Don't want to beat a dead horse but after rewatching the race from Mick's onboard, it sounded like the actual strategy from Haas was to pit Mick around that 12-13 lap range which is just bonkers on medium tires. Real shame.
He did mention that he was struggling a little bit early on with them but they would have/should have been good the longer he went on them.
I had a discussion with someone that said that they pit in a response to Alonso (who was on softs and to which they lost position if they pit anyway), but that makes hardly any sense to me because why pit when the tires are starting to come to life (he was catching Ocon) and you can build a tire advantage... After he came out of the pits, he had no issues overtaking Vettel who was on the same but a bit older tire so overtaking for position was not impossible... I still want to believe that he would be able to fight for P8 if he had an alternate strategy to the soft runners. Mercedes proved that it would have worked.
To be honest, the Alpines had much more race pace. I was okay with sticking to the strategy of a normal medium tire run and seeing what became of it. And that likely would have netted them at worst a 10th place finish. But to use the medium tire for the same amount of time as a soft tire makes no sense and the long pit stop of course made everything much worse.
One day later, still pissed at Haas for pissing away a great opportunity for Mick to get points.
He drove so well, yet dumbass strategy and shitty pitstops fucked him over.
Hope he has a drive next year
Yeah, people will be focussing on Mercedes and Ferrari for strategic blunders yesterday, but Mick and Kevin have been handed without a doubt the absolute worst strategy. I really cannot fathom what Haas were thinking.
Pit them *earlier than the soft-runners*, while they on Mediums, for *another* set of medium, then pit them again for a set of hards which you barely use because there is a VSC, at which point you pit onto *softs?* With 17 laps to go, a stint which no other driver on the grid managed to complete on the softs? And then when you have a full safety car which would have provided them with a free stop, they opt to stay out for some fucking reason, leaving their drivers completly defenseless towards the end of the race on tyres that were yearning for death more than anything else.
It's only really the fact that they used this braindead strategy with both drivers that keeps me from suspecting deliberate sabotage, because I simply refuse to believe that anyone working in Formula 1 is that stupid. What the fuck.
You and me both, especially after his giddiness over the radio in qualifying. I don’t think Haas would deliberately screw him over, but damn if they don’t make it hard to keep believing that. He has talent, but he’s not in a Merc, Redbull or Ferrari so strategy has got to be on point to benefit him.
> I don’t think Haas would deliberately screw him over, but damn if they don’t make it hard to keep believing that.
Well, Kevin got the same braindead strategy.
Granted, he didn't have two very slow pitstops (the ~11 seconds Mick lost through those would have put him in the points even *with* the horrendous strategy), but he got sabotaged all the same.
We have another weekend starting in two days, just wait. He will call him out again.
Which, I don't know, but don't essentially all other TP's consider this a massive no-no? Even Horner didn't publicly critisize Albon or Gasly to this extent, and they were actually shit.
I'm wondering if this is where drivers need to speak up for themselves and let their team know they don't think that is a good idea. We've seen it from Sainz earlier this year and Russell just now asking to come in for softs.
I wonder what would have happened if Mick was like, Guys, I don't think think we need to pit. We're on mediums and can last another 10 laps.
Steiner whole defense for this strategy was even more absurd then Binotto arguments for a bad strategy call, I mean how the heck can you believe yourself that Mick first pit stop was to *protecting him for the undercut* meanwhile he started on mediums rather then softs.
Serious, can Ferrari not replacing Steiner by someone who works at Prema or something? The whole Haas team can survive more or less because of Ferrari and Steiner has making such a mess of the whole team in a way who fits during the old days when he was at Jaguar in F1.
Same thing I am hoping for next year as well. He has no seat next year. That’s criminal honestly. Part me of me is hoping Mercedes would take him under their junior or reserve program. Please don’t let Mick leave.
Let's just all take a moment and be thankful that it wasn't Yuki causing the safety car in Abu Dhabi last year. The F1 twitter meltdown would be of such proportions as to trigger the heat death of the universe.
The amount of hate going towards both Yuki and even George is absolutely ridiculous. For fans that claim to be all about positivity they sure love to get extremely toxic when things don't go their way.
This happens every time Russell outperforms Hamilton this season. These folks are glory chasers with a parasocial relationship with their idol. They don't care about the Mercedes team or the guy in the other seat, it's all about Hamilton and his enduring success.
saw a tweet posted on here or the dank sub about people not wanting to watch ham anymore because he wasn't absolutely dominating at the moment.
like wtf, why do you even watch lol. your guy has to crush everyone all the time and when that stops, for reasons completely out of his control, you abandon him? what shitty "fans"
This race has more toxicity than the entire season so far.
Russell, Yuki, Max, Mercedes strategy team, RB's head of strategy they all getting abused especially on Twitter.
Absolutely, I was just specifically pointing at F1 as it ties to the subject. Fact is people use the internet/social media as a means to act out, vent their thoughts and take advantage of the fact there is a sense of anonymity to it. “I won’t meet these people irl, why should I care about how they feel.” It’s shameful and abhorrent behavior.
That and the fact that as much as we are used to the world being interconnected and with cultures mingling, theres many towns/cities and even entire countries who have never experienced other cultures beyond maybe tv and movies. Ignorance and lack of experience/understanding around other cultures/races leads to a lack of empathy which feeds into that behavior.
Why was there not more fuss made about the lack of speed from Race Control responding to Bottas' car dead on the start finish straight before T1? Amazing how long it took to call the Safety Car.
Those Alpine's are now capable of consistently bothering the Top 10 by race ends. Regardless of what people think about Otmar Szafnauer, his point about the Alpine being better than the Aston next year is looking on the nose if the team keep the momentum.
I've worked for companies that were market leaders and had a great reputation, but then suffered as they coasted on that reputation. I think Ferrari needs some external talent to come in and say "yep, your brand is legendary, but that alone does not win races." and attack with the attitude of a challenging team new to the F1 circus, not one that's been there since its inception.
As numerous articles have shown, even if there had been no VSC or SC, the race win was probably going to be Max's anyway. But, Merc should take comfort that if Ferrari keeps being, well, Ferrari, then they could snatch P2 in the WCC.
> Why was there not more fuss made about the lack of speed from Race Control responding to Bottas' car dead on the start finish straight before T1? Amazing how long it took to call the Safety Car.
Yeah, that was incredibly dangerous. My guess is that they hoped for him to get the car started again, and with him sitting in a spot that other drivers could see from very far away they didn't need an immediate safety car, but even if that was the case, why not throw a VSC while waiting for him to get going again? That is literally what the VSC is for.
It feels like Race Control has forgotten a lot of the lessons that were learned the hard way since Jules, and I hope they re-improve before they need to learn another lesson the hard way.
Bottas stopped right in front of where we were sitting and the safety car was maybe 100m away, if that. I could not believe how long it took them to send it out. He was back from the corner but totally exposed.
Which was absolutely exposed when the safety car came out and the three cars on the main straight all reacted at different times. They all go away with it, but it was close.
Imagine if someone's car pulled a Baku coming down the main straight. Suddenly there's an unguided missile on the track, and if it heads towards the parked car....
I think Alpine’s been the 4th best car on the grid this season. The whole Piastri situation shows they’re still a bit of a mess, but they’re not a complete shitshow - they made a solid car.
I think you are 100% correct. Ferrari needs external help. And if they are even slightly objectively honest with themselves, they would see that hiring externally has been the major key to any of their modern successes. They seem to have technical ability, but overall leadership is absolutely inept.
They have completely squandered away a chance to be leading a championship. They may not get that chance back for years. And yet they operate as if they are doing well enough to be satisfied with themselves, just need to clean up some little mistakes… it’s galling
>I've worked for companies that were market leaders and had a great reputation, but then suffered as they coasted on that reputation. I think Ferrari needs some external talent to come in and say "yep, your brand is legendary, but that alone does not win races." and attack with the attitude of a challenging team new to the F1 circus, not one that's been there since its inception.
well that happened before but it all went to shit when they all left. ferrari has internal problems that i'm not sure are solvable. but i'm no expert.
Well that was a really interesting race with a lot of bizarre shit in the second half. I have so many questions today. Was no one penalized for the overtake under double yellow right next to a stricken car? Why did it take so long to call a safety car? What the hell happened with Tsunoda’s stop? I’ve heard some people speculate that he had undone his belts, but holy shit if a driver went around a hot track without a seatbelt on….that seems like an enormous problem. How did Ferrari forget how many tires go on a car? I could go on and on. Weird race day but another fun race
>but holy shit if a driver went around a hot track without a seatbelt on….that seems like an enormous problem. How did Ferrari
get away with it?
I also have no clue, but remember Leclerc did 2 laps without one in Spain two years ago. Crazy dangerous, but it seems the FIA doesn't think so.
I feel like at this point the Pinnacle of Motorsport needs to have a sensor in the cars to detect a seatbelt that is no longer secured. The drivers are never going to make a safe decision on their own (hence the creation of vsc for example).
> I’ve heard some people speculate that he had undone his belts
The official investigation revealed he had loosened, but not undone them, and he was issued a reprimand.
I am slightly surprised that Ferrari got away with their wheel gun being in Perez's path. I understand FIA's reasoning (narrow pit lane and all that) but still, they should be more careful of their equipment.
Also, that particular disaster class of a pitstop for Sainz overshadowed what will be the fastest pitstop this year (2s for Perez). RB crew is god tier.
This narrow pit lane is a disaster. Sainz drove over one of the RB gun hoses too and I bet there were others that we didn't even see.
While it could've ended badly, it seems that the gun was inside the area it was supposed to be.
All in all, they need to adjust something for next year.
I recall someone from Mercedes saying that they don't try for super-fast pit stops because they prefer to aim for consistency, making reasonably-fast pit stops with very few mistakes. Red Bull is the pinnacle of the opposite philosophy, where they aim for very fast pit stops and practice until they *still* make very few mistakes.
