F1 2020 (spoilers abound)

Boring F1 eh 😳

Sad for Lewis, happy for viewers. Enjoying this.

I predict Albon will be fired after the next race. He should waltz past that Williams with it’s barn-door rear wing.

And Binottto. I suspect the ghost of Enzo Ferrari is currently duffing him up behind the Ferrari motorhome

Gasly wins, Albon last (of drivers without a stop-go)

Ooh, I liked that.

Gasly has earn his place back, Albion needs to go.  Despite Lewis and the cars issues he’s proved what a fighter he is.  He’s head and shoulders above everyone.

Epic race! An Italian team on the top step of the podium, that’s gotta be painful for Ferrari 🤭

Obviously Bottas has always been the #2 driver, but he’s really starting to look like one now. Only caught it from the restart, but enjoyed that

Gasly has earn his place back

If I were PG, and got a call from a grovelling Horner and Marko, I think the urge to tell them to go **** themselves might be too much to keep to myself…

Commentators were making excuses for Bottas not having the right setup for overtaking etc but that was shown to be rubbish when Lewis started cutting back through the field.

Gasly has been a better driver since being back at alpha, I think red bull had to drop him at the time with Albon looking like a ready made replacement but now should give him am extended chance to settle in at RB, maybe they bring some of his team with him as he is obviously happier driving at Alpha.

That could be Sainz’s best chance of a race win for a fair few years the state Ferrari are in

LeClerc must be checking the get out clauses on his contract by now. Would be a shame if he gets wasted by being locked in (assuming Ferrari can’t sort themselves out)

Whilst I do feel a bit sad about the locked in aspect of the contracts I do look at the salary numbers and think How Much?
So there you go.
Just laying that out there.

That was a completely random race, so much going on!! Monza is usually a boring 1-stop speedfest, completely didn’t expect any of that.

So can we tell if the limits on engine modes made any difference whatsoever?

So can we tell if the limits on engine modes made any difference whatsoever?

Red Bull were worse, otherwise not much. I bet they’re hacked off at whoever complained and got qualifying modes banned.

Whilst I do feel a bit sad about the locked in aspect of the contracts I do look at the salary numbers and think How Much?
So there you go.
Just laying that out there

Saw an interview with Toto Wolff, he reckoned the F1 team (and the successful image associated with it) was worth €4.5 billion to Mercedes, so their drivers salaries are a drop in the ocean. Ferrari & McLaren road car brands are built on F1/racing prestige so the same there, and I guess the same sporty image to Renault/alpine, Alfa Romeo and Aston Martin (next year).

For global brands, 7-8 figure salaries, for the marketing the bring, are pretty good value.

Blimey, not a dry eye here at the result. Would’ve loved a McLaren fairy-tale win, but seeing Gasly score that emotional finish was amazing.

Horner has admitted that the Red Bull is a much harder car to drive fast, but has more potential which is why Alex is struggling with it on the limit. Max, like Alonso, Hamilton and Ricciardo can drive a bad car close to the limit. Others like Vettel, Button and Bottas can’t.

Albon was only .29 slower than Max in qualifying, but struggled like both Max and Bottas in the race.

Gasly was very lucky the way the pit stops came down and only had to really defend for 1-2 laps from a Stroll and Sainz. He is driving well at the moment, but in a car that’s apparently mild mannered.

I loved David Coulthard’s description of next weeks circuit – “it’s gonna scare the whotnots out of them! Mugello is a properly scary race track!”

Brilliant both for what he said and hopefully what we’ll see!

Hamilton was good in the post race interviews – seemed quite upbeat considering and took full responsibility for the error despite the team making the call, the marker boards being on the wrong side of the track and in the wrong colour and there being no lights on the pit entry to state that it was closed.

seemed quite upbeat considering

I imagine he was, could have been much worse considering the penalty only losing 3 pts to Bottas and gaining 7 on Vestappen.

