@BearsEatBeets Hamilton has been pretty fast on Sundays, other than the two recent retirements he’s finished 6, 8, 8, 4, 8, 8, 12, 8. His problem in the second half of the season has been Saturdays (and then often DRS trains). I’d like to see what Charles and Lewis could do with a better car.
Super race from all three at the top. Max couldn't do more, Piastri shows hes a future champ and its lovely to see Norris reach his potential.
Good race
@Titntin I think Red Bull could have put Max on fresher tires when they had the chance with a free stop and Max could have backed them up for half the lap then stayed ahead on better tyres the other half of the lap.
Would certainly have increased his chances. But he would have needed both Charles and George to overtake Lando (or a collision, which would be possible) else Oscar would likely give up his place to Lando.
If that had been a race in the middle of the season it probably would have seemed a bit dull but with everything at stake and Charles keeping Lando on his toes it was an engrossing race.
Well done Lando.
EDIT: @themightyant yeah that strategy seemed the only way to make something happen but maybe Max has decided he didn't want to force something and just race the best he can and let things be what they will behind him.
@themightyant Agreed they could have done that. But I saw an uncharacteristicly open chat with Max not long before the start where he seemed to suggest he was just gonna go win the race and rely on luck behind him. Not sure I believed it, but it seems to be exactly what they did!
So many new things next season with the new regs cars, new teams and the extra amount of cars. The car reveals should actually be more interesting next year as different teams may go in very different directions. Hopefully some vibrant liveries as well.
I just saw Matt & Tommy's vid and remembered @themightyant and myself also did predictions for the season. So here is how I did
Prediction Actual
1. NOR NOR
2. VER VER
3. PIA PIA nailed the top 3
4. LEC RUS
5. RUS LEC close with these two but wrong way round
6. HAM HAM nailed it again
7. SAI ANT underestimated Antonelli
8. TSU ALB might have come true if he stayed in VCarb
9. ALB SAI if only found form a bit earlier
10. LAW ALO
11. ANT HLK
12. ALO HAD
13. GAS BEA
14. HAD LAW
15. DOO OCO
16. STR STR random correct one
17. BOR TSU
18. BEA GAS
19. HLK BOR
20. OCO COL
21. NA DOO
If I had swapped Russell and LeClerc I would have got the top 6 dead on, so close. It clearly gets worse the further down it goes. Clearly the Haas ended up being much better than I thought and the Alpine way worse.
As for the Constructors
1. McLaren McLaren
2. Ferrari Merc
3. Red Bull Red Bull
4. Mercedes Ferrari
5. Williams Williams
6. VCarb RB (which is what I called VCarb)
7. Alpine Aston
8. Aston Haas
9. Haas Sauber (Stake)
10. Stake Alpine
Got Ferrari and Merc mixed just like their best drivers. If I had known Alpine were going to be so rubbish and dropped them to bottom then those 2 would have been the only ones wrong.
How did you do @themightyant? (I had to go back to page 46 to find mine, I think yours was the page before).
EDIT: I had this spaced out clearer and edited once to put them back, but it keeps deleting the spaces when I post for some reason!
@BearsEatBeets HAHA! You beat me to this. I was going to do this later today.
Well done! You were FAR better than me on the drivers. We both expected Ferrari to do far better than they did and that upset both of my predictions.
I wasn't too far off with most of them, as most were just one place or two from where they ended up, especially the top 10. But very few were actually right, in fact I only got Antonelli exactly right versus your 5. Doh!
I think Lando and Piastri will share too many points and like Hamilton and Alonso in 2007 will allow consistent Max to steal the title.
This VERY nearly came to pass! My theory was accurate, they just didn't quite balls it up!
Further down I'll ignore Lawson & Tsunoda as they changed teams, but like you my main issue was overestimating Alpine and underestimating Haas as well as underestimating the HULK and Ollie Bearman, who I thought would fail and maybe the first rookie out. I'm glad he didn't, he had a strong rookie season and along with Hadjar and Antonelli looks like they could the real deal given some more experience.
MINE / ACTUAL / DIFFERENCE
1. VER / NOR / 1
2. NOR / VER / 1
3. LEC / PIA / 2
4. PIA / RUS / 1
5. HAM / LEC / 1
6. RUS / HAM / 2
7. ANT - ANT / =
8. SAI / ALB / 1
9. LAW / SAI / 5
10. ALB / ALO / 2
11. TSU / HLK / 6
12. ALO / HAD / 2
13. GAS / BEA / 6
14. HAD / LAW / 2
15. STR / OCO / 1
16. BOR / STR / 3
17. HLK / TSU / 6
18. OCO / GAS / 3
19. DOO / BOR / 2
20. BEA / COL / 7
21. - - - / DOO / 2
The only things that’s certain is most of that will be wrong. lol.
Quite! At least I was right about something!
As for the constructors, I got 50% exactly right, more than happy with that. Swap Ferrari and Mercedes and I would have got the top 6 all correct. And further down like you I thought Alpine would be better and Haas worse. Good for them it was tight race 2-4th (until the last few races) and 6-9th went to the wire.
