2022 Canadian Grand Prix - Montreal, June 17 - 19

[dialtone]

The race threads are so quiet and short these days. Races are OK, but not as exciting as last year.

I can't help but wonder if this in part a result of Lewis (and lesser extent Mercedes) not in the fight for pole positions/wins. Many people grow tired of dynasties, but there's no debating that the Lewis vs. Max rivalry (even if a lot of it was media/fan contrived) was certainly compelling. Right now it just doesn't feel like Max has a "real" competitor. And this is in spite of RB arguably not having the quickest car, or at the very least a car that is on par with the Ferrari.

The races have seen lots of action in the mid-pack, and it's inarguable that the cars can drive much closer to each other, but you're absolutely right that the races just don't have as much excitement as they did in the past. Maybe that is because Ferrari keep tripping themselves up (either in strategy, driver errors, or reliability).

You didn't find Bahrain, Jeddah, Monaco and Canada good/exciting races?

I can see Baku, Imola, Barcelona and maybe Miami not being exciting but the others...

[chrisc90]

The race threads are so quiet and short these days. Races are OK, but not as exciting as last year.

I can't help but wonder if this in part a result of Lewis (and lesser extent Mercedes) not in the fight for pole positions/wins. Many people grow tired of dynasties, but there's no debating that the Lewis vs. Max rivalry (even if a lot of it was media/fan contrived) was certainly compelling. Right now it just doesn't feel like Max has a "real" competitor. And this is in spite of RB arguably not having the quickest car, or at the very least a car that is on par with the Ferrari.

Makes you wonder how quiet places like the forum, and social media channels will be when Lewis retires. You dont really see a 'massive' following for other drivers (except Max)

[Just_a_fan]

The race threads are so quiet and short these days. Races are OK, but not as exciting as last year.

A number of people have moved away from the forum and found somewhere else to discuss things, and that makes the threads quieter because there are fewer people to bite at some of the deliberately provocative posts on this forum. Also, of course, there is less stuff happening on track this year compared to last year - the change in the "rules of racing" have meant cleaner driving and thus fewer contentious incidents.

[tpe]

They were very evenly matched on acceleration around the track, however it was clearly visible verstappen had better traction out of hairpin and thus always gained enough distance to keep sainz at bay. Had situation been reversed (no safety car) I believe verstappen was in a better position to overtake due to this advantage, along with more effective DRS on the red bull. That's if he could catch him in the first place of course.

@Juzh do you have access to the data to see what Max's DRS top speed was when he overtook Hamilton vs Sainz's highest top-speed with DRS behind Max?

I'm not Juzh but I do.

https://i.imgur.com/sMHRggH.jpeg

This is 90%ile lap from laps with DRS enabled only from the whole race, had to use distribution rather than average because Sainz had too many laps with it compared to VER and distribution is a better representation of the values in this case.

~2kph is the difference in speed on the main straight between Sainz and Verstappen in favor of Verstappen.

Ferrari has better acceleration out of T10, increasing the speed gap from around 150kph till 300kph and then RedBull has a bit less drag and regains speed against Ferrari to get to about 2kph up on them.

The 2 teams are very even on top speed when setup similarly. If Max had been behind Sainz, he would have been done for, just like Sainz was. The only thing that would have allowed a pass was a mistake from whoever would have been in front.

People listen to Sky too much.

However, from the TV, it looked like VER had better traction out of the haipin!
LEC had similar problems and not just with Ocon.
I wonder if there was anything to do, like a setting in the diff, or similar to change this situation

[dialtone]

@Juzh do you have access to the data to see what Max's DRS top speed was when he overtook Hamilton vs Sainz's highest top-speed with DRS behind Max?

I'm not Juzh but I do.

https://i.imgur.com/sMHRggH.jpeg

This is 90%ile lap from laps with DRS enabled only from the whole race, had to use distribution rather than average because Sainz had too many laps with it compared to VER and distribution is a better representation of the values in this case.

~2kph is the difference in speed on the main straight between Sainz and Verstappen in favor of Verstappen.

Ferrari has better acceleration out of T10, increasing the speed gap from around 150kph till 300kph and then RedBull has a bit less drag and regains speed against Ferrari to get to about 2kph up on them.

The 2 teams are very even on top speed when setup similarly. If Max had been behind Sainz, he would have been done for, just like Sainz was. The only thing that would have allowed a pass was a mistake from whoever would have been in front.

People listen to Sky too much.

