Check the team radio… they have asked Oscar if he thinks they can 1 stop and he said that his front left was dead. From a guy that was in free air.venkyhere wrote: ↑02 Sep 2024, 15:47
I am going to sound like a broken record here, making the same point as my previous post once again, but please bear with me :
PIA attacking NOR, NOR falling to P3 in lap1 itself, P1-P2 running away into the horizon advantage lost -- none of this mattered, honestly.
All McLaren needed to do, was to extend their first stint to 20-21 laps and do the remaining 33-32 laps on a single set of H. Why didn't they do that ? Because they are a 'reactive' team, they don't have the confidence to 'make the calls' without seeing what others are doing. Even when they came off the M too early, still they had enough opportunity to salvage P1-P2, simply by bringing in the H tyres gently, on such a hot track and go for a 1-stop. What is going to happen if the 1-stopper looks impossible halfway into the stint and tyre shows graining ? Take the hit for a few laps, drive a bit slower, then once the graining phase is over, they tyre comes alive again. Why can't they give themselves a chance ? Didn't they undergo this exact thing in Imola, when NOR suddenly found pace towards the end and attacked VER until the last lap, only to come within 1s ? What would have happened at worst ? P2 and P3, exactly like it happened anyway. But it happened after trying out the 'chicken' strategy, rather than the 'tiger' strategy. That's where the team needs to get sharper. Risks need to be taken, but intelligent ones ; not like the stupid one where they sacrificed 10-15 seconds instead of being prepared to sacrifice 3-4 second loss from double stacking in that dry->wet->dry race (forgot which, Silverstone?).
I've seen NOR do this 'bringing in gently' so many times in the first stint on M tyres, but for some reason, both NOR and PIA and I think the team as a whole, believe in 'massively attacking' the outlap and the first 2-3 laps after their first tyre change. This I have seen consistently, whether it's an attempt to undercut someone ahead or an attempt to overcut someone behind. Such 'burning up the tyre in the outlap itself' (they know the track temp is hot) is so un-necessary. The car has the pace even otherwise. Now, whether they have talked about this and then decided 'lets allow the drivers to do whatever they want in the outlap' is the way they plan their races, I don't know.
FittingMechanics wrote: ↑02 Sep 2024, 12:18Piastri attacking in Lap 1, risking it all is also probably over the limit. I am sure Norris will take it into mind and next time we are in a situation like this he will not leave room for two to go through the chicane. When that happens I hopePapayaFan481 wrote: ↑02 Sep 2024, 12:19That is what is frustrating. Oscar seemed to put himself above the team.
One day Oscar might need Lando to support his title challenge and I think he is burning that bridge this year.
Racing drivers are selfish. This is not the first or last instance of a team where teammates attack each other (not every team has a bottas or a perez, those are exceptions). No matter what 'papaya rules' or 'apple rules' or 'mango rules' are cooked up, a driver's primary enemy is his team mate. That is a universal time-immemorial characteristic of F1. It's how the team man-manages each driver that counts. In this monza race, all the team needed to do was ask the two drivers to 'not burn up' the fresh H needlessly. They would have surely gotten ahead of LeClerc (by my calculation, had a 0.3s/lap advantage over leClerc's ferrari) and then the team could have relayed their 'papaya rules' radio when the two of them would've eventually gotten to P1-P2 by lap 45 or so.
They didn’t expect that after some time graining would disappear.
