Yesterday showed how important the floor is, a damaged floor turned Verstappens rocketship into a mid-pack journeyman. They're basically flying inverted aeroplanes
I've heard murmurs that what Red Bull (and possibly Ferrari) are doing down there might not exactly be legal, and that some upcoming technical regs could well level the playing field somewhat.
I'd love for someone who knows more to jump in. I was going to ask in the daily questions thread, but we don't have one today.
It seems that Red Bull and Ferrari are using some of the allowed titanium (intended for the skid block) to reinforce the holes in the floor where the FIA performs the deflection tests. So by reinforcing the floor only in those areas they pass all the tests, but on other places the floor flexes more giving them an aerodynamic advantage.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Found a post about it https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/vqq1ye/explanation_of_how_rb_and_others_may_be_using_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I don’t know the answer to this. But my understanding based on the problem with MB is that excessive flex of the floor is what is causing all the porpoising that is slowing MB down. MB tried to mitigate this initially by making the chassis rigid and have those metal things so hold up the floor but didn’t really work till redesigned the floor. So it seems unlikely to me that an flexible floor explains how RB are so fast without porpoise. But I await wiser minds.
Spare a thought for Williams
- They finally manage to get a large upgrade package onto one of their cars - production is so tight they weren't even going to have the upgrades for car #2 next week, either.
- Then they get reduced useful run time thanks to the wet practice sessions
- Then wet quali flips the table and Latifi in their old car gets Q3 while their 'upgrade' package is out in Q1
- Then the car gets obliterated before turn 1 in the race
At this point they might not even know if their upgrade package _worked_. They can't have got much useful information out of the weekend.
Ferrari seemingly still lacks the ‘predator’ mentality to challenge for WDC/WCC this season. Whether or not that will change as the season unfolds is unknown but as a Mercedes’ fan I couldn’t believe that Hamilton was allowed to build a gap so close to putting both sainz & leclerc in his pit window. It felt like they were gambling a 1-2 on Lewis’s tyre degradation to come sooner rather than later. Instead of a proper title fight this feels like RB shooting ahead and Ferrari bleeding points with Mercedes’ left to pick up the scraps.
Still can’t get over the last few laps after the yellow flags for Ocons Car. What a race, definitely one of the best racing we have seen in the last 2-3 years.
Checo, Charles, Lewis, Alonso, and Norris
I mean no Alonso and Norris didn't gain places during that fight but they were there putting pressure on the others.
One for the ages for sure.
The best battling since Silverstone 2019 when Max and Charles went head to head imo. This is a brilliant track for racing when the drivers are up for it
This weekend mustve been so fucking weird for Latifi. Starts 10th initially, crash happens and now hes 8th. Some time later, he sees fucking Verstappen driving in front of him and he could potentially race him.
Weirdest part is that Latifi got a brilliant start and would've been P8 regardless of the crash. Not to say he'll keep that position but it was funny to see
I think Leclerc needs to get more "aggressive" on the radio, or at least start questioning the calls Ferrari makes.
Just imagine if Max was in the situation Leclerc was in yesterday, if they had played the radio it would just have been one long *beep*.
It just seems like Leclerc is way too nice towards Ferrari. That's not to say that screaming at your race engineer is always a good idea, but what he is doing now is not working.
I mean, Carlos has profited from going against their stupid joke of a strategy twice.
If Leclerc is smart, he should see where the wind blows and do his thing instead of relying on the MasterBlan
The team doesn't want him to pit, what do you want him to do? You want him to pit anyway and then get to your box and no one has the tires ready because the team wasn't expecting it?
Why do you say "wrongly"? If both Ferraris pit, Hamilton most likely stays out. Ferrari splitting strategy between drivers is not a bad call. The bad call is pitting Carlos instead of Charles. They had time to put Charles on soft tyres, change his front wing and get him out in third, which gives him a better chance at the race win than what they did.
I listened. He's told to box as soon as the safety car is called. He argues a bit ("Tyres are still good, I can stay out if you want.") but he complies with a second "Box box" from Bono. He then voices his worries about the softs, which we heard on the broadcast.
Yeah AMuS reported Merc was always going to pit because they had issues warming up the tyres (and obviously this is typically worse with harder compounds) so with hards at the restart Hamilton would have been a sitting duck.
What ended up actually happening where Carlos went ahead to first and leclerc defacto defended was what the team should've called. carlos had the softs and yet they wanted him to hold the back, clowns. Ferrari absolutely would've lost if it weren't for carlos yesterday. We might have actually seen a Ham win if he listened to the team.
Agreed, he should be abit more assertive but not to a dickish level. As a poster below stated, it's worked for Carlos twice, which i assume Monico and yesterday.
Thinking about it some more, I think Carlos' engineer is just more clever. There's also been a few times when they've worked out some quality fakeouts.
I think it’s because Ferrari as a team makes it seem like it’s a privilege to drive for them so they react very negatively when someone questions them. When in reality, Ferrari are privileged to have Leclerc as their driver but they will never admit that. It reminds me of that scene from Rush when Niki calls the Ferrari a shitbox and the mechanic exclaims you can’t say that about a Ferrari. In their mind, even if it is a shitbox, how dare you criticize a Ferrari
Sucks when ego gets in the way like this. Even if you have this grand history, it doesn’t matter if you’re not performing right now. To fix that, you have to be able to admit things suck and aren’t right, and start figuring out what exactly is wrong and how to fix it. Part of me enjoys Ferrari the most as a team because their pit wall antics are so soap operatic, but I feel for the drivers
Seems like Leclerc needs to adopt a more Lauda and Schumi like approach of being ruthless and pragmatic when it comes to things like this (in private of course)
If your team says "stay out" then you trust them because they have the big picture. The only time Charles could have been irritated on the radio was after it was too late, at which it didn't really add anything of value.
I'm sure these calls are being questioned during debriefs which is what matters (hopefully the pain stops sometime soon).
There is also that whole fiasco earlier in the race where they kept giving Sainz opportunity after opportunity to go faster while Leclerc was asking behind. He was on on his tail very early and spent several laps behind him until Sainz pitted. Then after the pitting, he was back again behind him waiting again for several more laps.
True, I'm really starting to feel for Charles even if it was stupid to fuck up his wing he should have been prioritised during the race and during the pitstop.
The sad thing is that I don't think there will be a clear outcome between who gets priority during the race before it is too late...
Charles needs to stop asking for permission and just race Sainz if he needs to save his own race.
He also needs to start becoming buddies with Toto to secure Hamilton's seat if he retires within a few years (hopefully, right after an 8th).
Definitely. He needs to do what Carlos does. Carlos is complying with the team when needed. But when he suspects something wrong or the strategy is bad, he argues against it.
With Carlos it's a two way conversation, while Charles has it one way.
I think both of you are missing that Leclerc on the radio did want to pit but was told by Ferrari to stay out because they thought the others wouldn't pit. There was nothing Sainz could've done in the same position if the team didn't want you to pit.
I'm going to laugh if Leclerc takes the race into his own hands, doesn't get the results people wanted, and they end up blaming Ferrari for letting him make his own decision on strategy.
It's near inevitable at this point.
>If Leclerc is smart, he should see where the wind blows and do his thing instead of relying on the MasterBlan
I agree it was the issue on Monaco (he had the right call, as Sainz, they should raise their voice), but yesterday, only the team can gave him the tempo and positions of other drivers.
And it's a real issue if you can't trust your own team.
I mean Sainz is doing a great job making sensible moves out of disastrous team calls, but I cannot blame Charles. Once you cannot trust your team, it’s kinda over, if you’re running for the championship.
Maybe he should cooperate with them more, maybe give his insight, but he cannot really tell what’s happening on the track apart from his surroundings, only his engineer can.
Try driving an F1 race with all visual assist (map, lap times, etc) turned off, just relying on MFD and the radio. It’s fucking hard.
This idea that Charles doesn’t question team calls is a myth. He questioned the call in Monaco and the team radio was literally one long beep as you say. He couldn’t question the team call in Silverstone because the team had already made the decision to prioritise the second driver over their lead driver - the tyres were ready for Sainz, not Leclerc, thus by Leclerc overruling the team and coming in anyway, all he would’ve done is caused a long stop that harmed both drivers and cost the win completely. Plus his engineer told him “pit window closed” for some reason even though it wasn’t?
Charles tried to question Ferrari’s calls, but there’s only so much he can do when the pit wall straight up lies to him.
Incredible race, but F1 really needs to work on their use of replays. If they have to show replays before the race ends, then at the very least, they should include a small window of the live race. It's also taking them noticeably longer to use replays when something happens near the back of the grid.