However, from the TV, it looked like VER had better traction out of the haipin!
LEC had similar problems and not just with Ocon.
I wonder if there was anything to do, like a setting in the diff, or similar to change this situation

We can argue wether LEC had worse traction out of hairpin, I don't actually think it was that bad, but I don't think we can argue that SAI had bad traction, he didn't.

Hairpin is approached at almost 300kph, downforce is critical to stop fast, when you are 0.4s behind the car in front, braking is a lot harder, takes more out of brakes, more out of tires and just takes more space. SAI (and LEC) needed to take a more internal line in that corner to recover that downforce and not destroy their tires/brakes, that line however forces the car to have a lower minimum speed in the corner, SAI was 5kph slower on average through it in the last 15 laps, 5kph slower for a corner you take at 60kph is a LOT. You will obviously pay this lower minimum apex speed, and worse line through the corner, when it comes time to exit the corner and need to make it back, you simply are slower through the corner and the other car goes full throttle earlier than you, it's just a matter of physics. Only way to bridge that is with a softer compound that can alleviate some of the issues.

Maybe SAI should have tried a different way to attack, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the 2 Ferrari drivers because they 100% know more than I do about what options they had available to make that corner.

The traction problem at the hairpin doesn't hold true even when you see that SAI was faster than VER through the race by roughly 0.2s/lap. S3 is 2 corners, if you have traction issues at the start of S3 you will pay a huge amount of time, which he never did once in clean air from Alonso.

[ringo]

The race threads are so quiet and short these days. Races are OK, but not as exciting as last year.

I can't help but wonder if this in part a result of Lewis (and lesser extent Mercedes) not in the fight for pole positions/wins. Many people grow tired of dynasties, but there's no debating that the Lewis vs. Max rivalry (even if a lot of it was media/fan contrived) was certainly compelling. Right now it just doesn't feel like Max has a "real" competitor. And this is in spite of RB arguably not having the quickest car, or at the very least a car that is on par with the Ferrari.

The races have seen lots of action in the mid-pack, and it's inarguable that the cars can drive much closer to each other, but you're absolutely right that the races just don't have as much excitement as they did in the past. Maybe that is because Ferrari keep tripping themselves up (either in strategy, driver errors, or reliability).

You didn't find Bahrain, Jeddah, Monaco and Canada good/exciting races?

I can see Baku, Imola, Barcelona and maybe Miami not being exciting but the others...

Monaco?

Bahrain and Jeddah maybe. That's about it.
I think fans are looking for battles and overtaking attemps and cars making mistakes under pressure for the lead.

Maybe Hamilton needs to be back at the front to apply pressure.

[Andres125sx]

Hairpin is approached at almost 300kph, downforce is critical to stop fast, when you are 0.4s behind the car in front, braking is a lot harder, takes more out of brakes, more out of tires and just takes more space. SAI (and LEC) needed to take a more internal line in that corner to recover that downforce and not destroy their tires/brakes,

As you said yourself, that´s a 60km/h corner. Downforce is negligible at that speed

[dialtone]

Hairpin is approached at almost 300kph, downforce is critical to stop fast, when you are 0.4s behind the car in front, braking is a lot harder, takes more out of brakes, more out of tires and just takes more space. SAI (and LEC) needed to take a more internal line in that corner to recover that downforce and not destroy their tires/brakes,

As you said yourself, that´s a 60km/h corner. Downforce is negligible at that speed

Not in braking into that corner.

[tpe]

We can argue wether LEC had worse traction out of hairpin, I don't actually think it was that bad, but I don't think we can argue that SAI had bad traction, he didn't.

Hairpin is approached at almost 300kph, downforce is critical to stop fast, when you are 0.4s behind the car in front, braking is a lot harder, takes more out of brakes, more out of tires and just takes more space. SAI (and LEC) needed to take a more internal line in that corner to recover that downforce and not destroy their tires/brakes, that line however forces the car to have a lower minimum speed in the corner, SAI was 5kph slower on average through it in the last 15 laps, 5kph slower for a corner you take at 60kph is a LOT. You will obviously pay this lower minimum apex speed, and worse line through the corner, when it comes time to exit the corner and need to make it back, you simply are slower through the corner and the other car goes full throttle earlier than you, it's just a matter of physics. Only way to bridge that is with a softer compound that can alleviate some of the issues.

Maybe SAI should have tried a different way to attack, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the 2 Ferrari drivers because they 100% know more than I do about what options they had available to make that corner.

The traction problem at the hairpin doesn't hold true even when you see that SAI was faster than VER through the race by roughly 0.2s/lap. S3 is 2 corners, if you have traction issues at the start of S3 you will pay a huge amount of time, which he never did once in clean air from Alonso.

