F1 2021 – spoilers here

No great surprise to see Coulthard

I’ve been satisfied with my one month Now TV purchase. Should get three GPs in plus I might get to see Brentford.

Listening to Coulthard I didn’t realise Horner was running a4 car team. What does the alpha tauri team head do all year apart from whatever Horner tells him to

Why, yet again was Bottas pottering round in 11 Ty for so long? He made a lousy start and then didn’t seem interested in doing anything about it until toto gave him the hurry up

Some opprobrium for Christian Horner here

He undid all of that later though: (from the BBC)

In the news conference he called to issue this apology, it was pointed out to him that in recent days he had accused Wolff of buckling under the pressure, criticised FIA officials, and effectively accused Mercedes of cheating. Did he have any regrets about the way he had conducted himself, he was asked?

“No not at all,” he said. “I believe in my team. I am a straight-talker. I have always conducted myself in that manner. I am not an overly emotional person. I don’t rant to cameras.

“I think the way I’ve conducted myself, I’ve got no issues with. I’d do exactly the same [again]. The only issue regarding any marshal, was if there was any personal offence taken for referencing a rogue yellow flag; [it] was not intended at any individual.

“I don’t know whether you heard the interview I gave this morning, but I don’t think it was unreasonable.”

So basically a non-apology apology. If you read between the lines about the rogue marshall comment not being targeted at an individual he’s actually tarring them all with the same brush. The man doesn’t know when to stop digging does he 🤣

chrismac
Full Member
Why, yet again was Bottas pottering round in 11 Ty for so long? He made a lousy start and then didn’t seem interested in doing anything about it until toto gave him the hurry up

Yes it was very bottas. To be kind maybe the plan was to tyre save to go long.

On McLaren, Danny ric said they had some kind of problem which meant they spent the whole race fuel saving. Not sure if that was just him or both cars.

Horner using the past exonerative in his apology:
“Some comments were made, I think in our interview earlier…”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/past_exonerative

This is what happens when you put top drivers into midfield cars.

Forget the drivers or constructors championship, I’m only here to find out the winner of…

THE OVERTAKE CHAMPIONSHIP

Alonso 116
Vettel 115
Raikkonen 115

The old timers still got it ?

— Matt Gallagher (@MattP1Gallagher) November 21, 2021

Mixed emotions from that race.

Good for Lewis as he caught up a bit in the drivers champ.

Not happy Red Bull had such a successful damage limitation attempt and caught up in the constructors champ.

Still bemused at Bottas’ lack of pace and what seemed like a lacklustre drive.

It’s very honourable that Merc are keeping Bottas till the end of the season but he’s not really doing a great job for the team. Just fake a positive COVID test for him so he has to isolate and put George in the Merc last few races to help cement that constructors and be more of a barricade for any Red Bulls trying to overtake.

100% agree with replacing bottas. He’s no use to merc at the moment. Possibly worse than that too.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much it is Bottas being off the pace and how much it is Hamilton driving the wheels off his Merc, but Bottas definitely seem to come alive a bit more after the first third of the race. He was actually doing ok when he had the puncture, looking at 4th place.

I have no issue with team orders within the same team, it makes total sense, but it really annoyed me when Coulthard was suggesting that Alpha should/would also act as part of the Red Bull team.

100% agree with replacing bottas. He’s no use to merc at the moment. Possibly worse than that too.

Apart from being 3rd in the drivers championship, one of the few outside of Hamilton and Verstappen to have won a race, and contributing over 200 points to Mercedes constructors point haul… 4 poles, 4 fastest laps, 10 podium spots…Yeah, of absolutely no use.

The continued slating that Bottas gets on here baffles me, it really does.

The continued slating that Bottas gets on here baffles me, it really does.

I felt very sorry for him – once he got into the swing of things yesterday he was driving well, had made up lots of places and was on course for a podium. Merc screwed up leaving him out there for so long.

