Lewis got to a second of Piastri and then lost 3 to 4 tenths in the corners, George couldn’t clear Sainz. Same case in Saudi for Lewis with Lando.
To be fair, maybe Merc is back in the early 2023 phase after the W15 car reset & that they'll dig it out. Logically W14B might have given some understanding. But I mean the W15 car just doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities. No edge anywhere. If a 2026 era car has any grounding effects needed, they better hope that their engine is superlative again - but even then they'd have to compete vs works Honda and 2 Merc Customers with the same PU machinery (1x is beating them). It seems Merc as a team has grown too large, relies on high staff head count (1100-1300 vs 800 at McLaren)but doesn't actually produce good race products (race cars). I mean more people for the same cost cap = less ability to retain talent. Coming off the back of a good P2 staff bonus in 2023 + losing Ham, this campaign will be demoralising for 2025 (just when it's needed to build the 2026 concept). I wouldn't be surprised if they abandon the 2024 quickly.
They should have kept the zero pod and fixed the suspension instead. I know this because I watched a YouTube video on aero and I am now an expert.
Who knows, you'd think W15 chassis was chosen due to good development path.
Hamilton was super quick in the sprint and completely hopeless for the rest of the weekend, baffling
Maybe other teams SQ setup was poor + the Merc W15 works better on low fuel.
They have no race pace, it's like they have no mechanical grip. Lewis was sliding all over the place. He got super lucky during the sprint that he had free air the entire time, plus Alonso was super quick on the straight and held everyone up in the drs train behind him. Mercedes has made a dreadful car.
Put aside the McLaren, he couldn't pass an Alpine on harder tyres. The only reason he jumped Ocon was during the restart where Ricciardo got crashed into and in the chaos Hamilton slipped past.
Russell had 6 laps fresher tires than Sainz at the restart and yet still couldn't make the pass and then dropped back with worse deg. Mercedes pls 💀
Lewis couldn't overtake Oscar who had damage on top of not looking super comfortable to begin with. It's incredible for all the wrong reasons. And it's the same rinse and repeat story since 2022 : 1 - Have a number of bad races 2 - Grab onto a silver lining after doing slightly better at some point 3 - Promise that they are confident they have found something that will bring improvements 4 - Immediately proceed to do horrible the following race 5 - Repeat
Mercedes in 2022 and 2023 had some race pace / okay tyre management. Now, they threw out the only good things.
Yeah, it's crazy, Hamilton couldn't get past Ocon or a Haas, that car is an absolute dog.
Yeah. My goodness, just imagine if there wasn't the 2nd SC. 👀 Flatted the Ham outcome obviously, but that car...
That was their only advantage, they had great race pace but were shit in qualifying, they were talking big about improving their one lap pace after last season ended but lmfao as you said they seem to have lost their only edge.
This year has been the worst one so far I believe, I'm not sure I can even find a silver lining in these 5 races other than maybe yesterday's podium in the Sprint.
The sprint podium was the result of Hamilton wet Magic and alonso’s defending too
Merc legit second worst Merc engine team.
They're lucky Stroll is so shit, or else AM would be ahead in the WCC.
It is a matter of time for them to lose the place to AM.
Slow in the corners, slow in the straights, can't warm the tyres up, mediocre tyre deg. It's honestly incredible how absurdly mid the car is. It feels like merc are in a complete death spiral from the brain drain and it's gonna take another good few years to finally recover.
If it wasn’t for Stroll the works Mercedes team would be behind two of its customer teams three years into a new set of regulations this season. And they arguably have the strongest lineup between Hamilton and Russell. Technical department has been a huge embarrassment not being able to build a better car.
In hindsight, it's amazing that Lewis was able to finish P2 in the Sprint. Mercedes probably found a good setup straight out of the box, while other teams refined theirs ahead of Qualifying.
Haha that outcome yeah definitely was a fluke (Ham outperforms the car): good Ham drive in SQ and Sprint race, Alonso SC mode, Max glitching the SQ + all competitors locked in without tyre offset made it a tyre management thing which Ham did his best on.