Now, that is an answer! Amazing response, thanks!

[Hammerfist]

I can't help but wonder if this in part a result of Lewis (and lesser extent Mercedes) not in the fight for pole positions/wins. Many people grow tired of dynasties, but there's no debating that the Lewis vs. Max rivalry (even if a lot of it was media/fan contrived) was certainly compelling. Right now it just doesn't feel like Max has a "real" competitor. And this is in spite of RB arguably not having the quickest car, or at the very least a car that is on par with the Ferrari.

The races have seen lots of action in the mid-pack, and it's inarguable that the cars can drive much closer to each other, but you're absolutely right that the races just don't have as much excitement as they did in the past. Maybe that is because Ferrari keep tripping themselves up (either in strategy, driver errors, or reliability).

You didn't find Bahrain, Jeddah, Monaco and Canada good/exciting races?

I can see Baku, Imola, Barcelona and maybe Miami not being exciting but the others...

Monaco?

Bahrain and Jeddah maybe. That's about it.
I think fans are looking for battles and overtaking attemps and cars making mistakes under pressure for the lead.

Maybe Hamilton needs to be back at the front to apply pressure.

The animosity between max and Lewis helped make things nteresting. It felt like two real life enemies going at it. Max was always over the top in wheel to wheel with Lewis ceding most of the time except for silverstone. This year there is none of that. Max and Charles have zero animosity. Their wheel to wheel encounters have been too respectful And Charles is not currently even Max’s closest challenger. There is just no juice to the fight, and although the cars can run closer to each other overtaking is still similar and the cars all look like mid 90’s Honda civics with chopped off suspension springs around the track. The show is definitely worst this year.

[InsaneX_Badger]

You didn't find Bahrain, Jeddah, Monaco and Canada good/exciting races?

I can see Baku, Imola, Barcelona and maybe Miami not being exciting but the others...

Monaco?

Bahrain and Jeddah maybe. That's about it.
I think fans are looking for battles and overtaking attemps and cars making mistakes under pressure for the lead.

Maybe Hamilton needs to be back at the front to apply pressure.

The animosity between max and Lewis helped make things nteresting. It felt like two real life enemies going at it. Max was always over the top in wheel to wheel with Lewis ceding most of the time except for silverstone. This year there is none of that. Max and Charles have zero animosity. Their wheel to wheel encounters have been too respectful And Charles is not currently even Max’s closest challenger. There is just no juice to the fight, and although the cars can run closer to each other overtaking is still similar and the cars all look like mid 90’s Honda civics with chopped off suspension springs around the track. The show is definitely worst this year.

Sounds silly, but I think all the graphics this year are just a step back also. Just feels so dark and uninteresting. Find myself avoiding to look at graphics now instead of watching for gaps between drivers.

[Mogster]

You didn't find Bahrain, Jeddah, Monaco and Canada good/exciting races?

I can see Baku, Imola, Barcelona and maybe Miami not being exciting but the others...

Monaco?

Bahrain and Jeddah maybe. That's about it.
I think fans are looking for battles and overtaking attemps and cars making mistakes under pressure for the lead.

Maybe Hamilton needs to be back at the front to apply pressure.

The animosity between max and Lewis helped make things nteresting. It felt like two real life enemies going at it. Max was always over the top in wheel to wheel with Lewis ceding most of the time except for silverstone. This year there is none of that. Max and Charles have zero animosity. Their wheel to wheel encounters have been too respectful And Charles is not currently even Max’s closest challenger. There is just no juice to the fight, and although the cars can run closer to each other overtaking is still similar and the cars all look like mid 90’s Honda civics with chopped off suspension springs around the track. The show is definitely worst this year.

The high rake cars looked stupid. Single seat race cars shouldn’t have moon buggy soft suspension, it was enabling corner cutting also, there’s much less kerb use and track limits abuse this year.

Ferrari should be concerned, Chaz has rolled over in every fight he’s had with Max it seems. Even Russell showed some noteable fight against him in Barcelona.

I do think the Max v Lewis fight was electric not just due to the characters they are. Max knew he had to bring Hamilton down to be taken seriously as his heir.

[Freelander]

Track walk 2022 Canadian GP https://imgur.com/a/ltoDtrP

[Freelander]

I thought watching Zhou take Vettel on the outside of turn 1 was the highlight of the whole race to be honest.

[Freelander]

Hamilton must have been having flashbacks to Jeddah with Verstappen passing him on fresh tires.