2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix - Baku, April 27-29

[Raleigh]

There seems to be a pervading narrative that Bottas ‘deserved’ to win in Baku - some even going so far as to suggest he ‘should have won’ the last three races.

Whilst I do actually think he would have had a decent shot at victory in Baku even without the SC, given his tyre offset - so I certainly don’t think his victory would have been undeserved given the SC almost gifted it to him - I think we should recognise that Vettel was in the pound seats without the safety car; he was primarily the one who was ‘unlucky’ prior to the debris for Bottas, just as Hamilton was ‘unlucky’ in Melbourne through no fault of his own. Lewis was probably more prudent in not having a lunge in Australia, but he also didn’t get the same kind of a sniff that Seb did, given the track layout.

We should be very clear that the fastest package - not just in quali but also the race - has been the Seb/Ferrari one, and in terms of the way he’s driving the car (as opposed to Ferrari’s strategy) he has been the driver who ‘deserved’ to win the races (all bar the first one) if given the correct strategy by his team.

If judged purely on how quickly the driver drove his car, we’d be looking at one win for Lewis and three for Seb.

Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne).

Bottas is under a lot of pressure to deliver this year and has been driving fantastically, only to lose what would have been 2 well earned victories in a row thanks to the timing of a safety car in China and a random piece of debris in Baku.

Seb and Lewis have both had bad luck but they've each been gifted a race win at someone else's expense, Valtteri is the only one to have been consistently unlucky.

If we were going purely by speed Australia would have been Lewis, Bahrain Seb, China Valtteri and Baku possibly Seb but probably Valtteri, he is extremely unfortunate not to be leading the championship at this point and to me out of the season so far has driven better than anyone else out of the top 3 teams.

[Phil]

Baku was Vettels to lose. Bottas was nowhere in that first stint and i am amazed people think he would have been in contest for the win without the safety car.

[nacho]

Baku was Vettels to lose. Bottas was nowhere in that first stint and i am amazed people think he would have been in contest for the win without the safety car.

I think the thinking is that Vettel and Hamilton were on the slow Soft tire and Bottas would have gone to the two steps softer Ultrasoft tire which was working well in the beginning for people like Sainz.

[Raleigh]

I feel like we might have had this conversation before but Valtteri kept his supersofts alive to lap 40 on that first stint, not only that but he was still extending the lead at the end of that stint, I'd hardly call that nowhere. Then he's got fresh Ultras and 12 laps to go catch Vettel who was only going to be 7s up the road lapping so slowly that he had been losing ground to the afore-mentioned 40 lap old Supersofts.

You could argue Ferrari screwed up Seb's race by pulling him in for softs that clearly weren't working for anyone, but he did wreck his own race at the safety car restart so that's on Seb.

[foxmulder_ms]

Baku was Vettels to lose. Bottas was nowhere in that first stint and i am amazed people think he would have been in contest for the win without the safety car.

ultra softs were quite smt. They were enough for Renault to pass redbull handily.

[sosic2121]

I feel like we might have had this conversation before but Valtteri kept his supersofts alive to lap 40 on that first stint, not only that but he was still extending the lead at the end of that stint, I'd hardly call that nowhere. Then he's got fresh Ultras and 12 laps to go catch Vettel who was only going to be 7s up the road lapping so slowly that he had been losing ground to the afore-mentioned 40 lap old Supersofts.

You could argue Ferrari screwed up Seb's race by pulling him in for softs that clearly weren't working for anyone, but he did wreck his own race at the safety car restart so that's on Seb.

I also thought soft were mistake for Seb, but is it?

Could US do 21 lap to the end? Sainz did 15 laps on used US set with heavy car and fighting RBs, but there was also a SC for 4-5 laps.
I think Ferrari could kept Seb on track for couple more laps but would that be enough?
I do believe that on US he would start catching Bottas and maybe make his strategy obsolete...

[Hammerfist]

I feel like we might have had this conversation before but Valtteri kept his supersofts alive to lap 40 on that first stint, not only that but he was still extending the lead at the end of that stint, I'd hardly call that nowhere. Then he's got fresh Ultras and 12 laps to go catch Vettel who was only going to be 7s up the road lapping so slowly that he had been losing ground to the afore-mentioned 40 lap old Supersofts.

