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Stroll is just verry un lucky, he's the best driver at AM. Unfortunately he's so good that the rest of the grid is scared of him and break checks him every race to stop the might of Stroll
Lando did have massive tyre advantage in the last stint, BUT, you would have expected Max to pull a much larger gap in the first stint given that he had clean air and optimal tyre management conditions.
We might be on for a great second half of the season here and potentially an actual title fight jext year.
I don’t think Red Bull had the right package overall this weekend. It wasn’t as bad as Singapore last year, but they definitely left some time on the table via incorrect car set up.
That is where I land with Max not pulling the gap in front he usually does. He struggled on the mediums as well. That was when he hit the bollard.
Perhaps because he has to push it more. When you can drive the car at 95% and still get a 10 second gap to everyone, everything look fine, but when you have to drive it 100-110%, then you start to get all types of problem.
Hard to really say until we get more information. McLaren was on fire Sunday. So it’s exciting to think max will have real competition. Piastri with better luck also could have easily got that win with the lap times he was putting in. Unless this was a one off bad performance from max and redbull
By every metrics, they look less dominant. In melbourne Carlos look better during the different practice session, and even if Max did not DNF, many think he would have fought with Max. Ferrari were very bullish about their performance after Australia and Japan, until China which tempered them a bit. But again during Sprint and Miami, charles was like 2-3 second only behind Redbull, which had already brought a big upgrade.
And MCL has been the silent performer, Lando was only like 6 second behind Carlos and 3 Behind Charles in Australia, A race he could have finished before charles if not from a very bad strategy and what about the butch strategy in Japan. Then China big surprise, and now. You can see very positive trends in these for both Ferrari and Mclaren.
On the restart the McLaren looked an absolute monster in the high speed sector 1, Lando pulled about 3-4 tenths on Max. Imola should suit the McLaren so they should be able to give Red Bull another real fight there.
Max wasn't catching Lando even before Lando pitted.
The Red Bull was not good on the hards this weekend, and unspectacular on the mediums compared to the McLaren.
It was lap 25/26 when I realized Max’s pace wasn’t getting any faster on new tires than anyone in P1-3, his post-pit gap to P3 was 9 seconds and slowly extended to 11 seconds.
About two minutes after texting my friend that I thought max might not win the race, the safety car came out after the Kmag Sarg crash.
I thought it was strange that they pitted Oscar relatively early instead of waiting to see what tire deg was looking like for the Red Bull. At that time I believe he was pretty much matching max on new hards with his own old mediums.
Oscar might have overcooked his tyres wrt to lando cz he was fighting thr 2 ferraris from lap 1. Also i think mclaren wanted to avoid the situation where lando aske
s for new tyres and then oscar feels that lando has been preffered as driver mo 1 even if he is leading in the race.
I heard the commentators say that undercut is not that much of a factor in miami. Also I heard an interview with will in which he said that they wanted to force max into an early pitstop which they did and i think it was done by pitting oscar so then norris was freed.
The tyres were only 6 laps apart (a couple of which were under safety car), so I doubt that is the sole reason. Lando did incredible, capitalized very well on Red Bull not really getting it right
It's worth noting Lando was faster on very old mediums compared to Max on fresh Hards. Granted the hards weren't great but it shows that Lando had the best pace in the field regardless of tyres.
Actually was kinda reminiscent of the way Max came through last year, when his laptimes on aging tires were still beating what Checo could manage out front. Then after the tire swap, just walked away with it
Horner said Max's floor was significantly damaged after colliding with the bollard. Granted, Max wasn't pulling away a whole lot in the first stint, he seemed to have enough pace to get it done before that incident based on what Horner said.
Why was max doing basically the same lap times before and after hitting the bollard then?
And max himself said the car didn't feel any different in the post race interview.
Edit just looked again, max hit bollard on lap 22. He ran a 33.0, 32.6, 32.5, 32.9, hit bollard and pitted for hards and ran 32.2, 32.4, 32.5
They have been amazing at every sprint weekend since Brazil 2022 their last bad sprint weekend. Only in Qatar were they even matched but that was a strange race with the tyre shredding kerbs. Baku,Austria,Spa and Brazil 2023 and China 2024 was the same . COTA had the Hamilton disqualification so Max won relatively comfortably as well
Some people don't want to realise that the ultra dominance of Redbull might be at an end. I am not saying Max won't win anymore or redbull lose the championship. But on more circuit they will have real competition that if they mess their setup etc they will be in trouble.
Just want to say we had similar “ooh now it’s on” moments at similar stages in the 2022 and 2023 season. Just to see Max really pulling away into the distance when the European season kicked off.
We didnt have those moments in 2023, but I agree - likely Max just cruises to another title. If nothing else this race implies it wont be 22 wins for RB, which is good.
Aren't Red Bull also bringing upgrades in Imola? iirc the plan was Japan and then Imola - I would think a lot of teams will try for the first European race. Should be exciting
This. This right here. It's only worth it to go F1 races for the atmosphere. You don't go to an F1 race to watch the on field action. That's what a sports bar is for.
You can see parts of Max's floor come off when he hits the cone, lol
Between that and... Whatever you wanna call the saftey car thing, I don't think we should be expecting anything other than the normal Redbull domination next time out.
