The Official F1 Thread

[Mr Bungle]

Enjoying the likes of Alpha Tauri, Williams and Alpine doing well.......and then there is Vettel....I just can't warm to him as a driver.

There's an inverse relationship between the likeability of drivers; & their chances of winning anything. The successful ones are the most selfish plums.

He's had his whingy moments, but he's often leading the way on sportsmanship to others after wins, Hamilton breaking records etc.

I really wanted Perez to win, so it was quite a joy seeing Hamilton overshoot on the restart. Even though I'm a fan of Hamilton, too. Just good to see the podiums and leaderboard get a bit of a shake up.

[Saint]

Certainly the most competitive championship we've had in a very long time.

Merc have missed a trick somewhere - and I reckon that the team has made more mistakes in the last 2 races than they would expect over an entire season. I'm not sure - but Hamilton seems to have lost focus completely - not sure if it is just the shock of actually not being in the fastest car - but he's going to have to majorly reset if he wants to win this year. Still think he is one of the best racers out there.....but jeesh......junior racer mistakes creeping in.

Interestingly - Merc has said their upgrades aren't going to be anything spectacular this season as they are concentrating on next seasons big changes.

Think Max is on for the championship - if his car stays reliable.

Enjoying the likes of Alpha Tauri, Williams and Alpine doing well.......and then there is Vettel....I just can't warm to him as a driver.

Hamilton's just had the best start to a season that he's ever had. He almost always makes some silly mistakes at the start of the season (Albon in Austria last year springs to mind straight away). The Merc is in a strange position - it suddenly appears able to follow cars lap after lap (perhapsbetter than any other car), where previously it would have destroyed it's tyres, but the flip side is that there's a struggle to keep the tyres active. Two street circuits without high speed corners have hurt them badly in this regard

[Mr Bungle]

Does anyone know why the post race podium. press conferences aren’t widely available?

I get the odd upload on YouTube by Joe Public. Only a transcript version on F1.com. My Spark Sport NZ coverage has 3 x practices, qualifying, pre race, race and post race. But no podium presser.

[ScarfaceClaw]

Red flag in Q1 in the first lap with Tsunoda backing it into the barriers.

[ScarfaceClaw]

And then Schumacher stuffs it into the wall. Leaves Stroll high and dry as he didn’t set a time.

Latifi, Kimi, May-spin, Stroll and Tsunoda out.

[sturginho]

I can't believe Schumacher got that tractor of a Haas into Q2!

[Kawazaki]

I can't believe Schumacher got that tractor of a Haas into Q2!

He used the Leclerc gambit to secure it.

[fishfoodie]

I can't believe Schumacher got that tractor of a Haas into Q2!

He used the Leclerc gambit to secure it.

and like Leclerc, he's probably going to need a new gearbox, & hence will get kicked back in the grid

[Insane_Homer]

I can't believe Schumacher got that tractor of a Haas into Q2!

He used the Leclerc gambit to secure it.

I think you'll find those sort of 'oops, I made a mistake. Oh noes did I gain from it' tactics are hereditary

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[Sandstorm]

Pissing rain and wind today. F1 race should be fun.

[Kawazaki]

Pissing rain and wind today. F1 race should be fun.

At the Paul Ricard circuit?

[handyman]

Pissing rain and wind today. F1 race should be fun.

I'm seeing sunshine on my telly.

[ScarfaceClaw]

Hamilton kicks off the tyre whinging and stays out there comfortably in the lead.

[salanya]

An actual race in Formula 1


A horseman of the apocalypse just woke up.


Note: only lasted a few laps - the horseman has fallen asleep again.

[Sandstorm]

Lewis needs a new teammate

[salanya]

Lewis needs a new teammate

Or maybe some new tacticians, now they don't have easily the best car anymore.....

Also not sure how well Bottas is being treated by Mercedes.

[Sandstorm]

Max wins. Great drive. Lewis 2nd. Perez third.

[Un Pilier]

Good result for McLaren Poor for Ferrari. I’m tempted to check if Alan’s feeling okay in a parallel universe.

It’s the season we hoped for in some respects. Danny Ric and Checho starting to get the hang of their new cars, Lewis and Max neck and neck, some serious teammate rivalries. And two of my favourite drivers, Lando and Pierre Gasly showing they are part of the future. Great bounce-back from Gasly.