You could argue Ferrari screwed up Seb's race by pulling him in for softs that clearly weren't working for anyone, but he did wreck his own race at the safety car restart so that's on Seb.

But if we look at Lewis's pace after the restart, and even Bottas's pace for half a lap before he hit the debris, the US tire didn't seem faster than the Super Soft. Maybe it needed more time to warm up? But we know Merc's favorite tire isn't the ultra soft anyway. So there is still this huge question mark about whether Bottas would have been much faster than Seb or Lewis if there was no safety car and he pitted to get some ultras.

[Sevach]

I also thought soft were mistake for Seb, but is it?

Could US do 21 lap to the end? Sainz did 15 laps on used US set with heavy car and fighting RBs, but there was also a SC for 4-5 laps.
I think Ferrari could kept Seb on track for couple more laps but would that be enough?
I do believe that on US he would start catching Bottas and maybe make his strategy obsolete...

I'm on the camp that he should've gone for US at the end, the lighter car and rubbered track would've helped him, also Renault kinda overreacted (just a little) it's normal that Red Bull caught Sainz when their tires started to work better.

He wasn't losing to teams like Haas or Mclaren.

In the end Mercedes gambled more on the SC than on Bottas catching Vettel straight up, when Red Bull pitted clearly it was safe enough, Bottas just kept going.

[f1316]

There seems to be a pervading narrative that Bottas ‘deserved’ to win in Baku - some even going so far as to suggest he ‘should have won’ the last three races.

Whilst I do actually think he would have had a decent shot at victory in Baku even without the SC, given his tyre offset - so I certainly don’t think his victory would have been undeserved given the SC almost gifted it to him - I think we should recognise that Vettel was in the pound seats without the safety car; he was primarily the one who was ‘unlucky’ prior to the debris for Bottas, just as Hamilton was ‘unlucky’ in Melbourne through no fault of his own. Lewis was probably more prudent in not having a lunge in Australia, but he also didn’t get the same kind of a sniff that Seb did, given the track layout.

We should be very clear that the fastest package - not just in quali but also the race - has been the Seb/Ferrari one, and in terms of the way he’s driving the car (as opposed to Ferrari’s strategy) he has been the driver who ‘deserved’ to win the races (all bar the first one) if given the correct strategy by his team.

If judged purely on how quickly the driver drove his car, we’d be looking at one win for Lewis and three for Seb.

Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne).

Bottas is under a lot of pressure to deliver this year and has been driving fantastically, only to lose what would have been 2 well earned victories in a row thanks to the timing of a safety car in China and a random piece of debris in Baku.

Seb and Lewis have both had bad luck but they've each been gifted a race win at someone else's expense, Valtteri is the only one to have been consistently unlucky.

If we were going purely by speed Australia would have been Lewis, Bahrain Seb, China Valtteri and Baku possibly Seb but probably Valtteri, he is extremely unfortunate not to be leading the championship at this point and to me out of the season so far has driven better than anyone else out of the top 3 teams.

I don’t know how you get Valtteri quicker than Seb in China - Seb pulled a 4 sec gap in the first stint, then Ferrari misjudged the undercut, but Seb was not only able to close up to Bottas but also stay close to him after that. To me is was quite clear that Vettel’s Ferrari was the quickest car out there - taking nothing away from Bottas who did everything right from his side and was significantly quicker than Lewis.

Anyway, shoulda coulda woulda but to me some of the articles hypothesising about a hatrick of Bottas wins miss the point that those three races were Ferrari’s and Seb’s to lose (and yes, Australia was Mercedes’ and Lewis’ to lose).

[iotar__]

There seems to be a pervading narrative that Bottas ‘deserved’ to win in Baku - some even going so far as to suggest he ‘should have won’ the last three races.

