2019 Italian Grand Prix - Monza, Sep 06 - 08

[Midi]

Great stuff Juzh as usual.

Is it just me or was Mercedes also not very strong traction wise out of the first chicane? When Leclerc made his mistake in the chicane and had a bad exit out of it I was amazed that Lewis could not get next to Leclerc earlier so that Leclerc had no chance to make his defensive move. It seemed Lewis had more trouble putting the power down, maybe his tires were already too worn. And is Parabolica all power limited? I would have thought that from the second part of Parabolica, were Leclerc often took a wider line, Mercedes were able to gain more from the slipstream.

Ironically, I do think Hamilton would have had a better chance of winning had he tried Bottas' strategy with fresher tires at the end whereas most people said after Spa that they should have tried the undercut. Apart from the hard racing / legal defensive driving discussion I do find it positive that there are still races this year that even Mercedes needs to be 100% perfect to win which was not the case in Spa and Monza. For the rest off the season (bar Mexico perhaps) the program will return to normal I'm afraid.

[Jolle]

Everybody speaks about the moment of Leclerc and Hamilton, but the fight between Sainz and Albon was way more dangerous, and i don't think that Sainz had a penalty.

THer is a big difference in moving someone off track in the braking zone and pushing someone wide after a corner. In the braking zone, there is less room for "bailing out", because you're committed and there is only so much room to brake (plus it starts with more speed). With pushing wide on the exit, the speeds are lower and you can back off if you want to (with under braking, you just can't stop braking...)

being pushed wide after a corner is something done for years and years, the clever drivers just yield, because you know you're going to loose out.

[sosic2121]

Everybody speaks about the moment of Leclerc and Hamilton, but the fight between Sainz and Albon was way more dangerous, and i don't think that Sainz had a penalty.

That's a very good point!
IIRC Sainz pushed Albon off in 2nd Lesmo. IMO this should not be done, but stewards disagree.

[sosic2121]

Verstappen 0 : 2 Albon

but who's counting

[Jambier]

Everybody speaks about the moment of Leclerc and Hamilton, but the fight between Sainz and Albon was way more dangerous, and i don't think that Sainz had a penalty.

That's a very good point!
IIRC Sainz pushed Albon off in 2nd Lesmo. IMO this should not be done, but stewards disagree.

Sainz push Albon but not on purpose, he lost the car, and then immediatly apologizes for that.

But yes it ruined Albon's race.

And I still think despite the result that Albon is doing a good job for now.
He needs to be quicker in qualy though

[iotar__]

Yellow flag for a chop in a braking zone is beyond absurd. Example:
Last race of the season, X leads by 1 point and leads the race. Y tries an overtake, X pushes him off track, moving in braking zone and leaving no space, Y goes off track. X wins a race and a WDC.

FIA's MASI:
"NO PROBLEM BUT DON"T DO IT AGAIN, OK?" WTF ?!

[dans79]

Yellow flag for a chop in a braking zone is beyond absurd. Example:
Last race of the season, X leads by 1 point and leads the race. Y tries an overtake, X pushes him off track, moving in braking zone and leaving no space, Y goes off track. X wins a race and a WDC.

FIA's MASI:
"NO PROBLEM BUT DON"T DO IT AGAIN, OK?" WTF ?!

It seems the FIA's ultimate goal is now to keep the masses happy, so we all know what that means!

[iotar__]

Everybody speaks about the moment of Leclerc and Hamilton, but the fight between Sainz and Albon was way more dangerous, and i don't think that Sainz had a penalty.

Correct but unlike Leclerc that's nothing new nor unexpected.

They can't control the car with two of them next to each other and do slide across the corner AKA Verstappen's manoeuvre (TM) . Remember when they gave Maldonado a f.. drive through for a rather clean defending, leaving enough space and a small contact in the later stage of the corner vs Perez?. Right hand ~90 degrees corner AFAI, was it Hungary? A weird race with Hamilton's penalty and Ricciardo taking out Rosberg?

FIA's refereeing is on the level of professional boxing.

[SiLo]

Was great to see Leclerc win, but their straight line speed won them the race really. The Merc race pace was much greater but their top speed wasn't enough to overtake.

I think Mercedes will be very happy with their results from the last two races, and be really buoyed by the fact that they probably could have won both of them with a tiny bit of luck.

[Vasconia]

Was great to see Leclerc win, but their straight line speed won them the race really. The Merc race pace was much greater but their top speed wasn't enough to overtake.

I think Mercedes will be very happy with their results from the last two races, and be really buoyed by the fact that they probably could have won both of them with a tiny bit of luck.

In fact, Mercedes has had the best car on race day in both Spa and Italy, even if they were supposed to suffer (according to Toto, but who trusts him?). They haven´t won both races because the straight line speed of Ferrari and Leclerc´s stellar performance.

[NathanOlder]

Better tyres would have made the fight bettween leclerc and ham last longer an more interesting. Soon ham tyres started to blister he had no chance of fighting as he was losing time in braking.

Merc could have put him on Hards. Leclerc could push all the way. Ofc Hamiltons tyres still get stressed more since he's in dirty air.

but if the medium rubber didnt give enough of a pace advantage to pass, the hards would never have done. I think Lewis said, if he went for hards, it would just have meant he would have finished 2nd. Going on the mediums was the only shot at winning.

[Vasconia]

I really hope Vettel bounces back and gives a challenge to Lec. Very depressing to see him fade away especially after he was beginning to show some form at the beginning of the weekend.

His pace was being good, he was reducing the gap to Bottas until that stupid mistake happened. But its clear that Vettel needs a car with more downforce in the back and this is not going to happen this season, unfortunately for him.

[selvam_e2002]

we are all just seeing the race and judging Vettel but we never know whats going within the team. If the driver is not doing good because of either personal issue or team issue.

for Vettel, it seems team issue instead of personal issues. He is not happy with things happening inside ferrari and it is coming out in race. It affects Ferrari and Vettel. Further Ferrari screwed him or he screwing Ferrari, I would suggest him to leave the team end of this year else his life at ferrari will be difficult.

He need to gain a confident but with Ferrari he could not. All the concentration is going to Lecrec for a 2 to 3 years. He cannot stay that long in ferrari to prove him self.

I feeling is that, he will either retire end of this year suddenly so that Ferrari will struggle to replace him because all of the drivers are already signed with other teams. You cannot buy back. Then the only option would be replace with him Kimi.

[Wynters]

The Steward's new interpretation of the rules makes getting Pole even more important and suggests that Sundays will be even more of a procession. With the difficulty in overtaking and the damage that following in dirty air inflicts, overtaking opportunities (particularly at the front) are already limited. Now drivers are allowed to mess about two, three, maybe even four times to block overtakes illegally, it means that the driver seeking to overtake needs to create three, four, maybe five overtaking opportunities instead of just one (and that's not even counting simply pushing opposing drivers wide on exit or sweeping across the track on the straight and pushing them off before they even reach the braking zone).

If I'm correct then this, in turn, places even more emphasis on passing during pit stops. Which would mean that every pit stop is a risk of losing the lead so (combined with the increased difficulty in overtaking) it means drivers driving even more slowly, putting even more emphasis on tyre management so that they can defend against an undercut.

*sigh*

Perhaps they should apply the same thinking to the engine regs. If a team puts an out-of-allocation (or straight up illegal) engine in the car, instead of penalising them, the Stewards can simply wave a flag at them a few times. At least there would be less complaints on Twitter about popular drivers having to start at the back of the grid. 'Bread and circuses', etc, etc.

[yelistener]

Hamilton's hunt for Leclerc. Full second stint. Nothing really happened in the first one, just hamilton sitting at 1s gap for most of it. Mercedes being absurdly slow on the straights actually made ferrari look better than they actually were.

vettel hitting 365 kmh while overtaking russel. this was the highest speed I've seen. Next one was kvyat with 360 kmh.
https://streamable.com/769bq
https://streamable.com/769bq

365km/h should be the highest speed in the whole race, in line with race speed trap's 359.7km/h.

Mercedes is literally at 2011-2013 v8 level in terms of straight line speed this year.