Mercedes has been caught on the back foot a few races this year, responding to the pace and strategy of RedBull, and Mercedes came up short. Mercedes is doing what they need to do to win, that's professional, top tier racing with millions of dollars at stake. This competitivenes and and edge-of-your-seat racing is what fans wanted out of Formula One and has been lacking since 16'.
" a bit of gamesmanship" for sure with Lewis playing it perfectly to keep red bull from another shot at pole.
Also in F1 adjacent news, "Williams Formula 1 reserve Jack Aitken and Ferrari factory driver Davide Rigon has been transferred to hospital after a major accident in the opening hour of the Spa 24 Hours." Looks like Aitken lost it at the top of Eau Rouge and several cars piled in.
In reply to johndej :
Ooh, that's bad news. Hope everyone is ok
Reports say nothing life threatening but pretty big impacts from the videos available.
What did MB have in their bag of tricks to boost them to 1-2 when they had been wallowing around in 3-4 or 4-5 as recently as Austria? And why wasn't this addressed then????? Drama anyone????
In reply to 759NRNG :
Pirelli changed rear tire compounds after the failures at Azerbaijan, Mercedes has adapted to the change, faster and better then RBR has.
Uh no not buying that(tires).....Toto and the boyz are twisting the knobs.....
759NRNG said:Uh no not buying that(tires).....Toto and the boyz are twisting the knobs.....
I think it's misleading to read too much into the time deltas. Verstappen had a one-off problem with his first run in Q3 (he says on the radio that the car suddenly started understeering -- could be a bad set of tires, perhaps he got the warmup outlap wrong, who knows), and then on his second run the track temperature had gone up and gotten slower as a result. If you look at the rest of the field, only a couple people got improvements in that final run. Hamilton's time was only 4 tenths quicker, and only 2 tenths over Verstappen's Q2 time.
The two cars are close enough that the race-to-race variability in track configuration and weather conditions will make one or the other car faster. I think that's all this is.
johndej said:" a bit of gamesmanship" for sure with Lewis playing it perfectly to keep red bull from another shot at pole.
So I reject this concept strongly! There was 100% NO GAMESMANSHIP. MB came out too late so on their out lap they got backed up by both Alpines, Norris, Gasly and Leclerc. They all crossed the line with gaps around 7-11seconds between each. So Hamilton did the same as everyone else, but he alone is labeled as playing games, I call BS, because it's just straight lies..RBR screwed up not getting their cars out early enough. MB basically also screwed up as they couldn't do their desired outlap either.
Nothing but sensational media hype.
What will the next "gamesmanship" be? Hamilton ate breakfast on raceday.. yup obviously gamesmanship on Hamilton's part, Lewis ate a vegan breakfast thus Max had an upset stomach....ugh
Rain. This is going to be wild.
New York Nick said:Rain. This is going to be wild.
LOL....Now how did you know that was going to happen? Max and Christian will be thinking there's a conspiracy.
Two races in a row, so much for an exciting rest of the season.
Valtteri sure is a good wingman.
DeadSkunk (Warren) said:New York Nick said:Rain. This is going to be wild.
LOL....Now how did you know that was going to happen? Max and Christian will be thinking there's a conspiracy.
IDK, taking out everyone with triple digit championship points *except* your teammate is pretty neat for MB.
A return to days-of-yore when teams had a T-car might be nice along about now. Although it is interesting to see how quickly the crews can mitigate the damage.
VB has not made any friends in that deal.
Ha!! It just got interesting again....pretty weird .... Max in front of Lewis...
I've never seen a standing start with 1 car on the grid.
If y'all think Bottas did that intentionally, you need some great big tinfoil hats. You think Mercedes could organize that coup then fail to bring in Lewis for slicks?
+1 on loosecannon's comment
lap 48 LH gets new tires. "It's hammer time all the way" :-)
RB strategy....I know no one cares ......but just bring it home???
Goodness gracious. How wide is Alonso's car? That was a heck of a race to watch. Mercedes strategists did a hell of a recovery job there.
Lewis basically got mugged by the whole field at the start with those pit stops. The irony of the whole thing is that none of them had to pit, they could have done it under the red flag. If someone had figured that out, they would have had a big advantage.
That was a fantastic race. The last 20 laps were excellent and Alonso ran a gem of a race.
loosecannon said:If y'all think Bottas did that intentionally, you need some great big tinfoil hats. You think Mercedes could organize that coup then fail to bring in Lewis for slicks?
Anyone who says that is obviously trolling, as is customary on the internet. Bottas locked up, just really E36 M3 car control with very lucky consequences.
In reply to 759NRNG :
RB just slightly missed out on the Merc undercut and cost Max 3-4 spots. Without damage he would've charged through the field similarly to Lewis.
In reply to AaronT :
Gotten farther than 10th, sure; carved through the field, no way. Too much damage.
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