The F1 thread

TimmyO

stickyfiddle said:

Well Lewis managed to turn that one into a reasonably exciting Spanish GP for once.  Phenomenal drive, bold strategy and perfect execution. 

One-stops should never be Plan A...

I think if it's 50:50ish then the leaders have to have one stop as plan A - then adjust as circumstances or wear suggests. 

But yes Mr Vowles' team rescued a dull race with a perfectly timed call - despite Bottas' efforts to scupper it lol 

TimmyO

Also: go Ricciardo! 

But Perez's move on him was VERY good 

TimmyO

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

stickyfiddle

TimmyO said:

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

I reckon Ferrari may just edge it, as I think both teams have the overall best lineups, but LeClerc is the best of those 4 guys. 

It’s going to be very close either eay

Fretwired

stickyfiddle said:

TimmyO said:

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

I reckon Ferrari may just edge it, as I think both teams have the overall best lineups, but LeClerc is the best of those 4 guys. 

It’s going to be very close either eay

LeClerc is an excellent driver .. he put Bottas in the shade on lap one and kept him at bay. I think McLaren will beat Ferrari. Norris had an off day and Ricciardo is finally getting to grips with his new car.

Speaking of Bottas I think his P45 has been signed after ignoring the pit wall instruction to let Lewis past - Wolff is just waiting for the end of the season or maybe next week. Bottas is out of the championship race and needs to support Hamilton. When Perez gets comfortable in the Red Bull during qualifying Bottas will be under pressure.

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

stickyfiddle said:

TimmyO said:

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

I reckon Ferrari may just edge it, as I think both teams have the overall best lineups, but LeClerc is the best of those 4 guys. 

It’s going to be very close either eay

Agree. I think Leclerc is just a cut above and will make the difference. Interesting to see the real Daniel Ricciardo turn up to today. It's taken a little while, but he had a strong race today.

It was a decent race today, probably the most wheel-to-wheel racing I can remember seeing at Barca. Some decent, ballsy moves throughout. I think Stroll around the outside was the pick of the bunch.

dazzajl

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

TimmyO said:

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

I reckon Ferrari may just edge it, as I think both teams have the overall best lineups, but LeClerc is the best of those 4 guys. 

It’s going to be very close either eay

LeClerc is an excellent driver .. he put Bottas in the shade on lap one and kept him at bay. I think McLaren will beat Ferrari. Norris had an off day and Ricciardo is finally getting to grips with his new car.

Speaking of Bottas I think his P45 has been signed after ignoring the pit wall instruction to let Lewis past - Wolff is just waiting for the end of the season or maybe next week. Bottas is out of the championship race and needs to support Hamilton. When Perez gets comfortable in the Red Bull during qualifying Bottas will be under pressure.

Lewis will be pushing hard to keep Bottas in the other car for long as possible and that will count for a lot. I do feel for him, he’s taking a real battering 

Fretwired

dazzajl said:

Lewis will be pushing hard to keep Bottas in the other car for long as possible and that will count for a lot. I do feel for him, he’s taking a real battering 

But Hamilton might do one more year (2022). If I were Wolff I'd get George Russell in the car next year - he can learn a lot from Hamilton and bed into the Mercedes team before Hamilton retires. Bottas looks like a beaten man to me - he's going backwards. Hamilton and Verstappen are in a different league and when Perez gets up to speed in his new car he'll also give Bottas a bad time. And with the engine freeze, Ferrari and McLaren could close the gap to Mercedes and Red Bull. Ricciardo and LeClerc are fast drivers and Norris is no slouch.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bottas quit at the end of the year.

fretmeister

Hamilton confirms he wants a new contract

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/57039920

stickyfiddle

Excellent. He's probably going to have his most enjoyable season to date and I'm guessing next year's Merc is looking strong.

sinbaadi

dazzajl said:

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

TimmyO said:

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

I reckon Ferrari may just edge it, as I think both teams have the overall best lineups, but LeClerc is the best of those 4 guys. 

It’s going to be very close either eay

LeClerc is an excellent driver .. he put Bottas in the shade on lap one and kept him at bay. I think McLaren will beat Ferrari. Norris had an off day and Ricciardo is finally getting to grips with his new car.

Speaking of Bottas I think his P45 has been signed after ignoring the pit wall instruction to let Lewis past - Wolff is just waiting for the end of the season or maybe next week. Bottas is out of the championship race and needs to support Hamilton. When Perez gets comfortable in the Red Bull during qualifying Bottas will be under pressure.

Lewis will be pushing hard to keep Bottas in the other car for long as possible and that will count for a lot. I do feel for him, he’s taking a real battering 

I don't buy in to the "GOAT NO QUESTION" stuff with Hamilton but not even I think that he would actively want to keep a better driver out of the other Mercedes at this point in his career.  What a sad indictment that would be, about the sport and about him.  

I mean it literally is just about stats if that is the case.  And it shows how meaningless stats really are!

roundthebend

I'm relatively new to the sport. I don't understand the Bottas problem. He seems to threaten for pole position every time, and often posts fastest laps. So, what's wrong?

His strategy? His endurance? Consistency throughout a race? Overtaking?

It seems he's playing second fiddle to Lewis and suffers as a result. The Merc didn't seem to like being behind other cars yesterday and that could trigger strategy issues. I think it's probably easier to get strategy under control when you're in the lead.

That said. I don't love him. I don't love Lewis either, by the way.

