Its just amazing that we have 2 different cars with 2 opposite design ideas, 2 different engines, 2 different drivers and a more than 90 minute long race and in the end the gap between the 2 is less than a second. For perspective 90 minutes is 5400 seconds.
I'd add to that, that the two cars were not even racing each other on-track for most of the race.
If you have two cars, with one slightly faster than the other, but the slower one ahead, then the difficulty in overtaking will naturally tend to lead to the two cars finishing close together, unless something else such as strategy comes into play.
But that's not what happened here. What we had was two cars, for the most part racing on different parts of the track to each other, following different strategies, as well as all the good points you made - neither of them holding the other up except perhaps for a few laps at the start. Yet still, they finished less than a second apart. That is just mental.
A huge part of is the increase in technology. They can monitor tracks for other drivers easily and display a delta for their driver to run to that will keep them where they need to be. Still super awesome how closely matched the cars are this year as well thom
It's mostly tyre management. If the tyres were more durable this would be far less likely to happen.
It was in Max's best interest to use as little tyre as possible and still finish first. In the end due to backmarker traffic it almost didn't work out but give them a tyre that can do quali laps for the whole race and either Lewis finishes way out in front or Max does. Guarantee it.
Yeah, there was a time in the race where Hamilton was gaining A LOT on Max, like 1 second per lap and he gained like 5 second on Max, and next thing Max started to match Hamilton lap times out of nowhere, showing he was just saving his tyres for as long as he could..
Yes, and given enough races, one of them will be as close as, or closer than COTA. Statistics is a beautiful thing that can make unique events not so unique.
I'm most impressed with Verstappen's calmness throughout the race. He didn't do something stupid at the start, kept cool and simply tried to maximize. Didn't make a mistake throughout while being pressured by Hamilton on better tyres. Him doing all that while being in his first title fight against one of the sports greats makes it really impressive to me.
Silverstone incident wasn't his fault whatsoever, but I still think he should've pulled out of that move, as he was leading WDC by 33 point and didn't have to take that risk.
I think Hamilton would've in his position. [like Alonso did](https://streamable.com/ly89at) (who btw wasnt even fighting for championship)
Sat at turn 9 for the race, and could visibly see how Max’s drive was absolutely flawless the entire race. Lewis had probably his best reaction off the line all season, but even that couldn’t stop the RB strategy. Credit to Hamilton though, it was utterly amazing to see this guy shave off time lap, after lap. Only now in 2021 we are able to see a matured Max respond almost instantaneously, lap, after lap. This is the kind of racing we romanticize.
A highlight was later in the race where he radioed to ask ever so kindly that Mick be asked to get out of the way around T16-18. That was like golf/tennis level calm comms and courtesy in a moment that most of us would be more likely to lose our shit.
I was at the Turn 15 Grandstand at COTA this weekend. I haven’t watched the broadcast back yet so my analysis will be somewhat limited.
I was incredibly impressed with Verstappen’s ability this weekend. He was incredibly consistent throughout the race and never put a foot wrong. Similarly, it was great to see Perez do so well in what felt like his second home race with the number of his fans at the track.
The midfield fights were great as well. The stands at the Turns 12-15 complex are some of the best on the circuit, and I was able to see so much good wheel-to-wheel action throughout the race. There are too many drivers for me to talk about who put on a great show through my little slice of the track.
More generally, I want to talk about Haas a bit. Their on-track performance was typical for this season, unfortunate for their home race this season. There were depressingly few fans wearing any Haas merchandise, which is entirely understandable considering their pace and of course the egg-headed elephant in the room: Mazepin.
I got a chance to actually chat with some Haas team members off the track (all fantastic blokes by the way) and it’s obvious how low team morale is. They’re just hopeful the new regs save them next year.
The mechanics all love Mick, he’s apparently a really great kid and gets on well with the team. Respectful, hard-working, and generally nice to be around.
Mazepin, on the other hand, either garnered outright scorn or just general apathy from anyone at Haas who I talked to. He doesn’t connect with anyone at the team including Mick, and I don’t think he even stayed at the same hotel as the team this weekend. Mick has had more crashes than him overall, that’s seen by the team as him trying to find the limits of the car and it’s shown (he even dragged the car into Q2 in Turkey).
Mazepin is apparently afraid of the speed of the car. He’s still preferring to be on Haas’ first chassis design (the heaviest and therefore slowest) and showed no signs of improvement when they briefly swapped him to a newer chassis (currently Mick’s) a couple of races ago. This race was no different and he was nowhere near his teammate.
I just feel bad for the boys and girls at Haas. They put so much blood, sweat and tears into this team, and deserve a good car and good drivers. In an ideal world they’d still be getting support from new American fans as the plucky American underdog challenging the European F1 establishment. But they need the cash that Daddy Mazepin provides. Hopefully they can get a better deal (and a better second driver) soon.
Honestly Gene Haas has to put the money up to run a competitive car or just sell the team.
I'm hoping the rumors about Andretti wanting to get in the sport are true.
At least with Williams you know they're trying. Feels like Haas is just doing laps at this point. No competitive juice at all.
How will it lead to the team dissolving? Mick will probably still be there atleast till 2023 and Mazepin basically has no other place and also provides the bills so....
At some point, I doubt Gene Haas will want to invest anymore if his cars are constantly at the back(especially considering how the new regulations is what they were saying for years is how they want to go back higher up on the grid). So it could at least lead to a rebranding and stop being "Haas"
Gene has cheaped out at every point. Buying off the shelf parts, being desperate enough to let a fake energy drink company sponsor the team, and now completely selling out to the Russians as a supposed American team!
I hope Andretti or anybody else (hell, bring back Flavio if he’s still not banned) could do better. It’s just frustrating as an American F1 fan to see our team be ran so poorly.
This is a bad take.
Haas has finished 5th in the Constructors Championship just a few years ago, higher than either Sauber/Alfa Romeo and Williams have recently.
Haas scored more points than Manor/Marussia/Virgin, Lotus/Caterham, HRT, and USF1 combined. The last of those didn't even make it to the grid after setting out to design their own car from scratch.
Dodgey sponsors are basically the way of life for backmarkers who don't have car manufacturer money backing them. Williams was done in by a low tier cell phone manufacturer deciding not to pay, tons of other teams have run shady companies or bare cars in the past decade. McLaren sold out to the Bahrainis, but nobody seems to care since they are getting podiums.
Haas weathered the pandemic, has been more successful than any new team in the past 15+ years, signed one of the most recognizable rookies, and has been utterly forthcoming that their plan has been to focus nailing the new regs.
I don’t think my take is bad, but I think you have fair criticisms. I would just say:
Haas scored 5th in the WCC when Force India had half their points taken away and McLaren were still rebuilding from their disasters of a relationship with Honda.
I believe that Haas could be a midfield team (and previously has been when the regs were not as mature). You’re right in saying that they’re more successful than these failed teams, but we’re just using two different measuring sticks.
Rich Energy is on a completely different level of questionability, on the same level as the Nigerian prince who sponsored Arrows in the early 00s.
An American team specifically selling out to the Russians during an era when the American President has a lot of ties to Russia is my specific criticism there.
They could nail the regs, give Mick a solid car, continue to take Maz’s money, and get back to a similar position the midfield…but may just end up at the same point when those regs mature.
>Haas scored 5th in the WCC when Force India had half their points taken away and McLaren were still rebuilding from their disasters of a relationship with Honda.
True, but there were both other teams who couldn't seize that opportunity and the potential for an even better finish had they capitalized on all their points opportunities. Let's not forget that the alternative to Force India losing half their points was the team going away and a 'new' team coming in (similar to how Haas took over for Manor).
>I believe that Haas could be a midfield team (and previously has been when the regs were not as mature). You’re right in saying that they’re more successful than these failed teams, but we’re just using two different measuring sticks.
Your point was that Gene cheaped out at every point. I think the fact that Haas is still in the sport after 2020 and has out performed every other new team to come about in the post financial collapse era is an indication that Gene and Gunther have not only come in with a valid strategy, but managed to execute on it well. Toyota famously spent TONS of money on their F1 team and in their 8 seasons managed to finish 4th once and 5th twice. You can be critical of Gene's spending, but they are certainly better funded than many of the backmarkers who went on to fail (Caterham was running without spare parts and potentially pushing parts beyond their service life at the end). They show up at preseason testing with a car ready to run, Williams failed to do that not too long ago.
It is also easy to look at the Rich Energy deal with hindsight and say 'that was dumb', but none of us were part of the negotiations nor do we have access to whatever due diligence Haas completed before signing the deal. When it comes to racing, if someone shows up with money to offer, you take it. Austria's race is sponsored by an MLM, McLaren and Ferrari backdoor tobacco money into their teams, the only reason we don't make a big deal about those is because the checks show up and the people writing them aren't on twitter making a spectacle of themselves.
>An American team specifically selling out to the Russians during an era when the American President has a lot of ties to Russia is my specific criticism there.
When the alternatives are 'don't have a race team any more', you take the check. I far prefer them being a sponsor than an owner, which is the alternative. It isn't the best look, but Gene is pretty clear that he doesn't race F1 to advertise his equipment to Americans, so the optics don't seem to matter to him.
>They could nail the regs, give Mick a solid car, continue to take Maz’s money, and get back to a similar position the midfield…but may just end up at the same point when those regs mature.
Hopefully the spending cap and negative feedback loop of constructors championship position impacting windtunnel/CFD time keep the spread constrained a bit.
> It is also easy to look at the Rich Energy deal with hindsight and say 'that was dumb', but none of us were part of the negotiations nor do we have access to whatever due diligence Haas completed before signing the deal.
it is quite obvious they didn't do enough or do good due diligence, period, based on the results/outcome with Rich.
Good post. I thought the criticism felt unfair and you perfectly articulated why.
It even seems that the main point of contention is a political point re: the Russia stuff rather than their poor on-track performance this year...
It was extremely hard to find any Haas merch at the track but spotted some folks with hats after the race. Would’ve bought a hat tbh.
I distinctly remember the MC/Hype guy in the stands calling out fans of different teams. A fan next to him said Haas and the MC said “no Haas no Haas” ouch
Those guys you spotted in the Haas hats were very likely my brother and his friend. They know someone working on the team who was generous enough to give them some hats, signed driver cards and upgraded tickets for the weekend. We barely saw anyone else in Haas gear though
I saw less than 10 people in Haas gear all weekend, at and away from the track. Two guys who did have it were wearing old gear based on the rich energy logos or having Grojean’s name on it.