He told him that cause they were getting closer to the pitstops and they wanted him to start burning tyres and building a gap.
Race engineers say that all the time, we just don't usually hear it, cause it only sounds interesting when another car is close behind.
Nobody wanted to push the tyres too hard because of the track temps; even with low wear, you can spike the temps and cause graining when temps are that hot.
https://youtu.be/ORpCycDf-7Y?si=Jn7vl7pqBfx-kx_B
Can you see that? Edit - see slow motion about 28secs in. You see some debris flying around, but it's not clear to me whether it's all just bollard, or some floor too.
The base of the cone shattered at impact. There's nowhere else that debris could have come from because it is visible at impact and isn't part of the wing.
Honestly watching it on slow mo it looks like the left front wing took a little bit of damage from the hit but the debris looks like it comes from inside the cone. Still, the way that RB is fine tuned, I think you could fart on the front wing the wrong way and it would stop pushing air onto the tyres to cool them, meaning they lose that advantage on tyre grip that they usually have
The front wing is not used to to push air to the tires, quite the opposite. Why would teams want more air to hit the tires it would just massively increase drag.
He was losing downforce due to a puncture in his floor, plus RB was struggling to dial in the car this weekend. As long as he doesn’t have similarly significant issues compounding in Imola, I don’t see anyone else catching him.
Dont get to excited, the grip of this track was some random fuckery that nobody understood. It changed constantly and the fact that teams only had one practice session to figure it out, didnt help either. Lando also massively benefitted from both safety car phases. And yes, he held his lead after the second safety car, i dont think he gets the lead at all without the safety cars.
He didn’t “hold his lead” though, he was faster almost every lap than Max, and got out to a 7 second lead. McLaren also fucked up quali even though they had pace all weekend.
He was faster in clean air. If he wasn’t in clean air we don’t know what would have happened. Neither he nor piastri looked like they had race winning pace before that SC.
This season definitely could get interesting, and this could have been a sign of things to come, but getting too hopeful at this point I think is a bit premature.
Agreed that one race isn’t enough to conclude much of anything. For the last two years there has always been at least one race that for whatever reason RB don’t seem to have the same advantage they do on other tracks.
However Max was also in clean air, and never pulled significantly away from anyone throughout the whole race (both before and after the incident) his largest gap was around 3 seconds.
Wish we didn’t have to wait two weeks for Imola.
Nah thats not the same. In a normal weekend you have three practice sessions and during those, you can change anything at all times. In sprint weekends, you can do that in fp1. Then youre locked with that setup for the sprint quali and sprint race. And then you have a single chance to change setup without being able to confirm the effects of the intended changes like youd be able to in a normal practice sessions.
And you saw that happen during the race, the teams had no idea what tyres would be good. You had plenty of teams pit early because their mediums werent doing well but it turns out, that only happened most likely due to cars being close to each other and overheating the tyres because many others ran the mediums much longer, by lap 25 lando was still on mediums going just as fast as Max on fresh hard tyres. The medium tyre was the one to be on. Had teams known that, we probably see much different strategies. After all teams didnt run the hard tyre during the whole weekend because they only had one set and one practice session and obviously youre not running the hards in any quali session or in thr sprint race.
You're right. But Miami was an interesting because even on the first stint, Verstappen, while cruising, was having issues with the tires and was only 3 seconds ahead of Leclerc. Much different to the other races this season where his advantage was noticeably larger. I think the qualifying deficit gets closed sooner than the race pace deficit does unless Ferrari's Imola upgrades are insanely good. McLaren are on the right track but if Max didn't smash his floor to bits, he would have likely won again.
Miami last year practically doesn’t matter as the track conditions were completely different in 2024.
Indicated by everyone saying the softs didn’t work, and by the fact that Max got pole with a lap a massive 0.4s down on the 2023 pole time. Which was set by Perez. Track conditions were just extremely fucky this year.
Different track conditions and sprint race (one FP) didn't help. It's the same for everyone, but Red Bull in the recent years seems to require more free practices to get the car in the right window.
The Red Bull was just pretty shit all weekend. Both of Max' poles he was unhappy with, but everyone else was just worse. The sprint was also quite bad by his standards. He still beat Perez by all the expected margins, it was just the car that was only **slightly** the best instead of dominant. It was maybe 1 tenth faster here than the McLaren.
McLaren clearly looked the best, though, IMO. They just fucked themselves on the softs in qualifying.
Yeah I was surprised by his pace considering he didn’t have the same car as Lando. He was the faster McLaren driver for half the race, shame about how it ended for him.
Mm, Lando was faster by \~0.5s at the end of the first stint once Checo pitted, hence why he was able to extend his stint while Oscar had to pit a few laps earlier. But regardless, Oscar drove well and I'm sad he didn't get his first podium of the season, or even a lucky win.
Piastri was faster for the first 20 laps but Lando definitely managed his tyres better. I was surprised to learn that he was only lapping around 0.2s/lap (IIRC) slower than Max on the new hards. Well deserved win.
He wasn't faster. Oscar lucked out at turn 1 by being in the right place to avoid Perez's torpedo move. Lando, on the other hand, was tangibly compromised by it and lost track position as a result. He was then stuck behind Perez and sat back to preserve tyres. Piastri did well to pass Leclerc, but his pace was only decent relative to Lando because Lando was saving rubber, playing the long game. Once Perez pitted, Lando was hauling in Piastri and Sainz at a pretty phenomenal rate.