Whilst I do actually think he would have had a decent shot at victory in Baku even without the SC, given his tyre offset - so I certainly don’t think his victory would have been undeserved given the SC almost gifted it to him - I think we should recognise that Vettel was in the pound seats without the safety car; he was primarily the one who was ‘unlucky’ prior to the debris for Bottas, just as Hamilton was ‘unlucky’ in Melbourne through no fault of his own. Lewis was probably more prudent in not having a lunge in Australia, but he also didn’t get the same kind of a sniff that Seb did, given the track layout.

We should be very clear that the fastest package - not just in quali but also the race - has been the Seb/Ferrari one, and in terms of the way he’s driving the car (as opposed to Ferrari’s strategy) he has been the driver who ‘deserved’ to win the races (all bar the first one) if given the correct strategy by his team.

If judged purely on how quickly the driver drove his car, we’d be looking at one win for Lewis and three for Seb.

Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne).

Overall load of ... but bold part might be the &^%$^ statement spouted here for a long, long time. Forget about the cars, why would you in "driver drove the car" world.

- China: how is Bottas jumping Vettel in and Vettel doing nothing except for one bad attempt using moving selective blocking chicane Raikkonen not being better? Yes he lost ~1 at the pits but his advantage was what 3, something? Where was his "driver driving a car quickly" there and afterwards??

- Bahrain - quickest car, deserved win, driver's performance: hard to say but, A. ~1,5 - (memory) bigger slow pitstop loss than reverse China. Bigger consequences B. smaller gap before pitstop (yes, you need to give credit the "driver driving quickly" against the one in free air and with a quicker car. C. tyres - work both ways, earlier pitstop AND pace forces competition's decisions, Strategy can depend on a driver, like Baku.

"Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne)."

Oh... We got to the bottom of that. It's not my favorite driver that is getting all the attention and Bottas drove circles around Hamilton in Baku so let's create some "deserving" and remove him from 4 races .

All the dynamic of stint/tyres/pace between Vettel and Bottas was covered earlier so I'm not going to repeat myself (just remember margin for error in Baku on a long SS stint (same for Grosjean)) and even the outcome was not certain with deserved by a driver short US stint. Forget about reality of Vettel's restart when it's more convinient to remove it from "driver driving quickly" (not mocking just referring to dubious criteria) competition.
------------
About Grosjean:
A. turned a switch and changed brake bias - v. stupid but at least performance was there. I blame Verstappen for causing SC. At least it was earned position, running v, long stint on SS and beating among others Sainz jr. (4-6th). Pity that they started on softs, lucky: tyres excuse can be used, it was the tyres, #nothisfault, #China'07.

B. He was at worst only ~7th big failure of the race behind: Verstappen, Vettel, Hulkenberg, Ocon, Sirotkin and (debatable but based on starting position, last - blame the team for a broken car) Magnussen.

[SamH123]

Baku was Vettels to lose. Bottas was nowhere in that first stint and i am amazed people think he would have been in contest for the win without the safety car.

ultra softs were quite smt. They were enough for Renault to pass redbull handily.

Red Bull were massively down on power early on in the race because of a battery issue I thought? Losing 20s to the front 3 can't have been genuine lack of pace surely

[JonoNic]

Maybe we need a vibration sensor added to show if the car is unbalanced on that halo graphic...

Disagree, Magnussen said he had sever vibrations and couldn´t see anything on his mirrors. If you look at his onboard it´s easy to see how his left mirror lost rigidity and is shaking, and also we can see he does not make any weird wheel movement, he´s on the normal racing line, so even when I initially agreed with Gasly about Magnussen move being one of the most dangerous in recent seasons, after reading his argumentation and watching his onboard I really think it was involuntary, very dangerous, but not on purpose

If you are blazing down walled-in streets at 300kph and can't see if you are about to put people into the wall because your car is too damaged then, sadly, you need to stop your car.

Sure, any F1 driver will retire if one of his mirrors is damaged

[Andres125sx]

That´s an idea!

[f1316]

There seems to be a pervading narrative that Bottas ‘deserved’ to win in Baku - some even going so far as to suggest he ‘should have won’ the last three races.