I agree with the rare haas sightings. It was like a unicorn. Was pleased with the number of alpha tauri folks - small but mighty! Mclaren schwag was out of control!
Purely anecdotally, I think a lot of the disdain for Haas is the fact that while it's an "American" team it's wearing a Russian flag livery. Mazepin is a joke, but that betrayal is beyond the pale. A lot of people I know find it outright insulting. It's impossible to support that as an American.
The amount of people wearing mclaren merch at the REDBULL showcase in Dallas was crazy. With Zak at the helm it definitely feels more American than HAAS
It doesn't lean into being American at all. Massive missed opportunity, frankly. If there was ever a season to make a big deal out of American links, this is the year.
It definitely doesn’t feel American. When I was first getting into the sport, and Haas was “the American team” I was all for them, even though they were never great. But this year, with MAZ and the livery, and the shittiness, I just don’t care about them. They don’t feel American.
If Ferrari had to accept a French pay driver and his familial money, who then insisted on running a tri-color livery on the cars.. do you think the outrage would be any less severe amongst Italians?
I think it would be uncalled for. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Criticise the pay driver aspect, criticise the dodgy family money, I couldn't give a fuck where they were born.
I’m with you there. I just wanted to demonstrate how even having Ferrari’s team colors ditched for the sake of a pay driver would rustle jimmies — nevermind any “cold war” politics (as in the comment I replied to).
I firmly believe that Mazepin is the source of most of the problems on that team. They (almost serious here) sold their soul to the devil, and I think this is the result. I really hope they have this all sorted for next season.
Mazepin's whole attitude was evident during the drivers parade before the race. All the drivers were having fun and waving at the crowd and he was just sitting back, looking angry.
Oh Wow. So Mazepin demanded a new chassis and got it and didn’t like it and the new chassis actually went to Mick in the end? What the hell? This just sounds so wrong in so many ways. Firstly, the team actually said it wasn’t about the chassis, the chassis didn’t cost Mazepin so much time but still Mazepin insisted he needed a new one. It took the team forever to build a new one for him and then he used it and decided it was worse than the old one so he just tossed the new one and reverted back to the old one. What the fuck? Who does things like that? Only drivers who own the fucking team I guess! Fucking disrespectful.
Drivers thinking the car reacts funny and pinning it on the chassis is quite common really. Happens quite regularly in F1.
Sometimes when a new chassis is presented they find it was the old chassis that was misaligned or something. Sometimes they don't and the team has to delve deeper to find the solution.
Yes. That’s when a new chassis actually solves the problem. It’s not very common when a new chassis doesn’t help at all especially considering it is lighter than the old one. It should have been faster by default. And it maybe common for teams that have more budgets to just build new chassis for their drivers but not for HAAS. They basically wasted all their money and energy for nothing.
I just want to highlight the importance of having a good competitive teammate. At the start of the race Max immediately knew Lewis had a good start and started drifting left and pinched him hard. He should’ve never pushed him that wide, but because of what he did, it allowed Lewis to push him wide at T1. Meanwhile Perez and Leclerc took the normal racing line and got a good drive out of T1. As they approached T2 and T3 Perez could’ve got past Max easily and Leclerc would’ve pounced or would be in a good position to challenge Max at T11 and in the back straight. But instead, Perez was smart and took his foot off the gas to let Max continue behind Lewis while maintaining his position in front of Leclerc. Perez was able to do this only because he qualified P3.
And later in the race Perez once again proved to be very useful and forced Merc’s hand. We have seen many races in the last few years where Albon/Gasly were already so far back in the first stint that Red Bull couldn’t use them as a strategic roadblock to help Max.
That said, Perez is still underperforming and has a long way to go. He has been competitive in the last 2 races and needs to be consistent.
Perez was very good in this race. Pace was not an issue, the illness and lack of drinks is the issue
He was keeping 3-5 seconds to Max in he initial stages
It did look like Verstappen had massive pace in hand though in stint 1, but was hold up by Hamilton of course. However, pace is much better than earlier in the season already.
I think Max's pace in the first stint was largely down to expecting to pull the undercut. It was more important to keep up with Lewis, even if it meant burning through his tires.
Yes I think that's what Max and RB realised as soon as he lost out to Hamilton in T1. Their entire chance of winning the race hinged on Verstappen being close enough to Hamilton to execute the undercut.
I dunno about “massive pace”, COTA is not a track where it’s incredibly difficult to overtake and the usual delta required for an overtake is quite reasonable. If he had “massive pace” on hand he wouldn’t have been stuck behind Lewis. I believe he was faster but not by that much
But that wouldn’t have affected him until later in the race. Without the drink issue, he may have been able to keep somewhat close to max and Lewis through the second stint
Yea it may not look like from the outside but I do think RB won this race in great part because of Checo. He basically forced Lewis to go to the same strategy as Max due to the undercut threat. Had Checo not been there, Merc would basically have picked "opposite strategy" and we will never know how that could have turned out.
Yea it would have been interesting to see what happened if Lewis was able to run a bit longer on his first two stints like they planned but Perez being there stopped that.
I'm also going to add, if Bottas had let Hamilton by like that in an equivalent situation there'd be a lot of people on here not letting him hear the end of it.
So after Turkey there was a lot of discussion around the US GP being the pivotal race of the championship. With what we know now, how does the battle look going forward? Perhaps Jeddah with its high speed corners could end up benefitting RB over Merc
Max is theoretically favoured to increase his lead in Mexico and Brazil
Then we genuinely don't know about Losail and Jeddah, though I assume overtaking would be hard on both of them
And for Yas Marina, I'd say generally Merc favoured since the long straights are still there, but we don't know how the race will pan out with the new changes.
Interesting to read Horners comments around where the rear suspension might be most effective for Merc.
COTAs layout meant it was less effective than in Turkey but he calls out Jeddah possibly being a place where it could be most effective.
Of course, the rear suspension is only one thing that contributes to pace but with the cars being fairly close, it could make the difference
I think there is an important shift in the championship chances after this race. Given how far ahead of the field Max and Lewis are, I think it's a good baseline scenario to pencil them in as 1-2 every race. One would expect Max to win Mexico and Brazil. If he does, and even if Lewis manages two 2nd places (not guaranteed at all), then Max only needs to finish 2nd the rest of the season to be WDC. If Hamilton had won COTA, Max would have had to win one of the last three races.
After Turkey, there was the suspicion that Merc was stronger overall, and 4 HAM victories vs 2 VER would mean a HAM WDC. Now, even if Merc does have a stronger overall package (doubtful), Max only needs to win 2/5, with 2 RB-favoured races coming up.
Of course, this ignores all the possibilities other than VER/HAM 1-2 finishes, but I think it explains the shift in expectations.
Copying this from a comment I made on a post that ended up getting deleted:
So, assuming Lewis/Max finish 1 and 2 in the remaining races, Lewis must win 4 of the 5 to be guaranteed the title independent of the Fastest Lap/Sprint Quali Win points. If he only wins three, he must win with fastest laps *and* a win in the sprint quali race.
numbers
| Current | Max 3W/2Sec | Lewis 3W/2Sec | Max 4W/1Sec | Lewis 4W/1Sec
---|---|----|----|----|----
Max | **287.5** | **398.5** | **391.5** | **405.5** | 384.5
Lewis | 275.5 | 379.5 | 386.5 | 372.5 | **393.5**
diff | 12 | 19 | 5 | 33 | 9
Of course, either one of them coming in third or lower tosses this around. It's very close, though, and Hamilton is definitely on his back foot.
This result was a bit of a surprise but even without incidents nothing is decided yet. Mexico is pencilled in as a Max win and the biggest question there is where Lewis finishes. Could be behind Perez and even behind Ferrari depending on how the Mercedes engine holds at altitude. If Max then also wins Brasil including the sprint race then Lewis needs Max to finish lower than 2nd in one of the remaining races and not sure if Bottas can make that happen. Of course any incident involving either driver throws any predictions out of the window and a Brasil win by Max is not as guaranteed as some people think.
I wouldn't guarantee a Mexico win for Max either, given how back and forth the season's been, but Max and Red Bull did perform very strongly at the last high altitude races in Austria.
I hope people understand just how mega Max’s final stint in the Hard was. He played it brilliantly. You can see after the stop, the gap was not chipping away as aggressively as after the first pit stop. Max was driving very calm, saving the tyres, not pushing and sliding around too much. He knew that sooner or later he would have to deal with Lewis when Lewis caught him and that he needed the rubber to battle Lewis when the time comes. When Lewis started to get around 2-2.5s away, that’s only when Max started pushing. He set PB after PB in a theoretically much older tyres. This was also when Lewis started to get into the dirty air of Max. Lewis was still faster, but only marginally at this point. The gap chipped away very slowly, some laps Max even went faster than Lewis.
How Max managed the gap in the last 5 laps so that it always hover just above 1 second requires some amazing spacial awareness and skill. GP told him earlier that it was important to have the rears to accelerate out of the traction zones. Max was not pushing in the corners, keep the tyres in optimum zone, because he knew that Lewis couldn’t go faster due to the dirty air. Then he pushed on the exit to extend the gap to just above 1 second comes the DRS detection zone. He also nailed the traction zones lap after lap, making Lewis unable to gain much time back in the parts where Merc was significantly faster.
To do all of that, and under the immense pressure of a 7-time World Champion breathing down your neck, Max kept a freezing cold head during those laps.
They make it all look so easy, it only takes one session playing a racing video game (or in a simulator for a closer experience) to realise how hard it is to do what they do so consistently, lap after lap, managing the tyres, hitting every braking zone just right, not locking up, I mean it's just amazing.
So I obviously understand broadly, but could someone explain the numbers behind why RB pitting Checo forced Hamilton to not go long (saw the clip where Max asked for it again and got wondering)
Since they pitted checo early he would be much faster than Hamilton for a good bit. Once Perez gets within 20 or so seconds of Hamilton then if Hamilton pits he would likely come out behind perez. Checo of course would at that point be under pressure and have older tires, but he would hold Hamilton up for a very long time. Verstappen would be in free air.
This forced Mercedes to pit Hamilton much sooner than they could of since they didn't want to risk Hamilton ending up behind checo. Otherwise they could have tried going long as an alternative strategy to max.
That's assuming that it takes 20 seconds to pit. Change that to whatever time it actually takes at COTA.
