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love the F1TV coverage w David Coulthard

absolutely destroying the Ferrari team for not being ready w inters after the first lap. he can barely contain his laughter

"do they think Charles wants a new set of slicks after 1 lap when it's pouring?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Producer (Post 9107634)

Eh, Charles explained it pretty well later.. It all happened fast and he decided on his own to pit at the last second. Maybe as soon as someone said "heavy rain" they should have been ready, but lots of teams got caught out, including some not even pitting right away

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp (Post 9107637)

i watched him try to explain it for his team after the race.

last minute or not - they were outside the garage w the wrong tires. they grabbed the wrong ones.

I was watching the formula 2 highlights, just an insane amount of carnage throughout the whole race. Including one of the cars losing both rear wheels

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp (Post 9107637)

They were outside waiting on him with no tires..

They literally were grabbing the inters off the shelves when he came in lol.. Charles can spin it however he wants but that’s just Ferrari being Ferrari. Honestly like when’s the last time you even saw Haas have a fuck up like that

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Producer (Post 9107639)

i watched him try to explain it for his team after the race.

last minute or not - they were outside the garage w the wrong tires. they grabbed the wrong ones.

They had no tires, not the wrong tires. At least one other team did the same thing.. Probably most of the teams that decided to pit on the first lap, except Haas I think? They were one team that had tires ready

i digress - i went back and watched the replay. the way DC described the situation and the frantic pace - including the slicks off the car sitting next to it made it look like the wrong tires were out there

can we agree that it's completely incompetent that none of the 30 people in the pits thought they might need them? i mean the crew was ready outside, they knew he was coming...it's like in the panic they forgot to bring tires.

Yup they definitely should have been ready as soon as they noticed how heavy the rain was! That goes for a lot of teams though, not just Ferrari.

They fuck up plenty, and this was one of them, but I'm just saying it wasn't as egregious as commentary made it seem.

Great attempt by Sainz, just needed to hold on for like 4 or 5 more laps, but the RB is just too fast with DRS. Even mid drivers can get on the podium with it.

LeClerc almost got him too, but that would have been kind of sad after such a great qualy and race only to have his teammate take 3rd LUL

Good on Sainz, driver of the day easily

The fact that there was one post made about this weekends race speaks volumes to how boring this season has been. Good for Max on setting the record in a ridiculously OP car but damn, they aren't doing much for the sport. A lot of momentum was fed into F1 with Drive to Survive and the phenomenal season that was 2021 but since then it's been a snooze fest.

I know it may not be a popular thing to say but get rid of the salary cap and let the teams throw all the money in the world at their cars. The cost cap really hampers the rest of the field from trying to catch up to redbull and only hurts the sport as a whole. Shit, Williams can't even build a new wind tunnel as they can't afford to do it becuase of the cost cap.

Yeah it's a little annoying knowing after the first race of the season that no other team is going to be able to compete with Redbull because you're limited to what you can do with the cost cap. I'm down to see rich companies push the limits and see what they are capable of.

Make it a soft cap like baseball where you can spend whatever you want but after a certain amount you pay a luxury tax that gets redistributed to the bottom teams.

That seems like a good idea, but wouldn't it lead to basically one team overtaking Red Bull to be the new boring dominant team?

Maybe, or there would be 2 or 3 teams fighting it out every year. Money doesn't automatically mean you're going to be the best, I doubt even with unlimited funds Mercedes was going to make their current car beat Red Bull this year.

I think the cost cap has been a good thing personally. Yes the RB has been a step faster than the field but look at the midfield, its mayhem back there. The quali times most weekends are insanely close verses the past. A perfect example is Williams who have obviously made some VERY good choices and have been able to move up the field.

Merc not being able to claw back pace in comparison to the RB is another great example of the costcap in effect. They rolled out a really big (costly) upgrade which brought their sidepods inline with everyone else and were much more competitive right away. However that upgrade meant, due to the costcap they had less ability to develop the car throughout this year and now we're seeing teams develop past them. Without that costcap the Merc would look almost exactly like the RB for better or worse.

I like Hamilton's suggestion teams should be limited on when they focus on their next years car. RB has already said they have basically walked away from the RB19 to get ready for 2024.

Rich

I like the cost cap because it gives smaller teams like Williams and Haas a fighting chance to be competitive. You need that for sure.

But definitely F1 has an issue whereby one team becomes dominant and it's near impossible for another team to catch up. We've seen it over and over again the past 20 years. One team owns the sport for 5 - 7 years.