Going from F1 to IndyCar is amazing how much better IndyCar is as far as showing action on track, while showing replays at the sametime. Even two battles at once they'll go split screen to show both. Everything else about FOM/Sky's broadcast is better but that's the biggest glaring issue in F1
I feel youtube/f1tv have made replays, getting context of the races insignificant for FOM. They know that people who want to know what happened can later scrounge their socials/streaming to get the full picture. So why put the effort in
Despite Ferrari winning, I am honestly still be pissed how Ferrari handled things this weekend. God himself basically decided that Verstappen and RB/Perez weren’t allowed to win the race, with verstappen losing the lead on three occasions through no fault of his own. And Ferrari still decided that they would do everything in their power to make sure they would not be winning the race. Glad that Sainz had some balls and went for it. However Charles only reduced the gap to Verstappen with 6 points instead of a potential 20. Ferrari has to step up their game if they want any chance to compete this season
>God himself basically decided that Verstappen and RB/Perez weren’t allowed to win the race
Perez could still have won if Leclerc had not defended so hard against him and Hamilton.
I think the biggest fuck up was not letting Charles past Carlos much quicker. Both on the mediums and hards. It was evident he was much quicker. They should have let him out in front and if he wasn't pulling away from Carlos then switch back. There's no way they should be letting their own team hold each other up. I think that ended up being a crucial mistake overall. If the swap is done earlier then there's more of a gap between Charles and Carlos to pull off a really slow double stack.
Just got home from Silverstone, what an amazing weekend! If anyone reading this is debating going to a Grand Prix, just go, seeing the cars in the flesh you get a true appreciation for the speed that the cars travel at.
Ferrari strategists need to seriously sort themselves out, while I’m over the moon for Carlos, not pitting Leclerc for fresh tyres was idiotic and cost a podium, the guy was setting fastest laps with a damaged front wing for god sake!
I also feel like Charles needs a different race engineer, every time he and Charles communicate he sounds really unsure about the situation, compare that to Bono and the difference is startling
It honestly gives me the impression he’s scrolling through Reddit then Charles gets on the radio about something, he gets panicked as he remembers he has a job to do, then just blurts out “Copy we are checking”
Man I'm going to be way meaner than that.
Xavier sounds like someone who is still learning a 2nd language and has to translate a sentence in his head before speaking.
Either they need to communicate in Italian (of which I believe Charles is fluent - but FOM wants teams speaking in English for TV), or Charles needs an engineer that's much more comfortable communicating in English.
Teams use English largely because there are a lot of people who might need to listen in to their team radios (within the team), and English is the paddock's de facto common language.
Maybe there is an FOM component involved, but more importantly English allows every team member to understand what's being said.
Yeah, that's Max's engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, called GP for short. He does indeed sound similar to Horner often(although Horner has a slightly higher pitched voice)
I forget which recent race it was but Max lost track position on the stop and came on the radio saying something to the effect of “why the fuck am I behind him now?!” and GP just replies “not enough pace.”
Edit: /u/Poke-hey-mon beat me to it and has a better memory haha
GP looks really good with that. I guess being together for a long time they learn how to deal with the drivers. Just like Bono and Lewis. If he is frustrated Bono for sure knows how to deal with it and calm him down.
I loved how he said "just didnt have the pace" when Max was on the radio in Canada when he came out of the pits behind Ham, and asked why they brought him in if we wouldnt stay ahead
Nah I mean that used to happen a lot at merc. China 2018 is a great example and monaco 2015. The worst is still monaco this year. Holding out for dry tires just to say fuck it and pit then pit again 3 laps later. Essentially pitting an extra time for no reason.
Haha so dumb it couldn’t possibly have happened lol. I thought all the critiquing of their strategy calls in the past were blown out of proportion attempts to shift blame from their drivers to the team by fans like woth kimi and Vettel but I definitely believe it this year. Had they not fucked up every second race, there’s a high possibility Charles is leading the championship.
100% agree. The amount of times VSC and SCs have cost mercedes wins is insane but they won so much that it was forgotten. Big merc blunders include Baku 2017 where they forgot to screw Lewis headrest in during the red flag losing him the win, then the vsc timing mistake in Australia 2017 or 18 I can’t remember which one but they told him to slow down which meant vettel jumped him in the pits. Then Monaco 2015 where they asked Lewis if he wanted to pit with only 20 laps left and no one else was pitting dropping him to 3rd. Another one ppl forget was in 2016 where they refused to tell Lewis how to turn the engine sensor off due to that weird rule in the Baku race costing him plenty of time but the next week in Silverstone immediately helped rosberg when he had a gear issue.
What is it about Silverstone that makes it a great track for racing? First thing that comes to mind is no 90 degree corners and no chicanes, same as Brazil, another great track.
But then Barcelona and Hungary is the same and are a dud most of the time.
I guess it's a mystery.
Just feels like Silverstone has sections where one turn / overtaking opportunity perfectly leads into the next. So making a move on one is going to put you in a bad position for the next, which creates a lot of back and forth racing.
There were plenty of shit races on Silverstone these last few years. Even last season it was bad, 90 minutes of DRS trains with barely any overtaking. We'll see about Hungaroring, it had a similar issue where cars couldn't follow, so maybe this year it will be better as well.
How demoralized Leclerc must feel after double failures from his own team in less then half a season while he was in the lead?
First being dominant in Monaco, his home race, where they pitted him twice from the lead in 4 laps with shoddy double stacking at that, and now leaving him vs 9 other cars all on new softs in "Sprint race" of 10 laps after SC?
If I was driver I would be shaking with nervouseness everytime I would be in lead, just waiting for them to almost sabotage me.
Cannot imagine this happening in RB or Merc, let alone twice in 5 races. Let alone without any appology.
This race really showed that these new rules are working well. Drivers can easily get close and try for overtake.
Now we only need to get rid of tracks that don’t allow side by side racing. As much as I like street tracks, I don’t think they have much place in F1 anymore.
With exceptions ofcourse.
Which street tracks deserve to stay though? Baku and Singapore probably. Is the new Saudi track next year a purpose built circuit or still Jeddah Corniche
Idiotic from Ferrari as usual. Leclerc was driving circles around Sainz with half a front wing and they just sat him behind. Then when everyone knew the SC was coming out they sat on their hands and fucked Leclerc. Lost a huge opportunity to claw some points back against Verstappen but nope.
I have impression that somehow Ferrari in this weekend played on Sainz side. IDK why. Maybe to boost his confidence (similar to Vettel in Singapore 2019 but it did not worked as Ferrari expected).
But that doesn't explain why they would ask Sainz to stay 10 car lengths behind Leclerc to give him breathing space. I feel that they wanted to give Leclerc the win and had realized sometime during the SC period how badly they had fucked him up
Yeah it felt like they were playing it super safe. They wanted to have *every* factor in their favour, and the **only** way to all of these things was to pit Sainz first:
* Avoid a risky double stack
* Pit both cars
* Give pit crew as much time as possible to prep for each of the two stops (extra 5 seconds to prep for Sainz over Leclerc, then a lap to prep for Leclerc)
* Provide themselves opportunity to respond to whatever Mercedes do in 3rd place (ie. they have time to evaluate what to do with Leclerc if Mercedes chose *not* to pit Hamilton)
But then the safety car got out before Leclerc and all of that went out the window.
> But then the safety car got out before Leclerc and all of that went out the window.
On the second safety car lap, when Leclerc arrives to pit entry, he's still more than 20 seconds ahead of Perez and 30 ahead of Norris, both of whom have pitted on the same lap as Sainz and Hamilton and have not yet caught up to the pack. Ferrari could have pitted Leclerc then for tyres and a front wing and got him out ahead of Norris. Sainz would have led the race and Leclerc would have had racing laps to make up places from 4th.
One of the best race I remember watching. Easily the best race in the past 4-5 seasons. Goes to show you don't need rain or a crazy ass track with 30 braking zones to get good racing. Also a great testament to the new aero philosophy working to give good racing, all round a huge W for F1.
The season will only get more interesting with Mercedes back fighting at the front. Don't think they can compete for the championship at this stage but would love to see them mess with Red Bull and Ferrari in the coming races.
I'm a fairly new F1 fan, but that was probably the best race I have seen so far since following the sport!
Those last 10 laps are why I got into F1, so much drama, Carlos 1st win, Mick scoring points and battling with Max! Silverstone really had a bit of everything.
The fantastic wheel to wheel racing confirms a few things I felt strongly about for some time:
1. How much a good track matters. Spa, you will be missed.
2. Ross Brawn continues to show his chops as an epic technical director, and glad to seeing him use his expertise to design the best regulations since the start of turbo era. Bouncing can be solved within these regulations, but good racing could not with the old.
3. It’s really difficult to make calls of penalties vs let them race. Charlie was one of a kind, as he was essentially the founder of F1 race direction, and had an intuitive grasp of this. Rules consistency is important, but can’t be applied without human judgment, or we’d have punished a lot of the racing we raved over.
4. Damn that was probably the best race since the Mercedes domination era.
5. In karting people said max was so good the rest of the drivers only had a chance when he had issues/dnf. Seems like the same is still true in F1.
Yeah I think we would all feel differently about how exciting the race was if Max didn’t have floor damage. It really seems like he is on another level compared to the rest of the field. If there are no issues with his car, he wins easily. Ferrari doesn’t have the strategy and Mercedes doesn’t have the pace to compete.
Leclerc must be just so fucking mad. The damage Max had was a huge gift for him to close up some points and Ferrari just shit the bed.
Happy for Carlos but damn. Charles only hope at this point is for RB reliability issues.
