Crazy...tough luck for Le Sharles.

And Renault...WTF

Le Riccardo made le wrong team choice AH?

Kimi still has it. Love when they asked him how his front wing was and he said "you tell me!"

Riccardo wasn’t the favored guy at Red Bull and makes about four times the money at Renault. He’s only in his second race there today and at one point wasn’t looking too bad compared to Max.
Leclerc looked like the future champ he probably is.
Vettel and Ferrari have to be wondering if it will ever come around for him.
Hamilton showed great skill on the track and graciousness off track. He knew he won due to some luck but also out drove Vettel to get into position.

Gut wrenching for Leclerc, but still impressive to hold position while down a fair amount of power.

The double DNF at the same time was surprising.

"Luck favors the prepared", right?

Interesting race, good to see LeClerc performing at such a high level so quickly. I also loved the conversation with Horner to discern what stroke of brilliance led to the early pit stop causing all sorts of downstream affects on others including Vettel.

No, just a slow puncture...

Another note on yesterday's race, if it's an indicator of the future, the midfield is going to provide some great action.

Even if MBZ & FER run away at the front, the midfield battles will be great to see.

Looks like Leclerc's problem wasn't the turbo, battery or engine itself but maybe some electronic/fuel system issue in one cylinder.
They are planning on running the same one at China, at least to start to see if they can determine the problem.

Apparently, this issue for LeClerc was a faulty sensor that caused a misfire in one cylinder. The sensor has been replaced and we'll see in China is that fixes everything. There have been some people online asking is Ferrari needs to install an OBDII Code Reader in the steering wheel so the driver can turn off "Check Engine Light" warnings like people who've bought the current Alfa Romeos...

Another shocking thing after this race is the only two engine manufacturers to have perfect reliability so far are Mercedes (no surprise) and Honda (big surprise). It also seems that Red Bull and Daniel Ricciardo are better with each other than without. All Christian Horner had to do was admit that Max fucked up at Baku and pay both drivers the same and they'd be 2nd place in the Constructor's. Now, Daniel's getting paid a lot of money to drive a car until it blows up, and all Pierre Gasly can do is fight Toro Rosso drivers for 10th place. That's not how you draw it up on the chalkboard.

Max sure made a fool of himself after qualifying, accusing others of playing games by passing him on the warm up lap.
Turns out he was going slow and couldn't make it to the line before time was up so others passed him so they wouldn't miss the cut off too.
Sounds like he eventually figured it out or someone set him straight.
Cost him a shot to be on the second row. Hopefully he will be a little more mature on lap one tomorrow.

I'm seeing mention that engine rules may well remain the same. If you like what you're seeing, settle in.

Ferrari seemed to have the worst strategy of anyone.
When Leclerc got in front of Vettel and they couldn't seem to keep up with the Merc's, why not have Charles push hard then pit early for hards to try the undercut and make Mercedes follow with at least one car?
The TV guys seemed to think Vettel was slightly faster but it seemed clear to me he was staying close due to DRS and the tow each lap. Complete waste of the second car by doing it the way they did.

Definitely not as action-packed as Bahrain, but a good race, I thought.

The return of 'Aussie-spec' (think is was D Croft that used that term) Bottas was great, though on race pace HAM was slowly eking out a gap.

Max in Q3:

Albon put in a great race to finish P10 after starting in the pit lane.

The torpedo hit 2 cars (though less intentional-looking as the Vettel collision in 2017), Sainz took quite a ride.

Honda making a big show so far, a huge change from the woes of the McHonda days.

USGP tickets went live Tuesday.

Waited about 2 hours watching the wheel spin, just to choose a section & gave up.

If we go, trying to decide on T9, T4, T12

We did T9 in 2017, T4 in 2018. Considering T12, but it's something like $100 more per ticket (over 3 days, $33.33 isn't bad I suppose).

Quite a few off-track excursion in free practice today.

FP1 cancelled after 10 minutes. Russell is a lucky guy.
Red flag delay in FP2

May make for an interesting race.

It should be very interesting to see what happens in the race. The qualy sims had Ferrari seven tenths ahead, but the long run race sims had the Mercs ahead. Ferrari also ran new floors on both cars and a big ass rear wing for more aero grip. I wonder if the engine can indeed makeup for the bigger wing. Also interesting that Leclerc is so far faster than Vettel.

Talk about incompetence on several fronts.

Video here

Ferrari just continue to underperform and shoot themselves in the foot.
I like Leclerc's attitude, I just wish they'd let him race. They haven't explained the lack of speed on the soft tires at the end. If they knew that's how they would perform, why did they use that strategy?
Take out the front three teams and the rest are great to watch and hard to predict.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Ferrari just continue to underperform and shoot themselves in the foot.
I like Leclerc's attitude, I just wish they'd let him race. They haven't explained the lack of speed on the soft tires at the end. If they knew that's how they would perform, why did they use that strategy?
Take out the front three teams and the rest are great to watch and hard to predict.

Well, he had to start on the Med due to his Q2 time being set on them.
Why they didn't pit him earlier & try a 2 stop, who knows. It was odd how much pace he lacked on the 'faster' tire.

Ricciardo: Did he not look in the mirror at all? Surely it's hard to miss a car broadside behind you.

Williams still in F2 land off the pace.

Glad to see VB77 back on top, even if by 1 point.

quote:

If they knew that's how they would perform, why did they use that strategy?

Dictated by quali wreck, but expected them to do more.

Borrrrriiiinnnnnngggggg Fffffffffffonnnnneeeeee

Another dominant year by Mercedes; We need some significant rule changes and we got to drop the road relevance nonsense. Why did we spend so much money on these fancy cars and then spend the last half of the race wearing about a set of tires?

Can we please get back to Innovation and engineering creativity?

RIP Roland Ratzenberger. 25 years today.