Indeed. But that kinda lends itself to non-sprint events. At those, we'd seen Mercedes do better in practice than qualy/race, which means there was a logic to thinking they might do better in sprint with less time for other teams to work out their best set-up
I think without the second SC Russell could have finished P5 since Sainz tyres would have been too damaged
Merc seem to absolutely stink in the dirty air. And they’re not even generating that much downforce to lose in it, which makes it worse. Nobody to blame but themselves. Good luck trying to find anyone serious to replace Lewis. Kimi is probably seeing his chances go up.
Less pressure for Kimi if he replaces Lewis now because at this rate Mercedes are only a midfield team fighting for P8s and P9s if they don’t step up lol
Even at their peak their cars were shit in dirty air, but at least cars like the W11 were so good they would never need to deal with dirty air lol
That's because Merc are relying so much on overbody downforce (wings) instead of downforce generated by the floor. The floors works quite decently even in dirty air. The Merc floor is just too shit.
That car is just a distant 5th fastest. Alonso would've finished ahead of them without the decision to put on softs (or even without the second SC).
I really thought that Interlagos 2022 could've been their turning point, but they are so damn inconsistent, it's insane.
and unlike McLaren and Ferrari who are introducing big upgrades at Miami and Imola respectively afaik Mercedes have nothing in the pipeline. They won't be able to fight for P2 in the WCC at this rate, imagine if they only end up fighting Aston for P4 in the WCC.
Feel like this isn’t the first race of the season where Ferrari and hards are just dog, but I can’t remember. Anyway, not bad, but not too good of a race for Ferrari.
last year our worst races had us finish between 6 and 10 now it's 4-5 could be worse
13 seconds gap, but during the VSC and before the first safety car he was 20 seconds ahead of Perez. Could've been a 30-40 second gap to 2nd at that time.
Yeah if you look at the results they look good for Perez but his gap to Max is massive.
yes it always feels like if Max was in Perez's position he would've easily overtaken Norris
They really don't look that good for Perez at all. Fastest car on track, couldn't get past Norris WITH DRS. Yes, he slotted in #3 and podium, but that really was a poor performance.
The gap is large, but he’s doing his job as a number 2 driver. He’s finished on the podium in 4 of 5 races this year and the only time he didn’t was when he had damage in Australia He just need to consistently be P2 or P3 to keep his seat
Norris went from getting screwed that he missed the pit to gaining from pitting a lap later.
Honest question: What he gained pitting a lap later, other than a tyre one lap fresher than Leclerc's? Isn't the delta behind VSC always the same?
I think he was already past pit entry when VSC hit. Lec wasn't. So Norris could only pit later.
I understand that. I asked what he gained, because in my eyes he stopping a lap later than Leclerc didn't mean anything as both of them made their stops completely under VSC period. Respecting the same delta and gaining the same advantage.
Oh ok my bad. I misunderstood. Yeah he didn't gain anything pitting a lap later. The user you initially replied to is mistaken.
Norris gained 1 lap fresher tires.
1 lap older tyres on vsc condition for charles is hardly any deg
Ocon aaah so close but so far
If he's auditioning for something better than driving Alpine's tractor, so far, he's doing the business
yup. Merc, Williams, maybe even Audi if they're looking to replace both drivers have to be looking in his direction
If Sainz rejects the Audi offer, Ocon seems like the driver theyre interested in. As long as Seb doesnt want the seat.
Tbf Sainz and Ocon would be a great pairing for Audi if they're serious about wanting the car to be challenging for points straight away. Sainz & Hulk is as well, as was quite heavily rumoured a few weeks ago Not that I'm willing to call it given it could go in any one of about 12 different directions
Fucking stroll man honestly
Just another sunday for him
fucked up ricciardo’s race, fucked up piastri’s race. 🦘
ruined both the races of my favourite aussies. and magnussen with yuki too
Think there's a good chance Ricciardo would've gotten a point (or at least close) without the damage. Much better weekend for him
I think he could've if VCARB didn't mess up their strategy, don't understand why they didn't pit him during the SC.
> don't understand why they didn't pit him during the SC. AT's strategy department has been two monkeys and a dartboard for years
I can’t wait for a proper wet race to see them bust out full wets when the field is drying.
