2023 Italian Grand Prix - Monza, Sep 01 - 03

[Mogster]

Drive through pens are a thing of the past. It’s essentially the death penalty for a driver, and kills his race, and ruins the show. You want drivers attacking each other, not living in fear of hitting someone and basically destroying your whole race with a drive through. 5s was correct.

I disagree, maybe you're mistaking it with stop-go penalty?
Drive-through would be like 15-20s penalty plus you have to give track position immediately and sort positions during race not after.
Also disagree that drivers shouldn't care if they take out competition for sake of show.

The previous lap Piastri braked too late and made contact with Hamilton. The drivers need to be allowed to race, sometimes that results in contact, that’s racing.

What we don’t want is drivers making moves that they think will result in a penalty for the opposing driver. All this, “he pushed me off…” “he left me no space…” calls on the radio get my goat.

[ringo]

Piastri is going to get Norris soon enough.
Norris has more experienced getting his slbows out and is more feisty. But Piastri seems to have a "purer" race pace to me; if that makes sense.
Time for Norris to jump to Redbull before Piastri crashes his stocks.

Yes piastri was the one that ran into Norris after the pitstop. Signs of things to come.

[Spoutnik]

At least the race was less of a snoozefest. We had a battle for the lead during the first stint.

Overall it will be a season to forget, it's even worse than 2015. 2011 was a really dominant year from Vettel but the races were enjoyable (China, Canada, Japan...)

[TNTHead]

If the car was really as ultra-epic as you claim, we would see consistent 1-2 finishes. We don't. What we do see is a driver that has systematically and strongly outperformed his teammates over several years, and managed to extract all performance from cars weekend after weekend while others could not do so with the same car. That is an exceptional performance regardless of your stance on the person's character.

10 wins in a row for max, 14 race wins in row this season, all races so far won by 1 team, and you are going to claim the car isn't ultra epic? Wow.

Yes. Remove Max from the equation and the picture would have been different. Which shows it does require a top tier driver to deliver the potential, just a good car isn't enough. Not saying its a bad car, nor that it isn't the best cad, but for it to be ultra-epic, it should still consistently win in the hands of a mediocre or bad driver - and there is no evidence of that.

+1

[Wouter]

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/wolff ... /10515824/
.

Wolff: Verstappen F1 wins record “is for Wikipedia”.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has said Max Verstappen’s historic 10th consecutive Formula 1 win
“is for Wikipedia and nobody reads that anyway”.

Verstappen’s Italian GP victory has broken the all-time record for most consecutive F1 wins, while Red Bull also set a new record for most team wins in a row with 15, and while delighted to make further grand prix racing history, the Dutch driver hadn't been focused on the feat.

Mercedes boss Wolff has also played down the value of the most consecutive wins record while highlighting Verstappen’s indifference to the achievement.

When quizzed about Mercedes never breaking the most consecutive wins record, Wolff told Sky Sports F1:
“Our situation was a little bit different because we had two guys fighting against each other within the team.

“I don’t know if he cares about the records. It is not something that would be important for me, those numbers,
it is for Wikipedia and nobody reads that anyway.”

[ringo]

At least the race was less of a snoozefest. We had a battle for the lead during the first stint.

Overall it will be a season to forget, it's even worse than 2015. 2011 was a really dominant year from Vettel but the races were enjoyable (China, Canada, Japan...)

The 2 ferraris sandwiching max was good while it lasted. I was wondering what could have been done to keep the lead strategically.
Maybe pitting Leclerc first for the undercut and using Sainz to slow up Max could have helped.

What is admirable about the setup of the redbull. I think it was intentional to limit wheel spin and instability by having enough downforce to not run into deg issues.
This worked like clock work as Perez reeled in leclerc and Max reeled in Sainz almost on the same lap. I dont think redbull was aiming to have the fastest car on the straights. They went with enough top speed without comrpomising the tyre health.
When they got the two cars into the clear, they just settled the race.
Well played.

[AR3-GP]

@Wouter Nothing more than sour grapes from Wolff.

