FORMULA ONE - 2020

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

z31maniac said:

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

Lewis hasn't signed yet for next year yet.  Just saying......

Not concerned in the slightest. He wants number 8. 

And Merc doesn't want him winning it in someone else's car.

I'd love to see Mercedes sign Russell, keep Bottas. Hamilton replaces Albon. Red Bull keeps Max. Then we see some indication of the relative abilities of the cars and drivers. Will it happen? Of course not....I've just got my meds all screwed up!

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

z31maniac said:

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

Lewis hasn't signed yet for next year yet.  Just saying......

Not concerned in the slightest. He wants number 8. 

And Merc doesn't want him winning it in someone else's car.

More like Hamilton doesn't want to lose in someone else's car...

I needed a cigarette after that race and I don't smoke. 

If not for Mercedes blunders, it would be a Mercedes 1-2 like any other weekend. Mercedes performance in my opinion looked like the pre-Lewis years of the pace is there but dumb mistakes and reliability (in this case the reliability the punctured tire). F1 can be tricky and contracts more or less mean nothing, so Russel could be there next year, but he doesn't come across as the Alpha like Senna,Shumi, and Lewis, which I think is needed to be a F1 champ. Other then maybe champs Button or Kimi, I haven't read anything crazy on them be extreme Alphas.  Sometimes that Alpha is what brings teams to the next level. I feel bad for Bottas as it seems as though he is getting beat down on and off the track mentally. I have to wonder what would happen to Russel mentally if he teamed up with Lewis.

How Bottas ended that race and then not end up in jail I'll never know. After the hosing he got from his pit crew I might have been in a seething red mist rage..

The reason for the pit stop problem has been clearly explained - basically, a radio problem with incorrect prioritization of messages. Short window of opportunity, a missed call to some of the team members and whoops. The pit team actually saved Bottas, if he'd been given George's tires all sorts of problems would have happened. I suspect he would have had to stop again and had his hards put back on.

Based on the moves that Russell laid down when passing both backmarkers and his own teammate - twice - I think he's got the on-track confidence he needs. He showed more mental strength than Vettel does when things didn't go his way, for example. He was apparently asking for all sorts of changes to the car to sort it out during practice so he's not cowed by the fact he was sitting in the big car either. I'm a fan. It's been easy to overlook him noodling around at the back of the field and beating the crap out of his ineffectual teammate, but he's got the chops to take the big prize IMO.

 There were two very slow laps in the middle of the race that I wonder about, though. Bottas took a big chunk of time out of George at that point, from +8s to +5. Was it traffic? 

I kept waiting for clarification on that. It sounded like either a software or settings issue, or traffic. Or something. And yeah you're right about the stop. I still wonder though if both cars woulda better off staying out during  that last yellow. Yes Bottas lost a lot of time on the tires he woulda been on minus the stop, but he would have been losing that time up front of the pack. Dunno. All I know for sure is that was one wierd interesting race...

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

The SKY team mentioned that the driver has 3 laps to fix that mistake- he did it in one.  So one can hope that he's not penalized- the mistake cost him the win, probably.  That should be penalty enough.  He lost a lot of positions having to come in again.

I thought I heard that to and so was unsure why it was a question mark at the end of the race. I could see penalties for intentional effort by a team to use the other car's set but they brought him right back in and fixed it.

The clarification came after the race.

Track engineering chief Andrew Shovlin. “We have found a smoking gun and that has to do with how the radio system prioritises messages, for instance when Ron is calling out the crews and getting them to get the tyres ready for the two drivers. There were a number of broadcasts at that time on the radio system.

"Now, the system knows to prioritise the messages coming from Ron because the most important thing is the tyres are there, more so than whatever a driver says or whatever someone else in the crew might say but it looks like there is a period whereby as the system is deciding to let the prioritised message through, we missed a key bit of the broadcast such that half of the tyre collectors didn't get the message and it looks like half of them did.

“Therefore, we've got the cars coming in and all the tyres are not ready in the pit lane… There was very little time between the safety car and George coming into the pits and that's where we found a smoking gun.”