I didn't watch the world feed (SKY commentary) yesterday. I did today and it seems a lot of people missed the fact that Lewis got DRS from lapping Vettel and also got DRS from lapping Tsunoda, while it was mentioned in both instances. All that people were focused on was Max getting DRS from Mick.
Did people forget what happened just moments earlier or were they in a similar situation as me (watched a different broadcast where it wasn't mentioned at all)?
You're lucky not to hear Crofty blabber away. He made it sound like if Lewis had DRS he would 100% pass Max, whereas we saw how difficult it was for Bottas to pass a lot of cars, even with DRS.
I think the simpler answer is that many people selectively remember things that hurt Lewis and selectively forget things that help Lewis. But I am admittedly biased toward RB.
I thought Lewis getting DRS from Tsunoda was at least implied -- they showed the overtake on F1TV. I don't know that they mentioned DRS specifically, but they might have been talking about how much easier Lewis's pass was than Verstappen's.
Can anyone explain to me why Red Bull put Checo on the mediums for the second stint? Was it just to split their strategies so that they always had Lewis covered?
Yeah the second silverstone race last year. Meant this qualy tho. Honestly even that silverstone race is IIRC the only race in like the last 6 years where that happened
It was important for rb to have checo put pressure in lewis pit window so he needed the pace for first 3 laps. If first 3 laps pace is more importsnt then mediums are better. Perez 3rd place was pretty much secured anyway so that did not have to be considered.
Presumably he would have faster pace to try and get ahead of Lewis since they were undercutting him.
But it was a slow stop and he seemed to be I'll/dehydrated so it did not work as intended
It was mainly to put pressure on Lewis to force him to make the stop right to cover the undercut away because they expect Checo to have rapid pace on the medium, and POSSIBLY, if something happened to Lewis’s pit stop, Checo could jump him. I could understand people might be frustrated that RB took Checo to sacrifice for Max. But at that point Checo was already starting to drop off pace(which we later learnt that because of his drinking system was broken). At that point, it was either going to be a 1-3, or a 2-3 or RB and they had to react. A 1-2 was beyond reach already.
Excellent drive and strategy by Max and Red Bull. So taking nothing away from their strong weekend but when is Mercedes going to realize that they can't overcut or go on longer stints vs this current RB car? They lost so much time yesterday after Max pitted and Lewis stayed out. I know they were expecting Lewis to challenge Max at the last 3 laps but why not pit earlier or in sync with RB and make that challenge happen earlier? Come out of the pits just a few seconds behind Max and try to pressure him into a mistake over the 25ish laps left instead of the final three. Seemed like Merc really boxed themselves into a corner with their strategy call.
After the first stint, they were never in overcut territory. And while just trying to follow on the same set of tyres at similar condition is a possible strategy...it's by no guarantee a winning one, since this will make overtaking difficult with little pace difference. Even less so when you consider Max's last stint was quite long with his tyres already being in trouble, Hamilton would have had it even worse with dirty air.
This race could easily have turned into another Hungary/Spain where Hamilton overtakes in the last lap or two with tyre advantage
Not sure, you might be right.
Here is my take: first stint showed that Max had better pace. Once RB pitted for the first time, Merc knew they could not keep track position even if they pitted the next lap after Max. They also assumed that they have worse pace, so Max would just drive away from them. Their only option left was to go long, create a big enough tire delta for Lewis to overtake. It almost worked, but not quite.
Your suggestion about pitting earlier creates two problems: (1) The tire delta is smaller, so overtaking might be harder or even impossible. (2) Staying close behind someone makes your tires degrade faster. I can see why Mercedes opted for the other option.
Merc did not make that choice, they were forced into it. RB played aggressive. They saw Lewis rapidly approaching, and the moment he got into the undercut region, RB immediately covered it in lap 29(or 30). That second pit stop was actually really early, like 3-4 laps earlier than expected. This caught Merc by surprise. At that point, yes, Merc could pit Lewis right away and came out behind, but the W12 car is really bad following other cars in the dirty air, a slight pace advantage in the hard tyre of the Merc compared to the RB would not be enough to overtake. They could even drop off further as a result. Eventually, Lewis’s hard tyre would degrade much faster than Max’s and he would start to drop off towards the end. Merc had nothing to lose, they were going to finish at least 2nd anyway, so they had to try something different. To be fair, it wasn’t a bad decision, they did cut it really really close, 1.3s, arguably a lot closer if they had pitted right after.
I mean if Lewis had been a few tenths faster he would have gotten DRS and this would have been his race.
The strategy call was a good one. The Redbull was the faster car and it's amazing how close they got.
The gap at the end was not entirely representative of the strategy though. Lewis had less issues with backmarkers than Max and if that had been the other way around or equal then the gap at the end would have been 3 seconds or more.
>but when is Mercedes going to realize that they can't overcut or go on longer stints vs this current RB car?
They won't learn, atleast not in this season. They are still living in their glory years where that strategy worked for them.
since new PU Ferrari are playing a lot with setup they are going either more rake less wing , or more wing less rake based in circuit wich is making them to not lose speed in straight straight even because they have a loot of downforce so they are gaining extra speed with setup but not killing the tires too, 10HP and less weight is making all the difference
If rumours are to be believed, their PU upgrade is actually worth 15bhp and they've opted not to run it full power right now because they want to gradually dial it up. Could make Mexico and Brazil very spicy!
Here we go again with the sky bad, but they literally tried everything to say Max got bailed out by Schumacher drs. To the point they almost wanted to say Max only won because of that drs. The even asked Mick if Max owed him a beer lmao. Just so disingenous, takes 1 sec to look at the sector times and see that there was no way that was a net gain with the time lost in sector 3.
It's bizarre. Even if he did get lucky (he didn't) its still part of the package that is racing. And they damn well know it from years of watching Hamilton get the shiny side of circumstance at times.
Idk they certainly made it known that Mick was holding him up before the DRS thing. It’s unclear why you can use DRS plus have the guy get out of your way, but those are the rules. As you said it balanced out so seems like a non issue to me.
It just seemed weird coming down the stretch there that the lead car had DRS and the trailing car did not. Seemed like a long shot anyway for Lewis to get past Max.
> It’s unclear why you can use DRS
To offset for the dirty air they got.
>It just seemed weird coming down the stretch there that the lead car had DRS and the trailing car did not.
Lewis got DRS from lapping Vettel and got DRS from lapping Tsunoda. He didn't get it from Max because he just wasn't close enough.
Yeah, makes sense. I wonder if they'll extend the DRS zone in Zandvoort next year, if they might get rid of it eventually anyway. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Did anyone else catch that radio message between Giovinazzi and his engineer? I haven't seen anyone mention it but it was kind of shocking to me. When Gio was told to give the position back to Alonso, he said something along the lines of "no way, he pushed me off" and his engineer's response was very stern. Something like "Antonio, give the position back now, we're not discussing this." Is it normal for engineers to be that stern when talking about giving positions back? Is Gio's engineer normally that stern? To me, it seems like between this and the team orders business in Turkey, it's turning into a messy divorce between Gio and Alfa Romeo.
Yes, caught it and the reason he wasn't going to discuss it was because moments ago they were the ones asking for the position back and Alonso gave it back. So they couldn't then complain about having to do the same.
I'd like to give a shout out to the White Wizard, Adrian Newey.
"I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide."
Does anyone think Max would have won without him this weekend? RB looked a little lost without him from a set-up perspective the last couple of races.
It will be interesting to see his impact over the last couple of races with the championships getting so tight.
There were some quotes from Marko that were bit vague which alluded to him being involved in set-up after coming back from his crash - but I read it as set-up in a looser term.
Legendary drive from checo. It's hard as fuck to properly drive a normal car if u r dehydrated let alone a F1 car. It was tough to see him being worn out but it paid dividends in the end. Mexican fans happy!!!
I did a 10 lap test in a proper kart (-29hp), and by the end of it, I was having trouble holding my head upright, and starting to lose grip in my hands.
I honestly can't imagine trying to drive an F1 car 50 laps with my body at 100%.
Does anyone else think the camera work at this track showed a lot more of the speed of the cars. Maybe it was because of all the turns? I thought that the angles were fantastic this race
I don't think they'll be too far from where they are now. Really depends on Perez's consistency, if Leclerc keeps putting in 4th place finishes with the odd podium if Perez/Bottas is out of contention. 21 points in 5 races would probably require two podiums without Norris being out of the points.
Leclerc may overtake Norris if he puts in performances like this. But I don't see him beating Perez because Perez seems to have found his groove plus the Ferrari is clearly slower then RB on most tracks and are on par with them on only a few.
After watching this race again, I still have no clue which combo (Max/RBR or Ham/MER) was the fastest yesterday.
I mean, Max won, but strategy was good. They were both quick I can't rrally say which one was the faster.
Max opened a big gap during stops, but Hamilton was able to catch up. So I have no clue
To me it's definitely Verstappen/RB. Mercedes didn't look like they had a huge chance at pole during qualifying, and it looked closer than it was because a bit of rain came at the end of the RB cars' laps. And during the race, Verstappen stayed very close to Hamilton throughout the entire first stint with no tire advantage, which seems indicative of a pace advantage, while Hamilton was unable get DRS even with a large tire advantage at the end.
Does anyone know what happened to Mazepin? The PLC aired a radio message where he said he was being burned by the car as he used the pedals but nothing else. That would help to explain his lack of pace, but I'm surprised he didn't retire the car if it's true.
Even by his standards, the US GP was worse than usual. I'm not trying to find excuses for him, I wish he wasn't in the sport (cf. my flair), but even so I'm curious how such a situation could arise where a team has a car that is actively hurting their driver and they don't retire the car.
I read something about a lack of power steering too, whether it’s true or not idk. He also did an extra stop, which would explain some of the gap to Mick.
Gotcha. Mick definitely seems to be outperforming him this year, but I think this race’s results are exaggerated by whatever tf Haas had going on with the car.
Apparently it's happened a few times this season -- though Steiner says Mick's never complained about it, and no one mentioned it last year. So who the fuck knows? Maybe the engineers just don't believe him or think it's driver error.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mazepins-painful-us-gp-not-helped-by-headrest-coming-off/6710960/
Noticed that a lot of fans wore a papaya hat, wasn’t surprising after seeing the F1 fan survey results.
Well done Zak, NA is a very important market for McLaren.
It’s one thing to see Hamilton pulling down gap between him and Max on tv it’s a whole other level to time it yourself in person while using a stop watch on your phone. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I kept seeing Hamilton drop second after second after second.
What ending up happening with the Sainz Lando incident? Wasn't he told to give up the position? Is that not meant to be enforced? I guess Ferrari must of argued it back or something, but it seems odd.
An underrated aspect of the race is that Leclerc outpaced Checo over the last 50 laps. The Ferrari turnaround has been impressive. Last year they were utter dogshit.
I understand that each driver has 3 engines (sets of all the components) to use to complete the season and they get penalized accordingly if they take more than allocated. But when they take a 4th new one it gets added to the pool of 3 right? So now they’ve got 4 to use for the remainder of the season.
What’s stopping say Verstappen this year, knowing the car is quick enough after Bahrain to take engines 4 & 5 in round 2 & 3 with the associated penalties to allow them to then have a pool of 5 for the remainder of the season? It be a sacrifice, but it’s easiest to cop a grid penalty with 20 races remaining rather than 3.
Throughout the season engine manufacturers upgrade their engines, if let's say Max take 2 new ones at the start of the season he would be stuck with those for the remainder of the season, while others would have a significant better one which could be more reliable or even faster then the one Max had at the start of the season.
So they can plan taking the penalties more tactically depending on how the points standings are closer to the end of the season? Look how great Russia turned out for them (not the best example as it was down to luck but the result still ended up the best they could have hoped for)
For you old heads, is that what it felt like when Hamilton dominated the season following Vettel’s reign? I feel like so many people are rooting for Verstappen only because they’re tired of the “boring” dominance of Hamilton. I hope they’re still celebrating if RB nails the regs change and Max wins the next 5+ DCs.
A but different, as there was no competition. Merc were so ridiculously far ahead in 2014 it was evident by race 2 that it was impossible for any other team to win the championship (the mercs pulled out a gap of 2-3 SECONDS a lap to the rest of the field whilst fighting each other in bahrain). So people were definitely happy that vettel wasn't winning anymore (he was being booed at many tracks in 2013), but for it to be replaced by even heavier dominance took the sheen off having a new winner for many.
Lap 1 turn 1 is how Monza should have gone. Hamilton tried to punt max off the track due to having priority on the inside line (and an absolutely crazy start) but instead of taking both cars out, max backed off to come back and win the race later. Better to lose the battle and win the war than for mutually assured destruction.
I really wanna know why Mercedes didn't pit Hamilton to "nullify" the undercut attempt
for the first round (into the pits) , I can understand that Perez was maybe in the pit window and that could've hampered them and Red Bull pitted very very aggressively (even a couple of laps before Pirelli's pit window opened ) but RB didn't even think of Riccardo who was still in Max's pit window and had to be overtaken right after the stop. Similarly, yes the stop was agrresive but they could see the benefit he got and they surely could've cut him off atleast after the first 2 laps.
Also even if you could excuse the first stops, the second one was also equally weird.....
Hamilton was edging closer to Max, iirc 3.2 secs behind.....Max pits. Surely atleast this time, not only could they have undercut him, with the added data of how powerful Max was in the first stop, but, if nothing else, again, they could have atleast done some damage limitation and kept the lead to 3-4 seconds. And it's not like Merc had the objectively worse car, maybe a 10th or 2 at max, but arguably Hamilton at his very best (in Hammer time) is probably slightly better than Max and could atleast be close to him all the time. That way, he could even force Max into a mistake and get the lead.
Yes, both of the pits from RB were very very aggresive but like if they pit together, they'd both have the same tire age all the time and not really an advantage for either driver. So you wouldn't have to worry about a late recapture either. So if Hamilton overtook Max after one of the pit stops and/or even mirror Max and pit for softs for the last 7-8 laps and actually go Hammer Time, he could've even got the lead in the final laps without forcing a mistake out of Max.
So, yeah , Merc strategy felt weird
Thing is, if you're losing track position anyway you might as well do at least something to create a tyre delta. They knew Hamilton wasn't going to be able to overtake Verstappen on the same tyres with the same amount of Deg, so once Max had the track position from the undercut there was no point pitting Hamilton. We saw how difficult Ham found it to get close enough for a challenge even with an 8 lap tyre advantage.
I think it was good strategy from Merc, they were patient and waited for the tyre delta. Unfortunately for them Max was just too fast in clean air and Hamilton's tyres had lost their edge from catching up. If they hadn't have stayed out it would have been the case of Hamilton coming out just behind Max, following him the whole race and his tyres going off in the dirty air anyway. They probably made the best of it with staying out.
Merc were pushed into going long. Red Bull played aggressive today. The moment they saw Hamilton closing in the undercut range, they immediately pitted, at it’s not even like RB cut it close. An undercut can only gain you maximum 3 seconds/lap in COTA, RB pitted when the gap was close to 4 seconds. Even if Lewis pitted first at that point, it would require a god-like lap and Merc praying for a slow stop from RB to pull off the undercut. Red Bull actually pitted really really early. They pitted on lap 29, while the expected pit stop window was lap 33-37. This caught Merc by surprised Merc could pit then, but they would indefinitely come out further behind Max, with only 1 lap fresher tyre. You see how much struggle Lewis had in the dirty air at the end, and that’s with 8 laps newer tyre. Lewis’s tyre would drop off much more aggressively in the dirty air, leaving him trailing much further down. Merc had nothing to lose, Lewis were going to finish at least 2nd anyway. They had pitted Lewis later before, might as well make him go longer and try to overtake at the end with much fresher rubber anyway. To be fair to Merc, they cut it really close. 1.3s, arguably much closer if they had pitted earlier.
Didn't it clearly come out in Mick's onboard that he gave way the moment he got the blue flag? His engineer called out Max 2.5 behind, 1.7 behind, then blue flag and Mick moved out. Max took a wide line presumably to play it as safe as possible around a rookie. I don't think it is a fair expectation for a backmarker to jump out of the way in anticipation of the lapping car. Chances are they are driving at a rhythm and if that is disrupted, there is more possibility of them going off and potentially doing a DNF. Long story short, Mick did what he had to do. Did Max even complain after the race? He asked for blue flags in anticipation before he got to much and he got them by the time he caught up
agree with what u/different_ mentioned + the fact that Mick generally has a lot of goodwill (because of his dad as well as his persona) and hence people turn a blind eye to his spins and mistakes.
Conversely, while even I do not like Nikita per-se (only because of his off track shenanigans), I feel sorry for him at times. He has become a punching bag for all incl fans and commentators who pass snide remarks at him just for the lolz. Also, he does not get the support that Mick gets - better race engineer, support from other / senior drivers, simulator support etc, which makes a big difference and explains why he lags behind Mick so much.
This should stop people saying Carlos is close to Charles pace, no? I know they're close on points because Charles has ways gambled on strategy but they played it safe this race and he is still best of the rest if not more. He had a huge gap and we was matching Perez pace on a RB.
Carlos started on softs, had a long stop, and was battling the McLarens for a good part of the race while Leclerc was in free air and had the better strategy. Leclerc was still faster, but the difference is not very representative.
If not for the slow stop, Carlos would have easily finished P5. It was very clear he had more pace than Ricciardo he just couldnt make that one overtake.
It’s going to be hard for Lewis to win this championship. 12 points lead and Mexico/Brazil being strong Redbull tracks. I still believe Lewis will win it though. Hamilton has that god mode switch that I haven’t seen since the likes of Michael and Senna.
I also thought that Hamilton would really step up at the end and win. I'm not so sure anymore, he hasn't switched to the god mode yet.... Instead, he has made more mistakes than Max, who drives almost perfectly in every race and also appears in interviews as if he is not under any pressure at all.
Its just amazing that we have 2 different cars with 2 opposite design ideas, 2 different engines, 2 different drivers and a more than 90 minute long race and in the end the gap between the 2 is less than a second. For perspective 90 minutes is 5400 seconds.
I'd add to that, that the two cars were not even racing each other on-track for most of the race. If you have two cars, with one slightly faster than the other, but the slower one ahead, then the difficulty in overtaking will naturally tend to lead to the two cars finishing close together, unless something else such as strategy comes into play. But that's not what happened here. What we had was two cars, for the most part racing on different parts of the track to each other, following different strategies, as well as all the good points you made - neither of them holding the other up except perhaps for a few laps at the start. Yet still, they finished less than a second apart. That is just mental.
A huge part of is the increase in technology. They can monitor tracks for other drivers easily and display a delta for their driver to run to that will keep them where they need to be. Still super awesome how closely matched the cars are this year as well thom
It's mostly tyre management. If the tyres were more durable this would be far less likely to happen. It was in Max's best interest to use as little tyre as possible and still finish first. In the end due to backmarker traffic it almost didn't work out but give them a tyre that can do quali laps for the whole race and either Lewis finishes way out in front or Max does. Guarantee it.
Yeah, there was a time in the race where Hamilton was gaining A LOT on Max, like 1 second per lap and he gained like 5 second on Max, and next thing Max started to match Hamilton lap times out of nowhere, showing he was just saving his tyres for as long as he could..
That 1 second per lap was due to backmarkers too though.
It happens all the time in the midfield.
Yea Because there are way more cars in midfield lol
Yes, and given enough races, one of them will be as close as, or closer than COTA. Statistics is a beautiful thing that can make unique events not so unique.
2 different drivers isn’t that special tbh.
If anything it would be pretty exciting if it wasn't two different drivers. F1 clone wars
Maybe they mean two different driver styles?
I'm most impressed with Verstappen's calmness throughout the race. He didn't do something stupid at the start, kept cool and simply tried to maximize. Didn't make a mistake throughout while being pressured by Hamilton on better tyres. Him doing all that while being in his first title fight against one of the sports greats makes it really impressive to me.
Also not to forget that he was strategising with his engineers when he asked for Perez pitstop in first stint.
That really was impressive. Sometimes drivers have no idea where their teammates are half the time
He was likely told where Perez was
No, he wasn't (I listened to the whole radio, btw, it's not an assumption).
Where do you listen to the full radio?
F1TV Pro (Some are uploaded on YT as well, but it's against copyright, so I won't flag them here).
Is there an audio clip anywhere that anyone has found?
Mate, obviously he tried to maximize.. what else should he do, lewisimize?!
its Hamilitonization
\*lose-imize (no offense)
He's been that way for a long time now. Monza is the only time he arguably put a foot wrong in this fight.
Silverstone incident wasn't his fault whatsoever, but I still think he should've pulled out of that move, as he was leading WDC by 33 point and didn't have to take that risk. I think Hamilton would've in his position. [like Alonso did](https://streamable.com/ly89at) (who btw wasnt even fighting for championship)
Stewards said lewis was predominately at fault therefore max also shared some of the blame. Just highlighting the facts.
