F1 2022-Round 13: Hungarian GP

That was a real champions drive from Max today. He really has matured massively.

Don't understand the flack that Checo is taking. He has 1 win and 5 2nd place finishes. He is 3rd in WDD and only 5 points behind Charles. I think he has done a smashing job this year.

You put 2 great drivers in a great car with a team making good strategic decisions, it's no surprise you will be 100 points ahead in the WCC. Red bull are class with strategy.....it was strategy that enables Max to do a number on Lewis on the last lap of the last race to win the championship last year.

Ferrari are nowhere RedBull in terms of management. It's an awful shame because the car looks good, drivers seem to like it and their drivers are very good. I think Sainz has done pretty fine job for Ferrari. Ferrari is just a basket case.

I think there is a fundamental issue with Ferrari's strategic philosophy. I don't think they pay close enough attention to what is actually happening on the track but make their decisions based on pre-planned simulations that they stick with no matter what. Last week Carlos was in the middle of overtaking Perez and they started calling him in to box. Today the Alpines were going backwards on the hards and they still went with it for Charles anyway, even though it was clear to everyone the hards were not a good race tyre today at all.

Red Bull on the other hand absolutely react to the evolving race situation on track. They even said they knew the hards were a non runner from the recon lap before the race and adjusted accordingly.

That's amazing. Mercedes has no right to be so close to Ferrari on pace alone.

Mercedes probably has the strongest driver pairing on the grid. I would have said the Ferrari boys were top but they have made mistakes. The Mercedes boys are consistently doing really good jobs. The Mercedes team are pure class. Really making the most of their car, flaws and all.

I was watching an F1TV programme called Radio Rewind for the French GP and they tend to play the team radio in sync with the on-board and Sainz was told to box on the second part of the back straight, not on the approach to the pit entry as it might appear.

It's interesting we didn't hear the Ferrari pit lane discussing every plan from A to F-up.

Watched the highlights again today. That’s probably Max’s best drive, he was clinical and so damn fast.

As for Ferrari…the decisions they are making are why Alonso and Vettel left, they are a shambles.

Vettel wasn’t free of sin during his time at Ferrari, but they are equally in the boo box during his time as well. They are doing the same more or less with Leclerc.

I like Seb but his time with Ferrari was not good, and the longer it went on the worse it got.

Oh agreed, a big falling out especially in his last year.

but the Ham Fan quoted here can only turn the hate dial upto 11 for certain drivers.

Ferrari have proven yet again that sh1tting the bed is their party trick as LeClerc is now realizing.

some great racing and tactics on sunday though with 3-4 team realistically in for the win.

That's silly. Ferrari gave him a title challenging car in 2018 and he almost mounted a title challenge. He had Kimi phoning it in as his teammate he resisted getting leclerc to replace Kimi. He knew is wouldn't be as good for his career to have a hungry, fast driver instead of a slow former world champion who he could compare favourably against (it's funny that everyone recognises thats what stroll is doing now. Trying to compare favourably beside an aging former world champion) . He was playing it clever.

He wasn't just beaten by leclerc in 2020, he was trounced. He ended up scoring a quarter of Leclerc's points total. That's Ricciardo vs norris this year level of disparity in performance.

I don't doubt his speed in the first half of his career. But I also don't doubt his huge plunge in performance in the last few years since the second half of 2018.

Ok I see now you're now also trying to play down Kimi's credentials in order to justify your rather extreme bias against Vettel. Raikkonen was a deserving world champion and was still recognised as one of the fastest drivers in the world at that time for the world class drives he pulled off at Lotus which earned him a Ferrari return just a year before Vettel joined. At that time there was a pretty strong case that he was the next best driver on the grid after Vettel and Alonso.

And again, you're then ignoring all of Vettel's drives between 2007 and 2019 and between 2021 and 2022 and instead homing in solely on 2020 to try to back up your otherwise baseless argument, which I already pointed was a massive outlier year and not remotely comparable to any other season in Vettel's career - the reason being that Binotto stabbed him in the back before the season even started so obviously he wasn't killing himself for the team and performing at his best in what was an utterly dreadful car and a team that did not have his back.

The more reasonable comparison between Vettel and Leclerc is 2019 when there was basically nothing between them and it could have gone either way - again, there is no shame in that as Charles is clearly a top tier generational talent just like Seb is. Had Binotto not made a massive error of judgement and had kept Vettel on in 2020 then the two drivers would have continued to be close and Seb may well be have been leading this year's championship in the current car, as he combines Leclerc's speed with a much stronger ability to think for himself and overrule the many terrible tactical decisions the team has made. And even if he did end up a smidgeon behind Leclerc, that would still put him comfortably in the top 3 in the world alongside Charles and Max.