I'm slowly changing my mind about Seb. I had written him off as whiny brat that missed being in the best car, but seeing him in Aston Martin, I'm wondering how much was just a toxic environment at Ferrari. Really impressed with his statement about Checo deserving the Red Bull ride.
In reply to alfadriver :
The comments from fans of Bottas switching to Williams and the new rules making the Williams at the front of the grid and Mercedes at the bottom are hilarious. I think it's obvious that Russell isn't going to be in a Williams next year.
For some reason I think that a Bottas Russel seat switch is imminent. It would be an amazing twist to see the Williams be a good car next year and the Merc not dominant. Certainly not wishing for any of it but lots of irony if it worked out that way.
So, Valteri behind Max, and Sergio behind Lewis. X-treme Strategery discussions will be interesting overnight.
Start, all men for themselves? Is there something you can do from the second row to disturb the front guys, without costing yourself? A heap of smoking cars at turn one and Sainz runs off to the win?
Pit stop time comes. Undercut? Overcut? Unless the online stuff was wrong, Checo is on softs, and Lewis has a couple more laps on his mediums than the rest of the guys. Brings an interesting dimension to the start, and to the pit strategy.
It should be fun tomorrow.
It almost worked for Lewis. Very nice drive for Max. Quite a race for fifth to about twelfth.
And Danny Ric will feel awfully good tonight.
That was a heck of a race, unless you are VB or Ferrari...
A Bottas/Russell swap has got to be coming soon. Bottas was ripping the berk out of his team quite publicly and he's now 5th in the WDC behind Lando in a McLaren!
If a guy really wanted to stretch logic, we could blame Valteri for Lewis not winning today.
He flat spotted a tire, so he had to pit early, so Max pitted early to cover him off, and we know the rest of the story.
The right tyre choice at the right time equals MAJOR SCOREBOARD ....YEA BABY MAX FREEKIN V
Streetwiseguy said:If a guy really wanted to stretch logic, we could blame Valteri for Lewis not winning today.
He flat spotted a tire, so he had to pit early, so Max pitted early to cover him off, and we know the rest of the story.
Bottas didn't provide much resistance to Max at the end of the race. If he'd held the Red Bull off for another lap, it could have made all the difference.
Gotta hand it to Max, he does not fluster under pressure.
Keith Tanner said:Streetwiseguy said:If a guy really wanted to stretch logic, we could blame Valteri for Lewis not winning today.
He flat spotted a tire, so he had to pit early, so Max pitted early to cover him off, and we know the rest of the story.
Bottas didn't provide much resistance to Max at the end of the race. If he'd held the Red Bull off for another lap, it could have made all the difference.
Gotta hand it to Max, he does not fluster under pressure.
They should have brought Valteri in for a third set of tires when he first started to bitch about them. It would have probably been a bit before Max, so...
I am so glad we only have to wait a week for Mercedes to make a comeback
So outside of the top 4 (which was interesting enough)- how about the classic Ferrari v McLaren race? LeClerc really struggled at the start, but I thought Sainz had enough to stay quick. And then seeing Lando drop back to 10th at the start- it looked bad. Then it all switched around- after the tire change, the Ferrari was a terrible car, and the McLaren was quick- they really earned that 5-6 today! Whereas Ferrari was beaten by Minardi again.
And I had also thought Alpine would have done better too- at least Alonso got points.
Decent strategy for Aston Martin- both cars getting points after driving forver on the opening tires.
Given that the top 4 had 2/3 of a lap on the next best- there are two very different races going on. It will be interesting when the resources are more even. At least for teams not painted in red.
I think this season is a lot like the 2017 season, so my predication is Hamilton back in the lead in September, max has 2 DNF's, Hamilton secures the championship. The constructor title I think Redbull still has a shot, I think the pressure on Bottas, is not Hamilton but Checo wining some key battles.
Streetwiseguy said:Keith Tanner said:Streetwiseguy said:If a guy really wanted to stretch logic, we could blame Valteri for Lewis not winning today.
He flat spotted a tire, so he had to pit early, so Max pitted early to cover him off, and we know the rest of the story.
Bottas didn't provide much resistance to Max at the end of the race. If he'd held the Red Bull off for another lap, it could have made all the difference.
Gotta hand it to Max, he does not fluster under pressure.
They should have brought Valteri in for a third set of tires when he first started to bitch about them. It would have probably been a bit before Max, so...
I am surprised they didn't bring him in for a fastest lap attempt after Max went by. Maybe they didn't want to risk something happening and having him drop further down.
trigun7469 said:I think this season is a lot like the 2017 season, so my predication is Hamilton back in the lead in September, max has 2 DNF's, Hamilton secures the championship. The constructor title I think Redbull still has a shot, I think the pressure on Bottas, is not Hamilton but Checo wining some key battles.
I'm right with you there. Lewis seems to thrive on a challenge since he recovered from Nico's mind games in 2016. He's not liable to start flailing around, he's more likely to raise his game. If that happens, we'll see the gap between him and Bottas grow even further. Even this past weekend, you wouldn't have anticipated how close it was at the end based on Friday's numbers.
