So basically there's really 9 races in which either driver can score maximum or nothing.
The question really is how often Piastri, Leclerc, Sainz, Hamilton, Russell, and of course Checo perform enough to be in the way. What we do know is that the McLaren is in a good place the team is afraid to move away from. Even with the RB20 in a subpar state, Max was able to keep Piastri and rest of the field in check. With the RB20's gremlins behind them now, it may be the Max can take the fight to Lando.
It was pretty noticeable that Lando was riding the kerbs with no hesitation where as Max carefully avoided them. It seems that the RB20 is still too nervous to take over the kerbs with confidence or Max didn't want to find out the hard way and played it safe. They will find out in Austin if they can ride the kerbs again. In times like these, they really need Checo to step up and be in the equation. They will need him to provide the tow and be Minister of Defense again.https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/how- ... /10657561/
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Head scratching in Singapore was followed by a late-night engineering session at the factory and in the Red Bull simulator in Milton Keynes, with Sebastien Buemi to try to improve the set-up and work out what was going wrong.
As team boss Christian Horner said of Buemi's work: “He was consuming plenty of Red Bull to keep him going. He played an important part, as does the whole team, in working hard with long days and long nights.”
Eventually the team found its eureka moment and got to the bottom of what was wrong with its car.
And it all revolved around its bruising encounter from 2023, when it had struggled massively with the track characteristics – opening the door for Ferrari and Carlos Sainz to triumph.
The conclusion was that amid concerns about a repeat of problems over Singapore’s kerbs and bumps this year, Red Bull had taken a too conservative approach with its mechanical set-up to cope with the track characteristics.
However, in focusing so much on improving its ride, in the belief that this was the best route to help Verstappen and Perez, it had ultimately sacrificed too much performance.
There wasn’t enough mechanical grip, and the result was that the tyres were not getting up into the right operating window.
For Saturday, Red Bull elected to sacrifice some of those better ride elements and focus more on pure performance - which suddenly helped the RB20 come alive.
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