In defence of albon, a bit, RB said the damage he got from the collision with gasly early on nobbled him to the tune of about a second a lap, so he was never going to be up the sharp end. Maybe should have been ahead of the Williams’ though…

seemed quite upbeat

A 47 point lead before the halfway in the season will do that

He knows that over the course of a season you’ll have one or two races where things go wrong. He’s had one today and lost very little to Bottas who is no real threat so that’s a solid result for him. If Verstappen had won he’d be a lot more downbeat but to walk away from a race with a 10 second stop-go with essentially an increased lead in the championship is good.

Certainly the mystery of the season is trying to figure out what Bottas’s “plan” was to beat Hamilton. Unless he was carrying a significant mechanical issue, finishing ten seconds ahead of Hamilton, when he had a bunch of time robbed by a restart, 30 seconds lost to the penalty, and about ten cars to overtake, is making him look very average again. As did Norris’s brilliant move on him on the first lap.

I’m not sure what’s more entertaining: watching the fresh talent take the spoils, watching Hamilton smoke everyone again, or seeing another Ferrari double DNF. Still, thanks to Covid restrictions, at least everyone in red overalls made it out of the circuit alive 🙂

Bring on Mugello, it’s going to be nuts.

Horner has admitted that the Red Bull is a much harder car to drive fast, but has more potential which is why Alex is struggling with it on the limit.

Has Verstappen got a weird driving style? Maybe his style just suits however the car is. Then if he’s doing well in it the engineers listen to his feedback and make the car more as he likes it, the designers make next year’s car more like and you end up with a viscious cycle creating a peculiar handling car only he can get a grip of.
Albon is not a slow driver, but he can’t get anywhere near, neither could Gasly or the Torpedo. Maybe the atmosphere at TR/AT just puts Gasly in his happy place and lets him perform better but maybe that is a more ‘normal’ car and he’s able to drive it propery, much as Albon did

Rather bizzarely, Grosjean has the lap record at Mugello…

Enjoyable race I would of preferred Sainz to win but all in all Hamilton not affected so I am fine. Redbull for me are a toxic team and are totally focused on Max winning, they just dont seem to support other drivers the same way. Anyway looking forward to Mugello.

Interesting result. Obviously, a fair bit of luck involved with Gasly pitting at exactly the right time, but he still had to drive well to take advantage of that. Sainz looked headed for a podium anyway, so that was on merit.

What’s interesting is that the smaller teams seem to be able to run competitively in low-drag conditions, but struggle more when they need to pile on more downforce. Obviously related to how much money they can spend on their aero department. Merc and Honda seem to be better at generating downforce without too much drag, but they’ve both had problems finding the optimum setups at times, especially Red Bull. The Red Bull seems to be potentially quite fast in high-downforce configuration, but unpredictable and difficult to set up. Verstappen has the confidence and reflexes to push the car to the limit, but other drivers seem to struggle with that. Similarly at Merc, a very fast car, but sometimes has a very narrow operating range that Hamilton seems to be better at hitting. The Ferrari seems to be similar, with Leclerc better able to exploit a difficult car, except the car is slow as well as difficult to drive.

The differences between the Merc, Honda, and Renault engines in race mode seem to be quite small now, so the midfield battle comes down to whoever can find a good setup for a particular circuit, plus a bit of random luck. Pretty obvious that Merc will run away with the teams championship, but the battle for 3rd through 6th will be intense. Hoping Merc and Red Bull have some more off days so we can see more varied podiums again.

Great race all round, said to my lad at the start I had a feeling it was going to be a bit different.

Bottas 3.0 or whatever it is this year often looking very average compared to Hamilton with race pace. Seems Red Bull struggling with the ban on party modes (bet Horner wished he’d kept his mouth shut now). [tongueincheek]Fun watching Hamilton make his way through the pack in a car that can’t overtake [/tongueincheek]

I’ve spent the past couple of seasons laughing at Vettels demise but for some reason part of me can’t help but feel sorry for him now.

Was desperate to see Lando on the podium but really happy for Gasly.