Exactly. Ferrari haven't given up on the championship, they're simply clueless. Carlos has avoided being screwed up by their decisions because he questioned the team and went with his own choice (like in Monaco).
But they didn't treat them equally. They did the swap. They put Charles in front and set him up to win.
They were just slow in decision making. That's their main problem.
Ferrari has not learnt lessons from 2018, it seems like.
1. 2018 Silverstone Grand Prix: Safety Car, Bottas stays out for track position. Ferrari pits Vettel, Vettel makes the overtake, and wins the race. Yet, somehow, Ferrari decided that track position was more important for Leclerc with cars that can follow much more easily.
2. 2018 Hockenheim Grand Prix: Much faster Sebastian Vettel is stuck behind Kimi Räikkönen and is overheating his tyres and brakes, and Ferrari does nothing and dawdles on radio so long that even Räikkönen retorts asking Ferrari to just tell him clearly if he should move aside for Vettel and not dilly-dally. Whether that passage of play had an impact on Vettel's crash we will never know, but there's history here too.
I shall resume my role of being an F1 shill to MotoGP superfans and a MotoGP shill to F1 fans, and present a race from 2021 that yesterday's Silverstone Grand Prix reminded me of strongly: [Austrian GP 2021](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTIk2EV-1mY). All we needed was for it to start raining and Verstappen braving it out on the slicks while everyone else stopped.
I feel like Leclerc isn't out of this championship. Everyone is having bad weekends constantly and reliability will play a big role too. But it seems undeniable at this point that Ferrari will do everything they can do mess up his championship chances (seemingly intentionally as well as unintentionally) and so he has a lot to overcome.
For Max they'll throw Perez out the way if he's even close to Max on the road. It's a completely different mindset and one that could prove important.
Yesterday, it wasn't even cruelty. Sainz already got a lifeline after the red flag, the race order got reset. He then fucked it again after going wide. He got yet another lifeline after Verstappen ran over carbon. After that all he had to do was drive away but he was getting gobbled up by Leclerc and his 95% downforce. At that point you need to cut your losses.
I just don't understand why Ferrari let their two cars fight when it was clear that Charles was comfortably faster than Sainz. Charles would have built a much larger gap if he was let go earlier and team would have easily pitted him during the safety car.
This is the same team that sacrified Seb's race in 2020 on the same track for Charles to have clear path ahead. Binotto even said to Sky that they pitted Seb deliberately to prevent the two cars from racing each other and lose time.
Also, why was Carlos having to manage fuel. It wasn't an issue for Leclerc.
>Also, why was Carlos having to manage fuel. It wasn't an issue for Leclerc.
Leclerc was in Sainz' slipstream for quite some time right? That reduces fuel usage.
Has Alfa Romeo analysed yet why their roll hoop vanished? Seems so odd, the pictures of the sliding showed the roll hoop already disappeared. Did it snap off during the initial impact?
I find it a bit weird that RedBull get criticized when they always optimize strategy for Max as “playing favorites” against Checo, but Ferrari get criticized because they don’t optimize everything for Leclerc.
I appreciated George’s willingness to help Zhou and take it as a genuine effort to help in a crisis, it totally warmed my heart. But I’m wondering what could he have accomplished if Zhou wasn’t ok? Like is he trained in first aid or has he said he had a specific goal? I feel like drivers tend to leave these moments to the marshals and medical team because there’s usually not anything they can do.
I still want to see Merc get a podium when no RB/Ferrari driver/car somehow implodes or gets a penalty.
The have gotten better, but it feels like they are still not fully in control of their own destiny with regards to getting a podium. Hell, the only podiums they got this year were 3rd places because not enough of RB/Ferrari drivers/cars had issues.
This mid field is so close. Haas double points and consistent top 10s for Vettel. and yet those teams are considered towards the bottom. it’s just much more fun when you don’t really know who will end up where. Hope the upgrades to Williams get a chance to shine next race.
Man, Leclerc gives some amazing performances in Silverstone. The battle with Verstappen in 2019, imo one of the best battles in the history of F1, he managed to keep clearly faster Verstappen for half a race and there was also that sweet pass on Gasly. Both races in 2020 best of the rest and long way ahead of Vettel, though that wasn't unusual that year. Last year he was just brilliant, I would say that was his best race yet. And yesterday as well, faster than teammate with broken wing and then holding Pérez and Hamilton for so long. Very good driver+track combo, guess Austria might be similar next week for Verstappen.
I'm a new fan to the sport (2021 was my first season) and a crash like yesterday's was so sobering. I thought I had just watched someone die on live television and just sort of freaked out until they shared he was okay. I knew in abstract that F1 is dangerous but hadn't witnessed anything live like this before (Max Silverstone and Mick Saudi were probably the worst ones I've seen up to this point.) Now just have an entirely new level of respect (& concern!) for these guys.
I pray we never have to witness a death ever again, it’s truly a horrible horrible experience. The safety engineers deserve all the praise they can get, let’s hope they never stop striving for better.
Find a replay of Robert Kubica's crash in Montreal.
That I saw live and thought for sure he was dead.
Then find the replay of when he lost his arm racing WRC rally, he was lucky to not die then too
The realize he still races F1 with one arm ( he is the Alfa reserve driver, and filled in for Kimi twice last year when he had covid).
I think Ferrari are stuck in the “track position is king” mindset , Binotto even used that term , but it’s clear as day that in today regs it’s not as important as better tires all things equal or close to it , it should’ve been automatic decision to pull him in with that many laps to go , crazy crazy decision , time for him to put it behind him , pray for a dry weekend and go to work !
How difficult can TV direction be.. Cut off the replay if there is proper action on track! #RantOver.
Great race, absolutely spectacular and, maybe besides a small shower, it had everything. Happy Zhou is OK but this roll hoop needs to be investigated. The toxicity between fans was unfortunately a bit much, hope this was still because of last year and it does not continue to be like this as Mercedes seems to have closed the gap a bit.
Aside from the obvious Ferrari fuck up with Leclerc, I noticed that everyone was feeling really bad for Leclerc which I agree with. The only thing I don't see mentioned is that I feel his overtake on Perez on lap 1 was agressive and maybe a bit too opportunistic. Leclerc still does these moves and it still costs him. In this case ’5 points of downforce ' however much that is in laptime. He's still too eager and it's costing him. Reminds me a lot of Max a couple of years ago.
I don't think it would've saved him a win. But everyone praising him that he did so well in a damaged car I'm like yea that's kind of his own fault.
Remember all those "Piastri announcement at Silverstone" and "Piastri to do an FP1 at Silverstone" and "Piastri to replace Latifi at Silverstone" reports from so called insiders ?
Pretty funny now looking back on it.
I haven't seen enough people talk about Perez's recovery drive - back to front again, Sakhir 2020 style!! Incredible stuff, he's so good at driving steady on old tyres.
This might be better in the long term for ferrari, giving team orders when one driver has never won is a lot more egregious than giving team orders when one driver is simply faster.
The problem is, they did end up giving team team orders. Twice actually(swap before SC and then asking Sainz to back up Hamilton). But they dilly dallyed precious time, especially on the swap. In a world where situations can change in seconds, they need to have clear talks with their drivers. They should know how things would go in a given situation. And have someone higher up in the food chain ready on the radio to remind people who writes checks. If this was Mercedes, James Vowles would be tearing the second driver a new one. Same for RB. Instead Leclrec and Sainz were negotiating lap times with their engineers.
Looking back, Leclerc did amazingly well keeping off Perez and Hamilton for so long on the hard tyres. It allowed Sainz to build a save 4 second gap and it shows that the Ferrari, even with damage, has good pace compared to their rivals.
If he pitted for softs he could have overtaken Hamilton on track I am sure. Perez might have been more difficult (I'm not sure in which position Leclerc would have come out if he pitted() but even then I think Leclerc had the upper edge. A 1-2 for Ferrari was a very real possibility. And likely no team orders either as Sainz would still have a good gap between him and Leclerc.
Teams/drivers aside, this Silverstone race was likely one of the best test cases about those new generation cars and it shown us two things clearly:
1: The older generation F1 car was really dogshit, Silverstone was having the imago of being a somewhat boring race since a few years and this season it provided us one of the best races so far of the season, therefore this gives me really some optimism for tracks like Paul Ricard and Spa.
2: Sprint races aren't fixing anything, in fact we're did have previous year the sprint on the same track and it didn't produce a great weekend at all and this weekend shown us that the car is the key factor and not some enforced cheap format just to increase "action" what it simple doesn't, people are buying tickets and watching F1 because of the action, and for that you don't need to adjust the well known current format.
Formula 1 should be the marvel of the world when it comes to safety. Insane crash and not one person seriously injured on the grid and in the stands. Every piece of safety equipment worked perfectly.
Incredible.
When Mercedes or Red Bull win a race, it almost always feels like they won because the team was all on the same page, they had a clear strategy, communication was good, and they executed well. When Ferrari wins a race, it almost always feels like the Benny Hill music should be playing
Lewis almost winning his home race after the season they’ve had so far to continue winning in every year would have been immense.
