[Other Sport] F1 2024

[Publius Ovidius]

Be interesting how the stewards react to sainz dangerous driving on checo! It looked like he hit a hard left straight into the side of the red bull….that could have caused serious injury to both of them.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

Switched on at 1.55pm to watch the formation lap only to see people wasting champagne on the podium. What a cock up. Doh!!

 

[The Colonel]

Big psychological win for Lando today to finish ahead of Verstappen from where he started. I know he needs to make up an average of 7 or 8 points points race and this was only 3, but I think it's a big blow to Red Bull. "If we can't finish ahead of him when we start 9 places higher, when can we?" must be going through their minds.

 

[Audax]

Be interesting how the stewards react to sainz dangerous driving on checo! It looked like he hit a hard left straight into the side of the red bull….that could have caused serious injury to both of them.

Errr, no. Absolutely 100% Perez's fault. Sainz drifted slightly to the left, but he was following the natural racing line along that stretch and Perez was the driver behind with full visibility of what was going on (vs Sainz only having a tiny mirror to look into). Perez didn't maintain the gap between his front right and Sainz's rear left, there was a touch, and that dragged Sainz across in front of Perez.

Entirely avoidable incident, and Perez is the one who failed to avoid it.

---

On a separate note ... I'm not convinced Piastri is out of the title hunt himself. He's in some very fine form at the moment. There was a stat shown repeatedly during the C4 highlights package at the end of the race that Piastri has scored the most points across the last 7 races (since Verstappen last won). Looking at the top 4 in the championship:

Verstappen - 94 points (0 wins, 2x 2nd)
Norris - 104 points (1x win, 1x 2nd, 2x 3rd)
Leclerc - 87 points (1x win, 1x 2nd, 2x 3rd)
Piastri - 135 points (2x win, 3x 2nd)

There's now 7 races remaining. Piastri is 91 points behind Verstappen. 7 weekends remaining (inc. 3 sprint weekends). He needs to close the gap by 13 points per race. It's a big ask, a very big ask. It'll require Red Bull to continue to struggle, and maybe a DNF for Verstappen somewhere along the way. But he's not out of it yet, especially given those 3 sprint weekends could provide a little help.

Looking at Norris: His calculation has now moved from needing 8 points per race to needing 8.5 per race on average. It's not a huge shift, especially given the sprint weekends where if he's able to finish ahead of Verstappen he gets a little boost over and above a race win advantage.

 

[AstroSloth]

So Red Bull have figured out where they went wrong with their development and it was...

Barcelona last year.

Horner tells an interesting story: “We have traced the development history back and it turned out that the first mistake already happened to us with an underbody upgrade in Barcelona in 2023. That was also the Grand Prix, from which Checo got his problems with the car. We just didn’t take it so seriously because Max continued to win.” Sports director Helmut Marko adds: “We are really wrong this year in Imola.”

So Verstappen was actually winning with a car that for their other driver was almost undriveable, and it was only when they really messed it up this year he's started having issues.

Although he's not everyone's cup of tea (to put it lightly), you can't deny how ridiculously talented he is.

 

[A1X]

So Red Bull have figured out where they went wrong with their development and it was...

Barcelona last year.

So Verstappen was actually winning with a car that for their other driver was almost undriveable, and it was only when they really messed it up this year he's started having issues.

Although he's not everyone's cup of tea (to put it lightly), you can't deny how ridiculously talented he is.

Absolutely. It also shows just how little Checo’s input is valued at Red Bull that he was warning them about this over a year ago and they essentially went “sorry I can’t hear you over the sound of Max winning”

 

[Flounce]

Absolutely. It also shows just how little Checo’s input is valued at Red Bull that he was warning them about this over a year ago and they essentially went “sorry I can’t hear you over the sound of Max winning”

Much like Hamilton telling Mercedes they were going in the wrong direction and the car was a heap of shit over two years ago, they ignored him.

 

[Audax]

The flipside to this is that Alonso has openly talked about how having Stroll at Aston Martin has helped the team. He's highlighted how his ability to flexibly adapt to a poor car and "drive around" any issues the car is having is detrimental to finding the best set up (on the day) and providing precise feedback to help improve the car in the future. In a bit of a back-handed compliment, he mentioned how Stroll can't drive around a problem car and that's been helpful for the team in more rapidly identifying bad set up directions and understanding bad upgrades.

In a different context, there's a similar story playing out at VCARB. Ricciardo hasn't been able to consistently match Tsunoda this season, but both Tsunoda and the team have mentioned how having Ricciardo there has improved the whole team. The paradox here is that Ricciardo joining has improved Tsunoda (Tsunoda has talked about how Ricciardo has helped improved his mental side, and Tsunoda, the team, and Ricciardo have talked about how Ricciardo helped with finding better set up direction on last year's Alpha Tauri and has helped drive set up / development this season as well). This may be part of the reason why Ricciardo a) hasn't been dropped in favour of Lawson (because dropping Ricciardo might also result in a loss of performance for Tsunoda) and b) was eventually landed on as the leading contender to replace Perez if he was dropped after Spa.

 

[Audax]

RUMOUR ALERT

There is a rumour that has emerged that Lawson's contract with Red Bull actually has some form of clause around giving him 5 race weekends this season. It is now being reported as part of this rumour that Lawson will replace Ricciardo as of this weekend.

So far I've only seen a single source for this, but it's being treated by some as a reliable source.

Edit: Ralf Schumacher now sharing the same. Described as an "open secret" in the paddock. Latest version is that Ricciardo drives this weekend, then Lawson will be announced as taking over from the Austin round.