Counter to that, I'm wondering if Lewis and Mercedes are just strategic geniuses. When he caught up with Max early on it seemed like he would fly past then, but didn't. Perhaps they were testing whether Max could push harder at the risk of killing his tyres. When they sussed that out, they realised another early stop would give them good tyres to the end and pace would be easily better. What could Max have done? If he'd pitted first, Lewis could have taken his tyres all the way and held the lead. It certainly made it interesting.

Emiel

What counts for Mercedes is winning both the drivers and constructors championship, and in that regard they are still leading comfortably, even with Bottas.

I thought that Bottas giving Hamilton a hard time passing in Spain showed either his frustrations or simply the fact that he doesn't care anymore. Maybe he has been told he will not be driving for Mercedes for 2022? But I don't think they'd want to upset Hamilton with gettinga new young and hot driver next to him in 2022 with all the new regulations coming into play.

I wouldn't be much surprised if Mercedes retains Bottas for 2022 and waits for Verstappen to replace Hamilton eventually, perhaps in 2023. Getting Verstappen will not only give them the most talented youngster on the grid, but also weaken their main rival Red Bull massively. 

stickyfiddle

Bottas is a really good driver. It's just that he's not as quick as Lewis, so inevitably ends up behind him, which means he gets asked to move over sometimes.  Ham and Max are two of the absolute best drivers in recent history, so it's no surprise that Bottas can't quite match them. Gasly, Albon and now Perez all struggled to get close to Max's pace in the RB as well.

Bottas is the *perfect* #2 because he's quick enough that he might still win a title if Lewis broke a leg, but otherwise he basically ensures Merc win the WCC without causing the sort of fisticuffs they had between Lewis and Rosberg. You can afford that shit when you're super dominant but have a season like 2016 in a tighter field and you end up 2nd - just like McLaren did in 2007. 

fretmeister

sinbaadi said:

dazzajl said:

Fretwired said:

stickyfiddle said:

TimmyO said:

McLaren v Ferrari : prediction over the season? 

I reckon Ferrari may just edge it, as I think both teams have the overall best lineups, but LeClerc is the best of those 4 guys. 

It’s going to be very close either eay

LeClerc is an excellent driver .. he put Bottas in the shade on lap one and kept him at bay. I think McLaren will beat Ferrari. Norris had an off day and Ricciardo is finally getting to grips with his new car.

Speaking of Bottas I think his P45 has been signed after ignoring the pit wall instruction to let Lewis past - Wolff is just waiting for the end of the season or maybe next week. Bottas is out of the championship race and needs to support Hamilton. When Perez gets comfortable in the Red Bull during qualifying Bottas will be under pressure.

Lewis will be pushing hard to keep Bottas in the other car for long as possible and that will count for a lot. I do feel for him, he’s taking a real battering 

I don't buy in to the "GOAT NO QUESTION" stuff with Hamilton but not even I think that he would actively want to keep a better driver out of the other Mercedes at this point in his career.  What a sad indictment that would be, about the sport and about him.  

I mean it literally is just about stats if that is the case.  And it shows how meaningless stats really are!

It's not new. Prost was known for asking his French sponsors to put pressure on teams to keep out other drivers, most notably Senna.

chillidoggy

I’m sure if the roles/cars were reversed, Max would have beaten Hamilton. 

Cols

roundthebend said:

I'm relatively new to the sport. I don't understand the Bottas problem. He seems to threaten for pole position every time, and often posts fastest laps. So, what's wrong?

He’s massively quick, but he can’t consistently give Hamilton much of a headache.  And when you have a team like Merc who’ve dominated the last 7 seasons to such an extent that no other team can seriously challenge for the championship, that’s a problem for the viewers at home who would prefer to see a bit of a fight.

It suits Mercedes management fine though; the team is much more harmonious through having a de facto number one and number two.  2014-16 was much more interesting with Rosberg making things very difficult for Hamilton, but it meant the team had two massive battling egos to juggle and placate.

He’ll be gone next year in favour of Russell unless Hamilton decides to retire.  Mercedes will be looking for the next megastar and Bottas, alas, is not it.

Fretwired

chillidoggy said:

I’m sure if the roles/cars were reversed, Max would have beaten Hamilton. 

I disagree. It was Hamilton's tyre management and Mercedes strategy that won the race, not the car. The Red Bull looked faster to me. Vestappen did take the fastest lap away from Bottas.

Red Bull dropped the ball by not anticipating what could happen - the hard tyre was not an option and the red-walled tyre was not that durable so their strategists should have kept a spare set of the yellow walled tyres in case a two-stop strategy was needed. Perelli gave 40 laps as the limit for Vestappen's tyres - he was going to have to go further.

Max ran out of tyres and Hamilton hunted him down on fresh rubber - this was not the first time he has done this - you'd think Red Bull would remember. In the first stint, Verstappen pulled out a decent lead and kept Hamilton behind him for a long period. Hamilton managed his tyres better than Max but that Red Bull was quick.

fretmeister

And now apparently Toto is saying Hamilton will sign a multi-year deal....

https://www.planetf1.com/news/lewis-hamilton-two-year-mercedes-contract-extension/

Fretwired

fretmeister said:

And now apparently Toto is saying Hamilton will sign a multi-year deal....

https://www.planetf1.com/news/lewis-hamilton-two-year-mercedes-contract-extension/

Didn't see that coming. I thought he might do another year. Maybe he wants to win 10 WCs.