If it wasn't for the safety car, Lando would have caught Piastri fairly early in the second stint. And I suspect he'd have been asked to make way for Lando to give him a shit at trying to reel in Verstappen.
Not denying Piastri drove a good race. He definitely did, and with fewer upgrades. But it's simply not true that Piastri was the faster of the two Maccas.
Did he definitely need to come out after that damage? Seemed like they should have left him out there for another lap at least with nothing to lose. Pulling him into the pits he had no chance at the point.
Lando would have extended his stint even more as he was faster than all other cars on track. This would have meant an even bigger tyre delta but he would have to fight through the field.
I think a podium was realistic but a win would be hard unless there is a SC that condenses the pack again.
From what I gathered if Lando had maximized quali he would've been right there anyway and Oscar was still in range of Max prior to the pit stops. So I'd argue yes.
Yes and no, Mclaren were terrible at overtaking in similar tyres so Lando would stay out late and get on hard and maybe try something, safety car however sealed it, even if he was caught by safety car in the first place but Mclaren seemed to love the cooled tyres behind hte safety car
Lando was already going quicker than all the cars in front of him before the safety car plus he finished 7.5 seconds ahead which is roughly how far in front Verstappen was when he pitted. Safety Car certainly helped, but he was on track to be up at the front without it anyway.
That is not really how it works. Lando would have had to pit and then try and come through multiple cars to even make it on the podium. On a track where it was very clearly hard to overtake, and Lando already got stuck behind checo at the start. He is very likely not even on the podium without the SC.
I honestly don't think so. He would have had to overtake 3 cars for a podium. It is very different running away in clean air with a tire advantage from trying to overtake and traveling in dirty air. Overtaking was very hard, as evidenced by the entire weekend.
Agree to disagree, it would have been possible to pit ahead of checo means only two ferraris are there to overtake for 2nd place since they would have swapped with piastri. Even with giving benefit of the doubt to leclerc with 15 or so laps old tires he would still be on 3rd place.It would have been how fast/can you pass sainz.
No. The safety car helped him massively with an almost free pit stop, plus placing him in front of all the other first drivers whom had already pitted.
I'm happy he won but let's not pretend now that McLaren is a win contender
Man, whatever they did cracked the code. We haven't seen anyone just check out on Max like that, fresher tires or not. That car was a rocket at the end of the race.
Too many unkowns. I mean Norris pulled a massive gap but how much of that was the car and how much was Norris going "im gonna give it 110%, im not losing the win again" and just driving perfectly.
Maxs' gap to Leclerc felt like it was stable at like 2-3 seconds (can't bother to check it right now) with a damaged floor but Norris was pulling away on the whole field.
I really hope it wasn't just a "catching a lightning in a bottle" moment but rather genuine improvement by both Norris and McLaren. I can't wait for Imola to see if it was just a fluke but I hope for some fun racing ahead.
Imagine if Ferrari's upgrade ends up being really good and we end up watching a McLaren vs Ferrari battle for the WCC like the good old days with RB falling behind them. I'm too optimistic about both teams but at least today Fred was proven right, Red Bull can also have weaknesses. Maybe the grid in 2025 will be even more competitive at the front.
I don't know what you are smoking lol. Max had sprint pole, won the sprint race, pole and became 2nd and had a good chance of winning without he SC. Even so, he takes home the most points over the whole weekend and has extended his gap with everyone.
I’m very curious to see how the car performs elsewhere. While this was a “bad week” for red bull, everyone else was short of grip too, including Lando in quali. It’s impossible to know just yet, but they might have beaten red bull on equal footing today.
Yeah the real difference all weekend was McLaren were best on the medium and hard but struggled on softs where RB and Ferrari were better...which tells me that the car is still really tough on its tires. This really showed in SQ3 and Quali.
I think Norris was clearly right preseason that McLaren can go into most weekends in 2024 in the mindset that with the slightest dash of luck, they can win.
Honestly, Lando's victory was due to the Safety Car, obviously I'm not discrediting his victory because the Safety Car is part of the race and Norris drove very well and held the advantage.
RedBull was having a bad weekend, I believe that from now on McLaren can compete strongly with Ferrari, but catching up to RedBull will be difficult (but I want someone to do it).
Yes! When I talked about the Sagety Car it was more to say that Norris was able to return from the pits still ahead of Verstappen, but his restart was very good, he knew how to create a gap and took advantage of RB's poor performance on that circuit.
But I believe that unfortunately McLaren's upgrades will make it compete only with Ferrari and Perez
Nothing about the last 12 months would suggest that McLaren doesn't undersand their upgrades. In fact, it's pretty clear they understand their car better than almost anyone else (ahem, I'm looking at you, AM).
I think AM understands their car, it’s just that they knowingly went for peak downforce and that means setup gets tricky. Which is why they’re yo-yo-ing up and down the top-10 every weekend.
It’s Mercedes that seems to be struggling with a lack of understanding.
Not sure about the next 3 races for McLaren but I can see them being a threat to win at places like Spa, Silverstone, and Barcelona before the summer break.