They had a big, big lead when the safety car went out and they were worried about getting caught out by a SC restart with shagged rubber. That's just what happened to Bottas, he got mugged after the restart and lost a bunch of places. Sergio didn't, but hey. So it should have been a free pitstop with little risk. But not zero.

Advan046 said:

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

The SKY team mentioned that the driver has 3 laps to fix that mistake- he did it in one.  So one can hope that he's not penalized- the mistake cost him the win, probably.  That should be penalty enough.  He lost a lot of positions having to come in again.

I thought I heard that to and so was unsure why it was a question mark at the end of the race. I could see penalties for intentional effort by a team to use the other car's set but they brought him right back in and fixed it.

That 3-lap rule is for a slightly different tire infraction.  According to the article I read on motorsport.com, there is no grace period attached to the rule about running tires from the wrong car.

It's also apparently the first time this particular infraction has been triggered. It's one of those situations where the rules say something but in reality it wouldn't have affected the race at all. If Bottas had a set of fresh mediums left and Russell didn't, then it would make sense that putting Bottas' fresh tires on Russell's car would have been a competitive advantage. Since both drivers had the same tires available, it didn't matter. But you don't get to leave grey areas in the rules.

I don't think I've ever seen Toto slag a driver after a race. Setting the stage?

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.bottas-did-not-shine-in-sakhir-gp-says-wolf-as-the-finn-blames-poor-start.12cn85mj1oyDcQfuyNvsaz.html 

I am a Mclaren fan and slightly a Williams fan. Mostly been a Hamilton fan.

But I kept up on the goings on of Williams. Russell, got more press than usual this weekend and you can see he was struggling with not just saying, "I can beat Bottas all day, any day, on any track.." Russell has said some strong things while at Williams about Kubica and Latifi and Claire and the team. He gets right on that line sometimes of going against them. 

He knows he is good at racing and that he isn't experienced (he probably has a lot of good training but he is taking it slow) with politics of talking to teams and the media. I found his comments at times to be rather like the entitled privileged brat and at other times to be like a hard working guy with confidence to say what he can do. Almost like Alonso at the start of his career, but he has drifted more towards entitled brat unfortunately. 

Bottas must know for 100% sure that unless Russell drops out of the MB family and gets signed with Redbull or Ferrari, he is out of a job no later than 2022 and needs to start looking for the next one. 

wae said:

Advan046 said:

alfadriver (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

The SKY team mentioned that the driver has 3 laps to fix that mistake- he did it in one.  So one can hope that he's not penalized- the mistake cost him the win, probably.  That should be penalty enough.  He lost a lot of positions having to come in again.

I thought I heard that to and so was unsure why it was a question mark at the end of the race. I could see penalties for intentional effort by a team to use the other car's set but they brought him right back in and fixed it.

That 3-lap rule is for a slightly different tire infraction.  According to the article I read on motorsport.com, there is no grace period attached to the rule about running tires from the wrong car.

Ah I see a couple news sites state that the penalty was a 20,000 euro fine.

It's my understanding that the 3 lap rule applies to running a mismatched set of rubber - hards on the rear and mediums up front, for example. Not to stealing someone else's tires :)

Keith Tanner said:

 

 There were two very slow laps in the middle of the race that I wonder about, though. Bottas took a big chunk of time out of George at that point, from +8s to +5. Was it traffic? 

Sensor failure, or he didn't get some button in the right spot after the stop.

The move of the race for me was Russell hanging on to the outside line through turn 6 to get by Bottas into Turn 7.

Then I really enjoyed some of Albon's passes which were only seen after the race on various news sites. He just had WAY too much downforce to do anything during the race. I remember reading about his plan after FP3 and just kept thinking, that won't work? The track seemed to be wearing in quickly and even last weekend the tires seemed to last longer than projected so for once Pirelli chose the perfect tires for these two weekends and then Albon's side of the garage handicap him with more wing. Just weird.

Streetwiseguy said:

Keith Tanner said:

 

 There were two very slow laps in the middle of the race that I wonder about, though. Bottas took a big chunk of time out of George at that point, from +8s to +5. Was it traffic? 

Sensor failure, or he didn't get some button in the right spot after the stop.