I think the solution is the winning team needs to be given more of a handicap going into the subsequent seasons, and the other teams have more advantage given to them.

The NFL tries very hard to create parity among teams each season, and that's what makes it exciting to watch. F1 needs to do more to create parity as well.

Like how other sports, there's a draft and the worst teams get first picks. Right now, in F1 it's basically wind tunnel time that is allocated based on finishing order. But I think they need to come up with even more than that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eff-1 (Post 9108596)

I really liked the idea of a luxury tax of some kind. Spend however much you want but once you go over the cap, you are heavily taxed and that money goes to the teams below the cap.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eff-1 (Post 9108596)

I think the solution is the winning team needs to be given more of a handicap going into the subsequent seasons, and the other teams have more advantage given to them.

The current F1 regs do this, the higher placed terms get less wind tunnel & CFD time over the season.

Edit: I should have Read your entire post instead of scan-reading and I just realized you mentioned this

I'm not in favor of a handicap that would impact a team's cost cap. You have to remember that F1 teams employ a lot of people, it wouldn't be right to have them constantly laying people off because of their cost cap situation

"Sorry Jason, you did so well in your job this year that we can't afford to keep you next year"

I think you’ve gotta give max a bit more credit for RB’s performance

If max wasn’t there and it was Checo and X driver, odds are it would be much tighter than it is. The human factor seems to come into play with Checo and the majority of the rest of the field whereas max has been almost flawless the entire season. The only other driver that doesn’t really seem prone to error is Hamilton but with the car he’s had it’s hard to do anything but whine about it

Max has been incredible, but I do wonder if the car was developed specifically for him? I'm not smart enough to know if that's even a thing

I think it's absolutely a thing. I mean I'm not sure you could design a car for a particular driver on paper, but once you have your first prototype and go into sim & testing you could totally be making changes to suit the feedback from one driver and completely ignore the feedback from the other driver.

Christian Horner directly addressed that a few days ago, here's what he said:

Quote:

"It shows a total lack of understanding of how a race car and team develop, if Toto thinks that we're developing a car around a single driver.

"You develop a car to be as quick as you can and sometimes quick cars are difficult cars - that's what's historically been the case.

"I think that drivers adapt. The good drivers that you see in wet conditions, mixed conditions, varied conditions, the elite, they adapt quickly and I think that's one of his (Verstappen's) key skill sets is his ability to adapt to the feeling and the grip levels that a car gives him.

"But there's certainly no direction to say, 'oh, we tailor something to suit one specific driver', we're just trying to design and build the fastest car that that we can, that our tools, our simulation or our wind tunnel provide us with that direction."

BUT actually, if you read Alex Albon's essay in the Player Tribune, he flat out said the car is super difficult to drive and is suited to Max's style.

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/po...-one-racing-f1

Quote:

This isn’t to throw shade at anyone at Red Bull Racing or Max or anything, honestly. But the car is set up in a unique way that is built around the lead driver, and that’s Max. And, look, I totally get why. I mean, when all is said and done, he might be the greatest driver of all time. But he has a very distinct style of driving, and he likes the car set up a certain way that’s hard for a lot of drivers to sync up with. Of course, you can tinker and tweak your own car, but just the Red Bull in general is suited to Max’s style.

I like a lot of front end and nose. I’ve been teammates with George and Charles and I’ve always had way more nose than them. Basically think front-end sensitivity. And when I got into the Red Bull … I mean there was so much nose on the thing that if you blew on the wheel the car would turn. If you play Call of Duty, or a game like that, turn your sensitivity up to the highest it will go. That’s what it’s like to drive that car.

At this point with that car though, I’m sure you can make enough adjustments where Checo would feel comfortable driving it

George and Lewis driving some merc's.

I don't remember seeing Lewis/Mercedes doing many of these PR driving/challenge sort of things before, so I find it cool to see him doing it now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hondaracer (Post 9108837)

At this point with that car though, I’m sure you can make enough adjustments where Checo would feel comfortable driving it

This is from an interview with Sergio

Quote:

The hard life as Verstappen's teammate: Sergio Perez is overshadowed by Max Verstappen. The Mexican tells us in an interview how he deals with this, why the car feels different since Barcelona and what he plans for the rest of the season.

This is your third year driving for Red Bull. Looking back, how difficult was the switch from midfield team Racing Point to a top team?