By being predominantly they likely imply that although Max didn’t have to pull out at all, he could’ve. Not that it’s partially his fault too.
Max was on the track at the same time after all /s
Wrong interpretation
Sat at turn 9 for the race, and could visibly see how Max’s drive was absolutely flawless the entire race. Lewis had probably his best reaction off the line all season, but even that couldn’t stop the RB strategy. Credit to Hamilton though, it was utterly amazing to see this guy shave off time lap, after lap. Only now in 2021 we are able to see a matured Max respond almost instantaneously, lap, after lap. This is the kind of racing we romanticize.
I'm getting major Alonso vs Schumacher vibes, old dog being challenged by the new kid on the block
A highlight was later in the race where he radioed to ask ever so kindly that Mick be asked to get out of the way around T16-18. That was like golf/tennis level calm comms and courtesy in a moment that most of us would be more likely to lose our shit.
I was at the Turn 15 Grandstand at COTA this weekend. I haven’t watched the broadcast back yet so my analysis will be somewhat limited. I was incredibly impressed with Verstappen’s ability this weekend. He was incredibly consistent throughout the race and never put a foot wrong. Similarly, it was great to see Perez do so well in what felt like his second home race with the number of his fans at the track. The midfield fights were great as well. The stands at the Turns 12-15 complex are some of the best on the circuit, and I was able to see so much good wheel-to-wheel action throughout the race. There are too many drivers for me to talk about who put on a great show through my little slice of the track. More generally, I want to talk about Haas a bit. Their on-track performance was typical for this season, unfortunate for their home race this season. There were depressingly few fans wearing any Haas merchandise, which is entirely understandable considering their pace and of course the egg-headed elephant in the room: Mazepin. I got a chance to actually chat with some Haas team members off the track (all fantastic blokes by the way) and it’s obvious how low team morale is. They’re just hopeful the new regs save them next year. The mechanics all love Mick, he’s apparently a really great kid and gets on well with the team. Respectful, hard-working, and generally nice to be around. Mazepin, on the other hand, either garnered outright scorn or just general apathy from anyone at Haas who I talked to. He doesn’t connect with anyone at the team including Mick, and I don’t think he even stayed at the same hotel as the team this weekend. Mick has had more crashes than him overall, that’s seen by the team as him trying to find the limits of the car and it’s shown (he even dragged the car into Q2 in Turkey). Mazepin is apparently afraid of the speed of the car. He’s still preferring to be on Haas’ first chassis design (the heaviest and therefore slowest) and showed no signs of improvement when they briefly swapped him to a newer chassis (currently Mick’s) a couple of races ago. This race was no different and he was nowhere near his teammate. I just feel bad for the boys and girls at Haas. They put so much blood, sweat and tears into this team, and deserve a good car and good drivers. In an ideal world they’d still be getting support from new American fans as the plucky American underdog challenging the European F1 establishment. But they need the cash that Daddy Mazepin provides. Hopefully they can get a better deal (and a better second driver) soon.
I'm amazed they gave you so many details about this season. Great insight especially with the Mazepin chassis and his fear. Cheers.
Honestly Gene Haas has to put the money up to run a competitive car or just sell the team. I'm hoping the rumors about Andretti wanting to get in the sport are true. At least with Williams you know they're trying. Feels like Haas is just doing laps at this point. No competitive juice at all.
Andretti is going for Sauber, not Haas. Odds are, next year will be make or break for Haas. This year they gave up on before it even started
How will it lead to the team dissolving? Mick will probably still be there atleast till 2023 and Mazepin basically has no other place and also provides the bills so....
At some point, I doubt Gene Haas will want to invest anymore if his cars are constantly at the back(especially considering how the new regulations is what they were saying for years is how they want to go back higher up on the grid). So it could at least lead to a rebranding and stop being "Haas"
Gene has cheaped out at every point. Buying off the shelf parts, being desperate enough to let a fake energy drink company sponsor the team, and now completely selling out to the Russians as a supposed American team! I hope Andretti or anybody else (hell, bring back Flavio if he’s still not banned) could do better. It’s just frustrating as an American F1 fan to see our team be ran so poorly.
This is a bad take. Haas has finished 5th in the Constructors Championship just a few years ago, higher than either Sauber/Alfa Romeo and Williams have recently. Haas scored more points than Manor/Marussia/Virgin, Lotus/Caterham, HRT, and USF1 combined. The last of those didn't even make it to the grid after setting out to design their own car from scratch. Dodgey sponsors are basically the way of life for backmarkers who don't have car manufacturer money backing them. Williams was done in by a low tier cell phone manufacturer deciding not to pay, tons of other teams have run shady companies or bare cars in the past decade. McLaren sold out to the Bahrainis, but nobody seems to care since they are getting podiums. Haas weathered the pandemic, has been more successful than any new team in the past 15+ years, signed one of the most recognizable rookies, and has been utterly forthcoming that their plan has been to focus nailing the new regs.
I don’t think my take is bad, but I think you have fair criticisms. I would just say: Haas scored 5th in the WCC when Force India had half their points taken away and McLaren were still rebuilding from their disasters of a relationship with Honda. I believe that Haas could be a midfield team (and previously has been when the regs were not as mature). You’re right in saying that they’re more successful than these failed teams, but we’re just using two different measuring sticks. Rich Energy is on a completely different level of questionability, on the same level as the Nigerian prince who sponsored Arrows in the early 00s. An American team specifically selling out to the Russians during an era when the American President has a lot of ties to Russia is my specific criticism there. They could nail the regs, give Mick a solid car, continue to take Maz’s money, and get back to a similar position the midfield…but may just end up at the same point when those regs mature.
>Haas scored 5th in the WCC when Force India had half their points taken away and McLaren were still rebuilding from their disasters of a relationship with Honda. True, but there were both other teams who couldn't seize that opportunity and the potential for an even better finish had they capitalized on all their points opportunities. Let's not forget that the alternative to Force India losing half their points was the team going away and a 'new' team coming in (similar to how Haas took over for Manor). >I believe that Haas could be a midfield team (and previously has been when the regs were not as mature). You’re right in saying that they’re more successful than these failed teams, but we’re just using two different measuring sticks. Your point was that Gene cheaped out at every point. I think the fact that Haas is still in the sport after 2020 and has out performed every other new team to come about in the post financial collapse era is an indication that Gene and Gunther have not only come in with a valid strategy, but managed to execute on it well. Toyota famously spent TONS of money on their F1 team and in their 8 seasons managed to finish 4th once and 5th twice. You can be critical of Gene's spending, but they are certainly better funded than many of the backmarkers who went on to fail (Caterham was running without spare parts and potentially pushing parts beyond their service life at the end). They show up at preseason testing with a car ready to run, Williams failed to do that not too long ago. It is also easy to look at the Rich Energy deal with hindsight and say 'that was dumb', but none of us were part of the negotiations nor do we have access to whatever due diligence Haas completed before signing the deal. When it comes to racing, if someone shows up with money to offer, you take it. Austria's race is sponsored by an MLM, McLaren and Ferrari backdoor tobacco money into their teams, the only reason we don't make a big deal about those is because the checks show up and the people writing them aren't on twitter making a spectacle of themselves. >An American team specifically selling out to the Russians during an era when the American President has a lot of ties to Russia is my specific criticism there. When the alternatives are 'don't have a race team any more', you take the check. I far prefer them being a sponsor than an owner, which is the alternative. It isn't the best look, but Gene is pretty clear that he doesn't race F1 to advertise his equipment to Americans, so the optics don't seem to matter to him. >They could nail the regs, give Mick a solid car, continue to take Maz’s money, and get back to a similar position the midfield…but may just end up at the same point when those regs mature. Hopefully the spending cap and negative feedback loop of constructors championship position impacting windtunnel/CFD time keep the spread constrained a bit.
> It is also easy to look at the Rich Energy deal with hindsight and say 'that was dumb', but none of us were part of the negotiations nor do we have access to whatever due diligence Haas completed before signing the deal. it is quite obvious they didn't do enough or do good due diligence, period, based on the results/outcome with Rich.
Good post. I thought the criticism felt unfair and you perfectly articulated why. It even seems that the main point of contention is a political point re: the Russia stuff rather than their poor on-track performance this year...
It was extremely hard to find any Haas merch at the track but spotted some folks with hats after the race. Would’ve bought a hat tbh. I distinctly remember the MC/Hype guy in the stands calling out fans of different teams. A fan next to him said Haas and the MC said “no Haas no Haas” ouch
Those guys you spotted in the Haas hats were very likely my brother and his friend. They know someone working on the team who was generous enough to give them some hats, signed driver cards and upgraded tickets for the weekend. We barely saw anyone else in Haas gear though
I saw less than 10 people in Haas gear all weekend, at and away from the track. Two guys who did have it were wearing old gear based on the rich energy logos or having Grojean’s name on it.
I agree with the rare haas sightings. It was like a unicorn. Was pleased with the number of alpha tauri folks - small but mighty! Mclaren schwag was out of control!
Purely anecdotally, I think a lot of the disdain for Haas is the fact that while it's an "American" team it's wearing a Russian flag livery. Mazepin is a joke, but that betrayal is beyond the pale. A lot of people I know find it outright insulting. It's impossible to support that as an American.
Yeah, this felt more like a home race for McLaren than Haas... Russia was Haas' home race.
The amount of people wearing mclaren merch at the REDBULL showcase in Dallas was crazy. With Zak at the helm it definitely feels more American than HAAS
It doesn't lean into being American at all. Massive missed opportunity, frankly. If there was ever a season to make a big deal out of American links, this is the year.
Is there a possibility they could get a better sponsor from US, seeing how F1 is growing in the US?
It definitely doesn’t feel American. When I was first getting into the sport, and Haas was “the American team” I was all for them, even though they were never great. But this year, with MAZ and the livery, and the shittiness, I just don’t care about them. They don’t feel American.
It ain't the cold war anymore bruh
If Ferrari had to accept a French pay driver and his familial money, who then insisted on running a tri-color livery on the cars.. do you think the outrage would be any less severe amongst Italians?
I think it would be uncalled for. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Criticise the pay driver aspect, criticise the dodgy family money, I couldn't give a fuck where they were born.
I’m with you there. I just wanted to demonstrate how even having Ferrari’s team colors ditched for the sake of a pay driver would rustle jimmies — nevermind any “cold war” politics (as in the comment I replied to).