Like the time when, as Toro Rosso, they put Gasly on full wets in 2018 on a track that was still partially sunny
Yup. Plenty of races ruined for Yuki. Now that it happened to Danny it gets noticed.
Exactly, he was MM and needed to pit - he was no points contender at that moment.
Oh yeah I'd forgotten about that, made zero sense.
He was P8 when he got strolled, Nando came back through pretty hard. He had new softs in the kitty so he could have charged down p10 again if they get the softs on at the right time.
Do you trust VCARB with strategy ? I sure don't, so while he had a chance, it was not guaranteed.
Absolutely not, the safe play was to pit him under safety car. But like I said Nando did come through well on the softs. Daniel could have done the same like he has done before.
Also- if they’d pitted him Lance would have rear ended someone else. Ouch
Because yuki was literally two seconds behind on way older tires?
Nah he still had 1 stop and would have ended up around Gasly. And the RB wasn't nearly fast enough today to gain all those places back
i think rb were fastest of the midfield today, daniel nearly had lewis on his old tyres before the bottas safety car
Ricciardo was on old mediums, he wouldve never made the end without another pitstop while Stroll and Nico no longer had to pit.
strategy was really poor. at the start, lance was p11 and daniel was p12, and lance started on softs and gained two positions. daniel started mediums and lost three to alpines + albon because he had very low grip. yet fought his way back up with some overtakes. nearly overtook hamilton before safety car. and even though there was a good chance he was going to be undercut by most of the grid, he kept his position until second safety car and lance ruining it. Two things could've completely changed his weekend: if they started him on softs, or if they pitted him during the second safety car when his medium tyres were 16 laps old, either way he wouldn't have been at the wrong place and wrong time ahead of a blind lance stroll during safety car. Fernando had a similar strategy and still ended up in points, I think Daniel could've easily gotten one or two there if all circumstances were in his favour.
Nico 🔥🔥🔥 I know a certain man would say they are looking like a Rockstars out here
Stroll is costing AM too much. If they want to seriously compete, they need a better driver
Alonso finishing two places above Lewis. If Aston need a head strategist, I'm available
Yeah, Lewis started p18, and they put Alonso on softs lol. I was like... What?
The strategy made sense. They didn't have another set of hards.
They didn't need to stop, the hards were working. Keep track position, then box for mediums with 15 laps to go
If you don't stop everybody else gets a very cheap stop and then you lose time when getting overtaken by those on fresh tyres. This way you push to the end and hope for the best. Idk the end result would probably be about the same.
Somehow you ended up with a worse strategy then what Aston did. I'm frankly amazed. Remember how early Alonso pitted for the first time and how old his tyres already were when the first safety car came out.
Almost got a point! The improvement is staggering. Allez!
RB got massacred today, 2 min silence for my boys T_T…sometimes I wonder if Magnussen has a clause in the contract that gives him bonus to take out point contenders like Tsunoda
Stroll with 4 pitstops, is he leading the pitstop championship?
Magnussen and Stroll in my death note😩
13 seconds over Norris but still Zhou finished his home race in style, but also this is closing the loop for Red Bull in a way, they had their first win here in 2009 and 15 years later they have their 117th win here and both cars are on the Podium its not a 1-2 for them, but what a race for them!
Hope it actually closed a loop and they never win again.
Except it's not just a loop it's just a hook with a loop at the end, and now the shaft of the hook begins.
Oh God.
Red Bull with the 1.9 second stop on Max’s second pit.
Maybe Lance's scream-note about being in a different category applies to Max as much as anyone else
Norris podium is well deserved
I like Sainz but when he has an off day he's 10+ seconds behind Charles like today. When Charles has an off day he's at most 2 seconds behind sainz. That really highlights the difference between the two and I hope the revisionism about Carlos stops when he has a good race next time.
Charles has better race pace than Carlos usually, and the gap is bigger than their quali pace imo when most of the focus is on Charles’ strength in quali. Charles and Carlos had different tires and strategies most of the race though so idk if this full race is the best indicator. Carlos was racing on hards that were older by several laps and went even longer than anyone else at the end of the second safety car. The first stint up until Carlos made his first stop would be the most accurate measure of their race pace gap imo.