The best time to get a bad result is when your opposition do the same. Lewis can afford to be generous in defeat today, and even he appreciates that it’s not great for the spectators if he wins all the time.

Anyone spot the sideline that Renault are changing names to Alpine next year? Going back to French blue for the colours, but with Renault retaining the name on the PU. It took about a year for people to stop using Force India instead of Racing Point, so wonder how long it’ll take to stop calling them Renault.

I think it’ll catch on more easily; Alpine is a marque with plenty of history and cult status, whereas “Racing Point” is frankly just a shit name from a presumably rushed whiteboard session conducted in the time it took Lawrence to unfold his chequebook 🙂

Yep enjoyed that race.

That was an absolute horror show of an opening lap from Bottas. One of the Mercs only weaknesses is that it doesn’t run well in dirty air. So Bottas was always going to struggle to get passed cars with similar straight line speed, but overall a pretty lacklustre performance.

I thought Hamilton’s penalty was a bit harsh but it certainly livened up the race. It was really nice to see Gasly get the win.

I thought Hamilton’s penalty was a bit harsh but it certainly livened up the race.

Not really – marshalls could have been pushing that car down the pit-lane and Lewis comes barrelling in at 120mph+. Safety issue so fair penalty.

Has Verstappen got a weird driving style? Maybe his style just suits however the car is. Then if he’s doing well in it the engineers listen to his feedback and make the car more as he likes it, the designers make next year’s car more like and you end up with a viscious cycle creating a peculiar handling car only he can get a grip of.

He has a very good feel for a nervy car, same as Schumacher and Alonso. All 3 have had team mates struggle to match them due to the car being so edgy. Alonso always seemed to lead the development down a blind alley, Schumacher just drove the wheels off whatever he was given and could trust the design team to give him a better car based on his feedback. Be interesting to see which way Verstappen goes, Red Bull benefited from 2 top drivers driving development with Vettel and Webber but Team Vertappen won’t allow a decent driver in the second seat so I fear he’ll end up taking Alonso’s path.

Good point about Alonso. It’s possible that Verstappen has had so limited experience of other cars he won’t really know which direction to try to push them in. Ricciardo could obviously drive the car they shared, and would presumably have had more say than Max in how it was developed being the more experienced voice, and would in turn have benefited from learning from Vettel, but now Max is steering it it may go down the Alonso route.
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On a different subject, there was a lot of Stroll-bashing a few pages ago. Half way through the championship he is now fourth. I am surprised, but credit where it’s due.

Credit where it’s due

There’s no credit Lol’s Dad is paying straight from his personal account

And then Norris loses sympathy or respect (a little) by chucking his toys out the pram “it’s not fair, stooopid rule”

https://www.planetf1.com/news/lando-norris-stupid-f1-rule/

I’m inclined to agree with him tbh. Does seem silly that someone with zero pitstops can have run two different tyre compounds, however unlikely the situation.

I thought they got rid of the changing tyres under red flags after the Monaco fiasco in what 2011/2012, but obviously not! Ruined a great race then and had an impact on this one as well. Completely agree with Lando, getting lucky with the timing of a safety to make a pit stop is one thing, not having to a pit stop at all is dumb.

Great race still though, penalty for Lewis was harsh given how close he was to parabolica and the fact the screens are on the right side of the track; these guys are looking so far ahead you’d never see them unless the team told you to look for them, which presumably everyone else bar Giovinazzi did as they were 10+ seconds at least behind.

I think they have to give a fairly severe penalty when safety is involved. But certainly on my TV the signs looked more amber than red and could easily be mistaken for the lights that accompany a yellow flag, so I think they should also look at improving their signalling.

I feel that for safety critical calls like the pitlane closing, marshals on track etc that race control should radio the driver’s directly.
Not because it would have stopped the penalty, (which was unfortunate but fair) but if it’s that safety critical it would remove a link in the chain and be safer.
Either way it made for an entertaining race.