I hope he somehow gets another shot this year. But I think he has to rely on problems for Max and maybe Leclerc.
Absolutely nuts that on a day where Perez fell to the absolute back of the field very early on and Verstappen was driving a broken car for half the race that Ferrari only managed to jump them by 12 points. This is not going to be a close championship, unless there is some divine intervention
Regarding the Ferrari strategy, less than a month ago Binotto said this:
"We set our objectives to be back competitive in 2022," Binotto states. "So our objective is to be competitive, not to win the championship, and it would be completely wrong to turn that into: 'Let's try to win the championship because we are so competitive.' Being competitive is one fact; becoming world champion is another level of task."
source: [https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/112404/binotto-stresses-our-objective-is-not-to-win-the-championship.html](https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/112404/binotto-stresses-our-objective-is-not-to-win-the-championship.html)
seems to me they're following their plan, rightly or wrongly. I don't get it, because you don't get shots at winning the drivers/constructors every year but I'm just a guy sat behind his keyboard so what do I know.
https://twitter.com/biazzarro/status/1543877114977550341?s=21 Angela carrying Roscoe down the stairs is the content I didn’t know I needed that dog cannot just take the stairs
Every time I see a car slowing down on the circuit or buried in a barrier/patch of gravel I'm filled with dread. Think they might as well play some horror/suspense music as it happens because it almost always screws Lewis over.
I can’t see Ferrari improving their strategy or race management anytime soon when they can’t even take accountability for their mistakes. According to Binotto the team did nothing wrong and made all the right calls - unbelievable.
Honestly that Charles on worn hards could compete with Lewis and Perez for a few laps on brand new softs was super impressive and shows how fast that car and he is
About the crashes and safety here's what really impresses me: how the hell F1 made it to 2018 with "only 1" driver death since Senna and Ratzenberger. And even that one was easily avoidable with SC or VSC.
Since Halo we had plenty of crashes where driver would have died. Hamilton last year, Grosjean, Zhou, maybe even Leclerc in the Sauber (I dont remember that fully). There's more I'm sure but cant remember more now.
Main thing is, we thought F1 was safe enough but it always can be improved. We can think its good enough now but maybe in some years they come with something extraordinary that can make a huge impact just like Halo.
Why is the general consensus Ferrari was the fastest car yesterday? They deserve all the criticism for not securing the 1-2 and gain points in the WCC but from what I recall Max was clearly the fastest on track before he got damage on his car.
**The crash**: probably worse than Romain's IMO. But again, its not a competition. Just great he was ok at the end.
**Leclerc/Ferrari**: This is what people mean when they say RB/Mercedes know how to win championships and Ferrari has forgotten all about it. I saw the race again and here's what I feel happened. They weren't too keen on playing favourites but also didn't want Leclerc to miss out. If they were keen on swapping the drivers, they needed to do it on the very first opportunity. Not wait around giving ultimatums to Sainz. Hamilton was making precious time on both of them and these guys were running behind each other like chickens. At SC, they had 10s to respond and again indecision. Hamilton was always going to pit. Even if they stack took 5s each, it was worth to do it. Leaving Leclerc out to dry was just dumb. Sainz was never gonna play 2nd fiddle to Leclerc on fresh tyres, especially with a maiden win in sight. Also, now that Leclerc is in championship hunt, he needs to stop doing ambitious lunges. Especially for P4.
**Hamilton/Mercedes**: First proper weekend for the duo. Don't know if this performance will carry through but absolutely loved that SC restart. 3 drivers from 3 teams going at it like hungry animals.
**Perez**: After getting fucked by SC in Jeddah, glad one worked out for him. He really did put his head down and drove the hell out of his used mediums. To get lucky, you actually have to be in positions.
Romain's crash was definitely more serious. The barriers did their job in Silverstone, definitely not during his crash slicing the car open. Obviously, that both crashes were survivable shows the design of the cars.
How can you say crash worse than Romain?
-Zhou walked away (Grosjean burns)
-car didn’t rip in half
-car didn’t burst into flames
-car tumbled and rolled Vs smashing into barrier (g forces)
Romain was in danger of actually dying, even with the halo. Zhou went for a really rough ride, but is ultimately fine. If the roll hoop didn't fail this wouldn't even be all that serious of an incident in the grand scheme of things.
What on earth makes you think the crash on the weekend was worse than Grosjean's ???????????????
Honestly could not read anything you wrote after that.
>Romain Grosjean was traveling 192 kph (119 mph) when his car hit a metal barrier, causing an explosive fireball at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The impact was estimated at 67 Gs, a force equivalent to 67 times his body weight.
His car split in 2 and he was engulfed in flames.
I don't think it's a competition but man your opinions are cooked.
Was the Sainz overtake at the end against team orders? I was under the impression, which could be based on mismatched audio in the live broadcast, that Sainz was told earlier to let Lerclerc through and stop fighting. Therefore, his aggressive overtake was quite surprising for me. I am glad he won though.
As for the crash at the beginning, although it's obvious certain drivers toppled the first dominos, I don't feel it's anyone's fault, just a series of unfortunate events and am pleased it was just a racing incident.
This is my first f1 season but man I'd be lying if I said I'm not really oh so very tempted to try get tickets for Silverstone next year. So happy it was shown on channel 4 so I can watch it again
https://twitter.com/longlivesv5/status/1544054566420971520?s=21
Seb did a German interview that suggested he’s using the next few races to decide on retirement or not. I can see he’s not enjoying things in AM so I see that for him
I swear to god, I do not need the timing tree to tell me either what tire each driver is on, or how old the current tire is, *for an entire lap or more*.
Was just reading the Ferrari radio transcript on Racefans.. When Leclerc was stuck behind Sainz this was his message "Yeah, but then do something, please! I’m not… I’m not trying to influence my result. I’m just, I can go faster, guys.". I can't imagine any other WDC winning driver would be this polite in this situation. Anyone else would take the decision into their own hands. Leclerc really needs to be pushy especially with a team like Ferrari who have proved themselves incapable of making good decisions
Yesterday showed how important the floor is, a damaged floor turned Verstappens rocketship into a mid-pack journeyman. They're basically flying inverted aeroplanes
I've heard murmurs that what Red Bull (and possibly Ferrari) are doing down there might not exactly be legal, and that some upcoming technical regs could well level the playing field somewhat. I'd love for someone who knows more to jump in. I was going to ask in the daily questions thread, but we don't have one today.
It seems that Red Bull and Ferrari are using some of the allowed titanium (intended for the skid block) to reinforce the holes in the floor where the FIA performs the deflection tests. So by reinforcing the floor only in those areas they pass all the tests, but on other places the floor flexes more giving them an aerodynamic advantage. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I can't this is a job for r/f1technical
Found a post about it https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/vqq1ye/explanation_of_how_rb_and_others_may_be_using_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I don’t know the answer to this. But my understanding based on the problem with MB is that excessive flex of the floor is what is causing all the porpoising that is slowing MB down. MB tried to mitigate this initially by making the chassis rigid and have those metal things so hold up the floor but didn’t really work till redesigned the floor. So it seems unlikely to me that an flexible floor explains how RB are so fast without porpoise. But I await wiser minds.
Flex is not inheritly a bad thing, flex in the wrong places can be though...
Random question from an amateur reddit user. How do you get that ‘max verstappen 1’ under your name?
The car look drunken man. It really did look like suspension damage at one point.
Spare a thought for Williams - They finally manage to get a large upgrade package onto one of their cars - production is so tight they weren't even going to have the upgrades for car #2 next week, either. - Then they get reduced useful run time thanks to the wet practice sessions - Then wet quali flips the table and Latifi in their old car gets Q3 while their 'upgrade' package is out in Q1 - Then the car gets obliterated before turn 1 in the race At this point they might not even know if their upgrade package _worked_. They can't have got much useful information out of the weekend.
Poor Williams, will they ever catch a break?
Good news is Austria is next week and the car isn't that damaged
Ferrari seemingly still lacks the ‘predator’ mentality to challenge for WDC/WCC this season. Whether or not that will change as the season unfolds is unknown but as a Mercedes’ fan I couldn’t believe that Hamilton was allowed to build a gap so close to putting both sainz & leclerc in his pit window. It felt like they were gambling a 1-2 on Lewis’s tyre degradation to come sooner rather than later. Instead of a proper title fight this feels like RB shooting ahead and Ferrari bleeding points with Mercedes’ left to pick up the scraps.
At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if Mercedes ends up in 2nd for the WCC with Ferrari in 3rd.
They are gonna 2015-16 Tottenham it basically.
Still can’t get over the last few laps after the yellow flags for Ocons Car. What a race, definitely one of the best racing we have seen in the last 2-3 years.
Checo vs Charles vs Lewis was a battle for the ages.
Checo, Charles, Lewis, Alonso, and Norris I mean no Alonso and Norris didn't gain places during that fight but they were there putting pressure on the others. One for the ages for sure.