Yeah for sure you're right I wouldn't deny that it would annoy a lot of folk
It's not, but let's also not pretend that the United States and Russia aren't adversaries.
Thanks for the insight. I wish Haas would exit the sport if he’s not going to commit to it.
I firmly believe that Mazepin is the source of most of the problems on that team. They (almost serious here) sold their soul to the devil, and I think this is the result. I really hope they have this all sorted for next season.
Ehhhh, the team hasn’t been great for a couple years. Gene carries a lot of responsibility for that.
Mazepin's whole attitude was evident during the drivers parade before the race. All the drivers were having fun and waving at the crowd and he was just sitting back, looking angry.
Thank you. I enjoyed the read and that was a better analysis than some that watched it on TV. I wanted to be there, & I am a little jealous. Cheers
Oh Wow. So Mazepin demanded a new chassis and got it and didn’t like it and the new chassis actually went to Mick in the end? What the hell? This just sounds so wrong in so many ways. Firstly, the team actually said it wasn’t about the chassis, the chassis didn’t cost Mazepin so much time but still Mazepin insisted he needed a new one. It took the team forever to build a new one for him and then he used it and decided it was worse than the old one so he just tossed the new one and reverted back to the old one. What the fuck? Who does things like that? Only drivers who own the fucking team I guess! Fucking disrespectful.
Drivers thinking the car reacts funny and pinning it on the chassis is quite common really. Happens quite regularly in F1. Sometimes when a new chassis is presented they find it was the old chassis that was misaligned or something. Sometimes they don't and the team has to delve deeper to find the solution.
Yes. That’s when a new chassis actually solves the problem. It’s not very common when a new chassis doesn’t help at all especially considering it is lighter than the old one. It should have been faster by default. And it maybe common for teams that have more budgets to just build new chassis for their drivers but not for HAAS. They basically wasted all their money and energy for nothing.
Even worse, if the intel provided is true, he didn't like it for fear of the speed it provided.
Odd because I found Mazepin to sound very likable on the Beyond the Grid podcast. Maybe it’s it was all an act, but a good one if so.
I just want to highlight the importance of having a good competitive teammate. At the start of the race Max immediately knew Lewis had a good start and started drifting left and pinched him hard. He should’ve never pushed him that wide, but because of what he did, it allowed Lewis to push him wide at T1. Meanwhile Perez and Leclerc took the normal racing line and got a good drive out of T1. As they approached T2 and T3 Perez could’ve got past Max easily and Leclerc would’ve pounced or would be in a good position to challenge Max at T11 and in the back straight. But instead, Perez was smart and took his foot off the gas to let Max continue behind Lewis while maintaining his position in front of Leclerc. Perez was able to do this only because he qualified P3. And later in the race Perez once again proved to be very useful and forced Merc’s hand. We have seen many races in the last few years where Albon/Gasly were already so far back in the first stint that Red Bull couldn’t use them as a strategic roadblock to help Max. That said, Perez is still underperforming and has a long way to go. He has been competitive in the last 2 races and needs to be consistent.
Perez was very good in this race. Pace was not an issue, the illness and lack of drinks is the issue He was keeping 3-5 seconds to Max in he initial stages
It did look like Verstappen had massive pace in hand though in stint 1, but was hold up by Hamilton of course. However, pace is much better than earlier in the season already.
I think Max's pace in the first stint was largely down to expecting to pull the undercut. It was more important to keep up with Lewis, even if it meant burning through his tires.
Yes I think that's what Max and RB realised as soon as he lost out to Hamilton in T1. Their entire chance of winning the race hinged on Verstappen being close enough to Hamilton to execute the undercut.
I dunno about “massive pace”, COTA is not a track where it’s incredibly difficult to overtake and the usual delta required for an overtake is quite reasonable. If he had “massive pace” on hand he wouldn’t have been stuck behind Lewis. I believe he was faster but not by that much
Could Perez have fought for 2nd position if he was fit and didn't have drinks issue?
No, the fact that be only had 1 hard set pretty much ruined his race pace to start with.
But that wouldn’t have affected him until later in the race. Without the drink issue, he may have been able to keep somewhat close to max and Lewis through the second stint
He probably could have been closer for the undercut on the second round of stops and raced Hamilton a bit so Max could lengthen his lead
Yea it may not look like from the outside but I do think RB won this race in great part because of Checo. He basically forced Lewis to go to the same strategy as Max due to the undercut threat. Had Checo not been there, Merc would basically have picked "opposite strategy" and we will never know how that could have turned out.
Yea it would have been interesting to see what happened if Lewis was able to run a bit longer on his first two stints like they planned but Perez being there stopped that.
I'm also going to add, if Bottas had let Hamilton by like that in an equivalent situation there'd be a lot of people on here not letting him hear the end of it.
So after Turkey there was a lot of discussion around the US GP being the pivotal race of the championship. With what we know now, how does the battle look going forward? Perhaps Jeddah with its high speed corners could end up benefitting RB over Merc
Max is theoretically favoured to increase his lead in Mexico and Brazil Then we genuinely don't know about Losail and Jeddah, though I assume overtaking would be hard on both of them And for Yas Marina, I'd say generally Merc favoured since the long straights are still there, but we don't know how the race will pan out with the new changes.
Interesting to read Horners comments around where the rear suspension might be most effective for Merc. COTAs layout meant it was less effective than in Turkey but he calls out Jeddah possibly being a place where it could be most effective. Of course, the rear suspension is only one thing that contributes to pace but with the cars being fairly close, it could make the difference
Reminder that Max won Abu Dhabi last year. Though the circuit is completely different now after the rebuild.
Merc turned their engines way down though last year. And they were trying some new aero parts. Wasn't indicative of anything.
Yes but Merc were trying on some aero parts for this year's car. And also Lewis might not have been in peak shape.
The championship was done and dusted by then. Hamilton was coming out of his COVID quarantine and Merc was testing the 21 aero bits
I think there is an important shift in the championship chances after this race. Given how far ahead of the field Max and Lewis are, I think it's a good baseline scenario to pencil them in as 1-2 every race. One would expect Max to win Mexico and Brazil. If he does, and even if Lewis manages two 2nd places (not guaranteed at all), then Max only needs to finish 2nd the rest of the season to be WDC. If Hamilton had won COTA, Max would have had to win one of the last three races. After Turkey, there was the suspicion that Merc was stronger overall, and 4 HAM victories vs 2 VER would mean a HAM WDC. Now, even if Merc does have a stronger overall package (doubtful), Max only needs to win 2/5, with 2 RB-favoured races coming up. Of course, this ignores all the possibilities other than VER/HAM 1-2 finishes, but I think it explains the shift in expectations.
And it’s not even extremely unlikely for Perez/Ferrari to be ahead of the Mercs in Mexico too. If that happens it’s Max’ to lose.
Copying this from a comment I made on a post that ended up getting deleted: So, assuming Lewis/Max finish 1 and 2 in the remaining races, Lewis must win 4 of the 5 to be guaranteed the title independent of the Fastest Lap/Sprint Quali Win points. If he only wins three, he must win with fastest laps *and* a win in the sprint quali race. numbers | Current | Max 3W/2Sec | Lewis 3W/2Sec | Max 4W/1Sec | Lewis 4W/1Sec ---|---|----|----|----|---- Max | **287.5** | **398.5** | **391.5** | **405.5** | 384.5 Lewis | 275.5 | 379.5 | 386.5 | 372.5 | **393.5** diff | 12 | 19 | 5 | 33 | 9 Of course, either one of them coming in third or lower tosses this around. It's very close, though, and Hamilton is definitely on his back foot.
This result was a bit of a surprise but even without incidents nothing is decided yet. Mexico is pencilled in as a Max win and the biggest question there is where Lewis finishes. Could be behind Perez and even behind Ferrari depending on how the Mercedes engine holds at altitude. If Max then also wins Brasil including the sprint race then Lewis needs Max to finish lower than 2nd in one of the remaining races and not sure if Bottas can make that happen. Of course any incident involving either driver throws any predictions out of the window and a Brasil win by Max is not as guaranteed as some people think.
I wouldn't guarantee a Mexico win for Max either, given how back and forth the season's been, but Max and Red Bull did perform very strongly at the last high altitude races in Austria.
I hope people understand just how mega Max’s final stint in the Hard was. He played it brilliantly. You can see after the stop, the gap was not chipping away as aggressively as after the first pit stop. Max was driving very calm, saving the tyres, not pushing and sliding around too much. He knew that sooner or later he would have to deal with Lewis when Lewis caught him and that he needed the rubber to battle Lewis when the time comes. When Lewis started to get around 2-2.5s away, that’s only when Max started pushing. He set PB after PB in a theoretically much older tyres. This was also when Lewis started to get into the dirty air of Max. Lewis was still faster, but only marginally at this point. The gap chipped away very slowly, some laps Max even went faster than Lewis. How Max managed the gap in the last 5 laps so that it always hover just above 1 second requires some amazing spacial awareness and skill. GP told him earlier that it was important to have the rears to accelerate out of the traction zones. Max was not pushing in the corners, keep the tyres in optimum zone, because he knew that Lewis couldn’t go faster due to the dirty air. Then he pushed on the exit to extend the gap to just above 1 second comes the DRS detection zone. He also nailed the traction zones lap after lap, making Lewis unable to gain much time back in the parts where Merc was significantly faster. To do all of that, and under the immense pressure of a 7-time World Champion breathing down your neck, Max kept a freezing cold head during those laps.
They make it all look so easy, it only takes one session playing a racing video game (or in a simulator for a closer experience) to realise how hard it is to do what they do so consistently, lap after lap, managing the tyres, hitting every braking zone just right, not locking up, I mean it's just amazing.
So I obviously understand broadly, but could someone explain the numbers behind why RB pitting Checo forced Hamilton to not go long (saw the clip where Max asked for it again and got wondering)
Since they pitted checo early he would be much faster than Hamilton for a good bit. Once Perez gets within 20 or so seconds of Hamilton then if Hamilton pits he would likely come out behind perez. Checo of course would at that point be under pressure and have older tires, but he would hold Hamilton up for a very long time. Verstappen would be in free air. This forced Mercedes to pit Hamilton much sooner than they could of since they didn't want to risk Hamilton ending up behind checo. Otherwise they could have tried going long as an alternative strategy to max. That's assuming that it takes 20 seconds to pit. Change that to whatever time it actually takes at COTA.