The punctures livened up what was otherwise a rather dull race. I turned off for about 25 laps in the middle, came back and everything was virtually identical…

I have no issue with team orders within the same team, it makes total sense, but it really annoyed me when Coulthard was suggesting that Alpha should/would also act as part of the Red Bull team

Absolutely agree with this. I hope it’s Coulthard that gets Covid and can’t attend the next two races to be honest.

“but it really annoyed me when Coulthard…”
Thats all you needed to write. I’m amazed he’s still got the gig with C4 given how biased his commentary is.
He, Horner and Verstappen are made for each other, if F1 is a big marketing exercise they’ve turned me off Red Bull drinks for life.
Really hope Hamilton grabs both the next wins by doing all they legally can to blow away the competition, Merc win the constructors, and the whining and whinging from RB can be put to bed until next season.

I have no issue with team orders within the same team, it makes total sense, but it really annoyed me when Coulthard was suggesting that Alpha should/would also act as part of the Red Bull team.

This with shiny bells on. Marko was stood next to Tost on the grid, arms folded eyeballing him before the race, could have been perfectly innocent but the cynic in me couldn’t help but think otherwise.

Thats all you needed to write. I’m amazed he’s still got the gig with C4 given how biased his commentary is.

It’s his production company that supplies C4 with the highlight package! 🙂

It’s his production company that supplies C4 with the highlight package! 🙂

Aaaahhhhhh.
The penny has dropped 😉
He’s still a nob.

Marko covering the team in more glory…. 🙄
https://www.planetf1.com/news/helmut-marko-fia-criticism-max-verstappen-penalty/

I watched a clip yesterday (can’t recall where) of Coultard jumping in with ‘MV should be WDC this year for the good of F1, he deserves it etc’.

He (Coultard) really has become a grade A prick. I used to quite like his commentary but now just see it as completely biased white noise rather than Brundle’s more incisive/informative stuff.

Yep Coulthard did lose me when he defended Horner’s criticism of the marshall. To use his own phrase, that was a slam dunk penalty and going after the marshall, who as it turns out was doing the right thing, is not ok

In many ways I hope that LH wins this year and next, GR takes his crown in ’23 and MV never gets to claim the WDC.
The whole charade around Red Bull being the little team that can, and standing up to the manufacturers like Merc is just getting tiring. It’ll be very interesting what happens to RBR when Newey decides to hang up his protractor and set-square or Mateschitz finds another plaything for his cubic billions.

If there’s a yellow flag, you slow down. Verstappen had a yellow flag, didn’t slow down. It’s about as ambiguous as Kimi Raikkonen explaining how to use a light switch

I watched a clip yesterday (can’t recall where) of Coultard jumping in with ‘MV should be WDC this year for the good of F1, he deserves it etc’.

I don’t necessarily disagree that Verstappen has taken the fight to the Mercedes team this year and it’s made for a great season, and I think he has what it takes to be a world champion; he’s clearly a superb driver. The off-stage bun fights are just a side show really though, and all it does is reveal how high stakes it all is (as if we didn’t know) I can forgive folks for being partisan

I can forgive folks for being partisan

Yeah but not really the commentary team. It just gets so tiring… 🙄

Agreed, the senior Red Bull management team are ruining it for me, I do wish they’d stop trying to score points with incessant whinging.

I’m relatively ambivalent about who winds the WDC this year, but Horner et al are starting to get on my nerves.

The continued slating that Bottas gets on here baffles me, it really does.

I think he mainly gets criticised for being ‘not as good as (probably) the greatest ever’ It’s a big ask of anyone!
.
.
On another note, I always like to watch the background of the interviews. Going round on the truck before the race, you can see everyone not being interviewed chatting with their mates, Russell, Norris and Sainz, Vettel and Raikonen, etc. The camera angle changed for Gasly’s interview and there’s poor old Mazapin stood on his own playing with his phone. I know he has a dodgy reputation but are the others all shunning him completely?

