Championship showdown this weekend. Will Lewis win his eight title or will Max win his first? All will be revealed on Sunday.
TV Times:
Qualifying Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports)
Race Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports and Channel 4)
Bring! It! On!
Lando was super in qualifying today.
Something which I doubt many drivers can claim
He's an outstanding driver. I think him and Gasly are the next best drivers after Max and Lewis.
I think leclerc is up there and Sainz has announced himself as a top tier driver too.
I think he was underrated last year, beating Norris. And he's only 9 points behind Leclerc this year which is a great result given he switched team and leclerc is in his 3rd year at ferrari.
Ham will not take any chances at the start, he can catch Max later on if neccessary.
Come on Max !!
I agree re Sainz. He has sort of stayed below the radar but done a pretty decent job in a new car/team.
Classy message
https://twitter.com/HondaRacingF1/status/1469891270177062916?s=20
Mazepin out so that reduces Safety Car chances by about 92%
I see the WWE merchants are out in force already. Some really silly stuff here about Max taking out Lewis or the number 2s being used to take out the number 1s. Silly season again...
Interesting to see how it will play out. Surprised Max got the job done yesterday. Him starting on softs was a disadvantage in my mind, but if Checo can jump Norris at the start and mind his tyres like only Checo does it should give Mercedes something to think about around the pit stops.
All in all just hoping for a clean race. As a Max supporter, I was a bit disappointed at some of the stuff last week so hoping he can keep a level head today.
Fascinated by the difference in starting tyres. It really sets the race up for a grandstand finish -- Hamilton hunting Max down on fresher tyres in the closing laps. It would be a fitting end to the season.
I'm assuming Max may want to two-stop which would mean a quick pace from him. Perez in 4th could be crucial in building a gap for him to drop into, while staying inside Hamilton's pit window.
I actually think Tsunoda is more dangerous than Mazepin at this stage.
We all expected a mess at the start in Saudi Arabia and there wasn’t so hopefully the same happens today. I just want a clean race and Perez needs to step up and help max. Bottas is surprisingly in sixth which isn’t where anybody expected him to be.
Maybe not at the first start but the second and third wasn't without incident.
Jeddah is a tight street circuit. Abu Dhabi is a very wide open normal track. If Hamilton gets a poor start on those tyres he might find himself getting swamped like what happened in Monza was it?
Who is champion if both fail to finish.?
It will come down to race wins, so Max will be champion by virtue of having 9 wins to Lewis’ 8
Pit at the right time?
Feel like going out buying an old Accord now.
Jordan had a decent few years when powered by Honda.
Three wins with customer Mugen Honda engines. They never had the same success with the works Honda engines.
Btw: theoretical Jack Aitken could take mazepin seat as he participated in fp1
Yeah 2 stop would be the aggressive approach and as you said, it would need max to be significantly faster then Lewis. But I'd worry that till be like last week and he's only equal on pace when on the softer tyre compound.
It's great that max is starting on pole but he was capable of pole last week too but madep a mistake at the end of the lap. And then Lewis was significantly faster on race pace. Max couldn't even create a gap when he was on mediums and Lewis was on hards.
PREDICTION: So I think the most likely result is a repeat of last week's scenario. Max keeps it competitive on the softer tyre but can't create a gap of more than a few seconds. If they get on the same tyre compound then Lewis can beat max and overtake him if he hasn't done it in the pitstops.
Since they're starting on the same tyre then max will either have to 2 stop which means he'll be on the harder tyre than Lewis at some point and Lewis will overtake him. If he tries to one stop and protect his tryes then Lewis overtakes him easily.
I think Lewis will just have the pace to win no matter which way the race goes. Same as last week.
One thing I will say though is that this is the last race so they can trash their cars/engines as much as they realistically want. That might give a bit of uncertainty
They should have both taken ICE penalties. Turn them up to the max and let them go as fast as humanly possible.
The one thing about the Hybrid era is that we never see just how fast these cars are capable of going.
As for today, the two contenders on the front row with different strategies. You can’t ask for much better than that.
Strategy cheat sheet. Expect Mercedes to stretch out their first stint.
I'm so delighted it's live on C4. Thought I was going to have to avoid all radio and TV for 5 hours🙂
Hope Max does it but he'll need to keep a cool head and the question is, can he?
Yes max you need critics which is one thing but there’s no conspiracy.
Big talk from max about telling his Dutch fans to tune in because he’s going to win.
Lewis comes out with the same tripe. Which is even more ridiculous.
Well yeah but I was responding to what max was saying in his interview on sky just now.
F*ck, Sky have taken over the C4 feed. At least Nico's there.