I think it was after that, as it was after Bottas had pitted. It wasn't mentioned in the broadcast but there was a brief "delta" display that showed the two bum laps. Also, the commentators got themselves all screwed up about that power loss and Russell's speed relative to Bottas. Russell set the fastest lap of the race right after that pit stop with the "wrong" settings or bad sensor. It can be a little hard to tell with the radio messages being delayed sometimes.

I think the track was a really good one. There were more real passes than we usually see. Instead of standard Tilke fast straight into slow turn DRS passes, we had cars setting up a pass three corners in advance. That Russell/Bottas pass, for example.

Oh no wait my FAVORITE moment of the race was watching Max drive into the gravel and try to blame everyone else!!!

I was happy that the Sky commentator gave him no pass on that one as it just looked like he just gave up on braking and just drove into the wall.

Advan046 said:

I was happy that the Sky commentator gave him no pass on that one as it just looked like he just gave up on braking and just drove into the wall.

It's kinda hard to brake in gravel. :)

At most other F1 tracks that would have been paved all the way to the wall and he would have been able to steer around the incident and back onto the track.

Advan046 said:

Oh no wait my FAVORITE moment of the race was watching Max drive into the gravel and try to blame everyone else!!!

I was happy that the Sky commentator gave him no pass on that one as it just looked like he just gave up on braking and just drove into the wall.

You may have watched a different race than I did, so fill me in on how Max was in error there. Would also be interested to know how to steer through gravel.

I'm not a huge max fan or anything but he was definitely the VERY cautious party here. He was pushed out wide and dusty. 

Advan046 said:

Oh no wait my FAVORITE moment of the race was watching Max drive into the gravel and try to blame everyone else!!!

I was happy that the Sky commentator gave him no pass on that one as it just looked like he just gave up on braking and just drove into the wall.

I find my slick shod, open-wheel racecars to be especially great on gravel as well. 

Did you miss LeClerc locking up and punting Checo? And how LeClerc has a 3-grid penalty for Abu Dhani?

Brundle corrected himself after seeing replays later in the race and speculated there would be a penalty.  

AaronT said:

Advan046 said:

Oh no wait my FAVORITE moment of the race was watching Max drive into the gravel and try to blame everyone else!!!

I was happy that the Sky commentator gave him no pass on that one as it just looked like he just gave up on braking and just drove into the wall.

You may have watched a different race than I did, so fill me in on how Max was in error there. Would also be interested to know how to steer through gravel.

He could have slowed down before he got off the asphalt, for example. Slow, get behind the accidenting Ferrari and RP, then rejoin near the back. Easy to say from my comfy couch.

My wife did mock him for trying to put the blame on someone else. 

Keith Tanner said:

AaronT said:

Advan046 said:

Oh no wait my FAVORITE moment of the race was watching Max drive into the gravel and try to blame everyone else!!!

I was happy that the Sky commentator gave him no pass on that one as it just looked like he just gave up on braking and just drove into the wall.

You may have watched a different race than I did, so fill me in on how Max was in error there. Would also be interested to know how to steer through gravel.

He could have slowed down before he got off the asphalt, for example. Slow, get behind the accidenting Ferrari and RP, then rejoin near the back. Easy to say from my comfy couch.

My wife did mock him for trying to put the blame on someone else. 

It seemed like because the gravel and the dusty concrete was identical in color, Max thought he had more runway than he did from the cock-pit view of an f1 car and in the heat of the moment. 

i.e. spot the gravel from this onboard (also look how much lock he had on....) - which is a better vantage point than the one Max has. Also seemed he was trying to keep from flat-spotting his tires, since everything off the track was just literal dust.

I'm pretty neutral on Max, neither a fanboy nor a hater. His spin in The Turkish GP was his fault for trying to pass Checo (iirc) impatiently.
 

But this time It looks to me like he was the unlucky passenger in a crash that was mostly Leclerc's fault for overdriving into the turn and pushing, and a tiny bit Perez' fault for cutting the corner like that when the probability of a car being in his blind spot is pretty high.  Max, otoh, braked early so as not to enter the turn 3 wide. Maybe it was a mistake to try to go off-track without slowing more, maybe he should have known it was a gravel-trap instead of a paved runoff, but these are secondary mistakes and not the root cause of Max' crash.