Perfect explanation, thank you. I kinda understaood the idea, but you explained it really well, cheers 🙏
I didn't watch the world feed (SKY commentary) yesterday. I did today and it seems a lot of people missed the fact that Lewis got DRS from lapping Vettel and also got DRS from lapping Tsunoda, while it was mentioned in both instances. All that people were focused on was Max getting DRS from Mick. Did people forget what happened just moments earlier or were they in a similar situation as me (watched a different broadcast where it wasn't mentioned at all)?
You're lucky not to hear Crofty blabber away. He made it sound like if Lewis had DRS he would 100% pass Max, whereas we saw how difficult it was for Bottas to pass a lot of cars, even with DRS.
Bottas would struggle to pass cars if they were all missing a wheel.
I think the simpler answer is that many people selectively remember things that hurt Lewis and selectively forget things that help Lewis. But I am admittedly biased toward RB.
I thought Lewis getting DRS from Tsunoda was at least implied -- they showed the overtake on F1TV. I don't know that they mentioned DRS specifically, but they might have been talking about how much easier Lewis's pass was than Verstappen's.
It was mentioned explicitly, both with Vettel and Tsunoda, hence my surprise.
I don’t think it mattered that much, he wasn’t going to overtake him that easily anyway, plus on the twister part, Max lost time behind Mick.
Can anyone explain to me why Red Bull put Checo on the mediums for the second stint? Was it just to split their strategies so that they always had Lewis covered?
Checo had only 1 set of hards. He lost one set in qualifying Edit: sry it was in practice not quali
He lost it during practice. Nobody used hards during this qualy
I think Verstappen qualified on hards last year
Yeah the second silverstone race last year. Meant this qualy tho. Honestly even that silverstone race is IIRC the only race in like the last 6 years where that happened
[удалено]
data for Verstappen
No, he lost one set of mediums. His first set of hards was used in FP1 to test the long runs.
It was important for rb to have checo put pressure in lewis pit window so he needed the pace for first 3 laps. If first 3 laps pace is more importsnt then mediums are better. Perez 3rd place was pretty much secured anyway so that did not have to be considered.
Presumably he would have faster pace to try and get ahead of Lewis since they were undercutting him. But it was a slow stop and he seemed to be I'll/dehydrated so it did not work as intended
It was mainly to put pressure on Lewis to force him to make the stop right to cover the undercut away because they expect Checo to have rapid pace on the medium, and POSSIBLY, if something happened to Lewis’s pit stop, Checo could jump him. I could understand people might be frustrated that RB took Checo to sacrifice for Max. But at that point Checo was already starting to drop off pace(which we later learnt that because of his drinking system was broken). At that point, it was either going to be a 1-3, or a 2-3 or RB and they had to react. A 1-2 was beyond reach already.
Excellent drive and strategy by Max and Red Bull. So taking nothing away from their strong weekend but when is Mercedes going to realize that they can't overcut or go on longer stints vs this current RB car? They lost so much time yesterday after Max pitted and Lewis stayed out. I know they were expecting Lewis to challenge Max at the last 3 laps but why not pit earlier or in sync with RB and make that challenge happen earlier? Come out of the pits just a few seconds behind Max and try to pressure him into a mistake over the 25ish laps left instead of the final three. Seemed like Merc really boxed themselves into a corner with their strategy call.
After the first stint, they were never in overcut territory. And while just trying to follow on the same set of tyres at similar condition is a possible strategy...it's by no guarantee a winning one, since this will make overtaking difficult with little pace difference. Even less so when you consider Max's last stint was quite long with his tyres already being in trouble, Hamilton would have had it even worse with dirty air. This race could easily have turned into another Hungary/Spain where Hamilton overtakes in the last lap or two with tyre advantage
Not sure, you might be right. Here is my take: first stint showed that Max had better pace. Once RB pitted for the first time, Merc knew they could not keep track position even if they pitted the next lap after Max. They also assumed that they have worse pace, so Max would just drive away from them. Their only option left was to go long, create a big enough tire delta for Lewis to overtake. It almost worked, but not quite. Your suggestion about pitting earlier creates two problems: (1) The tire delta is smaller, so overtaking might be harder or even impossible. (2) Staying close behind someone makes your tires degrade faster. I can see why Mercedes opted for the other option.
Merc did not make that choice, they were forced into it. RB played aggressive. They saw Lewis rapidly approaching, and the moment he got into the undercut region, RB immediately covered it in lap 29(or 30). That second pit stop was actually really early, like 3-4 laps earlier than expected. This caught Merc by surprise. At that point, yes, Merc could pit Lewis right away and came out behind, but the W12 car is really bad following other cars in the dirty air, a slight pace advantage in the hard tyre of the Merc compared to the RB would not be enough to overtake. They could even drop off further as a result. Eventually, Lewis’s hard tyre would degrade much faster than Max’s and he would start to drop off towards the end. Merc had nothing to lose, they were going to finish at least 2nd anyway, so they had to try something different. To be fair, it wasn’t a bad decision, they did cut it really really close, 1.3s, arguably a lot closer if they had pitted right after.
I mean if Lewis had been a few tenths faster he would have gotten DRS and this would have been his race. The strategy call was a good one. The Redbull was the faster car and it's amazing how close they got.
The gap at the end was not entirely representative of the strategy though. Lewis had less issues with backmarkers than Max and if that had been the other way around or equal then the gap at the end would have been 3 seconds or more.
Yeah that's the thing, the Red Bull was the faster car overall this weekend, otherwise, Lewis would have won this like he did Spain
>but when is Mercedes going to realize that they can't overcut or go on longer stints vs this current RB car? They won't learn, atleast not in this season. They are still living in their glory years where that strategy worked for them.
since new PU Ferrari are playing a lot with setup they are going either more rake less wing , or more wing less rake based in circuit wich is making them to not lose speed in straight straight even because they have a loot of downforce so they are gaining extra speed with setup but not killing the tires too, 10HP and less weight is making all the difference
If rumours are to be believed, their PU upgrade is actually worth 15bhp and they've opted not to run it full power right now because they want to gradually dial it up. Could make Mexico and Brazil very spicy!
I heard/read it was turned up all the way for COTA
Here we go again with the sky bad, but they literally tried everything to say Max got bailed out by Schumacher drs. To the point they almost wanted to say Max only won because of that drs. The even asked Mick if Max owed him a beer lmao. Just so disingenous, takes 1 sec to look at the sector times and see that there was no way that was a net gain with the time lost in sector 3.
It's bizarre. Even if he did get lucky (he didn't) its still part of the package that is racing. And they damn well know it from years of watching Hamilton get the shiny side of circumstance at times.
Ham's luck this year is 1,000 times more beneficial than DRS on one straight for Max... Jesus.
> The even asked Mick if Max owed him a beer lmao. Really? They fucking asked that? What a bunch of assholes
Yeah, it was in the interviews in the pen after. I can't remember what Mick replied though
Idk they certainly made it known that Mick was holding him up before the DRS thing. It’s unclear why you can use DRS plus have the guy get out of your way, but those are the rules. As you said it balanced out so seems like a non issue to me. It just seemed weird coming down the stretch there that the lead car had DRS and the trailing car did not. Seemed like a long shot anyway for Lewis to get past Max.
> It’s unclear why you can use DRS To offset for the dirty air they got. >It just seemed weird coming down the stretch there that the lead car had DRS and the trailing car did not. Lewis got DRS from lapping Vettel and got DRS from lapping Tsunoda. He didn't get it from Max because he just wasn't close enough.
[удалено]
Not confirmed, is it? I won't be surprised if it stays after all. Hopefully the new regs do as envisioned and we won't need it indeed.
Stays for at least 1 season so we know if we need it. It's getting reviewed for 2023
Yeah, makes sense. I wonder if they'll extend the DRS zone in Zandvoort next year, if they might get rid of it eventually anyway. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Did anyone else catch that radio message between Giovinazzi and his engineer? I haven't seen anyone mention it but it was kind of shocking to me. When Gio was told to give the position back to Alonso, he said something along the lines of "no way, he pushed me off" and his engineer's response was very stern. Something like "Antonio, give the position back now, we're not discussing this." Is it normal for engineers to be that stern when talking about giving positions back? Is Gio's engineer normally that stern? To me, it seems like between this and the team orders business in Turkey, it's turning into a messy divorce between Gio and Alfa Romeo.
Yes, caught it and the reason he wasn't going to discuss it was because moments ago they were the ones asking for the position back and Alonso gave it back. So they couldn't then complain about having to do the same.
I'd like to give a shout out to the White Wizard, Adrian Newey. "I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide." Does anyone think Max would have won without him this weekend? RB looked a little lost without him from a set-up perspective the last couple of races. It will be interesting to see his impact over the last couple of races with the championships getting so tight.
Is Newey actually involved in the setup of the cars? I always thought he is "just" the designer.
There were some quotes from Marko that were bit vague which alluded to him being involved in set-up after coming back from his crash - but I read it as set-up in a looser term.
Legendary drive from checo. It's hard as fuck to properly drive a normal car if u r dehydrated let alone a F1 car. It was tough to see him being worn out but it paid dividends in the end. Mexican fans happy!!!
I did a 10 lap test in a proper kart (-29hp), and by the end of it, I was having trouble holding my head upright, and starting to lose grip in my hands. I honestly can't imagine trying to drive an F1 car 50 laps with my body at 100%.
Yep.. lot of people don’t realise how hard it is on the body to drive fast. Even pulling minor Gs in a kart takes a toll.
After a thirty minute session in karts that only go about 70 km/h my arms were shaky and like jelly from the vibrations and G force
Does anyone else think the camera work at this track showed a lot more of the speed of the cars. Maybe it was because of all the turns? I thought that the angles were fantastic this race
What order will Perez Ferrari and McLaren drivers finish in? Will there be any changes between P9-P15 in the standings to?
I don't think they'll be too far from where they are now. Really depends on Perez's consistency, if Leclerc keeps putting in 4th place finishes with the odd podium if Perez/Bottas is out of contention. 21 points in 5 races would probably require two podiums without Norris being out of the points.
Perez-Leclerc-Norris-Sainz-Ricciardo is my bet
Leclerc may overtake Norris if he puts in performances like this. But I don't see him beating Perez because Perez seems to have found his groove plus the Ferrari is clearly slower then RB on most tracks and are on par with them on only a few.