Whilst I do actually think he would have had a decent shot at victory in Baku even without the SC, given his tyre offset - so I certainly don’t think his victory would have been undeserved given the SC almost gifted it to him - I think we should recognise that Vettel was in the pound seats without the safety car; he was primarily the one who was ‘unlucky’ prior to the debris for Bottas, just as Hamilton was ‘unlucky’ in Melbourne through no fault of his own. Lewis was probably more prudent in not having a lunge in Australia, but he also didn’t get the same kind of a sniff that Seb did, given the track layout.

We should be very clear that the fastest package - not just in quali but also the race - has been the Seb/Ferrari one, and in terms of the way he’s driving the car (as opposed to Ferrari’s strategy) he has been the driver who ‘deserved’ to win the races (all bar the first one) if given the correct strategy by his team.

If judged purely on how quickly the driver drove his car, we’d be looking at one win for Lewis and three for Seb.

Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne).

Overall load of ... but bold part might be the &^%$^ statement spouted here for a long, long time. Forget about the cars, why would you in "driver drove the car" world.

- China: how is Bottas jumping Vettel in and Vettel doing nothing except for one bad attempt using moving selective blocking chicane Raikkonen not being better? Yes he lost ~1 at the pits but his advantage was what 3, something? Where was his "driver driving a car quickly" there and afterwards??

- Bahrain - quickest car, deserved win, driver's performance: hard to say but, A. ~1,5 - (memory) bigger slow pitstop loss than reverse China. Bigger consequences B. smaller gap before pitstop (yes, you need to give credit the "driver driving quickly" against the one in free air and with a quicker car. C. tyres - work both ways, earlier pitstop AND pace forces competition's decisions, Strategy can depend on a driver, like Baku.

"Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne)."

Oh... We got to the bottom of that. It's not my favorite driver that is getting all the attention and Bottas drove circles around Hamilton in Baku so let's create some "deserving" and remove him from 4 races .

All the dynamic of stint/tyres/pace between Vettel and Bottas was covered earlier so I'm not going to repeat myself (just remember margin for error in Baku on a long SS stint (same for Grosjean)) and even the outcome was not certain with deserved by a driver short US stint. Forget about reality of Vettel's restart when it's more convinient to remove it from "driver driving quickly" (not mocking just referring to dubious criteria) competition.
------------
About Grosjean:
A. turned a switch and changed brake bias - v. stupid but at least performance was there. I blame Verstappen for causing SC. At least it was earned position, running v, long stint on SS and beating among others Sainz jr. (4-6th). Pity that they started on softs, lucky: tyres excuse can be used, it was the tyres, #nothisfault, #China'07.

B. He was at worst only ~7th big failure of the race behind: Verstappen, Vettel, Hulkenberg, Ocon, Sirotkin and (debatable but based on starting position, last - blame the team for a broken car) Magnussen.

Other than to acknowledge the utter, trolling, (not to mention rude) ridiculousness of the post, there’s really not much one can say to a post like that.

Fair enough mate, if saying all that makes you feel better, please go right ahead.

[Wynters]

If judged purely on how quickly the driver drove his car, we’d be looking at one win for Lewis and three for Seb.

Just feel as if that’s being lost in the overwhelming sentiment of praise from Bottas (which I grant he has driven very well since his mistake in Q3 Melbourne).

Other than to acknowledge the utter, trolling, (not to mention rude) ridiculousness of the post, there’s really not much one can say to a post like that.

Fair enough mate, if saying all that makes you feel better, please go right ahead.

Whilst I agree that the most recent race has a tendency to be overweighted when it comes to judging things, be careful not to shoot the message at the same time as the messenger. Vettel had three laps where he needed to be fast in China. The first lap, the lap Bottas pitted and his own lap. In the first lap he ensured that Kimi wasn't there to cover him against the Mercedes. In the other two laps, he was two seconds slower. Two seconds. Sure, he caught up to Bottas (with Kimi's help) but I don't remember him threatening to overtake despite the easy-to-overtake nature of the circuit. In a Formula where everyone is saving fuel, rubber and engine use it's easy to forget that getting close to someone and actually being faster than them when pushing 100% are very different things.

Similarly, in Baku, Vettel should struggle to think he was the quickest driver out there when he finished behind a Force India, that was on worse tyres and was passed fairly by said Force India on track.