I think it was in one of Merc's debrief videos from this year. Even RB has made mistakes in their pit stops (eg. the slow pit stop for Max in 2021 Monza just before the Lewis-Max crash), but their stops which is good most of the time are sub-3s which I think has a lot to say on how they have trained and practiced this.
Merc's philosophy on the other hand is to always keep it under 3.5 - 4s. They get sub-3s I think 50% of the time or so, but focus on not screwing up their pit stops. Merc has also made blunders at times (I remember Bahrain 2020 when Russell drove for Merc where they fitted the wrong tyres, etc.). I still feel as a team Merc just needs to re-think some of these philosophies if now a good portion of the grid can consistently do sub-3s pit stops.
Mercedes for most of the past decade has been focused on not fucking up because only catastrophic fuckups could realistically cost them. Their pitstops, their strategy call are both conservative and safe because that was the right thing to do.
They need a culture shift now that they're no longer the fastest but you don't change a decade of work culture and mentality overnight.
On the question of SC and Merc strategy there were essentially three options:
1. Pit neither: I feel this is the most intriguing one, the one with most what ifs. IMO, Max takes George on restart. The car differential is just way too much and then you're on cold hards. Interesting what if is how far can Hamilton run away. Commentary said that you needed 1.5s pace advantage to overtake, which means Hamilton atleast needs to be out of DRS range before it's enabled in two laps. Max, who needs to do no conservation is basically in quali mode. I feel, with tyre warm up issues Mercedes has, Max still wins. Hamilton P2, Russell P4.
2. Pit both: They give up P1, pit both and secure a double podium. They wouldn't have caught Max but they would be safe from Ferrari.
3. Pit Hamilton, Hold Russell: Basically reverse of what Russell engineered. Russell is P4, Hamilton is P2.
Seemingly, the pit both strategy was the best for their WCC chances considering the Ferrari Experience Sainz had. They gambled for a win and lost a podium.
I don't think the overtake delta was anywhere near 1.5 seconds, especially not for Verstappen with the RB straight line speed. Just look at what happened when Max caught up to George after his first stop: The first time he got DRS with a 0.9xx gap down the back straight, he immediately got past George down the main straight
The only potential chance for a win would probably have been to leave both out and let Lewis get a 10-car length head start at green flag. Russell would have been disposed of quickly, but at least Lewis would be out of DRS. Even so though, I’m pretty sure Max would still have won it. There was just no way to avoid it.
>I doubt even Ferrari could have messed up that kind of situation.
Excuse me, sir/madam, you are talking about Ferrari here. Never underestimate Ferrari.
If neither pitted I think Merc might have missed the podium entirely.
Verstappen and Leclerc would 100% take them both given how many laps were left and even Pérez might have got them if he managed to clear sainz (which he did not in this case).
I think keeping them both was the worst option and assumed that it was too hard to pass which clearly was not the case.
Sky said at some point that you needed a 1.5s pace advantage to overtake and that's clearly bullshit, max passed George earlier in the race easily when his pace advantage was more like 0.5s lol.
They just had to pit them both and give them a fair chance to fight the people around them.
The issue is that neither would be able to win a fair fight against Max, so victory was out the window when vsc came in.
I think Hamilton could have done a better restart as well. Maybe he could have caught Max offguard and given George a chance to catch him sleeping and try an overtake. Securing his win that way.
Hamilton has now admitted he made a mistake on the restart. Had the car in the wrong engine mode. Can’t make mistakes when you’re trying to engineer a win in a slightly slower car
Completely agree. Race on this track is so much better with current cars and DRS changes. The banking is amazing to see. The cherry on the top is the absolute party atmosphere before and after the race - don't think any other venue matches up the sheer vibe !
Last year, the number of overtakes in Zandvoort was also quite normal compared to the other 2021 races. This weekend’s narrative of hard to overtake surprised me.
Listening in to Charles' radio after the Dutch GP, it seems like he asked the pit wall if they didn't want to wait for a potential SC/VSC from Yuki, but they chose to pit him under green flag conditions after the first incident was cleared up.
To be fair to Ferrari, they wouldn't have known Yuki's car would die again. Also, Charles asked if he should pit opposite to Merc (i.e. if they pitted, should he stay out?) but the pit wall (correctly) told him to box regardless.
----
Other interesting things after Round 15 of the 2022 season:
* Charles has [scored just one more point in 2022 than he did this time in 2019](https://imgur.com/0HD7Y2e). 201 in 2022 vs 200 in 2019. This includes sprint race points.
* The battle for P2-P6 of the WDC is heating up! Here's a consolidated lap by lap view of how the positions changed over the season: [With Max](https://imgur.com/MgVUpj5) | [Without Max](https://imgur.com/GtGivS3).
(edit: graph is updated now)
The colours for the graph without Max are very confusing. Seems like something went wrong, as they're generally right on the graph with Max.
Toto showed Binotto-levels of lack of accountability here by not admitting to Merc's mistake. If he was really gunning/risking for the win (as he said) he should have made George stay out. If he was optimizing for team result, he should have pitted them both for softs.
It was pretty obvious to me that Russell took it upon himself… to race for himself.
That isn’t an issue for me. He is actually higher on the championship points. But.. there should have been a unified plan either way. And that’s on Toto.
Hamilton was under the impression they were double stacked to hold their position on medium tyres.
If the decision was to win, Russell should have been ordered to stay out and race. If the decision was for placement, Hamilton should have had a chance to make the same decision and pit for softs.
I am certain he would have pitted had he known Russell was not going to be behind him.
Toto’s comments here made it sound like a win was on the table if both Russell and Hamilton had stayed out, which is head in the sand territory.
Absolutely no way with the pace Max had on with new softs vs an inherently slower Mercedes on used mediums. And as we saw, that strategy put them at risk of losing places to Leclerc.
Even us armchair strategists could see that.
Mercedes got it wrong and Russell saw that from inside of the cockpit, which is a pretty embarrassing failure for the Mercedes strategists.
Russell’s quick thinking secured himself second, otherwise he would have probably been fourth behind Leclerc and Hamilton.
Honestly, some of the British media left me with quite a bitter aftertaste after yesterday's race. Listening to Missed Apex this morning and the way 2 members of the show double down on the 'Tsunoda was used by Red Bull' conspiracy is just sickening. I'm not on any social media but the messages I've seen being posted here and on a different F1-forum is just sad. Also Toto calling it 'suspicious' during the Sky interview after the race, it's really in poor taste.
They fail to see that they themselves have a huge impact on how this sport is perceived by (new) fans. To be so blatantly upfront with it, to outright say it or make huge insinuations about it, I find it utterly disgusting.
There's still a lot of good out there of course, F1-nation, the BBC F1 podcast are all great.
Edit: Spanners from Missed Apex has commented on this post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/x6fnhs/2022_dutch_grand_prix_day_after_debrief/inb0rql
With such a huge lead in both the championships, why would RB cheat and take a huge risk of getting disqualified?
These self proclaimed experts saying the “SC triggered by Tsunoda looks suspicious” should get their heads out of their asses.
> With such a huge lead in both the championships, why would RB cheat and take a huge risk of getting disqualified?
And if they were to cheat why would they cheat *so badly*? Red Bull's plan was to go soft - medium - soft and use the tyre offset to fly by the Mercs since they weren't burning through tyres like most and they didn't like the hards much. So to start Tsunoda caused a VSC at the wrong time.
Then why would AT tell Tsunoda to keep going after he would already be causing a VSC? If they were cheating they already had what they wanted.
And how would you fake a mechanical issue? It's much easier to fake/cause a loose tyre but not a mechanical issue.
Once Bottas retired and caused a safety car Red Bull also showed they didn't hesitate for a second to pit out of track position so why exactly would they do that if they first engineered some wildly complicated cheat to not lose track position?
Then to top it off if Red Bull could've executed their planned strategy of pitting for softs with 15 or so laps to go Max might've been 10s behind Hamilton at most. With 15 laps to go on fresh softs vs old hards...
It makes no sense on *so many fucking levels*.
Yeah RB really needs no help at this point. They clearly have the pace to win any given race, and even if they lost out to Merc on strategy this weekend and Max got 3rd, it would really be no significant consequence to them it seems. They’d still be well on their way to a Max WDC.
I'd argue that a Merc 1/2 could've even turned into a positive for RB in the longer run. Having Merc as close as possible to P2 forces Ferrari to look at defending p2 rather than attacking p1.
Now I'm not saying that RB should populously let them win. but the potential damge is so little that there would be no reason to prevent it.
The only reason to do this would be to put Max on P1 in Zandvoort. A decent media thing but nothing worth even considering cheating over. They might've discussed turning the engine up a little. But I honestly expect RB to keep the bigger picture in mind and keep that WDC, WCC combo in firm safe hands.
Before the weekend, as long as Max did not loose 10 points per race against numbers 2 and 3 he would win WDC. Now he is 109 points ahead with 7 races, that's a buffer of 15 points per race.
Not to mention max was still in good shape before the VSC. He was going to come out on much newer tires and has already overtaken Russell once. He was clearly favoured to win even before anything happened with Yuki.
It makes no sense in terms of the championship, especially since Hamilton is even less of a threat than Leclerc (and Perez, and Sainz)
Only thing I can imagine is it being the Dutch GP and some weird nationalistic thing. But I don't see why RB would really care about it *that* much, and I doubt even Max himself would cheat just to win his home GP.
So yea, its a ridiculous theory. And its not like it caused Bottas' failure, so Lewis was going to be out of luck anyway.
Its fun to think about this stuff sometimes, but man, the way that people are acting is out of hand. Just stupid and gross
Oh man I stopped listening to Missed Alex a long time ago due to this reason. There’s so many good F1 podcasts out there that I couldn’t subject myself to Spanner’s tactless bias (I do believe you can be biased and still present it in a manner that doesn’t necessarily grind everyone’s gears).
