The F1 thread

stickyfiddle

I want to say it's weird because it's like their strategy guys are just looking at the numbers but not actually following the race at all. But at the same time they've been like this since about 2015 so...

Cols

Realistically, Verstappen was already past Leclerc - he'd closed enough after his pitstop that Leclerc would always have come out behind him once he stopped.  Charles's chances of victory would then have rested on using his fresher tyres to hunt down and pass Vertappen, or hoping that Max would have to make a second stop.

Sainz's pitstop was odd.  Normally it's the front jack man who controls the release, as he's the one who can see if the tyres are replaced and secured, and if there's no oncoming traffic.  And he'd released, but then the rear jack man kept the car up in the air for long enough that the Williams made its way to the Ferrari pit.

Boromedic

Cols said:

A scream of frustration could mean many things, from "Arrrgh, my bloody car's broken again" to "Argggh, I was leading that race and just stuffed it in the barrier.  There goes the World Championship".  

The question would be - what would LeClerc's motivation be for taking the blame in order to cover up a technical failure?  It's not like he's a junior driver to be intimidated into submission in order to protect Ferrari's engineering reputation.

Aside from that - hell of a recovery drive for Sainz.  Undoubtedly star of the day.

I did wonder what the motivation would be, if it's a second throttle issue in 2 races and Sainz was still running then maybe they were worried they'd get a black and orange flag and pulled from the race? Or something along them lines as Le Clerc hit the barrier and it's a safety thing? Bit of a stretch maybe, but I've watched that crash loads and I think it was more then driver error. 

sinbaadi

Boromedic said:

boogieman said:

LeClerc has fessed up, it was his own fault. 

Rosberg reiterated it here, his wheels were still spinning as the car went round and any normal driver would've been off the throttle. The car also carried on towards the barrier at a fair lick too. I have my doubts and it sounds like the party line/obfuscation to me, could be wrong of course but the same problem afflicted him last race too. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eurosport.com/formula-1/french-grand-prix/2022/nico-rosberg-tells-charles-leclerc-not-to-take-blame-i-still-cant-believe-it-would-be-a-driver-mista_sto9058460/story-amp.shtml

Rosberg isn't suggesting that his throttle stuck wide open, is he?  He's basically saying it's weird and another issue might have been at play.  One such possibility could be that the throttle was not responsive.  A sudden lift or cut might cause a locking effect or enough weight transfer to destabilise the rear.

He didn't have a lot of grip though, and as soon as he was out that bit too wide it was always going to end badly.

I think it was a mistake and he ran in just a bit too fast.  Telemetry probably proves it, or he was just a little off line.

Simonh

The throttle issue he had was when trying to reverse out of the barrier -there is a good breakdown here

Boromedic

sinbaadi said:

Boromedic said:

boogieman said:

LeClerc has fessed up, it was his own fault. 

Rosberg reiterated it here, his wheels were still spinning as the car went round and any normal driver would've been off the throttle. The car also carried on towards the barrier at a fair lick too. I have my doubts and it sounds like the party line/obfuscation to me, could be wrong of course but the same problem afflicted him last race too. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eurosport.com/formula-1/french-grand-prix/2022/nico-rosberg-tells-charles-leclerc-not-to-take-blame-i-still-cant-believe-it-would-be-a-driver-mista_sto9058460/story-amp.shtml

Rosberg isn't suggesting that his throttle stuck wide open, is he?  He's basically saying it's weird and another issue might have been at play.  One such possibility could be that the throttle was not responsive.  A sudden lift or cut might cause a locking effect or enough weight transfer to destabilise the rear.

He didn't have a lot of grip though, and as soon as he was out that bit too wide it was always going to end badly.

I think it was a mistake and he ran in just a bit too fast.  Telemetry probably proves it, or he was just a little off line.

Yeah maybe, it was an odd crash either way, would be great to see telemetry but no chance obvs!

markr76

I wouldn’t be surprised if porpoising had a helping hand in LeClerc’s accident. 

Emiel

Both Binotto and Leclerc himself explained it was a driver error. I think he simply went too quick into the corner and his worn right front tire was having none of it. Pity because Verstappen had been saving tires and it could have been a great battle. 

Where it not for driver errors, bad strategy and reliability issues, Leclerc could have been well ahead in the championship standings. Unfortunately for him, Verstappens drives are pretty much flawless and Red Bulls strategies almost always right on point. Leclerc ánd Ferrari really must up their game. Speed isn’t enough.

Boromedic

Simonh said:

The throttle issue he had was when trying to reverse out of the barrier -there is a good breakdown here

Seems fair enough that it wasn't the throttle then, it's hard when you know there's a delay in the radio comms where it's come in the race.

Watching the accident again, it's still odd, literally lost the back end and still throttling on initially. If it's not partly caused by something else that's a hell of a rookie error but Charles has history of them before. 

chillidoggy

Every time I hear the word “porpoising”, it sounds to me like some kind of sexual deviancy, a bit like dogging

Cols

Cols said:

What happened to Perez in FP2?  A second off Verstappen is a bit much.

It must have been an uncomfortable debrief for Perez after the weekend.  After doing the job in qualifying to be just behind Verstappen, Karen Horner paid him the backhanded complement “He turned up today”.

And after Perez getting mugged by Russell after the VSC ending, the ever-charming Marko did his usual trick of slagging off his own drivers to the press.

“It’s very unfortunate that Checo was asleep at the restart,” Marko told Servus TV. “A certain third place was lost there.”

