2023 Italian Grand Prix - Monza, Sep 01 - 03

[dialtone]

The standard of driving is awful really. Too much "terrorism" defense from Russell, Sainz etc...

I'm no Sainz defender but he did nothing wrong imho.

[JordanMugen]

Russell was 9th with it after all.

After Mercedes botched his pitstop twice when Russell was on track to win the Grand Prix.

I'm confident that Russell could have had a very good chance to win the 2020 WDC with either Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas as teammate. Mercedes' wildly delayed promotion was a crying shame. That was very, very poor driver program management.

[dialtone]

Russell was 9th with it after all.

After Mercedes botched his pitstop twice when Russell was on track to win the Grand Prix.

if a car was so dominant they would finish every race 1-2 I heard.

[Mogster]

The standard of driving is awful really. Too much "terrorism" defense from Russell, Sainz etc...

Lots of time spent on e-sports.

Indycar have a rule that the defender can’t react to the attacking car. If you’re in front you have to pick a line and stick to it. The guy behind then has to drive round you but knows where you will be. Reacting is one of the few things Indycar regularly gives penalties for.

It looks strange at first if you’re used to European racing but it does enable overtaking. It’s worth thinking about, especially on street circuits where with the sort of moving that’s going on in F1 now you’re almost impossible to overtake.

[JordanMugen]

Russell was 9th with it after all.

After Mercedes botched his pitstop twice when Russell was on track to win the Grand Prix.

if a car was so dominant they would finish every race 1-2 I heard.

Not counting on Mercedes' stuff-ups!

Could George Russell be a two time WDC from the 2020 and 2021 seasons?

Mercedes had a number of other strategy stuff-ups too. Thankfully Red Bull's strategy is usually superior to Mercedes GP.

[Just_a_fan]

The onboards of the Hamilton/Piastri showed that the former didn't "move over" as there was no steering towards Piastri. Also, there was some space on the outside of Piastri. But easy to say these things from the comfort of our sofas rather than being strapped in to the cockpit of a car with limited visibility, etc..

Hamilton admitted it was totally his fault - far too few drivers ever do that - and he has apologised to Piastri personally too.

He's side by side going into the braking zone and aims the nose of his car towards the outside of the circuit. There was no need for steering inputs during braking, the fault was made when he aimed the car towards the outside when he knew he had a car next to him.

It was the slightest of drifts across the track and no doubt on the basis that he knew that as he was on the inside and felt he was well past the other driver, it was his track. Nothing malicious, a simple error of judgement. Apologies given, fault accepted. No histrionics by either driver - that is left to the keyboard warriors of the internet as always with sports incidents.

[ringo]

Has mercedes ever mentioned why they didn't get Daniel or Max or Fernando a seat alongside Lewis? Or even get Sebastian from Ferrari?

Bottas was a prodigy. Just look on his stats pre mercedes. He basically destroyed massa in the williams. Massa is a fast qualifier and of course a quality driver. Bottas was considered someone who could challenge Hamilton.
Nico was rated highly enough, better than Vettel.
Redbull would not release Riciardo.
Vettel he had the redbull culture of cherry picking teammates and would not teammup with hamilton.
Hamuilton beat Alonso. Alonso ran away from the challenge. Why would lewis want to face alonso again? Also Alonso has many times said no to being hamilton's partner.
Max could have came to mercedes, but would have been destroyed at that early stage. And this is not my opinion. I think his team have said this. Horner i think.
But hamilton has always wanted to have the fastest driver in the next seat and wanted the challenge. That's no secret if you have been watching f1 long enough.

Alonso - 2 x reigning champion. Faced lewis in his prime.
Button - 1x reiging champion. Faced lewis in his prime.
Nico - MS slayer, and champion material. Faced lewis in his prime in nico's team.

Bottas - prodigy, managed by Totto.
Heiki - prodigy and super fast qualifier.

There was no one else for Hamilton to face that was not beaten by these guys at the time. Kimi, Vettel, who else was there worthy?

[dialtone]

After Mercedes botched his pitstop twice when Russell was on track to win the Grand Prix.

if a car was so dominant they would finish every race 1-2 I heard.

Not counting on Mercedes' stuff-ups!

Could George Russell be a two time WDC from the 2020 and 2021 seasons?