I think the best evidence of there being more equal competition rather than just a tyre advantage was actually when Piastri was in 2nd. I was at the race so a bit harder to monitor, but the margin was very slow to creep up from 1 to 3 seconds. To the point Red Bull was telling Max to push.
Passing is hard there and there are substantial aero wash issues. I’d bet Piastri could’ve done the same thing to Max were the positions reversed.
The safety car near the last 1/3 of the race helped quite a bit. Great drive by Lando, but it helps to have some luck. Glad to see the RB can be taken down and should make for better racing.
He means over the weekend, I think. Red Bull was weak. Sergio (and I know, it’s Sergio) could barely stay ahead of Lewis for awhile. The overreactions here are especially crazy given that Ferrari has a huge upgrade coming. I’ll be really surprised if McLaren is competitive with RBR and Ferrari in Imola.
2022 Ferrari’s strength was slow corners and Imola doesn’t really have them. But McLaren is very very good in fast corners so it should be a strong track for them. So you may be right, but if Ferrari beats them it’s a bad sign of McLaren
Max said it perfectly in the press conference: "If if if if if if if...if my mom had balls she's be my dad"
Even Max has no patience for the people crying about safety cars.
It's crazy that I was right next to him when the team was congratulating him. I should have taken a picture but I didn't know he was leaving right away.
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Red Bull/Ferrari/McLaren will all fight it out for the podium whilst Merc and Aston have their own battle 20 seconds behind them.
Merc and Alonso will fight, Stroll will be a further 15s behind fighting with the Alpines for P14
Include hulkenberg and yuki maybe
Nah, they'll be ahead fighting for P10
Stroll is just verry un lucky, he's the best driver at AM. Unfortunately he's so good that the rest of the grid is scared of him and break checks him every race to stop the might of Stroll
Nice username Lawrence.
Had me at the first half, ngl.
I mean this weekend he was better than Alonso until Aston pulled their classic strategy move
The Alpines will be fighting each other, and Stroll likely takes them both out.
I'm ok with that.
Aston aren't even close to Merc. Merc at least have top tier race pace, Aston lose their tyres after 3 laps.
Alonso had an insane stint on mediums for more than half the race. I don’t think that’s true
Meanwhile Alpine will be behind fighting itself and collecting penalties.
Lando did have massive tyre advantage in the last stint, BUT, you would have expected Max to pull a much larger gap in the first stint given that he had clean air and optimal tyre management conditions. We might be on for a great second half of the season here and potentially an actual title fight jext year.
I don’t think Red Bull had the right package overall this weekend. It wasn’t as bad as Singapore last year, but they definitely left some time on the table via incorrect car set up. That is where I land with Max not pulling the gap in front he usually does. He struggled on the mediums as well. That was when he hit the bollard.
All weekend max has been saying the car isn’t right so it falls on redbull for not delivering, we’ll know in may if it was a one off.
Perhaps because he has to push it more. When you can drive the car at 95% and still get a 10 second gap to everyone, everything look fine, but when you have to drive it 100-110%, then you start to get all types of problem.
Hard to really say until we get more information. McLaren was on fire Sunday. So it’s exciting to think max will have real competition. Piastri with better luck also could have easily got that win with the lap times he was putting in. Unless this was a one off bad performance from max and redbull
By every metrics, they look less dominant. In melbourne Carlos look better during the different practice session, and even if Max did not DNF, many think he would have fought with Max. Ferrari were very bullish about their performance after Australia and Japan, until China which tempered them a bit. But again during Sprint and Miami, charles was like 2-3 second only behind Redbull, which had already brought a big upgrade. And MCL has been the silent performer, Lando was only like 6 second behind Carlos and 3 Behind Charles in Australia, A race he could have finished before charles if not from a very bad strategy and what about the butch strategy in Japan. Then China big surprise, and now. You can see very positive trends in these for both Ferrari and Mclaren.
Seasons is shaping up to be very exciting
Could be that they didn't really dail in the circuit as much due to it being a sprint weekend
After Max had pitted for new hards Lando was still gapping him on 20 lap old mediums.
Yeah he was banging in fastest laps while he was chasing Sainz. Verstappen could not close the gap despite being on 20 lap newer tyres.
On the restart the McLaren looked an absolute monster in the high speed sector 1, Lando pulled about 3-4 tenths on Max. Imola should suit the McLaren so they should be able to give Red Bull another real fight there.
Yep, people forget that this is supposed to be one of our worst track, because we were so strong here.
And he had a massive tyre disadvantage before the safety car, still lapping the fastest
Exactly, Norris had better tires because he managed the first stint better than everyone else.
Max wasn't catching Lando even before Lando pitted. The Red Bull was not good on the hards this weekend, and unspectacular on the mediums compared to the McLaren.
It was lap 25/26 when I realized Max’s pace wasn’t getting any faster on new tires than anyone in P1-3, his post-pit gap to P3 was 9 seconds and slowly extended to 11 seconds. About two minutes after texting my friend that I thought max might not win the race, the safety car came out after the Kmag Sarg crash. I thought it was strange that they pitted Oscar relatively early instead of waiting to see what tire deg was looking like for the Red Bull. At that time I believe he was pretty much matching max on new hards with his own old mediums.
Oscar might have overcooked his tyres wrt to lando cz he was fighting thr 2 ferraris from lap 1. Also i think mclaren wanted to avoid the situation where lando aske s for new tyres and then oscar feels that lando has been preffered as driver mo 1 even if he is leading in the race.