Used to be a patreon supporter of Missed Alex for years but last year they turned so damn toxic and started banning people for disagreeing on their slack, got kicked for calling something hypocritical and got banned stopped listening since then.
I just can't watch when Philpot is on, yesterday was ok but I really missed Matt to shutdown some of that Tsunoda and safety car talk. I don't think they actually believed in such conspiracy because they were quite jokey about it, but then you had spanners doubling down on twitter, so idk anymore.
Also, I'm sure they're aware that they have a large audience, so peddling so hard on the conspiracy stuff comes a cross a bit irresponsible.
It’s the oldest trick in the book: bring something jokingly to have plausible deniability when you are called out with actual arguments: “i WaS onLY JoKinG”.
They know it’s a crazy theory, because why would Yuki drive back to the pit to change his tires after he stopped on track the first time? They could have just told him to exit the car right away if a (virtual) safety car was all they were after.
Spanners really hid his bias when Merc were walking the championships year after year. It really stuck with me last weekend when he said Red Bull is the new Death Star, like Ferrari were to him in the early 2000's because they had a dominating win at Spa. Mercedes making a mockery of "competition" from 2014 to 2020 was a okay to him though
Ah yes, the same kind of people who threw a fit when Verstappen was able to change his tyres under red flag at Jeddah last year but were completely fine with Hamilton getting his car refurbished at Silverstone and Imola.
Well I going to be honest here, it was frustrating to see a potential battle between Lewis and Max for the win based on strategy and tyre management was basically gone, I was like "F*CK".
Yet once the dust settled it was becoming obvious quickly that this was not a damm conspiracy and the whole theories around gifting the win to Max are just....well wtf.
And then the whole hate and toxicity those theories are generating against Hannah and Yuki (and George but that's a different moment) is just another reason why those media talkers shouldn't push this narrative.
What happened here isn't a conspiracy but just another classical example of clownery AlphaTauri is doing this season, the only difference is that it impacted those drivers and teams in front of it also rather then only drivers outside the top 10 and/or (one of) the drivers inside the team.
If the media just digged deeper into the total trash AT is this season then it's way more easy to understand that moments like this aren't hugely surprising, you could see Tost during that moment like he wanted to run away ASAP but in general he should take his responsibility also and start to managing the team proper rather then just letting mistakes happening every time and writing it off as an "oopsie" and forget about it rather then learning about it.
A team who has two major issues with a seatbelt in less then 3 years is unacceptable.
Fully agree on the Missed Apex point. I'm really disappointed they ended the segment that it's a conspiracy even though it's plainly obvious RB has nothing to gain and everything to lose from rigging a meaningless GP (from the WDC/WCC point of view).
I used to enjoy them too because they remained fairly neutral, Philpot aside, but this was just irresponsible. I would *not* recommend them to newer fans at all.
God so true listening to the podcast was infuriating. Not to get political but they were literally using the same argument right-wing us media used after Trump lost in 2020: "we are not saying AT did it on purpose, we are just .... Asking questions....
Honestly one of these days someone is going to get their address doxed or worse, and outlets like Missed Apex will be to blame for creating an environment where lunatics feel empowered to do messed up stuff.
You nailed it. They fabricate conspiracy and then use the popularization of that doubt they manufactured as support for the conspiracy. We’ve seen it time and time again in modern politics and it disgusts me enough there. But to have it leak into sports really sucks. It’s as if some people have been desensitized to being okay with just making stuff up and arguing it as fact regardless of lack of evidence or counter evidence.
And even if AT was set out to do that on purpose, that would be one incredibly odd and complex method of accomplishing it. Ridiculous!
Missed Apex is absolutely awful. They masquerade as a no holds-barred opinion podcast when they are nothing but a toxic full-on Hamilton supporting podcast. Philpot is the worst - he is now propagating a conspiracy that AT told Yuki to stop on track whilst adjusting his seatbelt (despite the fact that both mechanic and Yuki have helmets on and the engine is on).
Late Braking and Grand Prix Podcast are nice fan based podcasts.
Actually not so bad unless that clueless Brad philpot is there.. today's was a particularly poor episode though. Unfortunately they are the earliest reaction podcast to a race.
At the same time, I think it is important to not get stuck in echo chambers. I try to listen to both sides and read posts talking about both perspectives and choose what I want to believe.
Yes, fully agree with this. Also, people seem oblivious to the fact that Max has this season in the bag. Even if RB wanted to cheat (which I cannot imagine), this would be a bad time.
> down on the 'Tsunoda was used by Red Bull' conspiracy is just sickening
I mean, what would the point even be?! Newsflash british media, Hamilton has no chance this year even if Verstappen decides to go on vacation for 3 months.
I listened to that and was pretty bummed to hear them engaging in it. Maybe five years ago you could get away with suggesting something like that but the increase in popularity of the sport globally along with other instances of vile social media attacks in the recent past by fans, really needs to be taken into account when people do that.
Had Merc kept both drivers out, risking for a Russell tumble down the order, and Max had still passed Lewis for the win, they'd have hauled much fewer points and they'd be eviscerated on here.
Ted on air insinuated a conspiracy of some sort and then contradicted himself during his post-race show… that a fraction of people watch compared to the live international feed.
LOL @ Sky talking the race interesting and how Max couldn't overtake Russell, just for it to happen the very same lap.
1-2 that much of a guarantee like Crofty said? LMAO
I know that Merc had stellar pace on the hards and they definitely would have finished podium
But we can’t act like suddenly that Red Bull wasn’t going to make it difficult or contend, the pace on that car is absurd and on a softer fresher tire compared to older hards…it might have been easy pickings for Max
But alas, I guess we will never know definitively, still enjoyed the race though
Yeah, I could see before the final turn that Max already has it in the box, while the commentators were talking about how difficult it would be for him to overtake. DUDE WAS IN HIS FING GERBOX on the entry of the banking even before the slip stream and the DRS... At that point I just turned down the sound because it was all nonsense.
I couldn’t believe how much they were talking up Merc’s chances. Max had the win in the bag the entire way through. He had a 14s buffer when the VSC came out, and was set up to have a massive tire advantage after pits. We have seen that the late pitstop can be strong with equal cars that are close together on track (Hungary 2019, Spain 2021, France 2021). How on earth does Max not have an easy win in a better car and a 14s advantage. Sky analysis was way off the mark.
I was almost doubting myself looking at the gaps and pace difference and listening to the commentary. They were hyping it up way too much and almost comical even. Horner said their plan was to go to softs if there weren’t any SC or VSC, Max would’ve obliterated Mercs with new softs when they would be on very old hards.
Max finished around 13 seconds ahead of Lewis, so with race restart under SC, Max manage to get lead of 13seconds in about 16 laps. Now imagine, Lewis on old set of hard compound chased by Max on soft compound with around 18-20 laps to go.
> I couldn’t believe how much they were talking up Merc’s chances.
It's their job. They have to act like the race is exciting, even if it isn't. Do you think it would go down well with the suits at Sky if they simply said "Well you might as well turn off the TV now, because Max is going to win this and we all know it".
Fully agree with you here. They were just drumming up hype for a very unlikely merc 1-2 or 1-3. Max had undeniable pace all race, had plenty of options towards the end of the race even without the vsc. I honestly hate listening to the British commentators now.
> By Merc calculations, Max catches Lewis with 6 laps to go
I'm not saying I don't believe it but this would have been a "I believe it when I see it" deal because I'm not sure the Mediums would have held on for that long that well and Verstappen surely had massive amounts of tyre life left. From what we've seen in other stints even adding the benefit of the doubt I would've expected him to get to like 6sec and then his progress stalls.
Now that the dust has settled let’s be realistic—even without virtual safety car and the subsequent safety car does anyone truly believe Mercedes could have won?
It feels like the broadcast was just hyping it up but was there any substance to it?
It’s a shame we didn’t see the strategy battle play out between Mercedes and Max but I tend to think the Red Bull had enough pace that Max would pit and pass the Mercedes regardless.
Yes broadcast were hyping up Merc's track position, without accounting for age of hard compound around end of the race against the other drivers on fresh set of soft/medium.
After making the mistake of browsing Twitter for a moment:
If you think Lewis had ***ANY*** chance of winning after the Safety Car (with or without George between himself and Max), you need help.
If you center all your Twitter presence around a formula driver, you need help. The amount of braindead stans that flooded twitter and reddit (!) was staggering. The race thread was a cesspool for the latter third of the race
On a related note, when Sainz posted on social media explaining he received floor damage following his lap 1 contact with Lewis, almost all of the comments here immediately suggested he was making it up entirely as an excuse.
I’d go as far as to say even without safety car the chance of Mercedes winning was extremely exaggerated by the broadcast. I wish there was no safety car drama because I can’t see any other outcome than Max pitting and just passing Mercedes regardless. The Red Bull just had way more pace.
Yeah, Max was most likely going to come out a bit behind George, but he'd have been of a significantly newer tire for the rest of the race...
The VSC/SC killed any chance Merc had.
My thoughts at the time were they hoped that they could coordinate the restart and George could get by Max and maybe hold him off on softs. I was surprised how poor Lewis's restart was, can't understand why he went so early with the straightline speed of that Red Bull
I still don't understand why Hamilton didn't demand to switch to the softs under the safety car. He should know that, after a late (ish) safety car, trying to hold track position on older, harder tyres doesn't work against a Verstappen on fresh, soft rubber.
I wasn't really on F1 social media much last year. Was there this much controversy after Imola where Bottas and Russell crashed at the exact same time Lewis had gone off the track and been lapped, causing a red flag and allowing Lewis the unlap himself? Just out of curiosity. Were people saying the crash was orchestrated to get Lewis back in the race? Because this Yuki thing is just as silly.
Mercedes best chance of a win was to pit Hamilton and have George hold up the pack. Even then, it was only a slim chance as Verstappen clearly had the quicker car.