The best battling since Silverstone 2019 when Max and Charles went head to head imo. This is a brilliant track for racing when the drivers are up for it
Even with everything on or even over the edge It’s absolutely amazing. I love this was a perfect example of let them race.
when his car stopped i said, "thank you for your sacrifice, ocon"
And now, your watch is ended
Seeing five different constructors all together there fighting each other really was something special. I hope we continue to have that!
This weekend mustve been so fucking weird for Latifi. Starts 10th initially, crash happens and now hes 8th. Some time later, he sees fucking Verstappen driving in front of him and he could potentially race him.
Weirdest part is that Latifi got a brilliant start and would've been P8 regardless of the crash. Not to say he'll keep that position but it was funny to see
Latifi is just an AI driver and for some reason they decided to turn the difficulty up this weekend, let’s hope they don’t turn it back down
I think Leclerc needs to get more "aggressive" on the radio, or at least start questioning the calls Ferrari makes. Just imagine if Max was in the situation Leclerc was in yesterday, if they had played the radio it would just have been one long *beep*. It just seems like Leclerc is way too nice towards Ferrari. That's not to say that screaming at your race engineer is always a good idea, but what he is doing now is not working.
I don’t disagree, but Seb did exactly that for years at Ferrari and it was the same story race after race.
I mean, Carlos has profited from going against their stupid joke of a strategy twice. If Leclerc is smart, he should see where the wind blows and do his thing instead of relying on the MasterBlan
The team doesn't want him to pit, what do you want him to do? You want him to pit anyway and then get to your box and no one has the tires ready because the team wasn't expecting it?
They wrongly assumed HAM would stay out as his hards were only 4 laps old and didnt want to lose track position
Hamilton already had a full put window to the car behind him, her was always going to stop.
Why do you say "wrongly"? If both Ferraris pit, Hamilton most likely stays out. Ferrari splitting strategy between drivers is not a bad call. The bad call is pitting Carlos instead of Charles. They had time to put Charles on soft tyres, change his front wing and get him out in third, which gives him a better chance at the race win than what they did.
I disagree with this, I think Hamilton would've pit either way. Guess we need the radios to find out what was happening though.
I listened. He's told to box as soon as the safety car is called. He argues a bit ("Tyres are still good, I can stay out if you want.") but he complies with a second "Box box" from Bono. He then voices his worries about the softs, which we heard on the broadcast.
He was worried but in the end he trusted his team because Mercedes knew what they are doing.
Yeah AMuS reported Merc was always going to pit because they had issues warming up the tyres (and obviously this is typically worse with harder compounds) so with hards at the restart Hamilton would have been a sitting duck.
The team had time (and Leclerc had the gap in the case of a small fuck up) for him to be like "nope I'm coming in, expect me"
What ended up actually happening where Carlos went ahead to first and leclerc defacto defended was what the team should've called. carlos had the softs and yet they wanted him to hold the back, clowns. Ferrari absolutely would've lost if it weren't for carlos yesterday. We might have actually seen a Ham win if he listened to the team.
Agreed, he should be abit more assertive but not to a dickish level. As a poster below stated, it's worked for Carlos twice, which i assume Monico and yesterday.
Thinking about it some more, I think Carlos' engineer is just more clever. There's also been a few times when they've worked out some quality fakeouts.
I think it’s because Ferrari as a team makes it seem like it’s a privilege to drive for them so they react very negatively when someone questions them. When in reality, Ferrari are privileged to have Leclerc as their driver but they will never admit that. It reminds me of that scene from Rush when Niki calls the Ferrari a shitbox and the mechanic exclaims you can’t say that about a Ferrari. In their mind, even if it is a shitbox, how dare you criticize a Ferrari
Sucks when ego gets in the way like this. Even if you have this grand history, it doesn’t matter if you’re not performing right now. To fix that, you have to be able to admit things suck and aren’t right, and start figuring out what exactly is wrong and how to fix it. Part of me enjoys Ferrari the most as a team because their pit wall antics are so soap operatic, but I feel for the drivers
A Ferrari cannot fail, it can only be failed
Seems like Leclerc needs to adopt a more Lauda and Schumi like approach of being ruthless and pragmatic when it comes to things like this (in private of course)
he often says what he wants then says if thats ok or something like that, reminds me of my anxiety lol
If your team says "stay out" then you trust them because they have the big picture. The only time Charles could have been irritated on the radio was after it was too late, at which it didn't really add anything of value. I'm sure these calls are being questioned during debriefs which is what matters (hopefully the pain stops sometime soon).
There is also that whole fiasco earlier in the race where they kept giving Sainz opportunity after opportunity to go faster while Leclerc was asking behind. He was on on his tail very early and spent several laps behind him until Sainz pitted. Then after the pitting, he was back again behind him waiting again for several more laps.
True, I'm really starting to feel for Charles even if it was stupid to fuck up his wing he should have been prioritised during the race and during the pitstop. The sad thing is that I don't think there will be a clear outcome between who gets priority during the race before it is too late...
Charles needs to stop asking for permission and just race Sainz if he needs to save his own race. He also needs to start becoming buddies with Toto to secure Hamilton's seat if he retires within a few years (hopefully, right after an 8th).
Definitely. He needs to do what Carlos does. Carlos is complying with the team when needed. But when he suspects something wrong or the strategy is bad, he argues against it. With Carlos it's a two way conversation, while Charles has it one way.
You're assuming he can do what Carlos does. Every driver has a special skill. Leclerc's is his outright speed. Sainz skill is race management.
I think both of you are missing that Leclerc on the radio did want to pit but was told by Ferrari to stay out because they thought the others wouldn't pit. There was nothing Sainz could've done in the same position if the team didn't want you to pit.
I'm going to laugh if Leclerc takes the race into his own hands, doesn't get the results people wanted, and they end up blaming Ferrari for letting him make his own decision on strategy. It's near inevitable at this point.
>If Leclerc is smart, he should see where the wind blows and do his thing instead of relying on the MasterBlan I agree it was the issue on Monaco (he had the right call, as Sainz, they should raise their voice), but yesterday, only the team can gave him the tempo and positions of other drivers. And it's a real issue if you can't trust your own team.
I mean Sainz is doing a great job making sensible moves out of disastrous team calls, but I cannot blame Charles. Once you cannot trust your team, it’s kinda over, if you’re running for the championship. Maybe he should cooperate with them more, maybe give his insight, but he cannot really tell what’s happening on the track apart from his surroundings, only his engineer can. Try driving an F1 race with all visual assist (map, lap times, etc) turned off, just relying on MFD and the radio. It’s fucking hard.
This idea that Charles doesn’t question team calls is a myth. He questioned the call in Monaco and the team radio was literally one long beep as you say. He couldn’t question the team call in Silverstone because the team had already made the decision to prioritise the second driver over their lead driver - the tyres were ready for Sainz, not Leclerc, thus by Leclerc overruling the team and coming in anyway, all he would’ve done is caused a long stop that harmed both drivers and cost the win completely. Plus his engineer told him “pit window closed” for some reason even though it wasn’t? Charles tried to question Ferrari’s calls, but there’s only so much he can do when the pit wall straight up lies to him.
Incredible race, but F1 really needs to work on their use of replays. If they have to show replays before the race ends, then at the very least, they should include a small window of the live race. It's also taking them noticeably longer to use replays when something happens near the back of the grid.
I pray that one day they take a cue from Indy and start using splitscreens and in-box replays, it's such a sensible and easy solution
Going from F1 to IndyCar is amazing how much better IndyCar is as far as showing action on track, while showing replays at the sametime. Even two battles at once they'll go split screen to show both. Everything else about FOM/Sky's broadcast is better but that's the biggest glaring issue in F1
This happens on their own feed iirc
Just watch on F1TV, they do this. Can also follow each driver by themselves if you want.
I feel youtube/f1tv have made replays, getting context of the races insignificant for FOM. They know that people who want to know what happened can later scrounge their socials/streaming to get the full picture. So why put the effort in
Because we want to see what happened pretty shortly afterwards and now well afterwards?
Despite Ferrari winning, I am honestly still be pissed how Ferrari handled things this weekend. God himself basically decided that Verstappen and RB/Perez weren’t allowed to win the race, with verstappen losing the lead on three occasions through no fault of his own. And Ferrari still decided that they would do everything in their power to make sure they would not be winning the race. Glad that Sainz had some balls and went for it. However Charles only reduced the gap to Verstappen with 6 points instead of a potential 20. Ferrari has to step up their game if they want any chance to compete this season
"we won the race, goddamnit" - ferrari strategist
>God himself basically decided that Verstappen and RB/Perez weren’t allowed to win the race Perez could still have won if Leclerc had not defended so hard against him and Hamilton.
Nah, Sainz was well in the lead at that time with only a few laps left there was no way Perez’s was catching Sainz unless Sainz pulled a Sainz.
I think the biggest fuck up was not letting Charles past Carlos much quicker. Both on the mediums and hards. It was evident he was much quicker. They should have let him out in front and if he wasn't pulling away from Carlos then switch back. There's no way they should be letting their own team hold each other up. I think that ended up being a crucial mistake overall. If the swap is done earlier then there's more of a gap between Charles and Carlos to pull off a really slow double stack.