Teetonetal

Emiel said:

Both Binotto and Leclerc himself explained it was a driver error. I think he simply went too quick into the corner and his worn right front tire was having none of it. Pity because Verstappen had been saving tires and it could have been a great battle. 

Where it not for driver errors, bad strategy and reliability issues, Leclerc could have been well ahead in the championship standings. Unfortunately for him, Verstappens drives are pretty much flawless and Red Bulls strategies almost always right on point. Leclerc ánd Ferrari really must up their game. Speed isn’t enough.

I wonder if red bull are just more battle hardened, for want of a better phrase. They’ve been up there hanging in with the Mercedes the last years and used to squeezing advantage where they can. Ferrari on the other hand still stuck in the midfield mentally.

menamestom

Emiel said:

Both Binotto and Leclerc himself explained it was a driver error. I think he simply went too quick into the corner and his worn right front tire was having none of it. Pity because Verstappen had been saving tires and it could have been a great battle. 

I think it was as much a strategy error as anything.  They should have brought him in the lap after MV.  He may have come out in front then.  Red Bull acted and Ferrari didn’t.  They are not dynamic enough.
Had they brought him in the lap after he’d have finished 1st or 2nd.  They didn’t act, fading tyres and driver error messed their race up but I think both were a factor.  The strategy meant CL had to push even harder.

Ferrari are so frustrating this season.  They can turn an open goal into an own goal.  

Boromedic

Cols said:

Cols said:

What happened to Perez in FP2?  A second off Verstappen is a bit much.

It must have been an uncomfortable debrief for Perez after the weekend.  After doing the job in qualifying to be just behind Verstappen, Karen Horner paid him the backhanded complement “He turned up today”.

And after Perez getting mugged by Russell after the VSC ending, the ever-charming Marko did his usual trick of slagging off his own drivers to the press.

“It’s very unfortunate that Checo was asleep at the restart,” Marko told Servus TV. “A certain third place was lost there.”

Red Bull, contrary to their young and we're so cool image, seem very to much to me to epitomise the old era of F1. Whereby there's a definite number 1 and number 2 driver and the second driver gets shafted at any available opportunity. Including new Gucci parts and all such other things.

Don't think you'd hear such comments from any other team like those above if say George had been mugged at the end of VSC. Not a nice atmosphere to be trying to ply your trade in at all, Horner and Marko can be reet cocks some times.

Cols

If I was Perez's boss, I'd certainly be giving him a dressing down after the French GP.  But - and this is the important part - behind closed doors.

One of the fundamental tenets of staff motivation is that when you have to give negative feedback, don't do it in front of others.  The only exception is where somebody else has been directly impacted - for example, if one of your drivers crashed into the other, you'd give them a bollocking in front of the other: "You destroyed your own race, and you ended his.  Sort it out."

Contrast Binotto's public comments on LeClerc, who (assuming it wasn't a mechanical failure) was worthy of a far more serious dressing down.

“I think it's a bit of an unfair judgement,” he said. “I think he was driving certainly at the limit. There are things that may happen when you're driving to the limit.

“Why it happened, [we will see if] is there anything else, we take our time with him to discuss, and to judge, but at the moment there is no reason to blame him.

“I'm pretty sure he will learn. We have always seen that Charles is reacting very strongly and well to when he's doing mistakes. And I'm pretty sure that he will be back in Hungary stronger and hungry.”

See?  Publicly supportive.  I'm sure he got the hairdryer treatment back at Maranello, but it doesn't achieve anything to publicly brief against him.

In fact, I can't think of any other team boss who is so consistently contemptuous of their No 2 drivers as Marko/Horner.

Boromedic

@Cols exactly mate

sinbaadi

It's stupid to not have a clear and obvious number 1 and 2 agreement if you have drivers in title contention for other teams.  See McLaren 2007.

Perez knows he has to defer to Max.  The only way to change that is to be the principle contender for the title, and the only way to do that is to be consistently faster.

If you're far and away the team with the fastest car and no clear competitors then you can let them fight it out, to a point.

chillidoggy

I don’t see any problem at all with team managers wanting VFM from their drivers, because they get paid a king’s ransom. But the one thing I don’t agree with is dressing them down in public. If the bosses want to rant, scream and shout, and call the drivers all the cunts under the sun, it should always be behind closed doors.

Boromedic

sinbaadi said:

It's stupid to not have a clear and obvious number 1 and 2 agreement if you have drivers in title contention for other teams.  See McLaren 2007.

Perez knows he has to defer to Max.  The only way to change that is to be the principle contender for the title, and the only way to do that is to be consistently faster.

If you're far and away the team with the fastest car and no clear competitors then you can let them fight it out, to a point.

I do get that, absolutely however there are better ways of managing the situation than Red Bull do. 

Cols

Reports that Spa and Paul Ricard are set to be dropped from an overcrowded calendar. 

While I wouldn't mourn the loss of Paul Ricard, it seems astounding that the country which first introduced the world to motor racing and has produced more F1 drivers than any nation other than UK and Italy should once again find itself without a Grand Prix.  Meanwhile countries which have never threatened to produce a Grand Prix driver - Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Azerbaijan, I'm looking at you - are secure on the calendar, while the US helps itself to three races.

And dropping Spa-Francorchamps would be like getting rid of Monaco.  Which Liberty are also considering.

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/why-f1-wants-to-cut-french-and-belgian-gps-for-las-vegas-and-kyalami-on-2023-calendar