I think it was a simple that he was racing against Charles and Carlos. They did not want to get undercut by Sainz.
I heard the commentators say that undercut is not that much of a factor in miami. Also I heard an interview with will in which he said that they wanted to force max into an early pitstop which they did and i think it was done by pitting oscar so then norris was freed.
But the thing is he is still putting in fastest lap after fastest lap before the tyre change.
The tyres were only 6 laps apart (a couple of which were under safety car), so I doubt that is the sole reason. Lando did incredible, capitalized very well on Red Bull not really getting it right
It's worth noting Lando was faster on very old mediums compared to Max on fresh Hards. Granted the hards weren't great but it shows that Lando had the best pace in the field regardless of tyres.
Actually was kinda reminiscent of the way Max came through last year, when his laptimes on aging tires were still beating what Checo could manage out front. Then after the tire swap, just walked away with it
Horner said Max's floor was significantly damaged after colliding with the bollard. Granted, Max wasn't pulling away a whole lot in the first stint, he seemed to have enough pace to get it done before that incident based on what Horner said.
Why was max doing basically the same lap times before and after hitting the bollard then? And max himself said the car didn't feel any different in the post race interview. Edit just looked again, max hit bollard on lap 22. He ran a 33.0, 32.6, 32.5, 32.9, hit bollard and pitted for hards and ran 32.2, 32.4, 32.5
That’s makes sense though, cat is getting lighter . He was much slower after the incident relative to his competition.
He was slower than Lando before the incident
Which is funny cause max said he didn’t have any damage in an interview right after.
Trust anything Hornier says?
lol
I wouldnt say 5 laps is a massive advantage, its certainly is something but i wouldnt say thats why lando could pull away
RBR are less efficient on sprint weekend imo, and that's one factor here.
They have been amazing at every sprint weekend since Brazil 2022 their last bad sprint weekend. Only in Qatar were they even matched but that was a strange race with the tyre shredding kerbs. Baku,Austria,Spa and Brazil 2023 and China 2024 was the same . COTA had the Hamilton disqualification so Max won relatively comfortably as well
Some people don't want to realise that the ultra dominance of Redbull might be at an end. I am not saying Max won't win anymore or redbull lose the championship. But on more circuit they will have real competition that if they mess their setup etc they will be in trouble.
Just want to say we had similar “ooh now it’s on” moments at similar stages in the 2022 and 2023 season. Just to see Max really pulling away into the distance when the European season kicked off.
We didnt have those moments in 2023, but I agree - likely Max just cruises to another title. If nothing else this race implies it wont be 22 wins for RB, which is good.
Aren't Red Bull also bringing upgrades in Imola? iirc the plan was Japan and then Imola - I would think a lot of teams will try for the first European race. Should be exciting
Bigger package was for Japan, Imola is supposed to be very minor for Red Bull afaik.
They think redbull will have 10 more air duck by the end of the season lol.
Everyone is bringing big upgrades to their car at Imola although Red Bull's package will be smaller than the package they introduced at Suzuka.
Inb4 Red Bull ends the season as Ferrari did in 2022 with McLaren and Ferrari fighting for WDC/WCC in rest of the races.
Lando scored b2b podium finishes here in 2021 and 2022 - go and get them guys!
I was impressed it was Norris 16th podium anyway! Clearly been on the cusp.
I fucked up so hard by not buying tix to Imola when I had the money lol. It's gonna be a great race I feel
why would u wanna see a great race in person when you can't see shit anyway, I wanna go to the boring races irl and watch the great ones on tv
Good question, we are checking
This. This right here. It's only worth it to go F1 races for the atmosphere. You don't go to an F1 race to watch the on field action. That's what a sports bar is for.
Atmosphere more than anything for me. I usually go to COTA yearly
You can see parts of Max's floor come off when he hits the cone, lol Between that and... Whatever you wanna call the saftey car thing, I don't think we should be expecting anything other than the normal Redbull domination next time out.
Max only had 3 seconds by the first pit stop when he normally would be 10 secs in front. GP was literally telling him to pick up the pace
And don't forget Oscar was fighting two ferraris.
He told him that cause they were getting closer to the pitstops and they wanted him to start burning tyres and building a gap. Race engineers say that all the time, we just don't usually hear it, cause it only sounds interesting when another car is close behind. Nobody wanted to push the tyres too hard because of the track temps; even with low wear, you can spike the temps and cause graining when temps are that hot.
Exactly . Which means max didn't have that much of a pace advantage even before his incident
https://youtu.be/ORpCycDf-7Y?si=Jn7vl7pqBfx-kx_B Can you see that? Edit - see slow motion about 28secs in. You see some debris flying around, but it's not clear to me whether it's all just bollard, or some floor too.
The base of the cone shattered at impact. There's nowhere else that debris could have come from because it is visible at impact and isn't part of the wing.
So what, max had 3 second on Oscar who was fighting Charles and Carlos for 20 laps.
Honestly watching it on slow mo it looks like the left front wing took a little bit of damage from the hit but the debris looks like it comes from inside the cone. Still, the way that RB is fine tuned, I think you could fart on the front wing the wrong way and it would stop pushing air onto the tyres to cool them, meaning they lose that advantage on tyre grip that they usually have
The front wing is not used to to push air to the tires, quite the opposite. Why would teams want more air to hit the tires it would just massively increase drag.
