adam525i
adam525i Dork
4/18/21 9:36 a.m.

Better start the Perez replacement rumors so he can get thrown off to the point of failing the rest of the season lol.

wae
wae UberDork
4/18/21 9:44 a.m.

In reply to jb229 :

Haha!  That was exactly my thought process at the time!

Streetwiseguy
Streetwiseguy MegaDork
4/18/21 10:03 a.m.

Lewis pulled a bit of a Seb, there.

alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
4/18/21 10:04 a.m.
alfadriver said:
loosecannon said:

Ugh!! I was so excited watching Lewis putting pressure on Max and that mistake! Lewis can still get a podium, though. A lot of drivers are having a horrible day.

If the grid notification is right, he's have a tough time doing that- they have him at 9th, a lap down.  But it looks like they will grid and a lot of cars will get unlapped.

Heck of a charge, there.  

BrewCity20
BrewCity20 New Reader
4/18/21 10:12 a.m.

Only Mercedes can have one of their cars crash so hard it causes a red flag - and benefit on all fronts from it.

Unreal.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
4/18/21 10:24 a.m.

In reply to BrewCity20 :

I'm not sure about ALL fronts, I'm pretty sure they would have liked a few more constructor points. But yeah, that definitely swung their way. 

I'm not surprised Lewis was being aggressive coming through the traffic. That was his chance to take the lead and it just just bit him. Great recovery even though it seemed a bit like a video game with the cheat codes enabled. 

Streetwiseguy
Streetwiseguy MegaDork
4/18/21 10:43 a.m.

Lewis comments after the race suggest that he knew as he went for it, just as we all did, that trying that pass on the wet line wasn't going to end well.

Max was the class of the field today, even without Lewis little parking episode.

Jim Pettengill
Jim Pettengill HalfDork
4/18/21 11:06 a.m.

Great drive from Lando!!

jb229
jb229 New Reader
4/18/21 11:11 a.m.

Lando had the drive of the day for me, easily.  Huge weekend for McLaren everywhere.

accordionfolder
accordionfolder SuperDork
4/18/21 12:54 p.m.

Hamilton fan or not, the dude is just a class act.

YEEHAW Lando!!

loosecannon
loosecannon SuperDork
4/18/21 2:57 p.m.

Italy and Portugal were considered poor tracks for Mercedes low rake concept but I think it's ominous that Toto said that they (Mercedes) were the quickest car today. I suspect we are going to see a fired up Lewis in two weeks and with Bottas falling behind in the points, Mercedes won't even have to treat them equally.

Feedyurhed
Feedyurhed UltraDork
4/18/21 3:38 p.m.

One of the best F1 races in a long time IMO.  Like it best when there isn't one team dominating race after race. Good start to the season. Congrats Lando!!

jb229
jb229 New Reader
4/18/21 11:08 p.m.

Watching the replay on ESPN, lap 60:

Lando: I'VE GOT CLUTCH SLIP IN THE CORNERS, LOSING DRIVE

Team: Lando, you're knocking the left paddle with your hand.

 

This race had everything.

AaronT
AaronT Reader
4/19/21 9:35 a.m.

With the day Bottas was having, Mercedes was able to optimize points having Ham in 2nd and Bottas DNF. If not for the crash, Mercedes ends up with Bottas maybe 6th, probably worse, and Ham a lap down and possibly out of the points. 

BrewCity20
BrewCity20 New Reader
4/19/21 9:42 a.m.
AaronT said:

With the day Bottas was having, Mercedes was able to optimize points having Ham in 2nd and Bottas DNF. If not for the crash, Mercedes ends up with Bottas maybe 6th, probably worse, and Ham a lap down and possibly out of the points. 

This was my thought as well. Mercedes was able to maximize both Lewis' points and Constructors points. And let's not kid ourselves - they don't care about Bottas.

So frustrating that Red Bull couldn't take advantage/the lead through these first two races. I have a bad feeling Mercedes is going to get stronger and stronger as the year goes on.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
4/19/21 10:04 a.m.

They definitely care about Bottas. He pushes Lewis, he doesn't take out his teammate and he brings home a LOT of manufacturer points. That last is very important for the budget. They would much rather have a Lewis/Bottas pairing than a Lewis/Rosberg pairing and Toto has said they would not allow that to happen again. Although when he has a bad weekend, it's really bad. And with the cost cap this year, having to build a whole new car for Bottas after this weekend is going to limit their ability to make upgrades.

Ross Brawn's column talks about how the wet really exaggerates the importance of getting tires up to temp. We saw it between Max and Lewis - Max ran away, Lewis fired up his tires a dozen laps later and just ran Max down. I have decided that Lewis Hamilton on worn intermediates is my favorite F1 driver mode. He's a beast. Anyhow, Bottas couldn't get his tires up to temp so he was mired in the traffic at the back of the pack. Lewis managed to get the slicks hot and then it was just a video game.

codrus (Forum Supporter)
codrus (Forum Supporter) PowerDork
4/19/21 10:17 a.m.
AaronT said:

With the day Bottas was having, Mercedes was able to optimize points having Ham in 2nd and Bottas DNF. If not for the crash, Mercedes ends up with Bottas maybe 6th, probably worse, and Ham a lap down and possibly out of the points. 