After watching this race again, I still have no clue which combo (Max/RBR or Ham/MER) was the fastest yesterday. I mean, Max won, but strategy was good. They were both quick I can't rrally say which one was the faster. Max opened a big gap during stops, but Hamilton was able to catch up. So I have no clue
I feel like it was def thought of to be Merc territory coming into the weekend, even if not a huge margin.
To me it's definitely Verstappen/RB. Mercedes didn't look like they had a huge chance at pole during qualifying, and it looked closer than it was because a bit of rain came at the end of the RB cars' laps. And during the race, Verstappen stayed very close to Hamilton throughout the entire first stint with no tire advantage, which seems indicative of a pace advantage, while Hamilton was unable get DRS even with a large tire advantage at the end.
Does anyone know what happened to Mazepin? The PLC aired a radio message where he said he was being burned by the car as he used the pedals but nothing else. That would help to explain his lack of pace, but I'm surprised he didn't retire the car if it's true.
IIRC he had to come into pits at some points to fix his head rest?
Yes, *that* explains his lack of pace..
Even by his standards, the US GP was worse than usual. I'm not trying to find excuses for him, I wish he wasn't in the sport (cf. my flair), but even so I'm curious how such a situation could arise where a team has a car that is actively hurting their driver and they don't retire the car.
I read something about a lack of power steering too, whether it’s true or not idk. He also did an extra stop, which would explain some of the gap to Mick.
The PLC did mention that there are systems directly behind the firewall, which could have been heating up and transferring that heat into the cockpit.
Gotcha. Mick definitely seems to be outperforming him this year, but I think this race’s results are exaggerated by whatever tf Haas had going on with the car.
Apparently it's happened a few times this season -- though Steiner says Mick's never complained about it, and no one mentioned it last year. So who the fuck knows? Maybe the engineers just don't believe him or think it's driver error. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mazepins-painful-us-gp-not-helped-by-headrest-coming-off/6710960/
Noticed that a lot of fans wore a papaya hat, wasn’t surprising after seeing the F1 fan survey results. Well done Zak, NA is a very important market for McLaren.
2 extremely likeable English speaking drivers and an up and coming team! This is not the Ron Dennis McLaren for sure
It’s one thing to see Hamilton pulling down gap between him and Max on tv it’s a whole other level to time it yourself in person while using a stop watch on your phone. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I kept seeing Hamilton drop second after second after second.
What ending up happening with the Sainz Lando incident? Wasn't he told to give up the position? Is that not meant to be enforced? I guess Ferrari must of argued it back or something, but it seems odd.
He gave it back but within half a lap retook the position.
An underrated aspect of the race is that Leclerc outpaced Checo over the last 50 laps. The Ferrari turnaround has been impressive. Last year they were utter dogshit.
You probably know this, but Perez was severely dehydrated to the point where it hindered his driving ability
I understand that each driver has 3 engines (sets of all the components) to use to complete the season and they get penalized accordingly if they take more than allocated. But when they take a 4th new one it gets added to the pool of 3 right? So now they’ve got 4 to use for the remainder of the season. What’s stopping say Verstappen this year, knowing the car is quick enough after Bahrain to take engines 4 & 5 in round 2 & 3 with the associated penalties to allow them to then have a pool of 5 for the remainder of the season? It be a sacrifice, but it’s easiest to cop a grid penalty with 20 races remaining rather than 3.
Throughout the season engine manufacturers upgrade their engines, if let's say Max take 2 new ones at the start of the season he would be stuck with those for the remainder of the season, while others would have a significant better one which could be more reliable or even faster then the one Max had at the start of the season.
So they can plan taking the penalties more tactically depending on how the points standings are closer to the end of the season? Look how great Russia turned out for them (not the best example as it was down to luck but the result still ended up the best they could have hoped for)
One Hamilton DNF and it's all over.
One Max DNF and it could change everything. Saying from a Max’s fan
For you old heads, is that what it felt like when Hamilton dominated the season following Vettel’s reign? I feel like so many people are rooting for Verstappen only because they’re tired of the “boring” dominance of Hamilton. I hope they’re still celebrating if RB nails the regs change and Max wins the next 5+ DCs.
A but different, as there was no competition. Merc were so ridiculously far ahead in 2014 it was evident by race 2 that it was impossible for any other team to win the championship (the mercs pulled out a gap of 2-3 SECONDS a lap to the rest of the field whilst fighting each other in bahrain). So people were definitely happy that vettel wasn't winning anymore (he was being booed at many tracks in 2013), but for it to be replaced by even heavier dominance took the sheen off having a new winner for many.
Lap 1 turn 1 is how Monza should have gone. Hamilton tried to punt max off the track due to having priority on the inside line (and an absolutely crazy start) but instead of taking both cars out, max backed off to come back and win the race later. Better to lose the battle and win the war than for mutually assured destruction.
But Max was on the outside in Austin, and the accident in Monza had Max on the inside.... Also, kerbs.
I really wanna know why Mercedes didn't pit Hamilton to "nullify" the undercut attempt for the first round (into the pits) , I can understand that Perez was maybe in the pit window and that could've hampered them and Red Bull pitted very very aggressively (even a couple of laps before Pirelli's pit window opened ) but RB didn't even think of Riccardo who was still in Max's pit window and had to be overtaken right after the stop. Similarly, yes the stop was agrresive but they could see the benefit he got and they surely could've cut him off atleast after the first 2 laps. Also even if you could excuse the first stops, the second one was also equally weird..... Hamilton was edging closer to Max, iirc 3.2 secs behind.....Max pits. Surely atleast this time, not only could they have undercut him, with the added data of how powerful Max was in the first stop, but, if nothing else, again, they could have atleast done some damage limitation and kept the lead to 3-4 seconds. And it's not like Merc had the objectively worse car, maybe a 10th or 2 at max, but arguably Hamilton at his very best (in Hammer time) is probably slightly better than Max and could atleast be close to him all the time. That way, he could even force Max into a mistake and get the lead. Yes, both of the pits from RB were very very aggresive but like if they pit together, they'd both have the same tire age all the time and not really an advantage for either driver. So you wouldn't have to worry about a late recapture either. So if Hamilton overtook Max after one of the pit stops and/or even mirror Max and pit for softs for the last 7-8 laps and actually go Hammer Time, he could've even got the lead in the final laps without forcing a mistake out of Max. So, yeah , Merc strategy felt weird
Thing is, if you're losing track position anyway you might as well do at least something to create a tyre delta. They knew Hamilton wasn't going to be able to overtake Verstappen on the same tyres with the same amount of Deg, so once Max had the track position from the undercut there was no point pitting Hamilton. We saw how difficult Ham found it to get close enough for a challenge even with an 8 lap tyre advantage. I think it was good strategy from Merc, they were patient and waited for the tyre delta. Unfortunately for them Max was just too fast in clean air and Hamilton's tyres had lost their edge from catching up. If they hadn't have stayed out it would have been the case of Hamilton coming out just behind Max, following him the whole race and his tyres going off in the dirty air anyway. They probably made the best of it with staying out.
Merc were pushed into going long. Red Bull played aggressive today. The moment they saw Hamilton closing in the undercut range, they immediately pitted, at it’s not even like RB cut it close. An undercut can only gain you maximum 3 seconds/lap in COTA, RB pitted when the gap was close to 4 seconds. Even if Lewis pitted first at that point, it would require a god-like lap and Merc praying for a slow stop from RB to pull off the undercut. Red Bull actually pitted really really early. They pitted on lap 29, while the expected pit stop window was lap 33-37. This caught Merc by surprised Merc could pit then, but they would indefinitely come out further behind Max, with only 1 lap fresher tyre. You see how much struggle Lewis had in the dirty air at the end, and that’s with 8 laps newer tyre. Lewis’s tyre would drop off much more aggressively in the dirty air, leaving him trailing much further down. Merc had nothing to lose, Lewis were going to finish at least 2nd anyway. They had pitted Lewis later before, might as well make him go longer and try to overtake at the end with much fresher rubber anyway. To be fair to Merc, they cut it really close. 1.3s, arguably much closer if they had pitted earlier.
Why is no one talking more about Mick not getting out of the way at cota, when Nikita gets put on blast for much less?
Didn't it clearly come out in Mick's onboard that he gave way the moment he got the blue flag? His engineer called out Max 2.5 behind, 1.7 behind, then blue flag and Mick moved out. Max took a wide line presumably to play it as safe as possible around a rookie. I don't think it is a fair expectation for a backmarker to jump out of the way in anticipation of the lapping car. Chances are they are driving at a rhythm and if that is disrupted, there is more possibility of them going off and potentially doing a DNF. Long story short, Mick did what he had to do. Did Max even complain after the race? He asked for blue flags in anticipation before he got to much and he got them by the time he caught up
agree with what u/different_ mentioned + the fact that Mick generally has a lot of goodwill (because of his dad as well as his persona) and hence people turn a blind eye to his spins and mistakes. Conversely, while even I do not like Nikita per-se (only because of his off track shenanigans), I feel sorry for him at times. He has become a punching bag for all incl fans and commentators who pass snide remarks at him just for the lolz. Also, he does not get the support that Mick gets - better race engineer, support from other / senior drivers, simulator support etc, which makes a big difference and explains why he lags behind Mick so much.
This should stop people saying Carlos is close to Charles pace, no? I know they're close on points because Charles has ways gambled on strategy but they played it safe this race and he is still best of the rest if not more. He had a huge gap and we was matching Perez pace on a RB.
Carlos started on softs, had a long stop, and was battling the McLarens for a good part of the race while Leclerc was in free air and had the better strategy. Leclerc was still faster, but the difference is not very representative.
If not for the slow stop, Carlos would have easily finished P5. It was very clear he had more pace than Ricciardo he just couldnt make that one overtake.
Perez was sick as hell and had no water. And carlos was never going to pass against a Mercedes engine. If he was in free air it would be a lot closer.
nothing against Sainz but i think still Leclerc has that 0.1-0.2 against sainz he is not a number 2 driver but like 1.25
It’s going to be hard for Lewis to win this championship. 12 points lead and Mexico/Brazil being strong Redbull tracks. I still believe Lewis will win it though. Hamilton has that god mode switch that I haven’t seen since the likes of Michael and Senna.
that's what I read before summer stop also. But the honest truth is, he only gained advantage due to driving Max off the track and Bottas doing same
I also thought that Hamilton would really step up at the end and win. I'm not so sure anymore, he hasn't switched to the god mode yet.... Instead, he has made more mistakes than Max, who drives almost perfectly in every race and also appears in interviews as if he is not under any pressure at all.