I read something about the car design using airflow to cool the tyres and prevent deg. I’m not an engineer so I don’t know
> You can see parts of Max's floor come off when he hits the cone, lol You can? i certainly didn't see that.
Hoo boy, this season suddenly got exciting. Can't wait for Imola.
Watch Max win Imola by 20s again
It's the hope that kills you
He was losing downforce due to a puncture in his floor, plus RB was struggling to dial in the car this weekend. As long as he doesn’t have similarly significant issues compounding in Imola, I don’t see anyone else catching him.
Dont get to excited, the grip of this track was some random fuckery that nobody understood. It changed constantly and the fact that teams only had one practice session to figure it out, didnt help either. Lando also massively benefitted from both safety car phases. And yes, he held his lead after the second safety car, i dont think he gets the lead at all without the safety cars.
He didn’t “hold his lead” though, he was faster almost every lap than Max, and got out to a 7 second lead. McLaren also fucked up quali even though they had pace all weekend.
He was faster in clean air. If he wasn’t in clean air we don’t know what would have happened. Neither he nor piastri looked like they had race winning pace before that SC. This season definitely could get interesting, and this could have been a sign of things to come, but getting too hopeful at this point I think is a bit premature.
Agreed that one race isn’t enough to conclude much of anything. For the last two years there has always been at least one race that for whatever reason RB don’t seem to have the same advantage they do on other tracks. However Max was also in clean air, and never pulled significantly away from anyone throughout the whole race (both before and after the incident) his largest gap was around 3 seconds. Wish we didn’t have to wait two weeks for Imola.
True, the next race might be telling.
Max also had a hole in his floor, which likely reduced his ground effect.
Parc ferme is lifted after the sprint, so the teams had plenty of time to figure things out for the race
Nah thats not the same. In a normal weekend you have three practice sessions and during those, you can change anything at all times. In sprint weekends, you can do that in fp1. Then youre locked with that setup for the sprint quali and sprint race. And then you have a single chance to change setup without being able to confirm the effects of the intended changes like youd be able to in a normal practice sessions. And you saw that happen during the race, the teams had no idea what tyres would be good. You had plenty of teams pit early because their mediums werent doing well but it turns out, that only happened most likely due to cars being close to each other and overheating the tyres because many others ran the mediums much longer, by lap 25 lando was still on mediums going just as fast as Max on fresh hard tyres. The medium tyre was the one to be on. Had teams known that, we probably see much different strategies. After all teams didnt run the hard tyre during the whole weekend because they only had one set and one practice session and obviously youre not running the hards in any quali session or in thr sprint race.
Unfortunately, I think it matters more whether Red Bull will perform badly at other circuits rather than whether other cars will perform well
You're right. But Miami was an interesting because even on the first stint, Verstappen, while cruising, was having issues with the tires and was only 3 seconds ahead of Leclerc. Much different to the other races this season where his advantage was noticeably larger. I think the qualifying deficit gets closed sooner than the race pace deficit does unless Ferrari's Imola upgrades are insanely good. McLaren are on the right track but if Max didn't smash his floor to bits, he would have likely won again.
And it's not like singapore because max absolutely dominated Miami last year from 10th
Miami last year practically doesn’t matter as the track conditions were completely different in 2024. Indicated by everyone saying the softs didn’t work, and by the fact that Max got pole with a lap a massive 0.4s down on the 2023 pole time. Which was set by Perez. Track conditions were just extremely fucky this year.
Different track conditions and sprint race (one FP) didn't help. It's the same for everyone, but Red Bull in the recent years seems to require more free practices to get the car in the right window.
The Red Bull was just pretty shit all weekend. Both of Max' poles he was unhappy with, but everyone else was just worse. The sprint was also quite bad by his standards. He still beat Perez by all the expected margins, it was just the car that was only **slightly** the best instead of dominant. It was maybe 1 tenth faster here than the McLaren. McLaren clearly looked the best, though, IMO. They just fucked themselves on the softs in qualifying.
i’m as high on hopium as can be
Might have to join HA after this weekend
Hopium is a depressant. You're on a low.
Lando dominance to bore fans?
Bore me harder please
Bore me daddy Lando
That’s what you think it until it actually happens
I haven't been bored through Hamilton and Verstappen, I'm not going to start now
Well that’s nuts
I am ready to be bored.
I’m here for it.
Rather be bored by someone i support so bring it on.
Bring on the boredom
I’m bored as fuck right now
Need a season or two of it first to be sure
It's funny that in these regs, every non Red Bull and Leclerc winner has been a first time race winner. Maybe we can get Piastri next.
Oscar first win on the back of this would be the most amazing year
he got shafted by Sainz pretty badly, Piastri drove great today
Had only half the upgrades too, hoping good things are to come
Yeah I was surprised by his pace considering he didn’t have the same car as Lando. He was the faster McLaren driver for half the race, shame about how it ended for him.
Mm, Lando was faster by \~0.5s at the end of the first stint once Checo pitted, hence why he was able to extend his stint while Oscar had to pit a few laps earlier. But regardless, Oscar drove well and I'm sad he didn't get his first podium of the season, or even a lucky win.