Mercedes had a number of other strategy stuff-ups too. Thankfully Red Bull's strategy is usually superior to Mercedes GP.

pit stop errors aside, for what it's worth RBR could have smashed pit stops multiple times in some races this year and Max would still have won... Do people realize that strategy errors aren't a thing for RBR because they have no need to react to anyone's race?

[JordanMugen]

There was no one else for Hamilton to face that was not beaten by these guys at the time. Kimi, Vettel, who else was there worthy?

So why wasn't Russell promoted for the 2020 season?

Redbull would not release Riciardo.

Ricciardo was a free agent for the 2019 season and would have been delighted to take a 3 year Mercedes contract.

Alonso - 2 x reigning champion. Faced lewis in his prime.
Button - 1x reiging champion. Faced lewis in his prime.
Nico - MS slayer, and champion material. Faced lewis in his prime in nico's team.

Those drivers did great against Hamilton and vice versa. But this does not explain why Bottas was not replaced by Ricciardo -- off-contract for 2019 -- or Russell -- could be cheaply extracted from Williams for 2020 -- in a prompt manner.

Bottas was only on one year deals and that Mercedes drive could have easily been allocated elsewhere, such as to the off-contract Ricciardo for 2019.

[denyall]

There was no one else for Hamilton to face that was not beaten by these guys at the time. Kimi, Vettel, who else was there worthy?

So why wasn't Russell promoted for the 2020 season?

Redbull would not release Riciardo.

Ricciardo was a free agent for the 2019 season and would have been delighted to take a 3 year Mercedes contract.

Loyalty to Bottas

Avoiding the mistakes of RB re: inexperienced driver against WDC

[Spoutnik]

Russell was 9th with it after all.

After Mercedes botched his pitstop twice when Russell was on track to win the Grand Prix.

I'm confident that Russell could have had a very good chance to win the 2020 WDC with either Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas as teammate. Mercedes' wildly delayed promotion was a crying shame. That was very, very poor driver program management.

We are witnessing this year how much faster Russell is compared to Hamilton

[JordanMugen]

Avoiding the mistakes of RB re: inexperienced driver against WDC

Given the inexperienced driver outscored Hamilton in their first season paired (bad luck etc, the same as in actual WDC), it seems this was unnecessary caution!

We are witnessing this year how much faster Russell is compared to Hamilton

You don't have to be faster to score more WDC points over the season.

The higher position of Sainz than Leclerc in 2021 and Russell than Hamilton in 2022 attests to that!

[ringo]

There was no one else for Hamilton to face that was not beaten by these guys at the time. Kimi, Vettel, who else was there worthy?

So why wasn't Russell promoted for the 2020 season?

Redbull would not release Riciardo.

Ricciardo was a free agent for the 2019 season and would have been delighted to take a 3 year Mercedes contract.

For same reason. He was not ready. You cannot assume him not getting experience in the williams would have given him the same tools.
Also Bottas was still fast.
But look on the points gap to hamilton now. I still think Russel is not complete enough to go head to head to Hamilton over a season.
And Hamilton is 38 years old.
Let's take 10 years off Hamilton's age and put any of these guys in the same car.
Too much speculation. But to get back on point...

Max needs a strong teammate. Dont change the topic.

Today's race he got past ferrari and did what was expect. Congrats on the 10 in a r9w record. But meh.. just statistics.

[ringo]

Russell was 9th with it after all.

After Mercedes botched his pitstop twice when Russell was on track to win the Grand Prix.

I'm confident that Russell could have had a very good chance to win the 2020 WDC with either Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas as teammate. Mercedes' wildly delayed promotion was a crying shame. That was very, very poor driver program management.

We are witnessing this year how much faster Russell is compared to Hamilton

comical.
Okay. Back on topic to Monza. My last post on the ying yang.

[organic]

The usual narratives are on display again

I wonder how many wins, championships, records max will take and some will still try to be dismissive. Only 12 months of a dominant car and so many records have tumbled

Well done Sainz for a wonderful defensive display, even if it cooked his tyres at times. He went wheel to wheel many times and kept it clean with great car positioning. Only blemish on the performance was the mistake letting max past but hard to contain the rb19, even if Ferrari were close today.

Perez, Albon good performance. Lawson too.

Ferrari blundered P2 with not reversing Charles/Carlos at lap 15ishn