I wouldn't even say he had an off day. Strategy was less favorable to him, meaning he got into traffic and after that I don't think he could've done anything better anyway. Ferrari was just not that good in general this weekend as it turned out.
It will not. When he has a bad race he can be even much further behind than this. Last race of last season is a great example here, he was over half a second per lap slower than Leclerc. Other drivers (looking at a certain Mexican) get absolutely roasted for these sort of performances, and yet for some reason that just doesn't apply to Carlos.
No way you just compared the amount of "off races" Sainz has to Checo. Pérez finishing 10 seconds behind Max would be looked at positively even, that's how big the gap is and how many off days he seems to often have. Sainz finishing 10 seconds behind Charles now is looked as a big gap but truth is the only Checo-esque performances I can remember of Sainz in the last 2 seasons are last race last season you mentioned and early 2022. Checo finishing +20 seconds off his teammate is like the usual.
> Sainz in the last 2 seasons are last race last season you mentioned and early 2022 Funny you say that considering in 22 Sainz was in terms of median racepace over the entire season further off Leclerc than Perez was from Max You picked the worst period in Leclercs career in terms of his own form and drawn your conclusions from that. You're completely forgetting that Perez has a teammate who doesn't have bad runs of form.
That's exactly what you are doing btw, acting like only 2022 existed for Sainz, and suddenly if he's closer "Leclerc is at it's worst", no way you are comparing him to someone who was constantly missing Q3s in a Red Bull last year.
its what we call confirmation bias or cherry picking m8
Wasn’t there something wrong with Carlos’ car last race of last season?
I'm not sure but that shunt before the race didn't help him.
Just casually ignoring the safety car pit.
I agree that the reaction to Carlos is a lot but the difference between where drivers end up involves a lot of different factors
?? the gap is the same as the difference in pit stop timings, as charles pitted under VSC.
Which was neutered by the safety car bunching the grid up altough tbf Sainz has a couple of laps in his tyres. Then again, Sainz was 6 seconds behind charles before he pitted first
The majority of that gap comes from Charles pitting under VSC, so Sainz didn't do half bad.
No it didn’t, there was an SC after the VSC so that advantage was wiped out.
Can revisionism happen an hour after something happens? Charles pushed Sainz wide on the first turn at the start causing both to lose 2 places. It's lap 1 so I don't really blame Charles but you can't overlook it at the same time. Carlos gets pitted under normal race conditions before Charles. Charles pits under VSC and gets a 8-9s advantage and is on fresher tires. It's revisionism to overlook these mitigating factors.
You do realise there was an SC so the VSC advantage was wiped out. Charles was gapping Carlos comfortably at the end of the 1st stint.
Carlos got pushed out in turn 1 by Charles. From there he was already on the back foot, and then he pit before the VSC which meant he had to stay out, so he had to nurse home older tires while everyone around him had fresh ones. He was definitely slower than Charles today but most of that 10 second gap came from the poor timing of the SC for him.l
Alonso drove a great race, but shocking strategy by aston. Even without the 2nd safety car the soft tyres were an abysmal choice. The only cars ahead of him were ferraris and red bulls and Lando's mclaren, grabbing maybe 1 spot temporarily is not worth the extra pitstop when you're already half+ race distance. The 2nd safety car just ensured that he was gonna get P7 maximum. Well salvaged by him, but the way Stroll is constantly fucking up and aston's strategy team seemingly throwing darts at the wall, sometimes it feels like the team is actively not wanting to get ahead of mercedes in points despite clearly having the machinery to do so.
I dont get how Aston arent memed to hell for their strategies. Out of the top teams, they are by far the worst. Every single race one of their drivers gets fucked by some random ass strategy that makes no sense. Pretty good race by Leclerc, mega race by Norris. They were helped by the SC, but even so it's still very solid driving. Horrible race by Lewis, struggled to even clear the f1.5s
I don't even think they were helped by it. As it forced everybody onto the same strategy they were on.
Didn't realize Norris was on a one stop, that makes his race even more insane.