[Kawazaki]

There's plenty of chin scratching at Mercedes at how fast the RB is on pit exit laps. They don't get timed conventionally as they start in the pitlane but I'd be interested to know if they're any quicker through the speed traps on those laps.

[handyman]

Great race and Verstappen was very good. He sounded agitated during the race, but kept it together nicely. Did well to have some life in the tyres at the end to make the pass.

[assfly]

Great race and Verstappen was very good. He sounded agitated during the race, but kept it together nicely. Did well to have some life in the tyres at the end to make the pass.

The last few laps were thrilling. This could be the best season we've seen in a long time.

[handyman]

Great race and Verstappen was very good. He sounded agitated during the race, but kept it together nicely. Did well to have some life in the tyres at the end to make the pass.

The last few laps were thrilling. This could be the best season we've seen in a long time.

Agreed. And the battle between Ferrari and McLaren is good as well.

[Enzedder]

Excellent sound effects on this ad

[Thor Sedan]

So:

Red Bull have the slightly faster car
Hamilton is still competitive in a slightly slower car
Red Bull have vastly superior tacticians
Red Bull pit crew leaves Mercedes in the dust
Mercedes have alluded that upgrades will be sparse as 2022 is more on their minds
Bottas is either slow, fed up or both

[Kawazaki]

I've said it for years; James Vowles is a terrible strategist. He's got away with some dreadful calls over the years due to Hamilton digging him out or the advantage of having such a good car but as soon as he's on a level field he's getting found out.

Sticking Hamilton on the wrong tyres on the wrong lap at Monaco in 2019 should have raised every red flag going with Wolff regards Vowles. Laughably inept.

[Sandstorm]

I've said it for years; James Vowles is a terrible strategist. He's got away with some dreadful calls over the years due to Hamilton digging him out or the advantage of having such a good car but as soon as he's on a level field he's getting found out.

Sticking Hamilton on the wrong tyres on the wrong lap at Monaco in 2019 should have raised every red flag going with Wolff regards Vowles. Laughably inept.

Red Bull have made the right call twice in 50 races!

[fishfoodie]

I've said it for years; James Vowles is a terrible strategist. He's got away with some dreadful calls over the years due to Hamilton digging him out or the advantage of having such a good car but as soon as he's on a level field he's getting found out.

Sticking Hamilton on the wrong tyres on the wrong lap at Monaco in 2019 should have raised every red flag going with Wolff regards Vowles. Laughably inept.

How much of the type stop strategy these days is still made by humans ?

I thought that 95% of it was down to a software model that they fed with previous running data, & the runs in practice; & then topped off with live data from the lap times of any early switchers on the day.

The only time when humans get to make the call; was when you had a safety car, etc; & they had a car in the slot, which could pit immediately, & gazump the field.

[Kawazaki]

I've said it for years; James Vowles is a terrible strategist. He's got away with some dreadful calls over the years due to Hamilton digging him out or the advantage of having such a good car but as soon as he's on a level field he's getting found out.

Sticking Hamilton on the wrong tyres on the wrong lap at Monaco in 2019 should have raised every red flag going with Wolff regards Vowles. Laughably inept.

Red Bull have made the right call twice in 50 races!

Vowles has made absolute howlers for years but they've gone unnoticed because either the car advantage, Hamilton and/or Bottas being quick enough to head off RB/Ferrari options has dug him out of the hole.

[MoreOrLess]

I've said it for years; James Vowles is a terrible strategist. He's got away with some dreadful calls over the years due to Hamilton digging him out or the advantage of having such a good car but as soon as he's on a level field he's getting found out.

Sticking Hamilton on the wrong tyres on the wrong lap at Monaco in 2019 should have raised every red flag going with Wolff regards Vowles. Laughably inept.

How much of the type stop strategy these days is still made by humans ?

I thought that 95% of it was down to a software model that they fed with previous running data, & the runs in practice; & then topped off with live data from the lap times of any early switchers on the day.

The only time when humans get to make the call; was when you had a safety car, etc; & they had a car in the slot, which could pit immediately, & gazump the field.