MINE / ACTUAL / DIFFERENCE
1. McLaren / McLaren / =
2. Ferrari / Mercedes / 2
3. Red Bull / Red Bull / =
4. Mercedes / Ferrari / 2
5. Williams / Williams / =
6. Racing Bulls / Racing Bulls / =
7. Alpine / Aston Martin / 4
8. Aston Martin / Haas / 2
9. Sauber / Sauber / =
10. Haas / Alpine / 2
A fun exercise. Thanks for sharing.
I'm going to make a completely wild pre-pre-season testing guess about where I think the constructors will finish next year, though I hope I am wrong!
1. Mercedes
2. McLaren
3. Ferrari
4. Red Bull
5. Williams
6. Aston Martin
7. Racing Bulls
8. Audi
9. Haas
10. Alpine
11. Cadillac
@themightyant I think we both did alright all things considered. I'm not bold enough to take a guess at the constructors this early, I'll wait until after testing.
Maybe next season we should allow ourselves a handful of swaps at the halfway point to allow for another Alpine situation.
It will be interesting to see how the Red Bull driver line-up strategy changes over the next few seasons with Helmut Marko retiring.
@BearsEatBeets Yep, the prediction for next year is pissing in the wind.
Not sure about the mid-season swap, it's a prediction at the start of the season. But perhaps we could have a mid season update too. But we should also be able to move drivers if they swap teams, even if in Tsunoda's case he likely would have finished higher at Racing Bulls!
@themightyant Yeah I meant the mid-season thing as an addition to doing the start as opposed to over-riding it, I release now what I wrote didn't explain that at all.
It will be interesting to see if that page gets 'corrected'. I'm pretty certain it's true that Lawson ended up with more points by going back to RB and the reverse for Yuki.
@BearsEatBeets Lawson only had 2 races this year before getting dropped... which seems completely crazy... but he just couldn't drive that car at the time.
In terms of qualifying he was 18th in Australia, 20th in China Sprint quali, 20th in race quali. That simply wasn't good enough when Max was 3rd, 2nd , 4th and Yuki was 5th, 8th, 9th.
In terms of the races/sprints Lawson was RET / 14 / 12 v Yuki 12 / 6 / 16 and Max was 2 / 3 / 4.
And in terms of points Liam had scored "nil points" from 3 races/sprints v 3 points for Yuki. The feeling at the time was Yuki was performing miracles in qualifying in the Racing Bulls.
It's hard to read too much from just 3 events but after that Yuki only scored another 30 points in the Red Bull, whereas Liam scored 38 in the Racing Bulls.
I think we now know the Racing Bulls car was much easier to drive, but the Red Bull likely had higher potential performance if you could make it work. I don't think Max could have almost won the title in the Racing Bulls car for example.
@themightyant I think your last two sentences are a very precise way to put it and tell something I think many fail (or choose not) to understand. So many claiming Max almost beat the 'rocket ship' McLarens in a tractor. It's clear that at it's peak, the Red Bull is a match for the McLarens (for a large part of the season) but it takes someone of Max's immense skill to be able to extract it.
It bugs me when people say a driver 'outdrove' a car. That's not possible. They extracted the maximum possible from a piece of machinery when others aren't able. That's impressive enough without the hyperbole. (mini rant over 😄).
Anyone else been following the pre-pre-season shakedown and rumour mill. It's all been quite amusing. I think my favourite is that Williams is severely sandbagging and have a double diffuser-like performance enhancing part on the car that they didn't want to show to the other teams early. I don't believe it... but could you imagine! Smooth Operator and Mr Round the Outside Albono with a rocket ship. I almost want it to be true. lol.
@themightyant It's been hard to get away from it - the whole F1 hype machine is desperate to have some more to get its teeth into! After so many years of watching this circus I've learnt that whatever you think you know from pre season shakedowns turns out to be a whole bag of nothing once performance starts to count.
That doesn't stop it being fun to watch though and based on the shakedown and that Hammy was fastest, I fully expect Ferrari to walk away with it this year 🤣
@Titntin Completely agree, you can't read much into it except laps done and fastest lap certainly doesn't count for much as we don't know who's sandbagging, who's not, what setups they are etc. It's like comparing apples to oranges.
But despite that we usually get a pretty good idea of the pecking order and usually have a good idea who is the fastest team and who might be struggling. We knew Mclaren seemed like the fastest team at pre-season last year, not from the lap times alone, but general running across all tyres, same for Red Bull the years before. Merc before that. Obviously this wasn't the normal pre-season testing, this was before that, but I think there's still a common understanding Mercedes might be the team slightly ahead. It will be interesting to see if that is true. With so many rule changes and new engine manufacturers I expected more reliability and other issues tbh but it seemed quite smooth.
I think what amused me most was how many hundreds of thousands of views many streams got that effectively said nothing. lol
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