[DGP123]

@Wouter Nothing more than sour grapes from Wolff.

And we had to endure the same sour grapes from Horner during the last era, in regards to Merc, them cheating, and the engines. It happens, just someone different on the end.

[chrisc90]

Does anyone have a pic of the tyres of the RB and Ferrari at the end of the race? Would make a very interesting comparison.

[IntrinsicVoid]

Sour grapes or not, team principals are stomping them, the media drives the fermentation and the either fanbase enjoys the wine that comes out of it. I won’t go any further.

[PlatinumZealot]

At least the race was less of a snoozefest. We had a battle for the lead during the first stint.

Overall it will be a season to forget, it's even worse than 2015. 2011 was a really dominant year from Vettel but the races were enjoyable (China, Canada, Japan...)

That "battle" was like taking candy from a baby. Max was like, "Okay Rocky do you want me to pass him on lap twelve or lap fifteen? And erm.. Should I save my tyres while I'm at it or burn them out a little bit for some fun before the stops? Oh tell Joe Bauer that there is a loose plank on the top step of the podium. Mmyeah hit my toe on it last time. "

[Gillian]

Russell would get eaten alive by Max imo.

I strongly disagree. To put Russell on a par with Gasly, Albon and Perez is unreasonable IMO. [Although it's true that Albon and Russell's delta to Latifi was very similar, though that could be because Latifi improved in the second year with 2020 style cars and got worse with the first year of venturi cars.]

Maybe Russell is only a Tier 1B driver instead of a Tier 1 driver, but sometimes moderate speed plus high determination is enough (e.g., Nigel Mansell and indeed Carlos Sainz Jr!).

Why is that unreasonable? Because Russell does well against Hamilton and Gasly/Albon/Perez got destroyed by Verstappen?

Gasly is doing just fine against Ocon. Perez and Ocon where pretty evenly matched. That same Ocon was no match against Verstappen in F3 while the latter was driving an inferior car. And that's not even taking Verstappen's age/experience into account.

Albon just had another fantastic race today and was a lot better than Latifi while paired together, pretty much similar to how Russell was superior to Latifi. Not much difference between Albon and Russel as far as I can tell.

Hamilton is a great driver, elite as some call it here (I personally hate that term but okay). But all the teammate comparing between Hamilton and Verstappen is silly at best. Button became WC driving against a washed out Barichello, driving an insanely dominant Brawn. By the time others caught up he had such a points lead he could finish outside top 3 and still win. Rosberg only became WC by beating Hamilton... Then there's Kovalainen and Bottas...

Ofcourse Hamilton's debute season was mighty against Alonso, but too much happened in that season. What it does prove is that Hamilton is a great.

Comparing Button, Kovalainen, Bottas and Rosberg against Sainz, Gasly, Perez, Albon I'd say there's not that much in it. Alonso is vastly superior to all of them, no argument there. But so is the performance difference between Verstappen and his teammates vs Hamilton and his teammates.

Oh and no other driver performed like Verstappen in a Red Bull. Alonso almost beat Vettel in an inferior car during 2 seasons. All 4 years that Vettel won, he was most definitely not the best driver overall. Vettel was a stellar qualifier but always struggled when not starting on pole. Yes Vettel had that nice 9 race win streak because tire compounds where very conveniently changed mid season.

[fritticaldi]

Lance Stroll was non-competitive all weekend. Whats up with him ?

[TwanV]

About Lewis' comment, he's right. Not sure why the comment is really necessary I think no one will argue too hard, he had some tough teammates. Toto's comment, to say that its just a stat that nobody cares about.. I think everybody in Brackley working hard to do the best possible job would strongly disagree; the only thing that in all their dominance they were unable to match. Having your boss say he doesn't respect that, in my opinion terrible leadership. 10 in a row for Max, 15 in a row for Red Bull (both records) is a 100% team achievement. Respect.

[DGP123]

Lance Stroll was non-competitive all weekend. Whats up with him ?

It’s the beginning of the end for him. Career in Tennis is the last I heard, along with Lawrence’s fellow investors pushing for him to be gone.