Formula 1 2020/2021: Shits getting crazier

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Poor Lando, that sucks.

[Werthead]

That was a wild race, easily the best F1 race ever held in Sochi. Lots of stuff going on up and down the track, some great overtakes and an absurd number of battles right down the grid. Lots of drivers doing really well today.

Lando losing the lead in the most horrible way possible. That was a ballsy call by Mercedes to bring Lewis in when the radar was giving very mixed signals on whether the rain was going to increase or not. McLaren obviously should have brought Lando in to score second, but he wanted to take the gamble for the win and lost out.

Verstappen with the biggest shit-eating grin in the paddock. Going last to 2nd and effectively getting an extra engine out of the deal. Mercedes may also be happy (ish) about Bottas, who finished fifth but effectively with two extra engines available to see out the season. That won't help Hamilton, though, as they might have to take a penalty for a new engine later on and after Max's second place today, that might very well cost him the championship.

Sainz, Raikkonen, Leclerc and Alonso also had outstanding days at the office, and Ricciardo a very good one as well. Russell got another point, but he might be kicking himself over that too early a pit stop (which almost cost Sainz as well, but he recovered). Daddy might be dragging Stroll into his office for a word about not crushing his team-mate into the barriers at 200mph though. And Perez was running superbly, so ninth will be a tough pill to swallow, but to be fair that's almost entirely down to a crappy pit stop.

Hamilton becoming the first driver to get 100 race wins is a stunning accomplishment in any conditions.

It is getting annoying seeing so many great races being destroyed by this crappy new pit control system, which clearly isn't working as intended and needs revision.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Verstappen with the biggest shit-eating grin in the paddock. Going last to 2nd and effectively getting an extra engine out of the deal. Mercedes may also be happy (ish) about Bottas, who finished fifth but effectively with two extra engines available to see out the season. That won't help Hamilton, though, as they might have to take a penalty for a new engine later on and after Max's second place today, that might very well cost him the championship.

Can you explain the bloded, Wert?

[Werthead]

Yikes, Giovinazzi's radio stopped working on Lap 2 and he had to do the whole race basically from his own judgement, with only the starting straight boards being available to tell him to pit.

44 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Can you explain the bloded, Wert?

Each car is limited to 3 engines per season. Use a 4th, and you get a back-of-the-grid penalty.

Getting each engine to do 8 races without a problem is a huge ask (though when the rule was introduced, they were asking them to do six-and-a-bit races each), and as the engines get older, reliability gets iffier. Performance also degrades over races, so an engine that's done seven or eight races is generally a little down on power versus one that's done one or two. Of course, the overall engine performance might make up for the differentiation (i.e. a 7-race-old Mercedes engine will probably still be more powerful than an unused Renault or Ferrari engine).

The older engines are still available, so teams can try to refurbish them to put them back in the car later on, although that can be an iffy prospect, and obviously the cost cap may force them into harder decisions about whether to build a new engine and take the penalty, or try to refurb one from earlier in the season.

In Verstappen's case, getting the 3-place penalty at a track that Red Bull have never gone amazingly at made the team leadership take the gamble of giving him a fourth engine there, sending him to the back of the track, so him surging through the field to second gives them a massive net boost and gain over where they could realistically expect to be.

Bottas got a fourth engine in Italy and Mercedes took a penalty to give him a new set of components (not a fifth engine, my mistake, but some new systems around it which gave him a 10-place penalty to drop him out just ahead of Verstappen). Given he just let Verstappen pass him without a fight, that seems to have been a waste of time, but could set him up well later on in the season.

 The problem for Mercedes is that their engine is normally so superior to the rest of the field that Hamilton could easily win on 3 engines for the season. However, this season, the Merc power unit is nip and tuck with the Honda PU in the Red Bull, and swapping engines could become key strategically. Crunching the numbers, Mercedes believe that Red Bull's win in France was certainly down to swapping in a new engine unit, otherwise on identical engine life, Mercedes should have just won.

That means Hamilton will now, more likely than not, have to take a fourth engine as well, otherwise he's going to have a hard time making it to the end of the season. But the chances of him getting as good a result as Max - taking the hit, going to the back of the grid and ending up on the podium - are somewhat less, so it will adversely affect his championship more than Max.

