Just because the engines can run it doesn’t mean you should; for litany of reasons. It’s a piss poor fuel compared to traditional petroleum hydrocarbons.

What a chaotic Q1
Drying track & constant greens. Surprised at the Haas pace. All Ferrari PU cars through Q1

Q2
Looks like just suspension damage, maybe LR hit too, hopefully no gearbox damage, but a tough start for the sprint tomorrow.
​​​​​​Rain after the red flag sucked for the ones at the bottom​

Q3, wet/damp start & a quick red flag...Quick thinking from KMag to keep it moving.
Didn't see the cause of the stoppage for red flag #2
3 red flags & grid set.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
What a chaotic Q1
Drying track & constant greens. Surprised at the Haas pace. All Ferrari PU cars through Q1

Q2
Looks like just suspension damage, maybe LR hit too, hopefully no gearbox damage, but a tough start for the sprint tomorrow.
​​​​​​Rain after the red flag sucked for the ones at the bottom​

Q3, wet/damp start & a quick red flag...Quick thinking from KMag to keep it moving.
Didn't see the cause of the stoppage for red flag #2
3 red flags & grid set.

2nd Q3 red flag was for Bottas going off. Car had to be recovered. Unfortunately for Leclerc, it was initially a yellow, allowing Max to get by and complete his pole lap, before the dropped the red flag. For K-mag, they dropped the red flag immediately, killing everyone right then, but for Bottas, they let it sit yellow for a bit before going red.

3rd red flag was for Norris going off, but it was less than 1 minute left, so the session was ended.

Right, I saw the reason for the red flag, but didn't hear if they mentioned why Bottas stopped on track. Looked like he just parked it in the grass, no obvious contact.

Very happy that Hamilton is starting around P13, but kinda sad for George Russel at P11. Carlos Sainz can’t stop shooting himself in the foot. This race does make me want an IndyCar rule put into qualifying that if you red flag a session you lose your fastest 2 lap times. There should be a consequence to screwing up everyone else’s lap because you can’t get your lap right.

Sainz keeps this up and they may want to get Bottas out of the Alfa and into the Ferrari.The job of a reliable #2 isn't as easy as some seem to think. Perez has often struggled too.
This has been the first rain event for the new cars. I wonder how much that played into the many mistakes made?
The Haas is looking pretty good, Mick, not so much. He's going to have to raise his game a lot to have a shot at that Ferrari seat. The only thing tying him to that now is his name and that's not good enough.
Nice to see the McLarens recovering so well since the first races.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Right, I saw the reason for the red flag, but didn't hear if they mentioned why Bottas stopped on track. Looked like he just parked it in the grass, no obvious contact.

It wasn’t explained at the time, but the exhaust broke and Bottas had to park it immediately to prevent further damage.

quote:

Originally posted by Dwill104:

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Right, I saw the reason for the red flag, but didn't hear if they mentioned why Bottas stopped on track. Looked like he just parked it in the grass, no obvious contact.

It wasn’t explained at the time, but the exhaust broke and Bottas had to park it immediately to prevent further damage.

The exhaust broke and for some reason, I suspect heat damage, they are replacing the chassis.

The sprint race was good. Soft tires ended up being the way to go but tomorrow, with a lot more weight of fuel onboard, I'd guess the mediums may look better. They also had the SC laps so if it had run straight through at full tilt, who knows.
On the other hand, they mentioned that rain is a possibility at some point tomorrow.
Nice to see the cars really racing again throughout the field.
If Red Bull gets the reliability sorted Ferrari will be looking over their shoulder. Leclerc's lead seemed large but there are a lot races to go and just one DNF would put Max back in the game overnight.
Perez is finally looking more comfortable too. If he could get his qualifying consistently strong, that would be a big factor too. Making the most passes in the race doesn't mean that much when you still don't end up at the front.

**crickets**

Trying to figure out why the broadcast team felt compelled to follow little Lew Lew throughout the race as he marched from 14th to...14th.

The four championships that Vettel has are due to Adrian Newey. He again worked his magic in 2022 Redbull. Apparently with the spending cap MB will not be able to make a better aero package. I propose a new aero design engineer for 2023.