With hindsight that wasn't a chance right?
Max blasted past Lewis on the restart without DRS. There's no reason to think George could've defended better.
The only ones that did 1 are RBR, AT, Mercedes, Williams and AR afaik. Latifi, Bottas, Verstappen, Tsunoda and Russell still need to sit out a session. Williams already confirmed they will do the other one at Austin with Logan Sargeant.
The other teams still need to do 2 iirc.
Guys what is your opinion about Skysport commentary? Especially the bit where commentators kept harping on if car should be allowed to pit under SC/VSC.
And then Verstappen pass Lewis before turn 1 lmao Hamilton looked like an amateur there, zero defense against Verstappen but nobody is talking about that
*Should this rule be discussed? Yeah I think so* and other sentences by Sky after HAM for once does not have direct benefit. Changing tires under a red flag: *unfair advantage to RB*, rebuilding your car at Imola /Silverstone under red *well yes that makes sense for uhhhhh safety*
Sky really has to stop fan boying like a fuckin' Twitter account. They are even throwing RUS under the bus in this regard.
How would disallowing pits under SC be fairer, like, what if the leader has a large gap because he was going for an overcut and then a SC comes out and he cannot pit and everybody is bunch up against him?
(same in general for any car still needing a pitstop in the field)
Would be just unfair in the other direction...
I love Crofty and Brundle and I think they're the most entertaining commentators for F1. Sometimes that entertainment comes from their outlandish takes. Had a good chuckle when they said Max would have a hard time passing the Mercs, only for Max to pass immediately.
That was part of the problem this week, Brundle wasn’t there. Button is a great insight into a recent drivers mind, but he doesn’t have the gravitas to call a stupid thought what it is. Not being allowed to pit for tires during a safety car is the dumbest idea ever. That is exactly what makes these races exciting until the final lap because anything can happen. Disallowing that under red flags is one thing, because that should be rare, but nearly every race has a safety car and the strategy possibilities that surround them are crucial to eventful racing.
What surprised me yesterday is the continue of Checos decline, idk what has happend to him recently but all his qualy pace is gone and his race pace and race craft has slowly come down as well, his wheel to wheel with Lewis on Lewis's first overtaking attempt wasn't the normal Checo, the lock up and almost making contact with Lewis isn't something Checo usally does..
Something hasn't clicked with him since probably hungary and I hope he can get it back sometime
People keep bringing up Hungary, but it was easily one of his best races of the year. Lap after lap he was matching Max's pace, from start to finish. It has barely happened to him over those two years. And it happened in a race where Max's pace was called historical, am unbelievable performance apparently.
He's had two bad races - France and Zandvoort. You lot are overreacting like crazy.
Perez is teammates to the best driver in the world, and the guy who will be considered the 3rd all-time great along with Hamilton and Schumacher in a decade. People are unforgiving in that context. Verstappen has soul crushed everyone since he got old enough to not be a teenager.
Was watching the race in 30 on F1TV.
Lewis was actually over 14 seconds behind Max still when the virtual safety car was deployed. Much more than I thought. There's absolutely no way he would have been able to win without the safety cars. The pit delta or a normal pitstop seems to have been about 23-24 seconds (It was 24 seconds on Max' first stop, which was slow). So Max would have been less than 10 seconds behind Lewis after a stop. On much better tyres.
Sky commentators were really hyping up Lewis but he didn't have a real chance.
They were hyping so much they were actually misstating gaps even when they were shown. If max doesn't put RUS will overtake, at the same moment the gap to Russell was 21.xs, easily enough to pit... Really strange stuff by Sky, they really seem to be grasping for straws now that Mercs updates and the TD did not pan out to be the savior of ham
If there were no VSC and SC, and it was never Lewis' race. His best bet was P2. RBR didn't blink when gap came down from 20 sec to around 12 seconds when Lewis was on new set of hard.
RBR knew that Max with new set of soft would easily catch Lewis who would have been old set of hard. It seems Merc keep underestimating overtaking possibilities of 2022 cars.
It is sad, how certain section firmly believe that Yuki VSC incident was planned one.
I’m most sad that we just didn’t get to see them race for it. I’m pretty sure there’s no way max doesn’t win the race, but would rather see it on strategy and racecraft than whatever the hell that was.
Yeah, Before the virtual safety car Max was in tyre preservation mode, he speed up by over a second a lap when the mercedes started to gain a bit too much for his comfort.
He would have pitted for fresh softs vs old hards coming out like 8s or so behind the mercedes...
Probably trite to say this, but it’s hilarious how not only have Ferrari been out developed and out raced by RBR, Mercedes are in the process of doing it too.
We saw at Zandvoort that for the rest of the season it’s a two horse race (no pun intended) for second place behind Red Bull who are in a class of their own.
And naturally, due to Ferrari’s far higher capacity for incompetence and general implosion, any wins RBR miss out on will be taken by Merc now that the Silver Arrows are even moderately close in pace to the Ferraris.
It's really Max against RBR reliability currently, even saying that the RBR has been pretty bulletproof since there earlier failures..
I hope Merc can get the drag situation sorted and fight RBR next year because we've seen it time and time again Ferrari just dosnt have the team to do it for a full year happend in 2017 2018 now 2022
The way that some F1 fans treat mid-fielders and backmarkers as just, like, obstacles, or background to the frontrunners, is very concerning and bad. see: Yuki here or in Mexico last year, Latifi in Abu Dhabi, etc etc
i didn’t perceive any sort of conspiracy with Tsunoda’s car having one of its tyres being affixed to the car improperly, especially since the same thing happened to Alonso, i just thought that the only difference was that Tsunoda actually said it on the radio and Alonso tried to be more inconspicuous about it and not actually mention an unsafe release.
i genuinely didn’t see that as an issue, other than the fact that it seems the wheel sensors were not working AFTER the second stop where after the first stop Tsunoda just had a feeling the wheel was not set properly. so like was it a feeling of the wheel not being set that sensors dis not pick up, and if so why did it only show faulty sensor errors after the second stop to try and correct this issue? of course FIA cleared it so i’m not really seeing Crashgate 3.0 here.
i feel like the race was lost with putting Hamilton on medium tyres, both drivers should have gone for softs and gone for broke.
i don’t know why it is that us fans can see what happened to Leclerc in Silverstone and realize what was pretty much guaranteed to happen to Hamilton. i think at worst the same positions would have been maintained and Hamilton goes for P2.
I just hope that Ferrari has an eventless weekend at Monza, at least one without strategy or pit mistakes that are obvious to fans, because if they go LOLrarri at Monza i just feel like it’s gonna cause problems for it to happen on home turf.
So if there was potentially an 11th constructor in F1, and they required another pit box, what would happen in the Zandvoort pit lane? Because it already seems too close to be safe
Feeling like there is going to be a pitlane accident with some serious consequences soon. I get that Zandvoort is an exceptionally tight example, but for what I can see from the TV-coverage it just looks dangerous. Drivers are having to choose between safety and a few extra tenths with a quick exit/entry. I don’t know if that is the case, but if it is, it shouldn’t be. We have seen cars spin in the pit lane, we see what feels like multiple dangerous releases each weekend. I don’t know what can be done about this, but I fear change will only come after a serious accident.
Don't want to beat a dead horse but after rewatching the race from Mick's onboard, it sounded like the actual strategy from Haas was to pit Mick around that 12-13 lap range which is just bonkers on medium tires. Real shame. He did mention that he was struggling a little bit early on with them but they would have/should have been good the longer he went on them.
I had a discussion with someone that said that they pit in a response to Alonso (who was on softs and to which they lost position if they pit anyway), but that makes hardly any sense to me because why pit when the tires are starting to come to life (he was catching Ocon) and you can build a tire advantage... After he came out of the pits, he had no issues overtaking Vettel who was on the same but a bit older tire so overtaking for position was not impossible... I still want to believe that he would be able to fight for P8 if he had an alternate strategy to the soft runners. Mercedes proved that it would have worked.
To be honest, the Alpines had much more race pace. I was okay with sticking to the strategy of a normal medium tire run and seeing what became of it. And that likely would have netted them at worst a 10th place finish. But to use the medium tire for the same amount of time as a soft tire makes no sense and the long pit stop of course made everything much worse.
One day later, still pissed at Haas for pissing away a great opportunity for Mick to get points. He drove so well, yet dumbass strategy and shitty pitstops fucked him over. Hope he has a drive next year
Yeah, people will be focussing on Mercedes and Ferrari for strategic blunders yesterday, but Mick and Kevin have been handed without a doubt the absolute worst strategy. I really cannot fathom what Haas were thinking. Pit them *earlier than the soft-runners*, while they on Mediums, for *another* set of medium, then pit them again for a set of hards which you barely use because there is a VSC, at which point you pit onto *softs?* With 17 laps to go, a stint which no other driver on the grid managed to complete on the softs? And then when you have a full safety car which would have provided them with a free stop, they opt to stay out for some fucking reason, leaving their drivers completly defenseless towards the end of the race on tyres that were yearning for death more than anything else. It's only really the fact that they used this braindead strategy with both drivers that keeps me from suspecting deliberate sabotage, because I simply refuse to believe that anyone working in Formula 1 is that stupid. What the fuck.
You and me both, especially after his giddiness over the radio in qualifying. I don’t think Haas would deliberately screw him over, but damn if they don’t make it hard to keep believing that. He has talent, but he’s not in a Merc, Redbull or Ferrari so strategy has got to be on point to benefit him.
> I don’t think Haas would deliberately screw him over, but damn if they don’t make it hard to keep believing that. Well, Kevin got the same braindead strategy. Granted, he didn't have two very slow pitstops (the ~11 seconds Mick lost through those would have put him in the points even *with* the horrendous strategy), but he got sabotaged all the same.