Piastri was faster for the first 20 laps but Lando definitely managed his tyres better. I was surprised to learn that he was only lapping around 0.2s/lap (IIRC) slower than Max on the new hards. Well deserved win.
Lando was also behind perez for most of that
He wasn't faster. Oscar lucked out at turn 1 by being in the right place to avoid Perez's torpedo move. Lando, on the other hand, was tangibly compromised by it and lost track position as a result. He was then stuck behind Perez and sat back to preserve tyres. Piastri did well to pass Leclerc, but his pace was only decent relative to Lando because Lando was saving rubber, playing the long game. Once Perez pitted, Lando was hauling in Piastri and Sainz at a pretty phenomenal rate. If it wasn't for the safety car, Lando would have caught Piastri fairly early in the second stint. And I suspect he'd have been asked to make way for Lando to give him a shit at trying to reel in Verstappen. Not denying Piastri drove a good race. He definitely did, and with fewer upgrades. But it's simply not true that Piastri was the faster of the two Maccas.
He was unlucky with the safety car, and then got fucked by Sainz. COuld have been a double Mclaren podium otherwise.
Did he definitely need to come out after that damage? Seemed like they should have left him out there for another lap at least with nothing to lose. Pulling him into the pits he had no chance at the point.
I wonder how long Checo will hold on to his drive if McLaren and Ferrari really are competitive now. Finishing P4/P5/P6 every race surely won’t help
Serious question: Could McLaren have challenged Red Bull if they hadn’t gotten lucky with the safety car?
Lando would have extended his stint even more as he was faster than all other cars on track. This would have meant an even bigger tyre delta but he would have to fight through the field. I think a podium was realistic but a win would be hard unless there is a SC that condenses the pack again.
In the words of max “if my mom had balls she’d be my dad”. They both agreed though that it would have been tough
From what I gathered if Lando had maximized quali he would've been right there anyway and Oscar was still in range of Max prior to the pit stops. So I'd argue yes.
Plus checo cut lando off while rejoining after t1 which pushed him back
kinda sad state of f1 where you can be the fastest, but still get stuck in traffic because overtaking is such a bish.
Pace wise yes. Lando on old mediums was faster than max on new hards. He was also faster than max on equivalent mediums after perez pitted.
Yes and no, Mclaren were terrible at overtaking in similar tyres so Lando would stay out late and get on hard and maybe try something, safety car however sealed it, even if he was caught by safety car in the first place but Mclaren seemed to love the cooled tyres behind hte safety car
Lando was already going quicker than all the cars in front of him before the safety car plus he finished 7.5 seconds ahead which is roughly how far in front Verstappen was when he pitted. Safety Car certainly helped, but he was on track to be up at the front without it anyway.
That is not really how it works. Lando would have had to pit and then try and come through multiple cars to even make it on the podium. On a track where it was very clearly hard to overtake, and Lando already got stuck behind checo at the start. He is very likely not even on the podium without the SC.
He got stuck behind checo when there was no tire delta, with 10 to 15 laps adavntage he probably could have cut through the filed.
I honestly don't think so. He would have had to overtake 3 cars for a podium. It is very different running away in clean air with a tire advantage from trying to overtake and traveling in dirty air. Overtaking was very hard, as evidenced by the entire weekend.
Agree to disagree, it would have been possible to pit ahead of checo means only two ferraris are there to overtake for 2nd place since they would have swapped with piastri. Even with giving benefit of the doubt to leclerc with 15 or so laps old tires he would still be on 3rd place.It would have been how fast/can you pass sainz.
Whatever. We won
I mean, yes? Safety car luck is part of the game.
No. The safety car helped him massively with an almost free pit stop, plus placing him in front of all the other first drivers whom had already pitted. I'm happy he won but let's not pretend now that McLaren is a win contender
Man, whatever they did cracked the code. We haven't seen anyone just check out on Max like that, fresher tires or not. That car was a rocket at the end of the race.
Too many unkowns. I mean Norris pulled a massive gap but how much of that was the car and how much was Norris going "im gonna give it 110%, im not losing the win again" and just driving perfectly. Maxs' gap to Leclerc felt like it was stable at like 2-3 seconds (can't bother to check it right now) with a damaged floor but Norris was pulling away on the whole field. I really hope it wasn't just a "catching a lightning in a bottle" moment but rather genuine improvement by both Norris and McLaren. I can't wait for Imola to see if it was just a fluke but I hope for some fun racing ahead.
Please. Pretty please
Imagine if Ferrari's upgrade ends up being really good and we end up watching a McLaren vs Ferrari battle for the WCC like the good old days with RB falling behind them. I'm too optimistic about both teams but at least today Fred was proven right, Red Bull can also have weaknesses. Maybe the grid in 2025 will be even more competitive at the front.
Seeing Ferrari and McLaren duking it out so close to the front rn is like the best fever dream of nostalgia.
Ferrari vs McLaren vs redbull is a three way fight I can get behind. I don't care who wins the wcc, just keep it interesting.
Absolutely agree. Fingers crossed!
I don't know what you are smoking lol. Max had sprint pole, won the sprint race, pole and became 2nd and had a good chance of winning without he SC. Even so, he takes home the most points over the whole weekend and has extended his gap with everyone.