It was a challenge. I came to a team where the concept of the car is significantly different from what I was used to. Both in terms of car set-up and driving style or tire management. Red Bull cars do their lap time in a different way than a Racing Point or a Mercedes. Because they are different in concept.

Is it not possible in a big team to say: Let Max drive the car the way he wants and let me drive the way that suits me best?

That's very difficult to implement. Formula 1 cars have a very narrow window in which they work. That makes it impossible to drive two completely different setups with the same basic concept. Or to change the aerodynamic balance. There are moments when I feel like I find my speed naturally, but then there are also the moments when I have to adapt and not everything goes automatically.

What have you learned most about over the past two and a half years?

How Red Bull works, what they emphasize, what they don't. It made me a more complete driver. That will help me in my further career because I've gained a wider perspective on many things.

You used to be regarded as a tire whisperer. Why do you now have more problems with tire management than Verstappen?

Because tire management works 100 percent differently in a Red Bull than in a Racing Point. You have to pay attention to completely different things. If I had known that three years ago, I would have been even better then.

It's been a pattern since you've been at Red Bull. You start the season strong, but then drop off. Why is that?

Mostly it was because the car suited me at the start of the season. Everything came about naturally. Then came the moment when I had to think more about how to drive the car to be fast. That set me back. This year, Barcelona was the turning point.

What happened there?

There was an upgrade on the car. But it would be too easy to blame it on that alone. The engineers themselves have a hard time explaining how this or that modification to the aerodynamics changed this, or that driving characteristic that one of the drivers might have a harder time with than the other. They bring upgrades to make the car faster. It did get faster. I'm the only one who had a harder time driving the car. That's happened to other drivers, too. Because a certain characteristic doesn't fit your driving style that way. Then you have to adapt. I didn't manage to do that as quickly as I should have.

Can't you correct that with the car's setup?

If you try to do that, the same thing usually happens: The car is easier for you to drive but also slower.

In Verstappen's case, the opposite apparently happened in Baku. According to him, he learned things in the race that gave him an advantage afterwards.

It has to do with how the car is balanced, how he drives it and how he conserves the tires. Whatever he found in the balance of the car, he feels comfortable in that frame.

The crash in Monte Carlo was something of a turning point for you. Why?

Because I couldn't explain the accident. And then when I came to Barcelona a few days later, I felt like I was driving a different car.

Why do you have more problems in qualifying than in the race?

When the tires are cold or the conditions change, it has more of an effect that I can't drive the car naturally. Then it subsides in the race. Because with all the tire management, it changes the way you drive the car.

So why is Red Bull's lead in the race greater than in qualifying?

Because we take better care of the tires. We seem to have found things that the others haven't. Tire management is obviously more difficult for me than for Max. I have to work my way forward in the race and attack. It's easy to overheat the tires. That's why it's very difficult to show my strength in the race. But that's in the past now.

What do you mean by that?

I've been getting on better with the car again for a few races. The difficult times are behind me, even if the conditions are difficult.

When did you achieve the turnaround?

I think the Hungarian GP was the turning point. We worked hard to find a setup so that I feel more at home in the car again. The final reckoning will be on Sunday in Abu Dhabi. If I have a good second half of the season, then what happened in between will be forgotten.

As a result of their poor grid positions, you are forced to overtake in the race. From your point of view, has it become easier with the ground effect cars?

It's definitely easier to follow other cars. But the more downforce is added, the more it gets diluted.

Is it more difficult to understand these cars?

Not more difficult. But you do have to adapt your driving style a lot. Because the cars have become much heavier, because the downforce and the tires react much more strongly when the car slips or is transverse.

How great is the pressure of sitting in the best car and having Verstappen as a teammate?

It's tough. But if you want to drive for Red Bull, you have to live with it and be very strong mentally to survive it.

If you compare your laps with those of Verstappen. Where does he win on you?

Mainly in the fast corners. But there's no clear pattern.

It's said that Verstappen doesn't have a problem with oversteer, but you do. Is that true?

Let's put it this way: when the car tends to oversteer, the distance between us increases. The other way around, I'm much closer.

What makes Verstappen so good?

We all have to appreciate what Max is doing. The level at which he's currently driving is extremely high. To deliver 100 percent every weekend, no matter what the conditions. When you're his teammate, that's hard to digest.

What is your goal for the rest of the season?

To find the form I had at the start of the season and win a few more races.

Translated via DeepL

Rich