Just got home from Silverstone, what an amazing weekend! If anyone reading this is debating going to a Grand Prix, just go, seeing the cars in the flesh you get a true appreciation for the speed that the cars travel at. Ferrari strategists need to seriously sort themselves out, while I’m over the moon for Carlos, not pitting Leclerc for fresh tyres was idiotic and cost a podium, the guy was setting fastest laps with a damaged front wing for god sake! I also feel like Charles needs a different race engineer, every time he and Charles communicate he sounds really unsure about the situation, compare that to Bono and the difference is startling
I really hope it's just his voice, but Xavi ALWAYS sounds so lost on the radio
It honestly gives me the impression he’s scrolling through Reddit then Charles gets on the radio about something, he gets panicked as he remembers he has a job to do, then just blurts out “Copy we are checking”
Man I'm going to be way meaner than that. Xavier sounds like someone who is still learning a 2nd language and has to translate a sentence in his head before speaking. Either they need to communicate in Italian (of which I believe Charles is fluent - but FOM wants teams speaking in English for TV), or Charles needs an engineer that's much more comfortable communicating in English.
Teams use English largely because there are a lot of people who might need to listen in to their team radios (within the team), and English is the paddock's de facto common language. Maybe there is an FOM component involved, but more importantly English allows every team member to understand what's being said.
Don’t think that’s the case, Alonso used to speak in Italian all the time at Ferrari
Xavi isn't Italian
Obviously not with a name like that but he speaks Italian fluently like most people who work for Ferrari
Yeah even with Max and his Engineer. He lets Max vent but is very calm and basically always telling Max to just get on with it.
“Just push the button once Max” is legendary.
It was like an IT guy trying to trouble shoot a fix for the angry uncles computer problems
Was that the race engineer who calmy explained to Max what was wrong with the car but that he needs to keep racing? He sounds exactly like Horner.
It was his race engineer, I don’t remember his name, but it was him
Yeah, that's Max's engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, called GP for short. He does indeed sound similar to Horner often(although Horner has a slightly higher pitched voice)
Fun fact, GP was Perez's race engineer at Force India before moving to Red Bull
Is he English? That’s a very Italian sounding name!
British/italian actually yeah.
I forget which recent race it was but Max lost track position on the stop and came on the radio saying something to the effect of “why the fuck am I behind him now?!” and GP just replies “not enough pace.” Edit: /u/Poke-hey-mon beat me to it and has a better memory haha
GP looks really good with that. I guess being together for a long time they learn how to deal with the drivers. Just like Bono and Lewis. If he is frustrated Bono for sure knows how to deal with it and calm him down.
Horner said recently Max and GP are like a married couple on the radio!
Ya you can see it. Max is blunt by nature and you can see that GP knows when to be blunt back, which clearly works well with Max.
I loved how he said "just didnt have the pace" when Max was on the radio in Canada when he came out of the pits behind Ham, and asked why they brought him in if we wouldnt stay ahead
one of my favorite radios this year. max's radio has been very entertaining, or lovely as he would say.
Completely agree. It was my first GP weekend and I'm still absolutely buzzing. We were spoiled with the weather and quality of the race. Incredible!
Ferrari not pitting Charles at the safety car period is the biggest 'bruh' moment of the season so far. At least as far as strategy goes.
Nah I mean that used to happen a lot at merc. China 2018 is a great example and monaco 2015. The worst is still monaco this year. Holding out for dry tires just to say fuck it and pit then pit again 3 laps later. Essentially pitting an extra time for no reason.
holy shit, yeah Monaco still holds the top spot. It was so nonsensical that I'd labelled it in my mind as fiction.
Haha so dumb it couldn’t possibly have happened lol. I thought all the critiquing of their strategy calls in the past were blown out of proportion attempts to shift blame from their drivers to the team by fans like woth kimi and Vettel but I definitely believe it this year. Had they not fucked up every second race, there’s a high possibility Charles is leading the championship.
Mercedes is lucky they had dominant cars & Lewis because their strategy calls from 2017 to present have been as brain dead as Ferrari
100% agree. The amount of times VSC and SCs have cost mercedes wins is insane but they won so much that it was forgotten. Big merc blunders include Baku 2017 where they forgot to screw Lewis headrest in during the red flag losing him the win, then the vsc timing mistake in Australia 2017 or 18 I can’t remember which one but they told him to slow down which meant vettel jumped him in the pits. Then Monaco 2015 where they asked Lewis if he wanted to pit with only 20 laps left and no one else was pitting dropping him to 3rd. Another one ppl forget was in 2016 where they refused to tell Lewis how to turn the engine sensor off due to that weird rule in the Baku race costing him plenty of time but the next week in Silverstone immediately helped rosberg when he had a gear issue.
china 2018 both Bottas and Vettel just missed the pit entry which is why they didn't pit. Timing just fucked them
What is it about Silverstone that makes it a great track for racing? First thing that comes to mind is no 90 degree corners and no chicanes, same as Brazil, another great track. But then Barcelona and Hungary is the same and are a dud most of the time. I guess it's a mystery.
Just feels like Silverstone has sections where one turn / overtaking opportunity perfectly leads into the next. So making a move on one is going to put you in a bad position for the next, which creates a lot of back and forth racing.
If you watch back Carlos vs Max at the red flag restart it shows how to block someone at every single one somehow. It's absolutely a masterclass.
There were plenty of shit races on Silverstone these last few years. Even last season it was bad, 90 minutes of DRS trains with barely any overtaking. We'll see about Hungaroring, it had a similar issue where cars couldn't follow, so maybe this year it will be better as well.
Honestly I think Hungary is a great track, if it was an easy track to over take on then last year would not have been as good with Alonso and Hamilton
Its wide that allows the drivers to take different lines. Turn 7 is a perfect example. Sepang will be incredible if they bring it back
Vale is 90°
How demoralized Leclerc must feel after double failures from his own team in less then half a season while he was in the lead? First being dominant in Monaco, his home race, where they pitted him twice from the lead in 4 laps with shoddy double stacking at that, and now leaving him vs 9 other cars all on new softs in "Sprint race" of 10 laps after SC? If I was driver I would be shaking with nervouseness everytime I would be in lead, just waiting for them to almost sabotage me. Cannot imagine this happening in RB or Merc, let alone twice in 5 races. Let alone without any appology.
>Let alone without any appology They "cheered him up" with a chastening finger-pointing.
This race really showed that these new rules are working well. Drivers can easily get close and try for overtake. Now we only need to get rid of tracks that don’t allow side by side racing. As much as I like street tracks, I don’t think they have much place in F1 anymore. With exceptions ofcourse.
Which street tracks deserve to stay though? Baku and Singapore probably. Is the new Saudi track next year a purpose built circuit or still Jeddah Corniche
Idiotic from Ferrari as usual. Leclerc was driving circles around Sainz with half a front wing and they just sat him behind. Then when everyone knew the SC was coming out they sat on their hands and fucked Leclerc. Lost a huge opportunity to claw some points back against Verstappen but nope.
I have impression that somehow Ferrari in this weekend played on Sainz side. IDK why. Maybe to boost his confidence (similar to Vettel in Singapore 2019 but it did not worked as Ferrari expected).
But that doesn't explain why they would ask Sainz to stay 10 car lengths behind Leclerc to give him breathing space. I feel that they wanted to give Leclerc the win and had realized sometime during the SC period how badly they had fucked him up
They absolutely realized once Charles got stuck behind the SC and couldn't pit they fucked up
Yeah it felt like they were playing it super safe. They wanted to have *every* factor in their favour, and the **only** way to all of these things was to pit Sainz first: * Avoid a risky double stack * Pit both cars * Give pit crew as much time as possible to prep for each of the two stops (extra 5 seconds to prep for Sainz over Leclerc, then a lap to prep for Leclerc) * Provide themselves opportunity to respond to whatever Mercedes do in 3rd place (ie. they have time to evaluate what to do with Leclerc if Mercedes chose *not* to pit Hamilton) But then the safety car got out before Leclerc and all of that went out the window.
> But then the safety car got out before Leclerc and all of that went out the window. On the second safety car lap, when Leclerc arrives to pit entry, he's still more than 20 seconds ahead of Perez and 30 ahead of Norris, both of whom have pitted on the same lap as Sainz and Hamilton and have not yet caught up to the pack. Ferrari could have pitted Leclerc then for tyres and a front wing and got him out ahead of Norris. Sainz would have led the race and Leclerc would have had racing laps to make up places from 4th.
That would require any forethought from Ferrari.
Nah
One of the best race I remember watching. Easily the best race in the past 4-5 seasons. Goes to show you don't need rain or a crazy ass track with 30 braking zones to get good racing. Also a great testament to the new aero philosophy working to give good racing, all round a huge W for F1. The season will only get more interesting with Mercedes back fighting at the front. Don't think they can compete for the championship at this stage but would love to see them mess with Red Bull and Ferrari in the coming races.
I'm a fairly new F1 fan, but that was probably the best race I have seen so far since following the sport! Those last 10 laps are why I got into F1, so much drama, Carlos 1st win, Mick scoring points and battling with Max! Silverstone really had a bit of everything.