Mercedes therefore have to choose between taking the hit quickly and rebuilding over the remaining seven races; not taking the hit at all and hoping they can grind out a win with just three recycled power units (they already don't think this is is likely); or hold fire until Max has another bad race (statistically he is much more likely than Hamilton to have another DNF or major race disaster) and then take the hit when it won't cost them anything.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

29 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The older engines are still available, so teams can try to refurbish them to put them back in the car later on, although that can be an iffy prospect, and obviously the cost cap may force them into harder decisions about whether to build a new engine and take the penalty, or try to refurb one from earlier in the season.

Appreciate the detailed response. This part is a bit confusing though. Since teams can fix and reuse engines, why not circulate through them to reduce wear and tear?

 

And is the limit on engines due to fair play or just to stop teams from expending like crazy?

[kungtotte]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And is the limit on engines due to fair play or just to stop teams from expending like crazy?

When it was first introduced, the engine limitation rule was to stop rich teams from just chucking in new engines as a way to maximize performance at all times, and on the surface of it the teams are supposed to make "road relevant" technological advancements which means making engines that last more than one grand prix. So it was mostly a cost-saving measure before there was a cost cap.

Now that we have an actual cost cap I don't know that they should keep the rule. This season it has mostly introduced weird corner cases where people get grid penalties for having to swap damaged engines after they were crashed out by competitors.

[Werthead]

27 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Appreciate the detailed response. This part is a bit confusing though. Since teams can fix and reuse engines, why not circulate through them to reduce wear and tear?

And is the limit on engines due to fair play or just to stop teams from expending like crazy?

The interaction between the engine, the MGU-H and MGU-K electrical and charging systems is extremely complicated, and screwing anything up can entail further penalties, so the teams will generally try to avoid swapping components around every race if they can avoid it. It's generally better and less risky in terms of reliability to run an engine setup as long as possible before you start messing around with it, not yanking bits out every race and slotting them back in.

With the next generation of engines entering service next year, which eliminate the MGU-H system altogether, it might be more possible to swap the engine in and out more easily, but that's unclear at the moment (especially with the dual MGU-K units which will control a four-wheel drive system, which is a new concept the teams will want to get used to first).

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

That was a wild race, easily the best F1 race ever held in Sochi. Lots of stuff going on up and down the track, some great overtakes and an absurd number of battles right down the grid. Lots of drivers doing really well today.

Lando losing the lead in the most horrible way possible. That was a ballsy call by Mercedes to bring Lewis in when the radar was giving very mixed signals on whether the rain was going to increase or not. McLaren obviously should have brought Lando in to score second, but he wanted to take the gamble for the win and lost out.

The rain really did arrive at the worse possible time for Norris. I can understand why he stayed out even if it turned out to be a mistake, if the rain hadn't gotten significantly heavier for a few minutes it would have worked out. He had driven a pretty much perfect race before that, managing to quickly recover from the setback of Sainz jumping him at the start.

Another crucial moment earlier might have been Ricciardo's slow pit-stop meaning that Hamilton didn't have to pass him on track, which he'd been struggling to do.

Hamilton perhaps had an easier choice, pitting unnecessarily might have lost any chance of challenging for the win but I think he'd likely be safely in second anyway. It did weirdly remind me of Hamilton's first title win where he stopped very near the end of the Brazilian race and looked like he had thrown the championship away but the wet tyres gave him enough of an advantage on the final lap to get the position he needed. He might have been lucky with the late weather here but it was still a strong drive from him, 100 victories is a stunning achievement and one that probably won't be matched for a very long time, if ever.

Verstappen will also be content with the outcome, I'm still not quite sure how he ended up second but I guess Red Bull timed the stop perfectly.

[ants]

On 9/27/2021 at 12:08 AM, Werthead said:

That was a wild race, easily the best F1 race ever held in Sochi. Lots of stuff going on up and down the track, some great overtakes and an absurd number of battles right down the grid. Lots of drivers doing really well today.

Lando losing the lead in the most horrible way possible. That was a ballsy call by Mercedes to bring Lewis in when the radar was giving very mixed signals on whether the rain was going to increase or not. McLaren obviously should have brought Lando in to score second, but he wanted to take the gamble for the win and lost out.

.......

Very very entertaining race. Every track should have a start like that one, where the cars can all jostle for position.