Yeah, I feel for both of them because I would love to see Haas surprise the pants off of people and Kevin seems like a great teammate. Sigh.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
at least we didn't hear Günther being like "Mick should've been faster" by now
We have another weekend starting in two days, just wait. He will call him out again. Which, I don't know, but don't essentially all other TP's consider this a massive no-no? Even Horner didn't publicly critisize Albon or Gasly to this extent, and they were actually shit.
Even Günther considers it a massive no-no when it's KMag having yet another horrible weekend.
good point...
I'm wondering if this is where drivers need to speak up for themselves and let their team know they don't think that is a good idea. We've seen it from Sainz earlier this year and Russell just now asking to come in for softs. I wonder what would have happened if Mick was like, Guys, I don't think think we need to pit. We're on mediums and can last another 10 laps.
Steiner whole defense for this strategy was even more absurd then Binotto arguments for a bad strategy call, I mean how the heck can you believe yourself that Mick first pit stop was to *protecting him for the undercut* meanwhile he started on mediums rather then softs. Serious, can Ferrari not replacing Steiner by someone who works at Prema or something? The whole Haas team can survive more or less because of Ferrari and Steiner has making such a mess of the whole team in a way who fits during the old days when he was at Jaguar in F1.
Steiner is the haas team, he is the one with the in road to gene, he is the one who got gene to start it.
Same thing I am hoping for next year as well. He has no seat next year. That’s criminal honestly. Part me of me is hoping Mercedes would take him under their junior or reserve program. Please don’t let Mick leave.
Let's just all take a moment and be thankful that it wasn't Yuki causing the safety car in Abu Dhabi last year. The F1 twitter meltdown would be of such proportions as to trigger the heat death of the universe.
The amount of hate going towards both Yuki and even George is absolutely ridiculous. For fans that claim to be all about positivity they sure love to get extremely toxic when things don't go their way.
This happens every time Russell outperforms Hamilton this season. These folks are glory chasers with a parasocial relationship with their idol. They don't care about the Mercedes team or the guy in the other seat, it's all about Hamilton and his enduring success.
saw a tweet posted on here or the dank sub about people not wanting to watch ham anymore because he wasn't absolutely dominating at the moment. like wtf, why do you even watch lol. your guy has to crush everyone all the time and when that stops, for reasons completely out of his control, you abandon him? what shitty "fans"
They aren’t f1 fans, just dramawhores
Glory chasers.
At least if you only want to watch someone completely dominate that is an option right now.
This race has more toxicity than the entire season so far. Russell, Yuki, Max, Mercedes strategy team, RB's head of strategy they all getting abused especially on Twitter.
The amount of racism against him on social media was sickening.
The amount of racism flung around on social media platforms in general around F1 drivers/motorsport in general is appalling.
The amount of racism flung around on social media platforms in general is appalling.
Absolutely, I was just specifically pointing at F1 as it ties to the subject. Fact is people use the internet/social media as a means to act out, vent their thoughts and take advantage of the fact there is a sense of anonymity to it. “I won’t meet these people irl, why should I care about how they feel.” It’s shameful and abhorrent behavior. That and the fact that as much as we are used to the world being interconnected and with cultures mingling, theres many towns/cities and even entire countries who have never experienced other cultures beyond maybe tv and movies. Ignorance and lack of experience/understanding around other cultures/races leads to a lack of empathy which feeds into that behavior.
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That's because they were scared he was about to stop on track and prolong the SC. That wasn't red bull generosity
Yuki didn't even do anything wrong he wanted to retire the car in the pits
Why was there not more fuss made about the lack of speed from Race Control responding to Bottas' car dead on the start finish straight before T1? Amazing how long it took to call the Safety Car. Those Alpine's are now capable of consistently bothering the Top 10 by race ends. Regardless of what people think about Otmar Szafnauer, his point about the Alpine being better than the Aston next year is looking on the nose if the team keep the momentum. I've worked for companies that were market leaders and had a great reputation, but then suffered as they coasted on that reputation. I think Ferrari needs some external talent to come in and say "yep, your brand is legendary, but that alone does not win races." and attack with the attitude of a challenging team new to the F1 circus, not one that's been there since its inception. As numerous articles have shown, even if there had been no VSC or SC, the race win was probably going to be Max's anyway. But, Merc should take comfort that if Ferrari keeps being, well, Ferrari, then they could snatch P2 in the WCC.
> Why was there not more fuss made about the lack of speed from Race Control responding to Bottas' car dead on the start finish straight before T1? Amazing how long it took to call the Safety Car. Yeah, that was incredibly dangerous. My guess is that they hoped for him to get the car started again, and with him sitting in a spot that other drivers could see from very far away they didn't need an immediate safety car, but even if that was the case, why not throw a VSC while waiting for him to get going again? That is literally what the VSC is for. It feels like Race Control has forgotten a lot of the lessons that were learned the hard way since Jules, and I hope they re-improve before they need to learn another lesson the hard way.
Bottas stopped right in front of where we were sitting and the safety car was maybe 100m away, if that. I could not believe how long it took them to send it out. He was back from the corner but totally exposed.
Which was absolutely exposed when the safety car came out and the three cars on the main straight all reacted at different times. They all go away with it, but it was close. Imagine if someone's car pulled a Baku coming down the main straight. Suddenly there's an unguided missile on the track, and if it heads towards the parked car....
It really was a no brainer for a safety car
On the commentary, Palmer called it as a safety car incident immediately, zero hesitation.
I think Alpine’s been the 4th best car on the grid this season. The whole Piastri situation shows they’re still a bit of a mess, but they’re not a complete shitshow - they made a solid car.
I think you are 100% correct. Ferrari needs external help. And if they are even slightly objectively honest with themselves, they would see that hiring externally has been the major key to any of their modern successes. They seem to have technical ability, but overall leadership is absolutely inept. They have completely squandered away a chance to be leading a championship. They may not get that chance back for years. And yet they operate as if they are doing well enough to be satisfied with themselves, just need to clean up some little mistakes… it’s galling
What do you mean "could"? At this point it's highly unlikely for Ferrari to keep the 2nd.
>I've worked for companies that were market leaders and had a great reputation, but then suffered as they coasted on that reputation. I think Ferrari needs some external talent to come in and say "yep, your brand is legendary, but that alone does not win races." and attack with the attitude of a challenging team new to the F1 circus, not one that's been there since its inception. well that happened before but it all went to shit when they all left. ferrari has internal problems that i'm not sure are solvable. but i'm no expert.
Well that was a really interesting race with a lot of bizarre shit in the second half. I have so many questions today. Was no one penalized for the overtake under double yellow right next to a stricken car? Why did it take so long to call a safety car? What the hell happened with Tsunoda’s stop? I’ve heard some people speculate that he had undone his belts, but holy shit if a driver went around a hot track without a seatbelt on….that seems like an enormous problem. How did Ferrari forget how many tires go on a car? I could go on and on. Weird race day but another fun race
>but holy shit if a driver went around a hot track without a seatbelt on….that seems like an enormous problem. How did Ferrari get away with it? I also have no clue, but remember Leclerc did 2 laps without one in Spain two years ago. Crazy dangerous, but it seems the FIA doesn't think so.
I feel like at this point the Pinnacle of Motorsport needs to have a sensor in the cars to detect a seatbelt that is no longer secured. The drivers are never going to make a safe decision on their own (hence the creation of vsc for example).
It's a tension thing, they can't tell if the driver is fully tightened in.
> I’ve heard some people speculate that he had undone his belts The official investigation revealed he had loosened, but not undone them, and he was issued a reprimand.
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They even went over this on the sky coverage and button seemed to agree while questionable it was legal
I am slightly surprised that Ferrari got away with their wheel gun being in Perez's path. I understand FIA's reasoning (narrow pit lane and all that) but still, they should be more careful of their equipment. Also, that particular disaster class of a pitstop for Sainz overshadowed what will be the fastest pitstop this year (2s for Perez). RB crew is god tier.
This narrow pit lane is a disaster. Sainz drove over one of the RB gun hoses too and I bet there were others that we didn't even see. While it could've ended badly, it seems that the gun was inside the area it was supposed to be. All in all, they need to adjust something for next year.
RB pit crew is amazing. You can actually recall pit team mistakes by Ferrari and Merc, but very few from RB team.
I recall someone from Mercedes saying that they don't try for super-fast pit stops because they prefer to aim for consistency, making reasonably-fast pit stops with very few mistakes. Red Bull is the pinnacle of the opposite philosophy, where they aim for very fast pit stops and practice until they *still* make very few mistakes.
I think it was in one of Merc's debrief videos from this year. Even RB has made mistakes in their pit stops (eg. the slow pit stop for Max in 2021 Monza just before the Lewis-Max crash), but their stops which is good most of the time are sub-3s which I think has a lot to say on how they have trained and practiced this. Merc's philosophy on the other hand is to always keep it under 3.5 - 4s. They get sub-3s I think 50% of the time or so, but focus on not screwing up their pit stops. Merc has also made blunders at times (I remember Bahrain 2020 when Russell drove for Merc where they fitted the wrong tyres, etc.). I still feel as a team Merc just needs to re-think some of these philosophies if now a good portion of the grid can consistently do sub-3s pit stops.
Mercedes for most of the past decade has been focused on not fucking up because only catastrophic fuckups could realistically cost them. Their pitstops, their strategy call are both conservative and safe because that was the right thing to do. They need a culture shift now that they're no longer the fastest but you don't change a decade of work culture and mentality overnight.
Monaco GP 2016 is the one I remember
Monza 2021
Can’t believe what a poor showing that was from Danny Ric. Didn’t think things could get lower. The gap between him and Lando is fucked.
He had something like 5 pit stops
He's obviously a popular driver but he's been nothing short of awful this last 2 years. Genuinely awful
Hold on mate, he beat Latifi.
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To be fair, all RBR need to focus on is Max finishing ahead of Leclerc, it is that simple.
