F1 2022- Round 21 Brazilian GP

Brundle mentioned Monaco, and Crofty followed up with a wild conspiracy theory about Perez crashing on purpose. I doubt anyone in their right mind believes he did, least of all someone within Red Bull who was present at the debrief with full access to the data.

I'd imagine if it was about Monaco it's more about the fact that the championship was very clearly looking like a tight two horse race between Max and Charles at the time, yet Checo held up Max for the race (he had track position thanks to the crash in qualy, but I think everyone can agree that was more luck than malice) then they gave Perez first preference on pit stops which ultimately consigned Max to third place, when the team could easily have pit Max first and he would have won. Nobody knew how badly Ferrari would crash and burn as the season went on, so throwing away those points for Max could have proved critical in the long run. But then that's just how Red Bull operate, they'll never treat their slower driver as a number 2 until he's mathematically out of the championship.

In Max's mind maybe he thinks he shouldn't help Checo now since Checo didn't help him then, but who knows as it's all conjecture. Maybe they'll clarify in the coming days but it was a real unnecessary shot in the foot from Red Bull when they should have just let them race like Ferrari sensibly did with their two drivers. P2 in the drivers championship has no real benefit or meaning, not one that compensates for introducing these kinds of dilemmas to the team.

Anyway, aside from the sideshow where everyone tries to pile on and make a massive deal of someone not engaging in team orders to hand over a 6th place, overall it was a pretty good race. Interlagos nearly always delivers.

More dirty driving from Hamilton early on but that's really par for the course for him when actually having to race for a competitive place so at this point it's barely worth commenting on. I am impressed with how bullet proof that Mercedes is, how reliably both Lewis and George are able to routinely hit other drivers without taking damage themselves. I found myself wondering what would happen if the two of them ever hit each other, an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object.

I wonder if karma from that incident may bite Lewis in the long run because the result was that this could arguably be the race people look back on as the one that cemented his role as the Mercedes number 2 driver, where it would might well have been just another inconsequential Verstappen win had Hamilton kept it clean. For George's part, he didn't really put a foot wrong and the win was never in doubt once Max was out of the picture. The safety car might have made it perilous but he was able to comfortably pull out a gap as soon as they got racing again.

Mercedes do look to have the clear fastest car now though and they'll be the team to beat in Abu Dhabi. It's really only been Max that's beaten them the last couple of races, Perez hasn't been anywhere near them, while Ferrari have fallen away.

It was a great performance from Sainz to recover from his early woes and get on the podium though. I've said it before but I do think Sainz has much better racecraft than Leclerc, while Charles is faster over a lap. Sainz always look racey and is always thinking about strategy, whereas when Leclerc ends up back in the field for whatever reason it often seems like he just doesn't really progress. It was looking like that for a while today but eventually with the aid of the safety car he came through. It was a very sloppy move from Norris that took Leclerc out, but it was pretty uncharacteristic and he had been ill all weekend so he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Alonso on fine form, after he did himself no favours with the fireworks and inflammatory statements in the sprint race, he showed today that he still has that magic at times and that's why he's still in such demand.

Great recovery drive from Max after being taken out early. To think he was put to the back of the field, had a damaged car, forced to serve an absolutely ridiculous penalty, and still climbed back up and beat his teammate who had a trouble free race fair and square, it was one hell of a drive. Such a shame the team tried to interfere and dirty laundry got aired. They should have just handled it like Ferrari. Everyone is saying if Perez loses P2 it will be Max's fault for not giving him the position, yet Sainz cost Leclerc even more points by not giving him his position this race, but nobody is talking about it because the team acted sensibly. It's not often you can say that about Ferrari compared to Red Bull.

Honourable mention for Vettel, he drove a great race as best of the rest behind the big three teams much of the way through, even in a podium place for a brief time, but was put on the wrong tyres at the wrong time which sent him backwards when the safety car came out.

And even more honourable mention for Magnussen, after the heroics on Friday and the come down on Saturday, what a shame to be taken out at the very start. Ricciardo takes a three place penalty into the next race which is probably about right given he put himself out of this race too with the move. In some ways it was a shame having a sprint race because taking that mixed up grid from qualifying into the race would have been really fun, but it had mostly shaken itself out by Sunday.

On a final note, they really need to look at the mess of the safety car. Not only did they not let Tsunoda through, they let Latifi who was behind him through so Tsunoda had to actually cede a position to Latifi then watch him drive off. And unlike Abu Dhabi where there was a lot of noise about minor technicalities that had zero impact on the outcome, the chaos here probably had a material impact on the final result, as aside from Tsunoda directly giving up a place it really cost Sainz a genuine chance he had of attacking the top two on his fresh tyres after getting past Perez, something he lost due to the multiple extra unnecessary laps behind the safety car in the confusion. I wonder if they'll hold an inquiry into this one? The officiating this year has been dreadful, even by the FIA's usual poor standards.