Mercedes call wasn't as brave as it sounds. They've admitted they did it in response to Max to ensure they had him blocked off. But it really did put the icing on a putrid day for McLaren off the track. The decision to box Riccardo early (possibly falling for a Mercedes bluff), to stuff up his pit, and then to not demand Norris come in for inters cost them probably a 1 and 3 finish, and maybe 1 and 2. Hamilton was struggling to get past Ricardo so if they could have kept him in front of Hamilton, it at least would have protected Lando for longer and guaranteed the win. Riccardo might have even got 2nd if they could have kept him in front of Lewis on similar tyres. Instead, they called Riccardo in early and let Hamilton have all that free air, when Lando showed the tyres would have stayed good. Even doing that, if they didn't stuff up the Ricardo's pit-stop he still would have been a strong chance at 3rd.  

Instead, neither driver made the podium. 

[williamjm]

13 hours ago, ants said:

The decision to box Riccardo early (possibly falling for a Mercedes bluff)

I suspect Hamilton may have been told to do the opposite to Ricciardo so they would try to do the undercut if Ricciardo didn't pit rather than being stuck behind the McLaren for longer.

[Toth]

The onboards of this race show great how insane it was:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmtLgCf6U2c

That lap 10 duel between Vettel and Leclerc!

[Werthead]

That was a disappointing race. Normally the damp spices things up, but they managed to achieve some kind of bizarre stasis where the humidity and drizzle was just enough to perfectly balance out the water being dislodged by the cars. So the conditions never really changed and the track never dried out, so everyone just had to sit on inters for the entire race and hold station, with only Hamilton, Perez and Sainz able to really make progress.

The only story was Mercedes calling in Hamilton for a tyre change which he felt was unnecessary, but is probably impossible to quantify. Making the end of the race one tyres which were balding by Lap 20 and almost non-existent at the end, whilst holding off a Ferrari who'd managed their tyres better and a McLaren on fresh tyres, was asking a lot, and there is a reasonable chance the tyres would have delaminated before the end and a DNF. However, Merc made the call too late. Lewis needed to pit when they first asked him. Him staying out for another few laps meant they didn't have enough time to go through the graining phase, which would have given him the chance to catch Perez.

As it stands, Mercedes lost the plot at a track they were much stronger on raw pace on than Red Bull, lost the championship lead and are now going to Austin, where Red Bull should be able to switch on the tyres much more aggressively and be more dangerous on raw pace (an advantage they should carry through into Mexico as well).

[williamjm]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

The only story was Mercedes calling in Hamilton for a tyre change which he felt was unnecessary, but is probably impossible to quantify. Making the end of the race one tyres which were balding by Lap 20 and almost non-existent at the end, whilst holding off a Ferrari who'd managed their tyres better and a McLaren on fresh tyres, was asking a lot, and there is a reasonable chance the tyres would have delaminated before the end and a DNF. However, Merc made the call too late. Lewis needed to pit when they first asked him. Him staying out for another few laps meant they didn't have enough time to go through the graining phase, which would have given him the chance to catch Perez.

It did feel that the Mercedes strategy was neither one thing nor the other with Hamilton, I agree if they were going to change tyres they should have done it earlier.

I thought the Perez/Hamilton attempted overtake was one of the highlights of the race, Perez has had a few forgettable races recently but Red Bull will be much happier with the job he did this time.

At the front Bottas didn't really seem to put a foot wrong, although it's a pity there wasn't more of a contest for the lead.

[Werthead]

14 hours ago, williamjm said:

It did feel that the Mercedes strategy was neither one thing nor the other with Hamilton, I agree if they were going to change tyres they should have done it earlier.

I thought the Perez/Hamilton attempted overtake was one of the highlights of the race, Perez has had a few forgettable races recently but Red Bull will be much happier with the job he did this time.

Yeah, Perez has had an okay season, but he's not been in the mix as much as Red Bull wanted. That win and two podiums are a step up in performance from Albon, but there isn't the consistency they need to challenge for the constructor's championship. It's clear Perez is not really comfortable in the car and his traditional driving style of going easy on the tyres and making a late push is not really meshing with a car that's capable of pushing harder from earlier on.

It'll be interesting to see how he handles the reset next year with the new aero.

[Werthead]

One of the F1 blogs found a wild statistic: if he wins the championship, Verstappen will become the first F1 driver since Niki Lauda in 1984 to have not competed against Michael Schumacher.