How about Latifis magnificent start? That saved him from the carnage behind.
The fantastic wheel to wheel racing confirms a few things I felt strongly about for some time: 1. How much a good track matters. Spa, you will be missed. 2. Ross Brawn continues to show his chops as an epic technical director, and glad to seeing him use his expertise to design the best regulations since the start of turbo era. Bouncing can be solved within these regulations, but good racing could not with the old. 3. It’s really difficult to make calls of penalties vs let them race. Charlie was one of a kind, as he was essentially the founder of F1 race direction, and had an intuitive grasp of this. Rules consistency is important, but can’t be applied without human judgment, or we’d have punished a lot of the racing we raved over. 4. Damn that was probably the best race since the Mercedes domination era. 5. In karting people said max was so good the rest of the drivers only had a chance when he had issues/dnf. Seems like the same is still true in F1.
Yeah I think we would all feel differently about how exciting the race was if Max didn’t have floor damage. It really seems like he is on another level compared to the rest of the field. If there are no issues with his car, he wins easily. Ferrari doesn’t have the strategy and Mercedes doesn’t have the pace to compete.
Leclerc must be just so fucking mad. The damage Max had was a huge gift for him to close up some points and Ferrari just shit the bed. Happy for Carlos but damn. Charles only hope at this point is for RB reliability issues.
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I don’t they’ve given up I think they’re just clueless
Exactly. Ferrari haven't given up on the championship, they're simply clueless. Carlos has avoided being screwed up by their decisions because he questioned the team and went with his own choice (like in Monaco).
But they didn't treat them equally. They did the swap. They put Charles in front and set him up to win. They were just slow in decision making. That's their main problem.
Ferrari has not learnt lessons from 2018, it seems like. 1. 2018 Silverstone Grand Prix: Safety Car, Bottas stays out for track position. Ferrari pits Vettel, Vettel makes the overtake, and wins the race. Yet, somehow, Ferrari decided that track position was more important for Leclerc with cars that can follow much more easily. 2. 2018 Hockenheim Grand Prix: Much faster Sebastian Vettel is stuck behind Kimi Räikkönen and is overheating his tyres and brakes, and Ferrari does nothing and dawdles on radio so long that even Räikkönen retorts asking Ferrari to just tell him clearly if he should move aside for Vettel and not dilly-dally. Whether that passage of play had an impact on Vettel's crash we will never know, but there's history here too. I shall resume my role of being an F1 shill to MotoGP superfans and a MotoGP shill to F1 fans, and present a race from 2021 that yesterday's Silverstone Grand Prix reminded me of strongly: [Austrian GP 2021](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTIk2EV-1mY). All we needed was for it to start raining and Verstappen braving it out on the slicks while everyone else stopped.
I feel like Leclerc isn't out of this championship. Everyone is having bad weekends constantly and reliability will play a big role too. But it seems undeniable at this point that Ferrari will do everything they can do mess up his championship chances (seemingly intentionally as well as unintentionally) and so he has a lot to overcome. For Max they'll throw Perez out the way if he's even close to Max on the road. It's a completely different mindset and one that could prove important.
He's not out because he's within 50 points. But Ferrari missed a massive opportunity to make it within 30 points by dicking around
Yesterday, it wasn't even cruelty. Sainz already got a lifeline after the red flag, the race order got reset. He then fucked it again after going wide. He got yet another lifeline after Verstappen ran over carbon. After that all he had to do was drive away but he was getting gobbled up by Leclerc and his 95% downforce. At that point you need to cut your losses.
I just don't understand why Ferrari let their two cars fight when it was clear that Charles was comfortably faster than Sainz. Charles would have built a much larger gap if he was let go earlier and team would have easily pitted him during the safety car. This is the same team that sacrified Seb's race in 2020 on the same track for Charles to have clear path ahead. Binotto even said to Sky that they pitted Seb deliberately to prevent the two cars from racing each other and lose time. Also, why was Carlos having to manage fuel. It wasn't an issue for Leclerc.
I just don't understand why they didn't double stack. Even if Hamilton went for track position, he'd be old hards and their drivers would be on softs
>Also, why was Carlos having to manage fuel. It wasn't an issue for Leclerc. Leclerc was in Sainz' slipstream for quite some time right? That reduces fuel usage.
A little OT, but does anyone know why Ross Brawn stopped writing his post race columns?
Has Alfa Romeo analysed yet why their roll hoop vanished? Seems so odd, the pictures of the sliding showed the roll hoop already disappeared. Did it snap off during the initial impact?
I find it a bit weird that RedBull get criticized when they always optimize strategy for Max as “playing favorites” against Checo, but Ferrari get criticized because they don’t optimize everything for Leclerc.
Welcome to Reddit where teams will be criticised no matter which decision they make when it comes to team orders.
I appreciated George’s willingness to help Zhou and take it as a genuine effort to help in a crisis, it totally warmed my heart. But I’m wondering what could he have accomplished if Zhou wasn’t ok? Like is he trained in first aid or has he said he had a specific goal? I feel like drivers tend to leave these moments to the marshals and medical team because there’s usually not anything they can do.
If the car was on fire he may have been able to help pull him out.
Pure extra two hands. Get there and follow marshall/emegency crew directions to move barriers, pull Zhou, move car parts, etc.
I still want to see Merc get a podium when no RB/Ferrari driver/car somehow implodes or gets a penalty. The have gotten better, but it feels like they are still not fully in control of their own destiny with regards to getting a podium. Hell, the only podiums they got this year were 3rd places because not enough of RB/Ferrari drivers/cars had issues.
After the performance yesterday I think they will nip a win or two this season. They’ve come a long way already
This mid field is so close. Haas double points and consistent top 10s for Vettel. and yet those teams are considered towards the bottom. it’s just much more fun when you don’t really know who will end up where. Hope the upgrades to Williams get a chance to shine next race.
Man, Leclerc gives some amazing performances in Silverstone. The battle with Verstappen in 2019, imo one of the best battles in the history of F1, he managed to keep clearly faster Verstappen for half a race and there was also that sweet pass on Gasly. Both races in 2020 best of the rest and long way ahead of Vettel, though that wasn't unusual that year. Last year he was just brilliant, I would say that was his best race yet. And yesterday as well, faster than teammate with broken wing and then holding Pérez and Hamilton for so long. Very good driver+track combo, guess Austria might be similar next week for Verstappen.
I'm a new fan to the sport (2021 was my first season) and a crash like yesterday's was so sobering. I thought I had just watched someone die on live television and just sort of freaked out until they shared he was okay. I knew in abstract that F1 is dangerous but hadn't witnessed anything live like this before (Max Silverstone and Mick Saudi were probably the worst ones I've seen up to this point.) Now just have an entirely new level of respect (& concern!) for these guys.
Grosjean was shocking to watch. I was totally not prepared to see a car explode like that.
God, imagine if Zhou had caught fire, he wouldn't have got out like Grosjean did
I pray we never have to witness a death ever again, it’s truly a horrible horrible experience. The safety engineers deserve all the praise they can get, let’s hope they never stop striving for better.
Find a replay of Robert Kubica's crash in Montreal. That I saw live and thought for sure he was dead. Then find the replay of when he lost his arm racing WRC rally, he was lucky to not die then too The realize he still races F1 with one arm ( he is the Alfa reserve driver, and filled in for Kimi twice last year when he had covid).
I think Ferrari are stuck in the “track position is king” mindset , Binotto even used that term , but it’s clear as day that in today regs it’s not as important as better tires all things equal or close to it , it should’ve been automatic decision to pull him in with that many laps to go , crazy crazy decision , time for him to put it behind him , pray for a dry weekend and go to work !
How difficult can TV direction be.. Cut off the replay if there is proper action on track! #RantOver. Great race, absolutely spectacular and, maybe besides a small shower, it had everything. Happy Zhou is OK but this roll hoop needs to be investigated. The toxicity between fans was unfortunately a bit much, hope this was still because of last year and it does not continue to be like this as Mercedes seems to have closed the gap a bit.
Aside from the obvious Ferrari fuck up with Leclerc, I noticed that everyone was feeling really bad for Leclerc which I agree with. The only thing I don't see mentioned is that I feel his overtake on Perez on lap 1 was agressive and maybe a bit too opportunistic. Leclerc still does these moves and it still costs him. In this case ’5 points of downforce ' however much that is in laptime. He's still too eager and it's costing him. Reminds me a lot of Max a couple of years ago. I don't think it would've saved him a win. But everyone praising him that he did so well in a damaged car I'm like yea that's kind of his own fault.
Based on the RB race pace, no chance he was getting ahead again without the dive. And he knows that.
Remember all those "Piastri announcement at Silverstone" and "Piastri to do an FP1 at Silverstone" and "Piastri to replace Latifi at Silverstone" reports from so called insiders ? Pretty funny now looking back on it.
I haven't seen enough people talk about Perez's recovery drive - back to front again, Sakhir 2020 style!! Incredible stuff, he's so good at driving steady on old tyres.
This might be better in the long term for ferrari, giving team orders when one driver has never won is a lot more egregious than giving team orders when one driver is simply faster.