I thought this was the case, too. However, since the 2 stop strategy clearly got around the race quicker than a 1-stop it shows that the software isn't capable of handling all the variables correctly and there's nobody in Merc with the gumption / wherewithal to manually overrule a dodgy "computer says no" output.

Even if Vowles isn't personally making strategy calls (I'd guess there's 10's or 100's of people involved in accumulating and interpreting the data) he's still responsible for the systems and the team.

I wondered if Merc are so used to having the fastest car that they're now in the habit of winning races by driving slowly, drawing out as much tyre life as they can and pitting as little as possible. Now that they have an actual race on their hands they find it difficult to adjust to tyre wear being dictated by race pace, rather than dictating the race pace to manage tyre wear. Particularly if the overnight rain reset a lot of their practice data and hamilton was driving slowly over the 1st stint, so they had no idea what max's race pace actually was and couldn't really predict the gap they'd need to defend an undercut.

[Dinsdale Piranha]

I've said it for years; James Vowles is a terrible strategist. He's got away with some dreadful calls over the years due to Hamilton digging him out or the advantage of having such a good car but as soon as he's on a level field he's getting found out.

Sticking Hamilton on the wrong tyres on the wrong lap at Monaco in 2019 should have raised every red flag going with Wolff regards Vowles. Laughably inept.

How much of the type stop strategy these days is still made by humans ?

I thought that 95% of it was down to a software model that they fed with previous running data, & the runs in practice; & then topped off with live data from the lap times of any early switchers on the day.

The only time when humans get to make the call; was when you had a safety car, etc; & they had a car in the slot, which could pit immediately, & gazump the field.

I thought this was the case, too. However, since the 2 stop strategy clearly got around the race quicker than a 1-stop it shows that the software isn't capable of handling all the variables correctly and there's nobody in Merc with the gumption / wherewithal to manually overrule a dodgy "computer says no" output.

Even if Vowles isn't personally making strategy calls (I'd guess there's 10's or 100's of people involved in accumulating and interpreting the data) he's still responsible for the systems and the team.

I wondered if Merc are so used to having the fastest car that they're now in the habit of winning races by driving slowly, drawing out as much tyre life as they can and pitting as little as possible. Now that they have an actual race on their hands they find it difficult to adjust to tyre wear being dictated by race pace, rather than dictating the race pace to manage tyre wear. Particularly if the overnight rain reset a lot of their practice data and hamilton was driving slowly over the 1st stint, so they had no idea what max's race pace actually was and couldn't really predict the gap they'd need to defend an undercut.

To be fair, a catch and a pass with 2 laps to go is a really tight margin - I bet all their strategy predictions were within the margin of error for the calculations.

I also assume Mercedes were spooked by losing the lead at the first stop. They did a cracking pitstop but still blew a 3 second advantage. Once RB had dived in for their second, Merc were out of options for Lewis -they could have brought Bottas in but I assume they were hoping to use him to hold Max up for a bit longer.

[Un Pilier]

I think the degree of undercut was what screwed Merc and I haven’t heard any definitive explaNations as to why it was so great. Anyone have any theories?

Loving the racing btw. Great to see real competitiveness

[MoreOrLess]

I think the degree of undercut was what screwed Merc and I haven’t heard any definitive explaNations as to why it was so great. Anyone have any theories?

Loving the racing btw. Great to see real competitiveness

My theory is that the 1st stint was quite slow with HAM controlling the pace, and the overnight rain had de-rubbered the track so nobody had a realistic understanding of the true pace on hard tyres.

france_laps.png (118.01 KiB) Viewed 1587 times

Both HAM and VER were about 1.5s a lap faster on hards while they were hammering the 14-ish laps on the 2nd stint, than they were on the 1st stint mediums. HAM managed to maintain this pace until the end on hards knowing VER was chasing him, so it's probably a reasonable pace for that tyre.

VER was another 1.5s a lap faster when he changed back to mediums. I think the drop off in pace towards the end was due to VER working through traffic. Lower fuel loads aside, this is probably a more reasonable lap time on mediums, and had Lewis not been controlling the pace on the 1st stint (as is his perogative) something close to 2.5s a lapt faster could have been realised on the 1st stint (50s faster over 20 laps). Plenty of drivers (e.g. Norris passing 6 cars in 6 laps) showed that overtaking was very possible, but VER wouldn't really have known that in the 1st stint so was also managing his tyres.