The winners since Lauda have been Prost (85-86, 89, 93), Picquet (87), Senna (88, 90-91), Mansell (92), Schumacher (94-95, 00-04), Hill (96), Villeneuve (97), Hakkinen (98-99), Alonso (05-06), Raikkonen (07), Hamilton (08, 14-15, 17-20), Button (09), Vettel (10-13) and Rosberg (16).

Schumacher's career ran from 1991 to 2006 and then his comeback in 2010-12. Picquet retired after the 1991 season and Schumacher's last team-mate was Rosberg, with Verstappen joining F1 in 2015.

Lauda was deeply involved in Mercedes' return to F1 in 2010, and worked closely alongside Schumacher during his second stint. For a driver with no connection to Schumacher at all, you have to go back to 1982's champion Keke Rosberg (father of Nico), who retired in 1986.

Completely pointless but interesting factoid.

[Werthead]

That went badly for Mercedes. Austin's power requirements meant that Mercedes expected to go well here, although the strength of its corners also favoured a Red Bull setup: hearing all week that it's a Mercedes circuit is weird, as Red Bull have sometimes gone well here and Verstappen even defeated Hamilton in a track battle a few years back when Verstappen was in a vastly inferior car. So seeing Verstappen take pole wasn't completely surprising. It seemed to leave Hamilton really bereft; it's the first non-Mercedes pole at Austin since 2014.

Even worse, they managed to screw over Bottas's engine again and he had to take a new ICE, putting him five places back into ninth, from where he's unlikely to make much of an impression at the front. And then Perez was absolutely on fire, a minute mistake in the final run taking him out of contention for pole. So Hamilton is now starting second on a grid where that's a real handicap because of the nature of the first turn (Max has way more space to nail the first corner) with another Red Bull in his mirror.

It could still work out well for Hamilton tomorrow, if he can get the first corner and take off into the distance, but he has to know that Verstappen is not going to give him space and if he gets taken out, even if Max goes as well, that leaves Verstappen in the lead with the much more Red Bull-friendly Mexico coming up next. Hamilton might be advised to go conservative and then try to come back through the pits.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

What a fun race! 

Also, Shaq is still taller than two of the three people on the podium. 

[Werthead]

That was a mighty Hamilton/Verstappen face off on pure pace on a Mercedes track (however exaggerated that claim is) and Verstappen proved victorious. Even Hamilton had to admit that Verstappen's performance was outrageously good.

That was a tough Red Bull call. They seemed to be banking that the track was so hot and tore through the mediums so fast that even the hard wasn't going to last long enough to mount a sustained, 20+ lap challenge which is what Mercedes and Hamilton seemed to be banking on. With Max going easy on the tyres until Lewis was around 3 seconds behind and then releasing that last bit of pace at the end, that allowed them to win but it was starting to get touch and go.

In fact, a couple of analyses even suggested that it was Verstappen getting DRS off Mick Schumacher in the last lap that sealed it, though that seems to be ignoring that Hamilton didn't get DRS in the last lap, without which it didn't make much odds (though it's questionable if without the Max's DRS, Lewis might have been in range for the DRS zone on the back straight, but that would have given Hamilton exactly one shot at it, which I don't think would have been enough).

Now off to Mexico, a high-altitude circuit which tends to punish the Mercedes power unit but the Honda PU seems to like. But given how close they are, who knows?

[Werthead]

Well, that was weird. The Red Bulls dominant until Q3 when they suddenly fell of a cliff, possibly with the rear wing downforce issue, and then not helped by Tsunoda messing up first Perez's lap and then Verstappen's.

Not disastrous, though. The run to the first corner is immense and the Red Bulls can slipstream the Mercedes ahead of them, and Mercedes have a headache in how to swap Bottas and Hamilton without them slowing down too much to give the Red Bulls an easier time of it. It's also unclear how Mercedes optimising the engines for high-altitude running might have compromised their race pace.

[kungtotte]

I mean, Tsunoda was fully off the track and no yellows were thrown when Perez got distracted and went off. So you can't really blame Tsunoda for that. And Perez was the first one back on track when Max was coming through which messed up Max's lap, and that is really on Perez/Red Bull.

Laying any of that on Tsunoda is a stretch.