He might as well leave RB now if that’s the case. He is only in F1 right now because of RB.

Laughable. Just flat out laughable. There will be no real consequences at all.

Lads, he is champion for a reason, this is an example of that. Just like all of them.

So I’ve let the dust settle after all the debate last night! And although I really like Max I thought at the time it was a dick move! But thinking more about it…. That’s what separates good drivers from great drivers… being a bit c**tish! My all time fave Vettel is loved by everyone these days but was just as big a prick when he was winning titles!

The race itself?!? Meh… it had an exciting start but I started paying more attention to the NFL after the first round of pit stops! It wasn’t a bad race, but was missing something!

One things for sure…! That Merc looks, dare I say it… “spicy”

'That's what champions do' is an utterly dreadful justification for crappy, indefensible behaviour. Champions help their team mates all of the time.

It's a pity that much of the commentary after the race was more about Verstappen not giving the place to Perez than Russell's first F1 win.

I think what you'll find looking back is that while Vettel has certainly matured, he was still the largely the same likable decent guy when he was winning titles as he is today, but because he was dominating and beating British drivers the English speaking media we're stuck with treated him much like they treat Max today, and like they treated Rosberg and Alonso when they were winning, driving the narrative they wanted to drive with little regard for facts.

To take multi-21 (which is really the only thing from that era people have to latch onto to attack Vettel over). Vettel was faster, he was the defending champion but stood behind a Lotus and Ferrari in the championship (albeit extremely early in the season), he qualified on pole and he was driving a solid race. He was only behind Webber because of a different tyre strategy but that put him on better tyres ready to overtake at the end. The team made a naive decision that for the sake of reliability they didn't want them pushing the engines too hard and asked Vettel to hold station behind his slower teammate. Vettel refused, believed he had the pace to win, and proved it by overtaking Webber fair and square then pulling out a gap and winning comfortably.

The media made an absolute mountain out of this molehill, and even though it was an example of the team trying to favour Webber over Vettel (for pure reliability reasons, as in reality they always got 100% equal treatment), it somehow inexplicably morphed into an example of how the team favoured Vettel, which they never did.

The thing is that that this wasn't the only incident like this. At Silverstone 2011 Vettel was ahead of Webber and the team did the exact same thing - for the sake of reliability in the closing stages of the race they asked Webber not to attack and to just bring the cars home. But Webber ignored the order and attacked and attempted to overtake anyway. He lacks the skill of Vettel so his overtake attempts failed and Sebastian finished ahead, but the way it was reported in the media was entirely different. The circumstances were basically 100% identical, just the roles reversed, but in this case the narrative was "good on the plucky Aussie for not succumbing to despicable team orders", in contrast to "what a selfish dastardly German refusing to comply with reasonable team orders". And of course multi21 still gets brought up to this day, while that other race is largely forgotten.

It's worth looking at the facts and not the hyperbole and the narrative the media tries to drive.

Red Bull generally have a philosophy of treating their drivers completely equally and don't have much experience of using team orders like Mercedes did routinely with Bottas or Ferrari used to before they changed philosophy after the backlash for the order with Massa. I think this is the reason that when they do do something, like Brazil today or multi21 before, that they do it in quite a ham-fisted way and shoot themselves in the foot when in both cases they should have just let them race. Ferrari had the good sense to let their guys race rather than make an unreasonable request of Sainz which would have been equally valid in the race for P2, but would have also most likely met with refusal (but wouldn't have had anything like the same level of scrutiny as Sainz and Ferrari are not public enemy number 1 these days like Red Bull are, or like they used to be when it was Alonso and Massa)

if it went down like:

'Max if checo lets you by and gives you a shot at Alonoso and you dont get past before the end will you give max the place back?' and max had said 'No, ill pass checo on track and he can defend aganst me to try keep the place' then this wouldn't be as bad.

Instead we got what we did and he stabbed one of the most liked drivers on the grid/paddock in the back.

The agreement with checo to let max past and give it his best which he couldnt manage this time was empty words which max just used to gain an absolutely pointless place for him and he just showed his true self in a very public highlighted way that didnt need to happen and probably permanently damaging the dynamic they had.

I know checo will get paccified by RB and not allowed speak about it and and will probably get another sympathy win handed to him at some point which is unfortunate. I would love nothing more than for him to completly refuse to help max in future but we all know that wont happen.

Oh just used the ignore function for the first time to remove/hide a poster and it hid the conspiricy theorist with the lewis hamilton shaped chip on his shoulder from my view of the thread/all threads, its great just leaves a blank space where they post, which thinking anout it is probably more truthful/factual and helpful 😂 than the drivel they usually post... last one i seen was that the AMG One is mercs secret way of developing their F1 around the cost cap budget while ignoring all the other teams that also produce OTT hypercars

It was interesting that the Mercs were going to let Lewis and George race each other at the end, I wonder would it have been the same call it Lewis was in P1.

