2025 F1 General Discussion Thread

I have no idea where this "favourite" BS has come from, but it has to be complete nonsense. McLaren have absolutely tied themselves in knots trying to be fair to both drivers, to the point of absurdity. Lando gets a bad pit stop and Oscar has to let him past. Lando bumps Oscar and Oscar gets first dibs on qualifying slots and slipstreams.

Also according to The Race, the slow pitstops have come from the wheel gun system, the fix for which is seemingly extremely difficult and could take until next year to sort.

How is it nonsense to speculate that McLaren are getting very close to having to back one driver over the other in order to hold off Max's late championship charge. It's all good trying to be unbiased when both drivers have a huge gap over third but that's gone. Arguably Oscar still has a good lead but he's bleeding points at the moment. The dynamic has shifted. It would be hugely embarrasing for the team to loose the drivers championship. It's been easy for them in the last few races given Oscar has been further down the field so there's no decision to make. But what do they do next week if Max is P1 and Lando is the car in front of Oscar? Oscar has the better lead over Max so do they let him pass the "in-form" Lando to maintain the bigger lead? Or do they just leave it play out and try to avoid the problem. At what point do McLaren decide one driver is their championship priority. It might work out that the decision is made for them so this all might come to nothing BUT… it's got to be on their mind that at some point they may need to choose who to prioritize. Every weekend now that Max takes 7-15 points out of the McLaren drivers leads that question becomes more burning.

But this messaging is always from one side of the garage or the other, further confused by what the broadcaster chooses to highlight during coverage. By definition these messages will always be centred around the driver that that side of the garage looks after. And then further confused by which of them is ahead of the other. Giving tows to each other is usually a function of who's showing better at qualifying or in danger of being eliminated. In other words, normal team behaviour.

My comments weren't based on the current situation, but on comments made going back further suggesting that the team favoured Norris over Piastri. There's no evidence of that as far as I can see. They may put their effort into one driver if Max is seen to be a threat, but even then, I'm not sure that that would be a good strategy given they're very close and one DNF could derail the effort completely if the non-prioritised driver leapfrogged the priority driver but due to being treated as the second driver was not in a position to compete for the title.

Surely the sensible option is to let both drivers race and let the points fall where they may. If they're finishing one, two, that's Max kept to third or worse.

Especially on the setup. At Austin because they hadn't had the run in the sprint they had to go conservative with the ride height as they couldn't risk too much plank wear.

The interesting thing with RB is Tsunoda starting to score points. There's now only 10 points between Mercedes at second and RB at 4th in the constructors.

I'd put max favourite now. Redbull will throw everything at it as they won't be winning next year regardless.

as they won't be winning next year regardless

If you mean the PU, they hired a lot from the Brackley facility, and they have Ford onboard now. Having said that, it is anyones guess, Brembo let leak that a lot of teams have specd very different brake sizes for the rear already.

I wouldn't be putting my money on any team over another right now.

Hondas issues weren't just wth their PU though, it was the requests from McLaren and not having enough time to develop the PU. Once they aligned with RB, they gave them more freedom and it worked out in the end.

Either way, no one has a clue. I would be interersted in seeing how AM and Honda get on, same as well with Merc overall. While they got the PU regs nailed for 2014, they made a balls of the 2022 aero regs.

Suppose the difference is that in the last couple of races where it mattered Lando expected that his strategy pick wouldnt benefit Oscar. It was ridiculous of the team to ask him to give the place back in Monza(something I don’t think would have happened without the car failure at Zandvoort), and then in Singapore he said something along the lines of “I don’t care what strategy we use as long as Oscar doesn’t benefit”, which is a mad thing to expect. You’re the lead driver, you dictate the calls, but you can’t expect to be protected from the outcome - and if the team agree to it then it very much feels like the second driver is support.

I don’t blame Norris for it - he’s fighting for a championship and the team aren’t going against it. Just something I think Piastri should take into next season - if he’s the leading driver make sure the whole garage knows it.

I think we can all appreciate this work of art, it boarders on pornography for me.

Seeing the Honda badge through it is beautiful, I love this sport.

While this track is a tad drab, the altitude plays havoc with the cooling. They run high DF wings but the air only gives them Monza levels of DF.

Why would that be a problem? It's not as though Sky have any influence on the result.

In what way? Show more shots of Audis on the track? Hardly likely when it's the leaders and winners that get the most coverage.

Managed to finish this yesterday: