mwillems wrote:Ground Effect wrote: ↑31 Mar 2019, 19:12
mwillems wrote: ↑31 Mar 2019, 18:56
Knowing the MGU-K we have, I hope he isn't literally in a fire.
Yes, there is a lot of biased and thoughtless fanboy comments in here now.
I wouldn't commit to third fastest car as Norris wasn't able to push later in the race as he was in the start of the race, so I think he used his allotted pushing early on (Fuel). But definitely at least 4th fastest in this race.
But still, only one car finished and the car can very easily not work in China, so there is a lot to do. The only thing that matters is points on the board and we don't have too many yet for a car that may be a midfield leading car. Things change, others develop and you have to take your points whilst you can or you lose your chance.
Lando switched to used softs, so it was always going to be tricky at the end. In my opinion, Red Bull are still 3rd, even though Carlos was putting pressure on Max, it could have been down to Red Bull's struggles on the softs this weekend.
DRS was also enabled and likely Max would be right on Sainz tail so I'm not convinced at all by this talk of a possible podium, I think he would have been fighting for 5th at best.
That said, that does highlight how well Lando did to get back into 6th position, although it helped that Hulk dropped out and Ric had damage to his front wing by that point.
I have a feeling we might struggle more at china (Despite the straight and our top speeds) and need to push hard to ensure a Q3.
It’s really impossible to speculate with any kind of accuracy what could have happened if Sainz would have stick the move... He could have build a little gap or he could have been fighting Verstappen for several laps at least until the Pitstop.
The reality is that for the first time in a long time, the team was fighting for 5th position on merit... Good qualifying, good race pace and a car that is capable to not only making a move during the race (Such as Norris), but also defend when needed (like Norris did with Kimi for a big part of the second stint... Which I thought he wouldn’t have been able to pull off).
The goal this season was:
1) Build a car that was capable of been developed, in other words, a car that had good correlation with the different models. In this sense, so far it seems to be the case.
2) Build a car that was capable of fighting with the midfield, which seems to be the case so far.
3) Make sure that they finish the year better than they started (outdevelop it’s rivals)... We will know if that’s the case by the end of the season.
But so far, with only 2 races in the bag... The team seems to be ticking the boxes that it needed to tick... Now it’s a matter of how much the car can be developed through the season, if they can continue to push towards the front of the midfield and hopefully bring the fight to Red Bull at some point.
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