So am I right then in saying that the only scenario where Max’ selfishness comes into play is with a double DNF for Perez and Leclerc? Possibly fastest lap points too but that’s really remote.

I defo think Checo will be less willing to compromise his own race to help Max in future. While he wont outright block Max he will probably keep a bigger eye on his own race from now on rather than sacrifice himself for Max.

I also find it somewhat amusing that Max's cùntishness is overshadowing the clusterfùck that was the Race Director completely forgetting Yuki Tsunoda was on track.

Different context sure, but parallels to be drawn.

In both cases you had a multiple world champion driver in a different league to his teammate, without whom the team certainly wouldn’t have won the previous year’s title. In both cases you have the team naively asking this driver to sacrifice their own race for their slower teammate (wildly different reasons and circumstances sure), and in both cases the driver refused and simply finished ahead on merit. No other top team has asked their top driver to do this in the last couple of decades and Red Bull have now done it twice and suffered a PR disaster both times. There is a reason no other top team has done it, because there is zero chance an Alonso or a Hamilton for example would comply if asked, and that’s why they’ve never been asked.

It all comes back to Red Bull’s obsession with treating their drivers absolutely equally and never giving one extra leeway just because he’s the champion and the much faster driver, which is a stark contrast to how other top teams generally operate. Last year Perez was never asked to help Max until he was mathematically out of the race, while Bottas was essentially a pawn to be used from race one. Now Max is mathematically out of the race in a different way and they make exactly the same ask of him as they asked of Perez at the end last year, without recognising the difference that P2 effectively means nothing compared to a true title fight and particularly in this race Perez did nothing to earn the right to finish ahead after Max put in a stunning recovery drive from the back of the field to finish comfortably ahead on merit. If P2 was so important Ferrari would have asked Sainz to hand his position to Leclerc, but they recognised that it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

The other parallel is the way the media portray it - Webber does it in 2011 and he’s a hero, Vettel does 100% the exact same thing and he’s a villain. All because they do everything in their power to tear down those who they perceive has a threat. Vettel’s “rehabilitation” in recent years wasn’t a sudden personality change, he simply no longer had a car to be a threat and therefore the media stopped distorting the way they reported everything he did. Max is the anointed villain right now so everything he does is warped to be portrayed in the most extreme way possible. It makes sense to ignore the hyperbole and step back and take a more nuanced and mature view of what was ultimately a 6th place that will have next to no impact in the grand scheme of things.

I reckon they would have still let them race. We can see from history that Mercedes have generally allowed their drivers to race until it came to the championship where 1 may need to be favoured. You have to give them credit for that...

Bad day all round for Max yesterday. Originally I thought Lewis hadn’t left enough space for Max but the analysis from Karun cleared it up and tied in with the stewards decision(essentially he was carrying too much speed after going around the outside that even if Lewis had left him more room he wouldn’t have avoided contact).

hold up who are you to come on here and give a level headed opinion on that moment we all know Lewis with his spicy enginge tried to kill max once again with his invincible merc that was developed under the guise of the AMG one and max has never put a foot wrong now go wash your mouth out with soap for all that sense you are talkin and write "I hate lewis Hamiltion" 1000 times.../s

But yeah i felt like Karun did explain it well, and the stewards were taking it as a turn 2 incident, max was ahead T1 but behind T2. Its a Turn 2 matter not a turn 1 matter that a lot of people seem to think it is, the penalty in hindsight I dunno maybe not really justified, he should of backed out taken more evasive action with the closing gap like the rest of the grid would of most likely IMO. It cost max very little in the long run and he alway has a free place when checo is ahead of him. Ferrari were faster merc were faster and so was alonso

Just took this snippet out so no need to read the wall of text:

"It all comes back to Red Bull’s obsession with treating their drivers absolutely equally and never giving one extra leeway just because he’s the champion and the much faster driver"

But that...THAT right there is why nothing you say about Max or Red Bull has any merit and is seen as trolling. If you actually genuinely believe the above bit of text you wrote then you need to be sectioned!

But wasn't the message that if he didn't pass Alonso by turn 13 them to swap with Perez. Seems strange to give a message about a turn he'd already passed. I'm not buying that excuse, this seems like damage limitation for Max seeing as he came across so bad by not giving up the spot.

Yeah it’s an odd one because as you said, the radio chat was broadcast… and I’m fairly sure I heard him be told to allow checo pass at T14… but, RB know this is all available so it doesn’t make sense to give what appears to be a bullshit statement like that! That’s what makes it interesting…. If it was lies someone must have called it out before publication…?!?