Hamilton was a lap down and in 9th after his pit stop to fix the wing, so it's unlikely he'd have fallen out of the points.  He'd probably have made up one or two spots from there.

Yes, Mercedes probably wound up with a few more constructor points from 2nd + DNF (18) than, say, 6th and 7th (14).  Saying that they "optimized" points would seem to imply that it was intentional though, and that seems very unlikely.  

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
4/19/21 10:24 a.m.

If Lewis had backed out of the gravel from the start (which was hilarious to watch but smart) instead of booping the wing into the wall and without the Bottas/Russell crash he would have still been fairly far up the field. Still ahead of Bottas, for example. Could have made for a good chase.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
4/19/21 10:32 a.m.

And Hass - did anyone notice them on the timing screens? It was just awful. Scumacher had that bad start where he had to keep driving around with no nose on the car because his own accident had closed the pit lane entrance, and he was still way ahead of Mazepin. With the free lap from the red flag they still ended up 2 laps down which means that Max lapped both Hass cars three times. A complete failure to perform and it's only going to get worse since they're not bothing to do much more than put new tires on the cars between races. The 107% rule is still in effect for qualifying, will we see a Hass bumped from the starting grip for performance reasons? 

If I'm doing my math right, the cutoff for Imola would have been 1:19.6. Mazepin was 1:16.7 so still well clear.

adam525i
adam525i Dork
4/19/21 11:17 a.m.

That was not a good race for Schumacher, his crash was under a safety car trying to keep heat in his tires. It was interesting hearing Ricciardo and Sainz's comments after the race about learning the cars and how every car on the grid is so different to drive and yet gets such similar times on track. Having two rookies in your car must be a large disadvantage to a team, add on a E36 M3 car that even veteran drivers couldn't get comfortable in last year and things start to look really bad.

adam525i
adam525i Dork
4/19/21 11:19 a.m.
loosecannon said:

When did Mazepin last spin? A handy webpage for people who must know when the last time Mazepin spun

Just bringing this back to latest page as it's pretty funny. He almost made it through the GP but right at the end looped it.

AaronT
AaronT Reader
4/19/21 11:20 a.m.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
AaronT said:

With the day Bottas was having, Mercedes was able to optimize points having Ham in 2nd and Bottas DNF. If not for the crash, Mercedes ends up with Bottas maybe 6th, probably worse, and Ham a lap down and possibly out of the points. 

Hamilton was a lap down and in 9th after his pit stop to fix the wing, so it's unlikely he'd have fallen out of the points.  He'd probably have made up one or two spots from there.

Yes, Mercedes probably wound up with a few more constructor points from 2nd + DNF (18) than, say, 6th and 7th (14).  Saying that they "optimized" points would seem to imply that it was intentional though, and that seems very unlikely.  

It was not my intention to imply that Toto offered Bot and Rus as sacrifice to the gods of petrol. Fun conspiracy theory, but obviously not the case.

The math also has to factor in the Safety Car conditions that Ham was driving under from Aquaminerala (sp?) through the pit entrance. 9th is not where he would have ended up under green conditions.

It did work out better for the WCC for Merc this way this race, if you ignore the cost of rebuilding Bot's car. Without the crash Ham would have come out of the pits in 12th behind Tsu. If he could drive the same delta as the first half of the race he makes it up to 5th at the absolute best. Assuming Bot could get to 6th they end up on equal points as Ham 2nd (18 point). That's highly unlikely given that the time gaps were much smaller after the red flag. It seems the most likely finish position is Ham 8th, Bot 9th or 10th, which is 5 or 6 points.

alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
4/19/21 12:06 p.m.
adam525i said:

That was not a good race for Schumacher, his crash was under a safety car trying to keep heat in his tires. It was interesting hearing Ricciardo and Sainz's comments after the race about learning the cars and how every car on the grid is so different to drive and yet gets such similar times on track. Having two rookies in your car must be a large disadvantage to a team, add on a E36 M3 car that even veteran drivers couldn't get comfortable in last year and things start to look really bad.

Performance wise, no doubt having two rookies is really tough.

But survival wise, these specific two rookies were the best choice Haas could make, including all of the drivers that were available in the field.  One brings massive funding from dad, the other brings advertising from Germany.

What would be something is if they could figure out why the rear of the car is *that* bad, and they can get a cheap fix for it.  If either one of them figure it out, and convince Gene to spend the money on the part, I would put them as future world champions- just to be able to fix a broken team like that as a rookie.

84FSP
84FSP UltraDork
4/19/21 3:06 p.m.
jb229 said:

Watching the replay on ESPN, lap 60:

Lando: I'VE GOT CLUTCH SLIP IN THE CORNERS, LOSING DRIVE

Team: Lando, you're knocking the left paddle with your hand.

 

This race had everything.

That was hilarious...

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter)
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) HalfDork
4/19/21 3:09 p.m.

And now we get an announcement that F1 is coming to Miami on basically a high speed autocross course around the Dolphin's stadium in Carol City...   

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