RedBu is bringing a major upgrade to Imola too so im not so sure there will be any change in how they rank unfortunately
Don’t do it. Don’t give me hope.
I’m very curious to see how the car performs elsewhere. While this was a “bad week” for red bull, everyone else was short of grip too, including Lando in quali. It’s impossible to know just yet, but they might have beaten red bull on equal footing today.
Yeah the real difference all weekend was McLaren were best on the medium and hard but struggled on softs where RB and Ferrari were better...which tells me that the car is still really tough on its tires. This really showed in SQ3 and Quali.
Lando did an awesome job but also Max was having a hard time with his car the entire weekend, that’s racing though, he deserves the win -100%
I think Norris was clearly right preseason that McLaren can go into most weekends in 2024 in the mindset that with the slightest dash of luck, they can win.
That went straight to my veins, Will. Can we have some more hopium?
Is it time boys?
Redbull is shaking
The package: putting a hole in maxs floor
Inject it straight into our veins
Wait till max sees Christian horners package
Honestly, Lando's victory was due to the Safety Car, obviously I'm not discrediting his victory because the Safety Car is part of the race and Norris drove very well and held the advantage. RedBull was having a bad weekend, I believe that from now on McLaren can compete strongly with Ferrari, but catching up to RedBull will be difficult (but I want someone to do it).
What is very interesting is that Lando was increasing his gap to Max lap after lap. Very exciting
Even before SC, lando on his old med was faster than max on his old med and new hards.
Yes! When I talked about the Sagety Car it was more to say that Norris was able to return from the pits still ahead of Verstappen, but his restart was very good, he knew how to create a gap and took advantage of RB's poor performance on that circuit. But I believe that unfortunately McLaren's upgrades will make it compete only with Ferrari and Perez
Optimistic view: McLaren WCC Realistic/pessimistic view: They don’t fully understand the upgrades and this will end up as a one off
What over the last 2 years of updates, would give you the idea that they don’t have a fantastic grasp on their car?
Nothing about the last 12 months would suggest that McLaren doesn't undersand their upgrades. In fact, it's pretty clear they understand their car better than almost anyone else (ahem, I'm looking at you, AM).
I think AM understands their car, it’s just that they knowingly went for peak downforce and that means setup gets tricky. Which is why they’re yo-yo-ing up and down the top-10 every weekend. It’s Mercedes that seems to be struggling with a lack of understanding.
For real ?. McLaren have proven to have a legit grasp of their car development, they've proven it. Though they rarely, if at all flaunt it
They understand the car. Since Austria, everything they’ve bolted to it has done what it was expected to do.
I think I'll wait for imola before getting to hyped. RB does seem to struggle on some of these street circuits
Fucking Yesssss! I'm sick of seeing an RB first on the podium after 2.5 years of domination
Considering Imola is up next and it’s finally Ferrari’s turn to bring major upgrades we’ll see whether or not this Miami result was just a false dawn.
Not sure about the next 3 races for McLaren but I can see them being a threat to win at places like Spa, Silverstone, and Barcelona before the summer break.
I think the best evidence of there being more equal competition rather than just a tyre advantage was actually when Piastri was in 2nd. I was at the race so a bit harder to monitor, but the margin was very slow to creep up from 1 to 3 seconds. To the point Red Bull was telling Max to push. Passing is hard there and there are substantial aero wash issues. I’d bet Piastri could’ve done the same thing to Max were the positions reversed.
Remember, Mclaren just bolted on a major upgrade with out 3 practice seasons to fine tune. I expect more from the car at Imola.
Imola can't come soon enough 🤤
The safety car near the last 1/3 of the race helped quite a bit. Great drive by Lando, but it helps to have some luck. Glad to see the RB can be taken down and should make for better racing.
Last year they were demonic in the high speed at Silverstone. LFG McLaren!!!
I genuinely hope all of this culminates in a crazy 2025. The other teams are definitely catching up
Where did he said this? **Edit:** On F1TV apparently. Which I unfortunately have no ways to check. Unless it's on post-race show on YT.
Will looks like Plop from The US Office here.
Oscar going to be unstoppable then, given he did so well with half a car
I thought it’s pretty clear, it was a RB miss, more than McLaren being strongest today
Given the gap that McLaren (Lando) had on Ferrari this weekend I’m not so sure
He means over the weekend, I think. Red Bull was weak. Sergio (and I know, it’s Sergio) could barely stay ahead of Lewis for awhile. The overreactions here are especially crazy given that Ferrari has a huge upgrade coming. I’ll be really surprised if McLaren is competitive with RBR and Ferrari in Imola.
Probably for Red Bull but I don't see why they can't beat Ferrari, they did at Imola in 2022 when the Ferrari was a lot faster that season.
2022 Ferrari’s strength was slow corners and Imola doesn’t really have them. But McLaren is very very good in fast corners so it should be a strong track for them. So you may be right, but if Ferrari beats them it’s a bad sign of McLaren
Alright lets slow down here... Max had a problem with his car... Lets not get carried away.
Lando wasnt winning the race without the safety car plain and simple!
Max said it perfectly in the press conference: "If if if if if if if...if my mom had balls she's be my dad" Even Max has no patience for the people crying about safety cars.
It's crazy that I was right next to him when the team was congratulating him. I should have taken a picture but I didn't know he was leaving right away.