Final Race before the summer Break :
Plenty to happen , Friday is hot and dry . Saturday is a stormy mixed bag
Session Times
And Sebastian Vettel stealing all the head lines .
Hope Seb has a good sign off over the next 10 races
Toto we need to stay humble for the second half of the season. đ
Feel the same for LeClerc. On his day able to compete with Max and the team errors have cost him a lot more this season than his errors. Thereâs plenty of the season left for him and the team to find more consistency if some changes are made.
Perez form is really poor at the moment ever since Austria. Still picked up some points in the last couple of races but the gap in class to Verstappen from last season has reappeared. Add to that Hamilton regaining his form and the Merc step up in performance and Perez is no longer a favorite for a podium like earlier in the season. Again, plenty of the season left to get some more podiums or a win in the right circumstances.
Ah yeah he does come out with some nonsense in fairness. The inters one was baffling but it's about creating talking points. You have to remember F1 is seeing somewhat of a resurgance in audience since DTS, and putting out questions like this gets people talking. Those of us who stuck with it during the barren years can see through it but others wont. Croft probably knows himself it's a bit nuts but if people are talking then it's job done.
Brundle made a great observation during the race that Ferrari should have put LeClerc on the softs in the middle stint to cover off the two compound rule. They may as well have since the second stint probably wouldn't have been much shorter if he had the softs on.
Ferrari's strategy is all over the shop but, to be fair, Red Bull deserve a lot of credit here. They made strategy calls that forced others to panic and react. That gets lost in this narrative at the best of times.
Binotto saying they expected the hards to have good pace after 10-11 laps but didnât work because the car doesnât work right.
Absolute nonsense! The whole weekend the hard tyres have looked poor.
And that was when the track temps were a lot higher than they were today as well.
Alpines went backwards when they put on the hards, Ferrari surely saw this but still went with them anyway. The track temperature window simply wasn't there for them to work. Madness altogether. It's actually inexplicable what's going on at Ferrari.
Very interesting from Christian Horner on Sky here. He said the initial plan was to start the race on the hards but when everyone struggled on their out laps, they changed the plan to softs.
I'm starting to think the first few races were flukes and Ferrari are starting to show their true colours in the past 3 or 4 as in a team never actually capable of winning just lucking into looking good at first instead they are mutton dressed as lamb.
Hopefully this floor change reels rb and Ferrari back a bit we have a genuine 2/3 way fight albeit for nothing but pride as the championships are effectively over.
A fight for the remainder of the season between merc and redbull and maybe someone else may win a race cause I don't see Ferrari win one more this season.
Indeed, good point about DTS and new audiences. To be fair to him it's obviously not an easy job having to commentate and try and keep up to speed with everything going on. He's much less painful to listen too than Herbet, imo anyway.
Thank god for Brundle, by far the best thing about Sky coverage, Karun is great too. Yeah RBR doing great so far this year and Max seems to be driving at a higher level again this year - probably because the pressure is off now having won that first title. Disappointing that Perez's performance has gone backwards I think, the team need him to keep closer to Max.
Ah here as if some of them didn't hate you enough already you've thrown the love island comment in there!
Whatever about Binotto,Inaki Rueda has been stealing a living since about 2014. Hes the teams "Head of Strategy" since he arrived when Lotus folded and has led some amount of own goals in that time.
Ferrari generally have the worst strategy calls.
Binotto trying to justify the hard tyre call. Verstappen and Hamilton's reaction to it tells you all you need to know, it was a stupid idea and Binotto should admit it was a mistake rather than trying to justify it. Even Leclerc himself said he didn't want to go onto the hard.
Skip forward to 24:37. Good analysis of what exactly happened.
https://youtu.be/qThU4CdXM50
Mercedes actually now helping Red bull to win the championship taking points away from Ferrari, Mercedes's haven't a chance of winning either with the points difference.
Croft said for someone outside the points, it might be worth a shot to go for intermediate under vsc.
If there was another 3 or 4 laps left with rain coming down, it would be a sensible enough comment but just not enough laps when he suggested it.
Maybe they should appoint an ex-driver to the role of race tactical controller, sitting on the pit wall, and who would have sole responsibility for strategic decisions like timing of pit stops and choices of tyres during races. Keep the role of team principal as purely that of a general manager. Binotto may be an engineer but he's not a real racing man, nor were his predecessors.
Nonsense post .... max was cruising the last lap and on a different older tyre. If Lewis had the pace to win he would have won.... simples
....
So by that logic would you say Hamilton didnât have the pace to win in Abu Dhabi?
Disappointing from Sky interviewing Horner after the race, rather than congratulate them on getting from tenth to first they just went straight to âyou were gifted that werenât youâ, similar to Verstappenâs post race interview at Paul Ricard.
Ferrari havenât exactly showered themselves in glory lately, but Red Bull deserve credit for pushing the issue and forcing mistakes. Leclerc went off while pushing too hard because Max was about to undercut him in France, and they went onto the wrong tyres here because Red Bull took an aggressive early pit stop knowing Ferrari couldnât go onto the medium and forced Ferrari to choose between switching to hards or being undercut.
The right call obviously would have been to stay out and not react then try to overtake Max on softs later, but if Red Bull hadnât been so aggressive on strategy and hadnât executed it so well Ferrari would never have had to make that decision.
Not to mention he also got the better of two Mercedes that both started ahead of him and probably had the better package at this circuit. Hardly a gift.
Interviewer : What was the key for that good result today?
Norris : You're looking at him đ
Which interview was that, the one with Lazenby, Herbert and Karun sitting on the stools?
hamilton had the pace to win abu Dhabi by a landslide ... But Max had the fresher, compound softer tyre after the sc.
Today Hamilton was able to make his two stints on the yellows longer by managing them well which resulted him being able to switch to softs at the last stint but at that point he was never able to catch verstappen who was just lifting and coasting towards the checkered flag.
Red Bull living rent free in the heads of so many british pundits.
Today was a masterclass by RB and Verstappen ..... Next time however I would recommed the donuts to be done after the finish
The RB pit wall won that race. Perfectly timed pits to undercut. I think Mx gained like 4/5 positions from the pits which is some going and was the winning of the dmrace for him.
That post race interview with Leclerc is kind of sad. Totally broken man.
Mattia Benotto giving himself a good talking to after the race đ
Hard Luck
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