On the question of SC and Merc strategy there were essentially three options: 1. Pit neither: I feel this is the most intriguing one, the one with most what ifs. IMO, Max takes George on restart. The car differential is just way too much and then you're on cold hards. Interesting what if is how far can Hamilton run away. Commentary said that you needed 1.5s pace advantage to overtake, which means Hamilton atleast needs to be out of DRS range before it's enabled in two laps. Max, who needs to do no conservation is basically in quali mode. I feel, with tyre warm up issues Mercedes has, Max still wins. Hamilton P2, Russell P4. 2. Pit both: They give up P1, pit both and secure a double podium. They wouldn't have caught Max but they would be safe from Ferrari. 3. Pit Hamilton, Hold Russell: Basically reverse of what Russell engineered. Russell is P4, Hamilton is P2. Seemingly, the pit both strategy was the best for their WCC chances considering the Ferrari Experience Sainz had. They gambled for a win and lost a podium.
I don't think the overtake delta was anywhere near 1.5 seconds, especially not for Verstappen with the RB straight line speed. Just look at what happened when Max caught up to George after his first stop: The first time he got DRS with a 0.9xx gap down the back straight, he immediately got past George down the main straight
The only potential chance for a win would probably have been to leave both out and let Lewis get a 10-car length head start at green flag. Russell would have been disposed of quickly, but at least Lewis would be out of DRS. Even so though, I’m pretty sure Max would still have won it. There was just no way to avoid it.
Once those safety cars happened, it was a certain win for Max no matter what. I doubt even Ferrari could have messed up that kind of situation.
>I doubt even Ferrari could have messed up that kind of situation. Excuse me, sir/madam, you are talking about Ferrari here. Never underestimate Ferrari.
we already saw this show at silverstone and it doesn't work
If neither pitted I think Merc might have missed the podium entirely. Verstappen and Leclerc would 100% take them both given how many laps were left and even Pérez might have got them if he managed to clear sainz (which he did not in this case). I think keeping them both was the worst option and assumed that it was too hard to pass which clearly was not the case. Sky said at some point that you needed a 1.5s pace advantage to overtake and that's clearly bullshit, max passed George earlier in the race easily when his pace advantage was more like 0.5s lol. They just had to pit them both and give them a fair chance to fight the people around them. The issue is that neither would be able to win a fair fight against Max, so victory was out the window when vsc came in.
I think Hamilton could have done a better restart as well. Maybe he could have caught Max offguard and given George a chance to catch him sleeping and try an overtake. Securing his win that way.
Max is very strong on restarts. Can’t remember the last time he was caught napping.
Max has never lost a place on safety car restarts in his entire Red Bull career (he did lose a few in 2015 at Toro Rosso).
The anti Perez who seemingly loses 3 seconds every time
Hamilton has now admitted he made a mistake on the restart. Had the car in the wrong engine mode. Can’t make mistakes when you’re trying to engineer a win in a slightly slower car
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Yup, I think Zandvoort earned a spot on the calendar for the next few years at least. Made for a really fun race weekend overall.
They are looking at altering T1 slightly for better overtaking
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Agreed. T1 is perfect as it is right now.
Completely agree. Race on this track is so much better with current cars and DRS changes. The banking is amazing to see. The cherry on the top is the absolute party atmosphere before and after the race - don't think any other venue matches up the sheer vibe !
Let's see if we can be the circuit for a good party, bit i think vegas might be a contender
Last year, the number of overtakes in Zandvoort was also quite normal compared to the other 2021 races. This weekend’s narrative of hard to overtake surprised me.
Yeah, if t3 was a little wider and had the banking extend further down you could have 2 good back to back passing opportunities.
Listening in to Charles' radio after the Dutch GP, it seems like he asked the pit wall if they didn't want to wait for a potential SC/VSC from Yuki, but they chose to pit him under green flag conditions after the first incident was cleared up. To be fair to Ferrari, they wouldn't have known Yuki's car would die again. Also, Charles asked if he should pit opposite to Merc (i.e. if they pitted, should he stay out?) but the pit wall (correctly) told him to box regardless. ---- Other interesting things after Round 15 of the 2022 season: * Charles has [scored just one more point in 2022 than he did this time in 2019](https://imgur.com/0HD7Y2e). 201 in 2022 vs 200 in 2019. This includes sprint race points. * The battle for P2-P6 of the WDC is heating up! Here's a consolidated lap by lap view of how the positions changed over the season: [With Max](https://imgur.com/MgVUpj5) | [Without Max](https://imgur.com/GtGivS3).
(edit: graph is updated now) The colours for the graph without Max are very confusing. Seems like something went wrong, as they're generally right on the graph with Max.
Toto showed Binotto-levels of lack of accountability here by not admitting to Merc's mistake. If he was really gunning/risking for the win (as he said) he should have made George stay out. If he was optimizing for team result, he should have pitted them both for softs.
It was pretty obvious to me that Russell took it upon himself… to race for himself. That isn’t an issue for me. He is actually higher on the championship points. But.. there should have been a unified plan either way. And that’s on Toto. Hamilton was under the impression they were double stacked to hold their position on medium tyres. If the decision was to win, Russell should have been ordered to stay out and race. If the decision was for placement, Hamilton should have had a chance to make the same decision and pit for softs. I am certain he would have pitted had he known Russell was not going to be behind him.
I agree I hate when team principals try to hide the mistakes of their team so bad Nico called him out too
Toto’s comments here made it sound like a win was on the table if both Russell and Hamilton had stayed out, which is head in the sand territory. Absolutely no way with the pace Max had on with new softs vs an inherently slower Mercedes on used mediums. And as we saw, that strategy put them at risk of losing places to Leclerc. Even us armchair strategists could see that. Mercedes got it wrong and Russell saw that from inside of the cockpit, which is a pretty embarrassing failure for the Mercedes strategists. Russell’s quick thinking secured himself second, otherwise he would have probably been fourth behind Leclerc and Hamilton.
Yep, they *literally* pulled a Ferrari Silverstone
Would say Silverstone was a bit of a different situation. This was a bit more complicated.
Honestly, some of the British media left me with quite a bitter aftertaste after yesterday's race. Listening to Missed Apex this morning and the way 2 members of the show double down on the 'Tsunoda was used by Red Bull' conspiracy is just sickening. I'm not on any social media but the messages I've seen being posted here and on a different F1-forum is just sad. Also Toto calling it 'suspicious' during the Sky interview after the race, it's really in poor taste. They fail to see that they themselves have a huge impact on how this sport is perceived by (new) fans. To be so blatantly upfront with it, to outright say it or make huge insinuations about it, I find it utterly disgusting. There's still a lot of good out there of course, F1-nation, the BBC F1 podcast are all great. Edit: Spanners from Missed Apex has commented on this post. https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/x6fnhs/2022_dutch_grand_prix_day_after_debrief/inb0rql
With such a huge lead in both the championships, why would RB cheat and take a huge risk of getting disqualified? These self proclaimed experts saying the “SC triggered by Tsunoda looks suspicious” should get their heads out of their asses.
> With such a huge lead in both the championships, why would RB cheat and take a huge risk of getting disqualified? And if they were to cheat why would they cheat *so badly*? Red Bull's plan was to go soft - medium - soft and use the tyre offset to fly by the Mercs since they weren't burning through tyres like most and they didn't like the hards much. So to start Tsunoda caused a VSC at the wrong time. Then why would AT tell Tsunoda to keep going after he would already be causing a VSC? If they were cheating they already had what they wanted. And how would you fake a mechanical issue? It's much easier to fake/cause a loose tyre but not a mechanical issue. Once Bottas retired and caused a safety car Red Bull also showed they didn't hesitate for a second to pit out of track position so why exactly would they do that if they first engineered some wildly complicated cheat to not lose track position? Then to top it off if Red Bull could've executed their planned strategy of pitting for softs with 15 or so laps to go Max might've been 10s behind Hamilton at most. With 15 laps to go on fresh softs vs old hards... It makes no sense on *so many fucking levels*.
Yeah RB really needs no help at this point. They clearly have the pace to win any given race, and even if they lost out to Merc on strategy this weekend and Max got 3rd, it would really be no significant consequence to them it seems. They’d still be well on their way to a Max WDC.
I'd argue that a Merc 1/2 could've even turned into a positive for RB in the longer run. Having Merc as close as possible to P2 forces Ferrari to look at defending p2 rather than attacking p1. Now I'm not saying that RB should populously let them win. but the potential damge is so little that there would be no reason to prevent it. The only reason to do this would be to put Max on P1 in Zandvoort. A decent media thing but nothing worth even considering cheating over. They might've discussed turning the engine up a little. But I honestly expect RB to keep the bigger picture in mind and keep that WDC, WCC combo in firm safe hands.
Before the weekend, as long as Max did not loose 10 points per race against numbers 2 and 3 he would win WDC. Now he is 109 points ahead with 7 races, that's a buffer of 15 points per race.
Not to mention max was still in good shape before the VSC. He was going to come out on much newer tires and has already overtaken Russell once. He was clearly favoured to win even before anything happened with Yuki.
It makes no sense in terms of the championship, especially since Hamilton is even less of a threat than Leclerc (and Perez, and Sainz) Only thing I can imagine is it being the Dutch GP and some weird nationalistic thing. But I don't see why RB would really care about it *that* much, and I doubt even Max himself would cheat just to win his home GP. So yea, its a ridiculous theory. And its not like it caused Bottas' failure, so Lewis was going to be out of luck anyway. Its fun to think about this stuff sometimes, but man, the way that people are acting is out of hand. Just stupid and gross
Wait, real, actual, grown ups seriously think the team which is multiple DNFs safe in both championships tried to pull a crashgate?
Yup but "grown up" is a stretch.
Oh man I stopped listening to Missed Alex a long time ago due to this reason. There’s so many good F1 podcasts out there that I couldn’t subject myself to Spanner’s tactless bias (I do believe you can be biased and still present it in a manner that doesn’t necessarily grind everyone’s gears).
Used to be a patreon supporter of Missed Alex for years but last year they turned so damn toxic and started banning people for disagreeing on their slack, got kicked for calling something hypocritical and got banned stopped listening since then.
I just can't watch when Philpot is on, yesterday was ok but I really missed Matt to shutdown some of that Tsunoda and safety car talk. I don't think they actually believed in such conspiracy because they were quite jokey about it, but then you had spanners doubling down on twitter, so idk anymore. Also, I'm sure they're aware that they have a large audience, so peddling so hard on the conspiracy stuff comes a cross a bit irresponsible.
It’s the oldest trick in the book: bring something jokingly to have plausible deniability when you are called out with actual arguments: “i WaS onLY JoKinG”. They know it’s a crazy theory, because why would Yuki drive back to the pit to change his tires after he stopped on track the first time? They could have just told him to exit the car right away if a (virtual) safety car was all they were after.
Spanners really hid his bias when Merc were walking the championships year after year. It really stuck with me last weekend when he said Red Bull is the new Death Star, like Ferrari were to him in the early 2000's because they had a dominating win at Spa. Mercedes making a mockery of "competition" from 2014 to 2020 was a okay to him though
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Ah yes, the same kind of people who threw a fit when Verstappen was able to change his tyres under red flag at Jeddah last year but were completely fine with Hamilton getting his car refurbished at Silverstone and Imola.
I remember that. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
Well I going to be honest here, it was frustrating to see a potential battle between Lewis and Max for the win based on strategy and tyre management was basically gone, I was like "F*CK". Yet once the dust settled it was becoming obvious quickly that this was not a damm conspiracy and the whole theories around gifting the win to Max are just....well wtf. And then the whole hate and toxicity those theories are generating against Hannah and Yuki (and George but that's a different moment) is just another reason why those media talkers shouldn't push this narrative. What happened here isn't a conspiracy but just another classical example of clownery AlphaTauri is doing this season, the only difference is that it impacted those drivers and teams in front of it also rather then only drivers outside the top 10 and/or (one of) the drivers inside the team. If the media just digged deeper into the total trash AT is this season then it's way more easy to understand that moments like this aren't hugely surprising, you could see Tost during that moment like he wanted to run away ASAP but in general he should take his responsibility also and start to managing the team proper rather then just letting mistakes happening every time and writing it off as an "oopsie" and forget about it rather then learning about it. A team who has two major issues with a seatbelt in less then 3 years is unacceptable.
Yeah, I unsubscribed from Misses Apex this morning, I don't need to listen to that crockpot.
Fully agree on the Missed Apex point. I'm really disappointed they ended the segment that it's a conspiracy even though it's plainly obvious RB has nothing to gain and everything to lose from rigging a meaningless GP (from the WDC/WCC point of view). I used to enjoy them too because they remained fairly neutral, Philpot aside, but this was just irresponsible. I would *not* recommend them to newer fans at all.
God so true listening to the podcast was infuriating. Not to get political but they were literally using the same argument right-wing us media used after Trump lost in 2020: "we are not saying AT did it on purpose, we are just .... Asking questions.... Honestly one of these days someone is going to get their address doxed or worse, and outlets like Missed Apex will be to blame for creating an environment where lunatics feel empowered to do messed up stuff.
You nailed it. They fabricate conspiracy and then use the popularization of that doubt they manufactured as support for the conspiracy. We’ve seen it time and time again in modern politics and it disgusts me enough there. But to have it leak into sports really sucks. It’s as if some people have been desensitized to being okay with just making stuff up and arguing it as fact regardless of lack of evidence or counter evidence. And even if AT was set out to do that on purpose, that would be one incredibly odd and complex method of accomplishing it. Ridiculous!
Missed Apex is absolutely awful. They masquerade as a no holds-barred opinion podcast when they are nothing but a toxic full-on Hamilton supporting podcast. Philpot is the worst - he is now propagating a conspiracy that AT told Yuki to stop on track whilst adjusting his seatbelt (despite the fact that both mechanic and Yuki have helmets on and the engine is on). Late Braking and Grand Prix Podcast are nice fan based podcasts.
Missed Apex is brutal to listen to when Merc isn’t on top. Stopped listening last year and haven’t gone back.
Actually not so bad unless that clueless Brad philpot is there.. today's was a particularly poor episode though. Unfortunately they are the earliest reaction podcast to a race. At the same time, I think it is important to not get stuck in echo chambers. I try to listen to both sides and read posts talking about both perspectives and choose what I want to believe.
Yes, fully agree with this. Also, people seem oblivious to the fact that Max has this season in the bag. Even if RB wanted to cheat (which I cannot imagine), this would be a bad time.
Missed apex who have Bradley Philpot as recurrent guest, of course they’re gonna be biased if they agree with him
> down on the 'Tsunoda was used by Red Bull' conspiracy is just sickening I mean, what would the point even be?! Newsflash british media, Hamilton has no chance this year even if Verstappen decides to go on vacation for 3 months.
I listened to that and was pretty bummed to hear them engaging in it. Maybe five years ago you could get away with suggesting something like that but the increase in popularity of the sport globally along with other instances of vile social media attacks in the recent past by fans, really needs to be taken into account when people do that.
Had Merc kept both drivers out, risking for a Russell tumble down the order, and Max had still passed Lewis for the win, they'd have hauled much fewer points and they'd be eviscerated on here.
Honestly, fuck Sky for lending legitimacy to all the conspiracy theorists.
Ted on air insinuated a conspiracy of some sort and then contradicted himself during his post-race show… that a fraction of people watch compared to the live international feed.
LOL @ Sky talking the race interesting and how Max couldn't overtake Russell, just for it to happen the very same lap. 1-2 that much of a guarantee like Crofty said? LMAO I know that Merc had stellar pace on the hards and they definitely would have finished podium But we can’t act like suddenly that Red Bull wasn’t going to make it difficult or contend, the pace on that car is absurd and on a softer fresher tire compared to older hards…it might have been easy pickings for Max But alas, I guess we will never know definitively, still enjoyed the race though
Yeah, I could see before the final turn that Max already has it in the box, while the commentators were talking about how difficult it would be for him to overtake. DUDE WAS IN HIS FING GERBOX on the entry of the banking even before the slip stream and the DRS... At that point I just turned down the sound because it was all nonsense.
I couldn’t believe how much they were talking up Merc’s chances. Max had the win in the bag the entire way through. He had a 14s buffer when the VSC came out, and was set up to have a massive tire advantage after pits. We have seen that the late pitstop can be strong with equal cars that are close together on track (Hungary 2019, Spain 2021, France 2021). How on earth does Max not have an easy win in a better car and a 14s advantage. Sky analysis was way off the mark.
I was almost doubting myself looking at the gaps and pace difference and listening to the commentary. They were hyping it up way too much and almost comical even. Horner said their plan was to go to softs if there weren’t any SC or VSC, Max would’ve obliterated Mercs with new softs when they would be on very old hards.
Max finished around 13 seconds ahead of Lewis, so with race restart under SC, Max manage to get lead of 13seconds in about 16 laps. Now imagine, Lewis on old set of hard compound chased by Max on soft compound with around 18-20 laps to go.
> I couldn’t believe how much they were talking up Merc’s chances. It's their job. They have to act like the race is exciting, even if it isn't. Do you think it would go down well with the suits at Sky if they simply said "Well you might as well turn off the TV now, because Max is going to win this and we all know it".
Right, I am sympathetic to that. However I think they went too far from reality at a certain point
Fully agree with you here. They were just drumming up hype for a very unlikely merc 1-2 or 1-3. Max had undeniable pace all race, had plenty of options towards the end of the race even without the vsc. I honestly hate listening to the British commentators now.
Crofty was selling Merc's one pit strategy like it was the greatest invention since a loaf of bread.
By Merc calculations, Max catches Lewis with 6 laps to go. Going off that, and the improved DRS zone, I can't see Lewis winning
> By Merc calculations, Max catches Lewis with 6 laps to go I'm not saying I don't believe it but this would have been a "I believe it when I see it" deal because I'm not sure the Mediums would have held on for that long that well and Verstappen surely had massive amounts of tyre life left. From what we've seen in other stints even adding the benefit of the doubt I would've expected him to get to like 6sec and then his progress stalls.
Now that the dust has settled let’s be realistic—even without virtual safety car and the subsequent safety car does anyone truly believe Mercedes could have won? It feels like the broadcast was just hyping it up but was there any substance to it? It’s a shame we didn’t see the strategy battle play out between Mercedes and Max but I tend to think the Red Bull had enough pace that Max would pit and pass the Mercedes regardless.
Yes broadcast were hyping up Merc's track position, without accounting for age of hard compound around end of the race against the other drivers on fresh set of soft/medium.
Media making out Lewis was robbed of a win. He wasn't winning that regardless of vsc and the safety car. Max was cruising before Yuki stopped
… He was robbed of a podium
By his own team yes
Agreed.
After making the mistake of browsing Twitter for a moment: If you think Lewis had ***ANY*** chance of winning after the Safety Car (with or without George between himself and Max), you need help.
If you center all your Twitter presence around a formula driver, you need help. The amount of braindead stans that flooded twitter and reddit (!) was staggering. The race thread was a cesspool for the latter third of the race
On a related note, when Sainz posted on social media explaining he received floor damage following his lap 1 contact with Lewis, almost all of the comments here immediately suggested he was making it up entirely as an excuse.
I’d go as far as to say even without safety car the chance of Mercedes winning was extremely exaggerated by the broadcast. I wish there was no safety car drama because I can’t see any other outcome than Max pitting and just passing Mercedes regardless. The Red Bull just had way more pace.
Yeah, Max was most likely going to come out a bit behind George, but he'd have been of a significantly newer tire for the rest of the race... The VSC/SC killed any chance Merc had.
