2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix - Jeddah, March 17 - 19

[Mr Alcatraz]

some scottish women with totally nonsense about tires

I couldn't understand a word she was saying the whole freakin' race.....dawg!


Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

[chrisc90]

Plenty occurred post race.

Aston Martin expressed their right to review the 10s penalty for Alonso and the penalty was over turned (rightfully in my opinion) meaning that Alonso keeps his 3rd position.

I do however think there needs to be clearer rules regarding this. I think there should be no ‘addressing the car’ when it pulls up for its penalty. Therefore all the mechanics shouldn’t be able to move from the positions they start at when the car is about to be driven into the pit box. That way you have no jacks in place, no mechanics about to lift the tyre away, no wheel nut guns about to buzz the nut off the wheel. If the mechanics keep in line with the 2 yellow lines on the pit box this means that it becomes impossible to start to work on the car or inadvertently touch it.

Only other method is to make any ‘minor’ penalties 5-10second added onto the total race time rather than served in the pit lane, with the exception of drive through or stop-go penalties.

Overall though, a semi interesting race. Masterclass from Perez holding his due throughout- even mentioning yesterday he wasn’t bother about turn 1 with Alonso.

Great race by Max. Little lucky with the safety car, but I don’t think that would affected the overall result of the race.

Nice race by Alonso. Found it very hard to re-take Perez with DRS which gives credit to the RB straight line speed with/without DRS. I don’t think I seen many other overtakes where the car behind with DRS wasn’t able to overtake the car in front.

Ferrari just seemed to be nowhere today. Massively out of the expected Position as I’d have expected them to be ahead of the Mercedes today.

Solid race from Russell. I was half expecting Lewis to take him on the medium tyre Vs Russell on the hards, but only 2-3 laps of threat then Lewis dropped right back off. I guess this was tyre preservation with him being on the medium.

Plenty of action in the lower midfield - probably kept the race alive and exciting.

[zeph]

I'm pleasantly surprised by Logan Sargeant, too soon to tell if he's made of the stuff of legends, but he looks like he belongs in F1.

As this is supposed to be a low-downforce track I'm not surprised to see Mercedes do a bit better, but I expected Ferrari to be ahead of them. Strange.

I still don't understand what happened to Stroll, brake failure? Glad to see Alonso doing well, though! I'd love to see him fighting for (or better yet, winning) the title, but in lieu of that I'll happily take podiums. Here's hoping AM can give RBR a headache on low-speed high-DF tracks!

Taking drivers from Renault/Alpine doesn't seem to do wonders for McLaren so far...

[organic]

I'm pleasantly surprised by Logan Sargeant, too soon to tell if he's made of the stuff of legends, but he looks like he belongs in F1.

As this is supposed to be a low-downforce track I'm not surprised to see Mercedes do a bit better, but I expected Ferrari to be ahead of them. Strange.

I still don't understand what happened to Stroll, brake failure? Glad to see Alonso doing well, though! I'd love to see him fighting for (or better yet, winning) the title, but in lieu of that I'll happily take podiums. Here's hoping AM can give RBR a headache on low-speed high-DF tracks!

Taking drivers from Renault/Alpine doesn't seem to do wonders for McLaren so far...

Smoke was coming out of the rear when the camera was looking rearwards on Stroll's onboard

[organic]

I believe they will be clarifying what counts as "working" on the car at Melbourne due to inconsistency in application of this rule previously (see 2021)

[chrisc90]

I’m sure we seen a puff of white smoke from the back of strolls car from the rear onboard, whilst he was on track, just around the braking zone, there was a puff which appeared to clear then he got told to retire the car on track.

Something looked to let go, very rare for a Mercedes PU in the back.

Gutted though as in sure he would be done well if he didn’t retire

[ringo]

A big story for me for this is race is Perez vs Max.
Can Perez make this year exciting and fight for the title.
We saw where redbull gave him a time delta just to bring Max into play. He was told to do 36.6's and smartly Perez asked why the team want him to slow down, then he asked ehat times is Max doing. Team told him 36.4's.
So perez rightfully asked why are they doing that?!
It's great that Perez has a racing braing and is smart enough to know when the team are trying to prioritize Max over him.
It was a low point from the team. It's clear they still want him to play #2 and not challenge Max.
But with the other cars so far away, we will be seeing Perez and Max on the front row for many races and Max will have to focus more on being quicker over the race distance to stay ahead. The team will also need to sharpen up their reliability to give both cars a fair fighting chance to win. Now it seems Perez has the luckier chassis.

[ringo]

I’m sure we seen a puff of white smoke from the back of strolls car from the rear onboard, whilst he was on track, just around the braking zone, there was a puff which appeared to clear then he got told to retire the car on track.

Something looked to let go, very rare for a Mercedes PU in the back.

Gutted though as in sure he would be done well if he didn’t retire

Stroll did a blinding overtake in the first stint. I think he will come good in a few races when his hands heal.

[organic]

Once we get to the regular circuits checo will struggle more as we saw every year

Every year this narrative appears and it disappears again very quickly

This year "struggling more" may mean p2 rather than p4-p6 it was last year, but I don't expect his consistency to be up to scratch and he'll have faded by race 10 latest

It was a great drive but great drives don't win you championships

Also on subject of Alonso's starting alignment penalty:

[zeph]

We saw where redbull gave him a time delta just to bring Max into play. He was told to do 36.6's and smartly Perez asked why the team want him to slow down, then he asked ehat times is Max doing. Team told him 36.4's.
So perez rightfully asked why are they doing that?!

I think we know the answer to that question...

[AMG.Tzan]

Can anyone please tell me why did the FIA choose to use the full Safety Car instead of the VSC or nothing at all?

Stroll managed to park his car outside the track immediately! There was absolutely no reason for a safety car! There have been so many instances in the past where a Safety Car should have been used and would have made the race much better…thankfully Checo managed to pull away and win cause otherwise we would have to listen all day of what an epic achievement Max accomplished by winning from 15th while being gifted 20 seconds in the process!

I remember Germany 2014 where Hamilton started 16th and had got up into 3rd while Rosberg was leading by a country mile when suddenly Sutil spun on the start finish straight! They didn’t even bother getting the SC out and they just kept on racing with a car in the middle of the track and marshals trying to salvage it as if it was the 1960s! Guess it’s no surprise that in a similar situation some months later at Japan something went horribly wrong…

German GP - German driver - German car….Hamilton would have wrecked the party probably…

There’s the video for reference:
[media] [/media]

[vorticism]

[organic]

Alex brundles voice is uncanny valley

It feels like an ai trying to do Martin Brundle

[vorticism]

Penalty reversed?

[chrisc90]

I don’t think anything untoward with the RB asking Perez to do a certain lap time. No different to last race when Max was asked to do the same. Then a few laps later they were told onto just drive as normal.
Seriously clutching at straws thinking RB wanted to bring max into play. Especially given it was the other way round last race.