2020 Spanish Grand Prix - Catalunya, August 14 - 16

[wesley123]

Unbeknownst to him, Ricciardo's Cowardice would never get him a number one seat at Mercedes or Ferrari. He should have thought carefully before jumping. If he was gonna be number 2 to Max on pure pace, he should have accepted it, be a good number 2 and then his chances at Mercedes or Ferrari would have astronomically increased and he might just have a chance of upgradin his number 2 to number ones there.

Why? Max definitely didn't have him beat. Ricciardo won 2 out of the three championships together, and was essentially plagued with a crapload of mechanical failures in the second half of 2018.

There was no reason for a driver like Ricciardo to play second fiddle when he clearly has the ability to do more. His choice to go to Renault wasn't a bad choice; be able to build a team there and create some success. Turned out that Renault is a team that has no clue what they are actually doing and will blame everyone but themselves for their depressing performances.

[PlatinumZealot]

I do not disagree.... Just saying that he should have subdued Max on pace if possible to prove he is number 1 OR simplybe a strong number 2 than run away. Running away made him less attractive to Ferrari or Mercedes IMO.

[bkrac]

I do not disagree.... Just saying that he should have subdued Max on pace if possible to prove he is number 1

That's not how it works.

[falonso81]

He was already being sidelined by RedBull. They made it clear Max was their No1 choice. Now they have 1 car competing for the championship and 1 test car. No decent driver is going to go near that 2nd RB seat. You reap what you sow.

[Mamba]

Remind me, who was leading the Driver’s Championship after Hungary in 2017?

And again, who was leading the Driver’s Championship and about to take a commanding lead during the German GP in 2018?

Think it was a German guy wearing red overalls.

Yet in both 2017 & 2018 Mercedes wrapped up both titles with three or four races to go almost. 2018 took a bit longer I think. That summer break lead is always thrown around as if Ferrari were miles ahead...
Ferrari's failures always came after the summer break. Be it reliability in 2017 or updates that didn't work as designed in 2018. Merc go from strength to strength after the summer break with both team and driver. They were always close enough that Ferrari could not extend their advantage far enough at the start of the year to have some safety margin.

[Moore77]

Remind me, who was leading the Driver’s Championship after Hungary in 2017?

And again, who was leading the Driver’s Championship and about to take a commanding lead during the German GP in 2018?

Think it was a German guy wearing red overalls.

Yet in both 2017 & 2018 Mercedes wrapped up both titles with three or four races to go almost. 2018 took a bit longer I think. That summer break lead is always thrown around as if Ferrari were miles ahead...
Ferrari's failures always came after the summer break. Be it reliability in 2017 or updates that didn't work as designed in 2018. Merc go from strength to strength after the summer break with both team and driver. They were always close enough that Ferrari could not extend their advantage far enough at the start of the year to have some safety margin.

That's the point he is making, that it was in fact, "Close", not that Mercedes was just saying it was close.

[Mamba]

That's the point he is making, that it was in fact, "Close", not that Mercedes was just saying it was close.

They have been saying so since 2015... '17 & '18 was close at some points, but Merc were either on the podium or winning yet spun the PR story that they are struggling and are nowhere. It's a boring narrative by now.

[DChemTech]

That's the point he is making, that it was in fact, "Close", not that Mercedes was just saying it was close.

They have been saying so since 2015... '17 & '18 was close at some points, but Merc were either on the podium or winning yet spun the PR story that they are struggling and are nowhere. It's a boring narrative by now.

Indeed, they say it regardless of whether it's actually close. And it's quite annoying frankly; if you are dominant, just be honest about it.

[sosic2121]

That's exactly the reason he still is a Mercedes driver. Perfect second driver. Good enough to get points, no crashes, no fighting with his team mate, no moaning, simply wonderful wingman. Hamilton WDC and Mercedes WCC every year. Not a single reason to replace him.

Beware dude, I am constantly marked negative by saying that Bottas is 2nd driver. Beware.

No, it’s because you keep saying that Mercedes conspires against Bottas in every race so he can’t finish ahead of Hamilton.

And that's clearly not what happened last week!

[AnthonyG]

Hamilton did an amazing job with tyre management, keeping them alive and pushing the maximum.
Just too bad it was a boring race and didn't even matter, he could have just as easily made a 3 stop and still have a dominant victory.

[Bsowles]

I don’t understand Ferrari’s radio response to Vettel with about 12 laps remaining (don’t recall exactly) when Vettel asked if he should box for new tires or stay out. I found their response saying only “we’ve already discussed that” to be abrupt and dismissive. You can almost call it rude. I know there’s been hard feelings with their pending “divorce”, but Ferrari’s response seemed to be a little out of line, unless I missed something.

[basti313]

Remind me, who was leading the Driver’s Championship after Hungary in 2017?

And again, who was leading the Driver’s Championship and about to take a commanding lead during the German GP in 2018?

Think it was a German guy wearing red overalls.

Yet in both 2017 & 2018 Mercedes wrapped up both titles with three or four races to go almost. 2018 took a bit longer I think. That summer break lead is always thrown around as if Ferrari were miles ahead...
Ferrari's failures always came after the summer break. Be it reliability in 2017 or updates that didn't work as designed in 2018. Merc go from strength to strength after the summer break with both team and driver. They were always close enough that Ferrari could not extend their advantage far enough at the start of the year to have some safety margin.

That's the point he is making, that it was in fact, "Close", not that Mercedes was just saying it was close.

It was "close" before the summer break. But not because the cars were close, but because one of Bot, Ham or the Mercedes team were each race underpreforming and gifting points to Vettel in 2017.
Oz: Strategy error
China: Bot rotating
Bahrain: Tire pressure wrong, unnecessary penalty
Rus: Merc car vastly stronger, but Ham underperforming
Spa: Bot car failure and crash
Mon: Ham underperforming in first Q2 run...out in Q2
Aze: Headrest loose
Aus: Gearbox

It is very strange, that this personal underperformance is now accounted to the car performance...whenever they did not make big faults, Merc was miles away, but mostly only with one car. On the other side, the swing in the other direction would have not been that strong if Ferrari and Vet would not have been similarly error prone starting Azer. But this is also not attributed to the car strength, as there was no strong 3rd car, it was only RedBull stealing much points when the others underperformed.

[Pany]

Hamilton did an amazing job with tyre management, keeping them alive and pushing the maximum.
Just too bad it was a boring race and didn't even matter, he could have just as easily made a 3 stop and still have a dominant victory.

yessss. But consider max was down on power, because of old angine repacement. Honda is trying everything and doing very well, but still behind mercedes, still on first engine. Is a PU driven formula, you like it or not

[dodds_turbo]

Has anybody mentioned the fact that Magnussen, Grosjean and Latifi were almost non-existant in this GP? Apart from Grosjean's series of late race mistakes I'd forgotten Haas were even there! And zero coverage of Räikkönen's power through the low-midfield toward the end to claim P14. I found the TV coverage (watching Sky F1 UK) particularly poor yesterday.

[Phil]

Indeed, they say it regardless of whether it's actually close. And it's quite annoying frankly; if you are dominant, just be honest about it.

I think you guys underestimate how quickly things can turn. Didn't just Silverstone II show how quickly one can go from being utterly dominant to 2nd best simply because of higher temperatures and higher mandates pressures despite having a comfortable 7 tenths to over a second of margin in the first race?