He (Coultard) really has become a grade A prick. I used to quite like his commentary but now just see it as completely biased white noise rather than Brundle’s more incisive/informative stuff.

This +1. I used to enjoy the C4 coverage but now skip a lot off the fluff before and after the race as it’ll just be some biased nonsense.

One of the other (unnamed) team principles referred to Horner’s claims about Mercedes “not physically possible” speed advantage in Brazil as “just the usual Reb Bull bullshit” 😁

When you look at just how fast Mercedes 2020 car was compared to RB (even at the end of the season where Mercedes turned the engine down to prevent a DNF, it was still competitive) and how much they lost this year. LH at the start of the season said they’d had to apply so much additional aerodownforce (drag) to get it to behave, that it was MUCH slower than last year. Come the end of the year, Mercedes understand the car better, have been able to get that required downforce from the package rather than increasing the wing size/drag and lo and behold, they’re fast again.

I really do hope that Mercedes have just placed a bit of grit into the rear wing to cause the “fretting” that RB are focussing on, when in reality, it’s either the package as a whole of they have something else that RB can’t see. I like the idea of Horner fretting about Mercedes wing fretting.

Coulthard trotted out his usual “just let them race” line several times, yesterday.

Curious to see how long he’ll stick to this, if Max ends up on the receiving end…

Toto’s offer to send Red Bull a wing to examine is classic Toto and a load of hot-air too. 🙂

If Red Bull did find anything they could copy it’s too late to do so now. And next years rear wing and whole aero concept is massively different so would have no relevance.

Bottas under performance complaints are only semi-valid as a few have pointed out but there are definite examples where he seems to fail to perform as you would expect, especially when letting everyone drive around and overtake him as if he is on a Sunday afternoon sightseeinbg ride rather than a race.

He is unfortunate in being compared to Hamilton tough.

Anyone remember Eddy Irvine during the Shoemaker days?
He was asked why he wasn’t competative once and his answer was something like “Michael is faster and a better than me but I console myself with the yacht and the babes – something along those lines anyway

Curious to see how long he’ll stick to this, if Max ends up on the receiving end…

I seem to recall he was a little less ambivalent at Silverstone…?

Anyone remember Eddy Irvine during the Shoemaker days?

Thing is, I’m sure I recall a race at Suzuka where it was oddly enthralling watching Irvine drive a masterful strategic race to hold cars behind him and allow Schumacher to romp off ahead. Not exactly what we’ve seen from Bottas. He’s damn fast over a lap on his day but he’s always had tiny elbows…

He’s damn fast over a lap on his day but he’s always had tiny elbows…

Kind of the opposite of Perez, qualifies well but often struggles to come back through the field when he has to.
Checo is usually the master of a recovery drive, but should mostly never have been that far back in the first place.

Kind of the opposite of Perez

Yes, if you could take Bottas’s qualifying performances and Perez’s race performances, you’d have a pretty decent driver.

Toto’s offer to send Red Bull a wing to examine is classic Toto and a load of hot-air too

It would be very funny if Merc could somehow acquire an actual genuine RB wing, paint it up in Merc colours and send it to RB for analysis. Then wait to see how much RB complained about anomalies and illegalities.

Then point out they’re talking about their own wing.

Yes, if you could take Bottas’s qualifying performances and Perez’s race performances, you’d have a pretty decent driver. Lando Norris or George Russell

Yes, if you could take Bottas’s qualifying performances and Perez’s race performances, you’d have a pretty decent driver.

You definitely would! I suppose at that point you’d have a Hamilton or a Verstappen.

Being fair to bottas I didn’t see many people defending a drs pass into turn 1, so it was a big ask for anyone to hold up a faster car. So I’ll excuse him for yesterday, but there’s still plenty of other races where he’s hardly even tried to play the tactical defensive role.