Not the most exciting race.
Was great seeing VB with such good pace, even with a damaged nose.
Bummer for Sainz, I put most of the blame on DR for that T1 incident.
Leclerc, just a bit too much kerb came back to bite him.

Up next, Miami.....not sure what to hope for there.

Yeah, Sainz has to be feeling spooked. It was my understanding the last race, there was a known issue with his car, he was sent out on hard tires to maybe gain a later race advantage and it all went wrong. He's under more and more pressure and that's it's own huge burden.

That said, Leclerc actually did appear to more comprehensively drop the ball this weekend, a very bad start in the race and his awful mistake at the end. He looked like death warmed over as he waited to be weighed after the race. For whatever else it may be, driving for Ferrari looks like no fun.

I recall when Kimi/Leclerc swapped seats, Kimi said racing was fun again at Sauber.
I can't imagine the pressure of being a Ferrari driver. I would guess those have to be the 2 most high pressure seats on the grid. Followed by MB & RBR.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
Yeah, Sainz has to be feeling spooked. It was my understanding the last race, there was a known issue with his car, he was sent out on hard tires to maybe gain a later race advantage and it all went wrong. He's under more and more pressure and that's it's own huge burden.

That said, Leclerc actually did appear to more comprehensively drop the ball this weekend, a very bad start in the race and his awful mistake at the end. He looked like death warmed over as he waited to be weighed after the race. For whatever else it may be, driving for Ferrari looks like no fun.

What last race for Sainz are you referring too? The issue in Australia was that he swapped steering wheels just before the start, but the new steering wheel wasn’t programmed by the team with the proper start settings, so anti-stall kicked in, and he lost places at the start. Bit, that only affected the start map. He got too aggressive because he fell back and binned it on his own.

This race, don’t forget that Sainz put it into the wall during qualy, even though he wasn’t pushing at the time. All him, not the team. He was unlucky with Riccardo, though, and that wasn’t his fault.

Leclerc just messed up on his own. I hope we’re not seeing a re-emergence of the first Ferrari season Leclerc, where there have been some great drives, which showed his talent, but mixed in with stupid moves that ended badly for him. I thought he put that behind him, but maybe not.

If both Ferrari come in behind both Red Bull in Miami, it’s probably all over for them. Red Bull has the straight line speed, and Ferrari doesn’t seem to be currently able to challenge that. It looks like Perez has finally gotten his act together this year, so Ferrari really needs both drivers, and of the two, Sainz the one who needs to get his stuff together. Leclerc just needs to not make any mistakes, as just one can hurt a lot in a close fight like this. He seems to handle the pressure when he’s leading just fine; it how he handles it trying to catch you if he’s behind that’s the potential problem IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by Dwill104:

This race, don’t forget that Sainz put it into the wall during qualy, even though he wasn’t pushing at the time.

Afterwards, Sainz seemed genuinely perplexed as to why that happened. I've not read any more about it, telemetry, whatever, maybe not so straightforward as it may appear. As for his previous race problems, he was doubly on his back foot before the race started, so yeah, maybe trying to get too much out of the day. If Sainz can weather the heavy criticism, he may come out stronger. I do believe he has the talent to succeed but there's no more margin for error. Starting....now.

Performing at the top level is about handing the pressure.
Few are handling it well. A few are handling it well.

I don't understand why LeClerc had to pit and change tires when he had a podium position locked up...

trying to garner 1 point cost them how many points?

the stupid was strong with that decision

^^^

But that one point was what it was all about, no?

Ferrari's drivers don't have a lock on feeling the pressure, the team has a pretty good history of dropping the ball. Didn't Vettel's first WDC come as a result of Ferrari pulling the rug out from under Alonso?

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Not the most exciting race.
Was great seeing VB with such good pace, even with a damaged nose.
Bummer for Sainz, I put most of the blame on DR for that T1 incident.
Leclerc, just a bit too much kerb came back to bite him.

Up next, Miami.....not sure what to hope for there.

It was a boring race. No action in the lead. No action in the middle of the pack.

And LeClerc screwed up. It was not the pit stop that cost LeClerc that podium, it was a driving error. He got back out on the track after the pit with no loss of position.

The only thing about it I liked was that McLaren is doing better.

Hell, I’m pleased as pie with RB number one and two! Sprint race win as well