But Max has matured. He's far less likely to make stupid mistakes and he apparently does not feel pressure when he has Lewis all over his gearbox. We'll see what his mental game is like over the long haul if this turns into a back-and-forth championship battle.
Keith Tanner said:Streetwiseguy said:Keith Tanner said:Streetwiseguy said:If a guy really wanted to stretch logic, we could blame Valteri for Lewis not winning today.
He flat spotted a tire, so he had to pit early, so Max pitted early to cover him off, and we know the rest of the story.
Bottas didn't provide much resistance to Max at the end of the race. If he'd held the Red Bull off for another lap, it could have made all the difference.
Gotta hand it to Max, he does not fluster under pressure.
They should have brought Valteri in for a third set of tires when he first started to bitch about them. It would have probably been a bit before Max, so...
I am surprised they didn't bring him in for a fastest lap attempt after Max went by. Maybe they didn't want to risk something happening and having him drop further down.
Doing that would have dropped him behind Perez, and keeping 3rd would have been more points. I don't remember if there was time to do it after Perez had passed him.
At this race Mercedes was prioritizing track position over tire speed, I suspect that was because they were running more downforce than Red Bull and the extra drag meant that even with DRS they didn't have enough straightline speed to pull off a pass. Look at how long Hamilton spent trying DRS passes on Verstappen after Mercedes screwed up the pit stop timing and lost the lead due to an undercut. The Mercedes wings were also visibly bigger than the RB ones.
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
Duh, forgot about Perez. The fastest lap would have happened if the OTHER Red Bull got by.
I don't think anyone in the paddock thinks Mercedes screwed up the pit stop timing, not even Red Bull. That undercut was crazy strong and Lewis still came out basically beside Max. He picked up about 3s on that lap.
Keith Tanner said:I am surprised they didn't bring him in for a fastest lap attempt after Max went by. Maybe they didn't want to risk something happening and having him drop further down.
When Perez got by Bottas at the end he went wide on corner exit off track as a result of being wide at the apex incase Bottas was still there. There was a chance of a 5 second penalty for that so they left Bottas out to snag third if that happened. At the end of the day they declared the pass was over before Perez went wide so he did not gain an advantage and Bottas ended up just over 5 seconds behind him even if they did give him that penalty. It seems like a case where if Bottas had stuck his nose in there (he probably couldn't based on how far off line he was through those corners) Perez probably would have had to give the position back or go hammer down to negate the penalty.
Edit - Perez passed Bottas with 5 to go, lots of time to bring him for tires after that for a fastest lap and zero pressure from behind, they even showed them getting tires ready for this but then the above happened so they left him out.
Keith Tanner said:In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
I don't think anyone in the paddock thinks Mercedes screwed up the pit stop timing, not even Red Bull. That undercut was crazy strong and Lewis still came out basically beside Max. He picked up about 3s on that lap.
Well, predicting the strength of the undercut is the kind of thing that the strategists are paid to do -- that's their job. Pitting Bottas was likely to bring Verstappen in the next lap to defend against a Mercedes undercut, so predicting that and bringing Hamilton in at the same time would have made sense. Yes it's likely that there were other considerations we don't know about and that at the time the strategists thought those considerations were more important than a small risk of RB undercutting them. They were wrong though, and I don't think it's unreasonable to consider that a mistake.
Verstappen was 3.5 seconds ahead of Hamilton when he made the second pit stop on lap 32 and was 2.9 seconds ahead at the finish. If he'd done the same pit stop from 1 second behind Hamilton (if Mercedes had pitted Hamilton 1 lap earlier and kept the lead) then he would probably have run out of laps before he managed to catch up, and Mercedes would probably have won the race.
Once Verstappen made his error on the opening lap and lost his initial lead Mercedes had an opportunity to win, but their own error in execution meant they couldn't follow through on it.
I'm going to stop posting on a Monday morning because I've obviously forgotten what happened in the last few minutes of the race.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
It was all overshadowed by Max hunting down and passing Lewis at the same time.
Overall a much better race than everyone expected though from start to finish with no red flags, safety cars or retirements. There was a decent amount of actual overtakes and the DRS seemed to be just right. I can't even remember a yellow sector throughout. Vive Le France!
In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :
But the guy in second place has nothing to lose by coming early. The Bottas situation pulled them way earlier than Merc wanted.
No question there were mistakes made by Merc. But, based on the undercut pass by Max, the only choice was to go long with Lewis. He had the opportunity to pass after the first stop, but was not able to. So, run the tires to the end and hope Max gets caught up in traffic, or wears the tires out. And, it just about worked.
I was going to say their bigger mistake was in not giving Bottas new tires when Max got his third set, but they were hoping for him to be a blocker more than they wanted him to beat Sergio, I guess.
Red Bull won that race more than Mercedes lost it, I feel.
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