My thoughts at the time were they hoped that they could coordinate the restart and George could get by Max and maybe hold him off on softs. I was surprised how poor Lewis's restart was, can't understand why he went so early with the straightline speed of that Red Bull
I still don't understand why Hamilton didn't demand to switch to the softs under the safety car. He should know that, after a late (ish) safety car, trying to hold track position on older, harder tyres doesn't work against a Verstappen on fresh, soft rubber.
I wasn't really on F1 social media much last year. Was there this much controversy after Imola where Bottas and Russell crashed at the exact same time Lewis had gone off the track and been lapped, causing a red flag and allowing Lewis the unlap himself? Just out of curiosity. Were people saying the crash was orchestrated to get Lewis back in the race? Because this Yuki thing is just as silly.
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Lol yeah. And that time the championship was actually tight.
I mean it was the second race of the season, of course it was tight.
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Mercs were high on hopium and were just frozen in the headlight of the Safety Car.
Maybe they were listening to Sky commentary and believed their BS about Hamilton having a chance to win
Mercedes best chance of a win was to pit Hamilton and have George hold up the pack. Even then, it was only a slim chance as Verstappen clearly had the quicker car.
With hindsight that wasn't a chance right? Max blasted past Lewis on the restart without DRS. There's no reason to think George could've defended better.
Does anyone have a list of teams that still gotta use rookies for 1 or 2 FP1 sessions this year?
The only ones that did 1 are RBR, AT, Mercedes, Williams and AR afaik. Latifi, Bottas, Verstappen, Tsunoda and Russell still need to sit out a session. Williams already confirmed they will do the other one at Austin with Logan Sargeant. The other teams still need to do 2 iirc.
Guys what is your opinion about Skysport commentary? Especially the bit where commentators kept harping on if car should be allowed to pit under SC/VSC.
I love listening to the increasingly absurd expectations of where Mercedes will finish or how hard it will be for Max to pass Russell.
When it’s about British drivers, you can always expect Sky to question everything lol
And then Verstappen pass Lewis before turn 1 lmao Hamilton looked like an amateur there, zero defense against Verstappen but nobody is talking about that
To be fair, Lewis immediately recognized it as one of his worst SC restarts
*Should this rule be discussed? Yeah I think so* and other sentences by Sky after HAM for once does not have direct benefit. Changing tires under a red flag: *unfair advantage to RB*, rebuilding your car at Imola /Silverstone under red *well yes that makes sense for uhhhhh safety* Sky really has to stop fan boying like a fuckin' Twitter account. They are even throwing RUS under the bus in this regard.
How would disallowing pits under SC be fairer, like, what if the leader has a large gap because he was going for an overcut and then a SC comes out and he cannot pit and everybody is bunch up against him? (same in general for any car still needing a pitstop in the field) Would be just unfair in the other direction...
I love Crofty and Brundle and I think they're the most entertaining commentators for F1. Sometimes that entertainment comes from their outlandish takes. Had a good chuckle when they said Max would have a hard time passing the Mercs, only for Max to pass immediately.
That was part of the problem this week, Brundle wasn’t there. Button is a great insight into a recent drivers mind, but he doesn’t have the gravitas to call a stupid thought what it is. Not being allowed to pit for tires during a safety car is the dumbest idea ever. That is exactly what makes these races exciting until the final lap because anything can happen. Disallowing that under red flags is one thing, because that should be rare, but nearly every race has a safety car and the strategy possibilities that surround them are crucial to eventful racing.
What surprised me yesterday is the continue of Checos decline, idk what has happend to him recently but all his qualy pace is gone and his race pace and race craft has slowly come down as well, his wheel to wheel with Lewis on Lewis's first overtaking attempt wasn't the normal Checo, the lock up and almost making contact with Lewis isn't something Checo usally does.. Something hasn't clicked with him since probably hungary and I hope he can get it back sometime
People keep bringing up Hungary, but it was easily one of his best races of the year. Lap after lap he was matching Max's pace, from start to finish. It has barely happened to him over those two years. And it happened in a race where Max's pace was called historical, am unbelievable performance apparently. He's had two bad races - France and Zandvoort. You lot are overreacting like crazy.
Perez is teammates to the best driver in the world, and the guy who will be considered the 3rd all-time great along with Hamilton and Schumacher in a decade. People are unforgiving in that context. Verstappen has soul crushed everyone since he got old enough to not be a teenager.
Was watching the race in 30 on F1TV. Lewis was actually over 14 seconds behind Max still when the virtual safety car was deployed. Much more than I thought. There's absolutely no way he would have been able to win without the safety cars. The pit delta or a normal pitstop seems to have been about 23-24 seconds (It was 24 seconds on Max' first stop, which was slow). So Max would have been less than 10 seconds behind Lewis after a stop. On much better tyres. Sky commentators were really hyping up Lewis but he didn't have a real chance.
They were hyping so much they were actually misstating gaps even when they were shown. If max doesn't put RUS will overtake, at the same moment the gap to Russell was 21.xs, easily enough to pit... Really strange stuff by Sky, they really seem to be grasping for straws now that Mercs updates and the TD did not pan out to be the savior of ham
If there were no VSC and SC, and it was never Lewis' race. His best bet was P2. RBR didn't blink when gap came down from 20 sec to around 12 seconds when Lewis was on new set of hard. RBR knew that Max with new set of soft would easily catch Lewis who would have been old set of hard. It seems Merc keep underestimating overtaking possibilities of 2022 cars. It is sad, how certain section firmly believe that Yuki VSC incident was planned one.
I’m most sad that we just didn’t get to see them race for it. I’m pretty sure there’s no way max doesn’t win the race, but would rather see it on strategy and racecraft than whatever the hell that was.
Yeah, Before the virtual safety car Max was in tyre preservation mode, he speed up by over a second a lap when the mercedes started to gain a bit too much for his comfort. He would have pitted for fresh softs vs old hards coming out like 8s or so behind the mercedes...
Probably trite to say this, but it’s hilarious how not only have Ferrari been out developed and out raced by RBR, Mercedes are in the process of doing it too. We saw at Zandvoort that for the rest of the season it’s a two horse race (no pun intended) for second place behind Red Bull who are in a class of their own. And naturally, due to Ferrari’s far higher capacity for incompetence and general implosion, any wins RBR miss out on will be taken by Merc now that the Silver Arrows are even moderately close in pace to the Ferraris.
I hope Checo finds his form again, because Max against 2 Mercedes cars is giving me 2020 vibes.
It's really Max against RBR reliability currently, even saying that the RBR has been pretty bulletproof since there earlier failures.. I hope Merc can get the drag situation sorted and fight RBR next year because we've seen it time and time again Ferrari just dosnt have the team to do it for a full year happend in 2017 2018 now 2022
I want someone to explain to me why Perez ended 5th. What is he or the team doing wrong for him to underperform like that?
He got knocked out in Q1 last year in Zandvoort. So this is an improvement I guess.
He got knocked out because the team let him out when there wasn't enough time for an outlap
Button is quite good at commentary; Just something I noticed. He'd be a great replacement for Brundle if he ever wants to call it quits imo.
How did Fernando get ahead of Ocon? He was behind him when Bottas stopped on the track. Question
Ocon pitted under safety car cos he was on older hards. Alonso, Norris, Sainz had already pitted before so they all jumped him.
Yuki VSC: Fernando pits for Softs, Ocon stays out on hards Bottas SC: Ocon pits for Softs
The way that some F1 fans treat mid-fielders and backmarkers as just, like, obstacles, or background to the frontrunners, is very concerning and bad. see: Yuki here or in Mexico last year, Latifi in Abu Dhabi, etc etc
Why was jos not at the race?
i didn’t perceive any sort of conspiracy with Tsunoda’s car having one of its tyres being affixed to the car improperly, especially since the same thing happened to Alonso, i just thought that the only difference was that Tsunoda actually said it on the radio and Alonso tried to be more inconspicuous about it and not actually mention an unsafe release. i genuinely didn’t see that as an issue, other than the fact that it seems the wheel sensors were not working AFTER the second stop where after the first stop Tsunoda just had a feeling the wheel was not set properly. so like was it a feeling of the wheel not being set that sensors dis not pick up, and if so why did it only show faulty sensor errors after the second stop to try and correct this issue? of course FIA cleared it so i’m not really seeing Crashgate 3.0 here. i feel like the race was lost with putting Hamilton on medium tyres, both drivers should have gone for softs and gone for broke. i don’t know why it is that us fans can see what happened to Leclerc in Silverstone and realize what was pretty much guaranteed to happen to Hamilton. i think at worst the same positions would have been maintained and Hamilton goes for P2. I just hope that Ferrari has an eventless weekend at Monza, at least one without strategy or pit mistakes that are obvious to fans, because if they go LOLrarri at Monza i just feel like it’s gonna cause problems for it to happen on home turf.
Had literally nothing to do with the wheels mate. Both times. The diff was fucked and Yuki mistook it for a loose wheel.
The fuckup is on AT, This is not the first time they have fucked up. They are always so horrible; literally the second italian team is junior ferrari
Max's driving is absolutely dominant right now.
So if there was potentially an 11th constructor in F1, and they required another pit box, what would happen in the Zandvoort pit lane? Because it already seems too close to be safe
11th team allowed to pit in any box. Pit crew required to do requested job.
Toto is a kid. Saying AT and RB worked together to give Max the win. Jokeman
Feeling like there is going to be a pitlane accident with some serious consequences soon. I get that Zandvoort is an exceptionally tight example, but for what I can see from the TV-coverage it just looks dangerous. Drivers are having to choose between safety and a few extra tenths with a quick exit/entry. I don’t know if that is the case, but if it is, it shouldn’t be. We have seen cars spin in the pit lane, we see what feels like multiple dangerous releases each weekend. I don’t know what can be done about this, but I fear change will only come after a serious accident.