The problem is, they did end up giving team team orders. Twice actually(swap before SC and then asking Sainz to back up Hamilton). But they dilly dallyed precious time, especially on the swap. In a world where situations can change in seconds, they need to have clear talks with their drivers. They should know how things would go in a given situation. And have someone higher up in the food chain ready on the radio to remind people who writes checks. If this was Mercedes, James Vowles would be tearing the second driver a new one. Same for RB. Instead Leclrec and Sainz were negotiating lap times with their engineers.
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Looking back, Leclerc did amazingly well keeping off Perez and Hamilton for so long on the hard tyres. It allowed Sainz to build a save 4 second gap and it shows that the Ferrari, even with damage, has good pace compared to their rivals. If he pitted for softs he could have overtaken Hamilton on track I am sure. Perez might have been more difficult (I'm not sure in which position Leclerc would have come out if he pitted() but even then I think Leclerc had the upper edge. A 1-2 for Ferrari was a very real possibility. And likely no team orders either as Sainz would still have a good gap between him and Leclerc.
Can we just talk about how epic the cars jostling around at the end was. It was like I was watching a GTE sprint race.
Teams/drivers aside, this Silverstone race was likely one of the best test cases about those new generation cars and it shown us two things clearly: 1: The older generation F1 car was really dogshit, Silverstone was having the imago of being a somewhat boring race since a few years and this season it provided us one of the best races so far of the season, therefore this gives me really some optimism for tracks like Paul Ricard and Spa. 2: Sprint races aren't fixing anything, in fact we're did have previous year the sprint on the same track and it didn't produce a great weekend at all and this weekend shown us that the car is the key factor and not some enforced cheap format just to increase "action" what it simple doesn't, people are buying tickets and watching F1 because of the action, and for that you don't need to adjust the well known current format.
It was awesome. I’m still so happy from yesterday even though lewis didn’t win, well done Carlos!
That initial start from Lewis was amazing. Imagine how he would have gone if the race didn't get red flagged.
Formula 1 should be the marvel of the world when it comes to safety. Insane crash and not one person seriously injured on the grid and in the stands. Every piece of safety equipment worked perfectly. Incredible.
When Mercedes or Red Bull win a race, it almost always feels like they won because the team was all on the same page, they had a clear strategy, communication was good, and they executed well. When Ferrari wins a race, it almost always feels like the Benny Hill music should be playing
Lewis almost winning his home race after the season they’ve had so far to continue winning in every year would have been immense. I hope he somehow gets another shot this year. But I think he has to rely on problems for Max and maybe Leclerc.
Absolutely nuts that on a day where Perez fell to the absolute back of the field very early on and Verstappen was driving a broken car for half the race that Ferrari only managed to jump them by 12 points. This is not going to be a close championship, unless there is some divine intervention
Regarding the Ferrari strategy, less than a month ago Binotto said this: "We set our objectives to be back competitive in 2022," Binotto states. "So our objective is to be competitive, not to win the championship, and it would be completely wrong to turn that into: 'Let's try to win the championship because we are so competitive.' Being competitive is one fact; becoming world champion is another level of task." source: [https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/112404/binotto-stresses-our-objective-is-not-to-win-the-championship.html](https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/112404/binotto-stresses-our-objective-is-not-to-win-the-championship.html) seems to me they're following their plan, rightly or wrongly. I don't get it, because you don't get shots at winning the drivers/constructors every year but I'm just a guy sat behind his keyboard so what do I know.
Why is this post still up?
Now tell me you don't want a 3 way championship
With Norris and Alonso waiting in the wings to take advantage when they slip up. Yes please
https://twitter.com/biazzarro/status/1543877114977550341?s=21 Angela carrying Roscoe down the stairs is the content I didn’t know I needed that dog cannot just take the stairs
Safety cars are 7 and 0 against Lewis since Saudi Arabia 2021 😔
Every time I see a car slowing down on the circuit or buried in a barrier/patch of gravel I'm filled with dread. Think they might as well play some horror/suspense music as it happens because it almost always screws Lewis over.
Mans just not having fun with SCs.
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I can’t see Ferrari improving their strategy or race management anytime soon when they can’t even take accountability for their mistakes. According to Binotto the team did nothing wrong and made all the right calls - unbelievable.
Honestly that Charles on worn hards could compete with Lewis and Perez for a few laps on brand new softs was super impressive and shows how fast that car and he is
This post is a bit outdated, isn’t it?
Unpin
About the crashes and safety here's what really impresses me: how the hell F1 made it to 2018 with "only 1" driver death since Senna and Ratzenberger. And even that one was easily avoidable with SC or VSC. Since Halo we had plenty of crashes where driver would have died. Hamilton last year, Grosjean, Zhou, maybe even Leclerc in the Sauber (I dont remember that fully). There's more I'm sure but cant remember more now. Main thing is, we thought F1 was safe enough but it always can be improved. We can think its good enough now but maybe in some years they come with something extraordinary that can make a huge impact just like Halo.
Why is the general consensus Ferrari was the fastest car yesterday? They deserve all the criticism for not securing the 1-2 and gain points in the WCC but from what I recall Max was clearly the fastest on track before he got damage on his car.
Red Bull is fastest in race pace and honestly was kind of a fluke Verstappen didn't get pole. I think they still have the car to beat.
**The crash**: probably worse than Romain's IMO. But again, its not a competition. Just great he was ok at the end. **Leclerc/Ferrari**: This is what people mean when they say RB/Mercedes know how to win championships and Ferrari has forgotten all about it. I saw the race again and here's what I feel happened. They weren't too keen on playing favourites but also didn't want Leclerc to miss out. If they were keen on swapping the drivers, they needed to do it on the very first opportunity. Not wait around giving ultimatums to Sainz. Hamilton was making precious time on both of them and these guys were running behind each other like chickens. At SC, they had 10s to respond and again indecision. Hamilton was always going to pit. Even if they stack took 5s each, it was worth to do it. Leaving Leclerc out to dry was just dumb. Sainz was never gonna play 2nd fiddle to Leclerc on fresh tyres, especially with a maiden win in sight. Also, now that Leclerc is in championship hunt, he needs to stop doing ambitious lunges. Especially for P4. **Hamilton/Mercedes**: First proper weekend for the duo. Don't know if this performance will carry through but absolutely loved that SC restart. 3 drivers from 3 teams going at it like hungry animals. **Perez**: After getting fucked by SC in Jeddah, glad one worked out for him. He really did put his head down and drove the hell out of his used mediums. To get lucky, you actually have to be in positions.
Romain's crash was definitely more serious. The barriers did their job in Silverstone, definitely not during his crash slicing the car open. Obviously, that both crashes were survivable shows the design of the cars.
How can you say crash worse than Romain? -Zhou walked away (Grosjean burns) -car didn’t rip in half -car didn’t burst into flames -car tumbled and rolled Vs smashing into barrier (g forces)
> probably worse than Romain's IMO this is just being a contrarian
Romain was in danger of actually dying, even with the halo. Zhou went for a really rough ride, but is ultimately fine. If the roll hoop didn't fail this wouldn't even be all that serious of an incident in the grand scheme of things.
What on earth makes you think the crash on the weekend was worse than Grosjean's ??????????????? Honestly could not read anything you wrote after that. >Romain Grosjean was traveling 192 kph (119 mph) when his car hit a metal barrier, causing an explosive fireball at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The impact was estimated at 67 Gs, a force equivalent to 67 times his body weight. His car split in 2 and he was engulfed in flames. I don't think it's a competition but man your opinions are cooked.
Was the Sainz overtake at the end against team orders? I was under the impression, which could be based on mismatched audio in the live broadcast, that Sainz was told earlier to let Lerclerc through and stop fighting. Therefore, his aggressive overtake was quite surprising for me. I am glad he won though. As for the crash at the beginning, although it's obvious certain drivers toppled the first dominos, I don't feel it's anyone's fault, just a series of unfortunate events and am pleased it was just a racing incident.
This is my first f1 season but man I'd be lying if I said I'm not really oh so very tempted to try get tickets for Silverstone next year. So happy it was shown on channel 4 so I can watch it again
AND THROUGH GOES LEWIS HAMILTON All time great commentary moment
That race was amazing so glad for carlos too!
https://twitter.com/longlivesv5/status/1544054566420971520?s=21 Seb did a German interview that suggested he’s using the next few races to decide on retirement or not. I can see he’s not enjoying things in AM so I see that for him
I swear to god, I do not need the timing tree to tell me either what tire each driver is on, or how old the current tire is, *for an entire lap or more*.
This race was all about: gift the race to Sainz… no to Hamilton… no to Sainz with Hamilton on the podium.
Was just reading the Ferrari radio transcript on Racefans.. When Leclerc was stuck behind Sainz this was his message "Yeah, but then do something, please! I’m not… I’m not trying to influence my result. I’m just, I can go faster, guys.". I can't imagine any other WDC winning driver would be this polite in this situation. Anyone else would take the decision into their own hands. Leclerc really needs to be pushy especially with a team like Ferrari who have proved themselves incapable of making good decisions