So it seems that the strength of the undercut really came from a slower 1st stint because it wouldn't typically be expected that hard tyres are 1.5s faster than mediums, especially when VER showed in the 3rd stint that the mediums were more like 1s - 1.5 s faster than the hards.

With hindsight, had teams recognized the potential for a 2-stop and could have raised the pace in stint 1, a medium - medium - soft strategy would have covered race distance fastest. Although this would need enough confidence that you could last 10-ish laps on softs (VER managed 45 laps on mediums, leaving 8 laps on softs at the end. Stroll managed 19 laps on softs).

[Un Pilier]

I think the degree of undercut was what screwed Merc and I haven’t heard any definitive explaNations as to why it was so great. Anyone have any theories?

Loving the racing btw. Great to see real competitiveness

My theory is that the 1st stint was quite slow with HAM controlling the pace, and the overnight rain had de-rubbered the track so nobody had a realistic understanding of the true pace on hard tyres.

france_laps.png

Both HAM and VER were about 1.5s a lap faster on hards while they were hammering the 14-ish laps on the 2nd stint, than they were on the 1st stint mediums. HAM managed to maintain this pace until the end on hards knowing VER was chasing him, so it's probably a reasonable pace for that tyre.

VER was another 1.5s a lap faster when he changed back to mediums. I think the drop off in pace towards the end was due to VER working through traffic. Lower fuel loads aside, this is probably a more reasonable lap time on mediums, and had Lewis not been controlling the pace on the 1st stint (as is his perogative) something close to 2.5s a lapt faster could have been realised on the 1st stint (50s faster over 20 laps). Plenty of drivers (e.g. Norris passing 6 cars in 6 laps) showed that overtaking was very possible, but VER wouldn't really have known that in the 1st stint so was also managing his tyres.

So it seems that the strength of the undercut really came from a slower 1st stint because it wouldn't typically be expected that hard tyres are 1.5s faster than mediums, especially when VER showed in the 3rd stint that the mediums were more like 1s - 1.5 s faster than the hards.

With hindsight, had teams recognized the potential for a 2-stop and could have raised the pace in stint 1, a medium - medium - soft strategy would have covered race distance fastest. Although this would need enough confidence that you could last 10-ish laps on softs (VER managed 45 laps on mediums, leaving 8 laps on softs at the end. Stroll managed 19 laps on softs).

You may be right. It was certainly the most interesting Paul Ricard race I can recall off the top of my head.

[MoreOrLess]

Agree 100% on entertainment. That might be because it was actually entertaining at the front for once, though. 2018 and 2019 had something like 70-odd overtakes in total, but you had to work hard to follow them since the 2019 coverage was generally just HAM and BOT turning laps at the front. Even this year TV missed much of Lando's 6 lap rampage.

Back-to-back races at the Red Bull Ring might stack the championship in RBs favour a little, but the rest of the European schedule (Silverstone, Hungary, Spa, Zandvoort, Monza) will hopefully be pretty well balanced between Merc and RB. Wouldnt be surprised to see McLaren giving Merc and RB something else to think about over the next couple of weeks too.

[Sandstorm]

Most amazing (and sad) thing is that Honda finally have a really good powertrain and they're getting out of F1 at the end of the season!

(Yes, I know RB has bought the engine rights)

[MoreOrLess]

Yep, even AT are smashing FP1!

Honda seem to be making a habit of bailing out at exactly the wrong time.

[Kawazaki]

Most amazing (and sad) thing is that Honda finally have a really good powertrain and they're getting out of F1 at the end of the season!

(Yes, I know RB has bought the engine rights)

They sold a very good car to Ross Brawn for peanuts in 2008 as well.

Madness by Honda.

[ScarfaceClaw]

A few minutes away from kick off and I’ve just realised we’ve not heard much about Mazapin of late. Is he getting himself sorted out?

[ScarfaceClaw]

Gasly done with smashed rear suspension. LeClerc with front wing damage. Latifi with a puncture.

[ScarfaceClaw]

Punchy start from Norris. Was not going to give up that third place.