I know FP1 is over but this thread will cover everything.
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I know FP1 is over but this thread will cover everything.
FP2 is also over
It's weird having race weekends again. But I'm glad we have something to watch and I hope things keep switching up to keep us on our toes!
Smokin' lap by the boss!
Nope, Norris qualified P6 and will start P9.
I think people have been too excited about some drivers' performances this quali, such as Hamilton, Sainz and Ocon. Yes, it's obviously true that Hamilton pulled a very good lap, but I don't think the large difference to second place is because the lap is "stuff of the greats", but rather, because Verstappen and Bottas dropped the ball. Bottas in particular qualifying behind a McLaren is embarrassing, although I don't know if he was hindered by yellow flags.
On top of that, it's very noteworthy that P5 (Ocon) to P9 (Ricciardo) were separated by less than three tenths of a second. Sainz was the only midfield driver to get ahead of the rest of the group and it was "only" by .25 seconds, which is significant, but not massive on a wet track.
I think even with verstappen not making the mistake, it looked like Hamilton would have beat him by about half a second. Remember he was still up by .587 through the first 2 sectors and only got quicker by the end. I believe Verstappen had a yellow middle sector too on that last attempt. But yeah, the 1.2s is a bit of flattery. Bottas on the other hand had nothing at the end. lol. The race is a different beast though. so who knows what will happen. If you told me at 2pm last sunday that a ferrari would be on the podium, I would have been skeptical. ;)
Yeah, but not dropping the ball when others do is part of it, no? When you set a time that causes others to skate off the track when trying to match or beat it, in the very same conditions (not getting a lucky time in when the track dries for a bit, for example), is what has established certain drivers as true rainmeisters over the years. Senna certainly had that odd talent. Schumacher had it too. And as demonstrated time and time again, so does Lewis.
I enjoyed the heck out of that qualy. I'm glad that they were able to get it in and I'm glad that the rain mixed things up a good bit. Congrats to the other talents who put in some great laps in treacherous conditions too.
Magical qualifying. Great drives by a lot of people. I am very surprised with Renault and Ferrari, for very different reasons of course! :D
Since I was skeptical, I stand corrected. This is what Toto Wolff had to say about Lewis' lap:
Quote:
Very rarely do you see performances that are just not from this world. When you look at the onboard of his lap, he was balancing the car on the edge, aquaplaning, throttle control was incredible.
Since it's never happened before, it'll be interesting to see how drivers adjust to the same track when they're given another opportunity at the same track.
You'd presume the RB will last longer than last week. So with the MB and Verstappen effectively being in the same position as last week, it'll be interesting to note how much he could influence the outcome of the race.
Hamilton and Bottas have swapped positions from last week. Hamilton got himself in a position to threaten to win the race. You'd presume he's going to take the early lead of the race, so then it's up to Bottas to see if he can put similar pressure Hamilton did last week.
F1 will use remote-controlled trollies to deliver trophies to the drivers on the podium.
Oh boy. Oh boy.
Fettel!! Sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry! :dork:
Ferrari donkeys of the week-end!
I was thinking that this was an uncharacteristic mistake from Leclerc, but if memory serves me well, he's actually had a few during his Ferrari tenure. There's no question that he's mighty fast and a likeable character, but he's not bulletproof. Hopefully he'll become more consistent and able to match Hamilton and Verstappen.
Brilliant race by Perez so far. Albon on the other side is rather disappointing today, he can't match his team-mate's pace at all.
Beautiful win by Hamilton - boring race, admittedly, but this is what you get when the fastest driver on the track starts from pole on the fastest car on the track.
Lovely race by Norris again - although I'm kinda gutted for Sainz because that fifth place was sort of earmarked for him, but the botched pitstop destroyed his race.
Shame about Pérez as well - lovely race, but screwed by a small mistake. Still managed to salvage a very decent sixth place.
And Albon... oh boy, Albon. It doesn't look very nice when you're so long behind your teammate that he can essentially get a free pitstop. At the same time, to be fair, the fact that he's doing a Gasly shows that Red Bull is pretty much a one-driver team and they only field a second car because the regs make them to - it's hard to imagine that someone would be so far behind their teammate otherwise.
At the same time, I think today's race shows why Sainz was the right signing for Ferrari - he's got a lame pitstop and ended up losing track position as a result, so he just gives his teammate the benefit of two DRS zones and gets out of the way. Can anyone see that happening with Vettel instead? :p
To his credit he was very honest and contrite in his statements to the media.
But that being said, you absolutely cannot send it like that on the first lap like that in heavy traffic.
The thing is, that Ferrari is probably better on race pace than qualy and probably vettel or leclerc or both would have finished in the top 10 easily and maybe even p4.
It was the worst possible outcome for Ferrari and nothing Vettel could do.
Yup. The car, is pretty much custom built to max specifications and I wonder how much say Albon actually has with setup etc. I cannot imagine he is that far adrift from his teammate unless they turned his engine down or some other kind of issue or strategic reason. A week ago he was on for the race win and now out of a sudden he can barely surpass the Racing point? I bet you verstappen (or marko) said something to remind them who's who at the team and this is what you get. Albon looked compromised today very inexplicably. Typical RBR stuff
Then again, to be fair, last week Mercedes were having to nurse their car a lot more. This weekend it hasn't been like that because there haven't been safety car periods to erase their advantage, and you'd imagine that they've taken countermeasures to avoid a repeat of last week's problems. There's that, and there's also the fact that Albon was on softer tyres than the Mercedes, and that Verstappen wasn't there to provide a benchmark. When you take all of this into account, it's probably not such a big surprise that Albon's pace relative to the Mercedes has gone away.