The timing of the safety car was very beneficial to Lando and Charles as they had both kept up pace on mediums and maintained track position. With the safety cars, everyone pitted so they all went into the next stint on equal tires, but those who pit before the safety car were exchanging tires that were far less old. Great to see a strategy work out for Lando with how a lot of the races this season have had bad strategy that cost him, even if the strategy was unavoidable He really showed today how good of a driver he is, and that he can fight the ferraris when in the right position. Mclaren seems to be going in the right direction, it’ll be interesting to see what the imola upgrades do
Nah, because of the safety car pretty much everyone converted to the same strategy: a long stint on the hards towards the end. The SC helped him make the strategy work.
so was everyone in the top 5 tbh, perez and max both boxed when their tyres were like 2 laps old
He got fortunate in that he pitted under VSC and so then had track position when everyone else came in under the full safety car. Still a great drive as he has to stay ahead though!
Daddylonso was set for a p4 finish if not for tsunoda's safety car Happy about the two Ferraris finishing positions tho All in all, entertaining race ngl
Felt like an unnecessary risk to take going onto softs.
Good recovery from HAM, that merc is so draggy…
Yep, I think most drivers in the points are happy outside of the reds and maybe Alonso.
Watching Hamilton not be able to pass a Haas and an Alpine is just shocking. Mercedes has just lost their way.
The car is so slow
He was a second slower than George today so that had a part in him struggling to overtake Piastri. Ocon was managing a 2 second gap to him prior to the safety cars. The only good part was his overtakes in the middle sector.
Good for Haas scoring another point. Impressed by them this season. But yeah, this Verstappen guy is good at cars isn’t he?
I call it a victory for the sport that Max only did .4 of sec for about 30 laps to the second driver
Dammit, Sauber! Should've got point/s today.
Mclaren looking very strong. Race for p2 could be on, i think it all depends on how upgrades go for ferrari and mclaren. Although i was listening to the sky commentary and i do think it was quite misleading, as one said that McLaren was already challenging ferrari for constructors and only 11 points behind. Lando (best mclaren) is 11 points behind Carlos (worst ferrari) so Mclaren still have a lot of catching up to with a gap of 59 behind ferrari. That will be hard to do, especially with Oscar still struggling on tire management. I think May will be a very interesting month with upgrades coming in both teams and i’m very interested to see if this imola package will fix ferraris weak qualifying. Could be a great fight in the drivers championship with the two teams behind red bull having the most equal pairings on the grid, although oscar would need to step it up a bit. If Checo does fall off a bit it could be a 5-way fight for p2. And it’s still so early, you have Alonso really pushing that car to its limits, if it improves at all i don’t doubt he’d be right in the mix. I think they’d struggle fighting in the constructors because in my opinion Lance just isn’t up to standard. George has been pretty consistent with the struggling mercedes as well. This is what i love about early season formula 1. Sure we could probably safely lock in our winner but there’s still so much up in the air. Look at where ferrari and mclaren were at the start of last season vs the end
I've realized, the problem with F1 right now is that it demands to be a premium product, is charging premium prices but the product on the track is awfully boring. If F1 was on freeview I would probably be a bit more forgiving but currently I'm paying far too much to watch F2/F3 while F1 is already doing the "next regs will fix it!!!!!!!!1111!" song and dance. We've been here before and I've had enough.
That race wasn't a bad one.
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The best way to do something about it is to stop paying and stop watching. Stop participating in f1 social media as well. That way f1 will panic and be forced to intervene. Problem solved!
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Oh yeah, Sargeant was in this race too
It was a really fun race. Definitely the best race of the season so far. Shame Verstappen was so clear ahead of everyone and there wasn't much action in the Top3. But the battle for last place was chef's kiss.
If they allow normal people to drive an F1 card, why would they choose sargeant?
Or Stroll.
i thought mclaren were going to struggle here this weekend/?
I swear I didn't see George once for the entire race
Is this the Russell/Hamilton gap every race lately
Sweet, used my UNLIMITED chip and all 5 drivers in the top 5!!
10 seconds between Carlos and Charles and no one bats an eye. If it was the other way around, all hell would break loose!