I still doubt they had any issues last weekend. I think it was all smoke and mirrors. They wanted the 1-2 last weekend. When that was no longer possible they were easily able to increase their pace. They are just playing games.
Pretty dull race today- Norris is looking like a star. Albon must start getting closer to Verstappen soon. Lewis deserved winner. Nothing in this race will make me want to go back and watch it again.
Two things bothered me about this race and the stewarding.
In reviewing the stroll ricciardo incident, it seems pretty obvious the stroll forced him off the track and given what happened last week I’m surprised they said “no further action” I guess your car has to be facing the other way or something for them to deem it punishable.
Also I’m surprised lecterc didn’t get any kind of penalty. Just because the person most adversely affected is your teammate doesn’t change the recklessness of the move. Furthermore it did affect the other cars around them in terms of potential damage and lost positions. I remember grosjean getting penalties for similar moves
Lewis in control at the front from qually to race finish.
Except for that, everything got pretty wild.
Leclerc pulled a bonehead, but owned it the best he could. I'm sure his afternoon talk wasn't pleasant.
Bottas and Merc used a good strategy, and gave him enough time to make the pass. Max certainly didn't make it easy, and Bottas had to put in some work for it. Well done by both in the attack and the defense, and clean driving througout.
Great job by Perez right up until that contact. He got lucky on that and things worked out in the end... barely! It almost cost him much more dearly, and in my view he was the one at fault with Albon, but not a bad try.
As for Stroll, a mighty effort but I personally feel he should have been forced to give the position back. It appeared to me that he just widened up the turn to push Ric off. If not and his brakes were done, he still pushed Ric off, and didn't complete any proper pass on track. I think he probably would have not cleared that pass, and also got overtaken by Lando most likely.
But except for a couple smaller incidents and some no contact calls, I thought we saw a lot of really good wheel to wheel racing between a number of drivers, and the majority of it was really clean and fair. It spiced up the fact that Merc was in control up front, and made the race fun to watch to the very, very, very end.
Regarding Stroll, I thought the same. He went four tires off, so either way it was a banzai move.
I'd also agree with the Leclerc move, or any contact between team mates that impacts the others around them. From the onboard on Kimi's car, he had to completely check up and probably lost 2-3 places at a minimum. Others might have been impacted less, but it still altered their races as well.
Decent race and some good individual performances.. but no real outstanding moments to write home about.
Almost faultless victory by Lewis.. back to top form, business as usual. Dissapointed but not at all surprised by his 'black power' salute on the podium. Racist twat sprung to mind but hey ho.
Real pity for Sainz with the McLaren pit stop error after putting in such a superb wet qualy performance but at least Norris benefitted from it and also produced a great performance of his own.
Good to see Racing point up there again but feeling that they didn't maximize and should probably have done better.
Calamity for Ferrari.. Binnoto refusing to blame Charles was a strange one but I guess they just want to keep his confidence up by not getting on his back.
The irony of calling an anti-racism stand racist.
Educate yourself on the history of that salute and why it was there in the first place
then spend some time reading Ecclestone's racist comments in 2020 (which you seem to be aligning yourself with) before you come on here with such a comment.
SMH
I can call the kkk an anti-racist organisation, but that doesn't make it true.
BLM is clearly racist and ecclestone said nothing but the truth.
I don't give crap what signs Hamilton makes, he could take a crap on the mercedes star for all i care. But if a white person would make a white power salute after winning a race he would never race again.
I'd go with no lives matter.
There's nearly 8 billion people on the planet, it would be better to lose some than to gain even more.
there we are then...
Quite a few donkeys in this thread, what? :-/
All lives do not matter until black lives matter.
boy do you sound uneducated.
Like I said get a clue about the history of the fist and it's meaning before you make yourself sound even more ignorant.
Perhaps google 1968 olympics and understand it's origins. Instead of your own off-base assumptions.
It is amazing how some folks get triggered by the most innocuous and relevant things.
until then...no point in discussing it with you
cheers
I know all about it. So its what.. 'positive racism'? There is nothing positive about doing the black power salute on the podium at a sporting event and accusing F1 as a sport of being institutionaly racist. What happened to George Floyd was utterly wrong but to tar every white person or instituition with the same brush has all gone too far now.
Someone better explain to Hamilton that its more likely a case of black people typically gravitating towards more athletic sports where they most often excel, making Motorsport more of a predominantly white rich mans sport.
I dont believe that black engineers/mechanics/pitcrew are being refused jobs in Motorsport because of their skin colour.
In the 3 years I studied Aero engineering I didnt see one single black engineer or mechanic start studying anything Engineering related, period... so there is maybe a wee hint in there as to why the disparity in numbers exists in F1.
As I say... these are facts which I'm sure would be further verified if Tech college/Uni enrollments were looked into but dress it up however you like. I'm not triggered at all. You are the one hurling insults because you cant handle the notion that racism is a 2 way street. Jog on..
If only some of you could disagree on political views without getting personal.