After a reasonably quiet first half of the race, two incidents due to tyre wear mixed things up considerably, resulting in Sergio Perez taking the win at Azerbaijan, joined on the podium by Sebastian Vettel and Pierre Gasly.
Is Rob Smedley one of the reliable sources? Few days ago Toto told that they are flat out focusing on 2022 and will only bring small updates here and there throughout the season. The major performance improvement will come from understanding car and tires, as per him.
But then again, Toto is the mind game expert himself, so who knows.
He was Felipe Massa's race engineer at Ferrari and the Head of Vehicle Performance at Williams (Merc customer) from 2014-2018, and now works as the Director of Data Systems for FOM.
Brilliant engineer and very plugged into the paddock. So I'd consider him very reliable.
Slow corners plus 2 long straights will lend very well for Aston Martin, and McLaren. I will not be surprised if both are ahead of Ferrari and maybe McLaren can even push RedBull.
If the practice sessions are even half as intriguing as the Monaco ones it will be exciting, but Baku seldom disappoints.
McLaren’s strengths are the high speed corners. They’re not faster than Ferrari on slow speed. Not even to mention Aston Martin.
From a driving point of view this track is in fact deceptively technical, there is a technique that must be used to extract the lap time.
The most important aspect of the track in terms of lap time are the obvious straights, in the race a good lap time can be had with approximately 312-322kph down the main straight, which means a medium downforce configuration.
The less obvious aspect of lap time is in the braking phase, not particularly the initial braking phase. While a tenth or two can be gained with late braking, this is more than negated by the amount you gain on corner exit. Therefore it is the brake release point that is the most important on this track. The brake release point and the car's entry angle to the corner will contribute more to lap time than any other late braking heroics in every single place except the castle turn.
Every corner will be taken quickest if the proper entry angle and brake release are used, as the car will be able to straight line the corner as much as possible. Because there are such long straights after every corner, all the time is gained on getting the perfect exit that will let you be fastest in the sections between corners and straights.
The brake release and steering inputs happen before and after you have passed the apex.
To make things even more interesting every corner has a slight kink on approach making the driver focus on the entry angle just that little bit more.
Should I invest in crypto or bet on a Bottas victory this weekend? The odds for Bottas are quite good and this is one of his strongest tracks (his other strong track is Sochi).
Should I invest in crypto or bet on a Bottas victory this weekend? The odds for Bottas are quite good and this is one of his strongest tracks (his other strong track is Sochi).
You should DCA your crypto like Mercedes DCA's Bottas annually
AMuS say that Mercedes will be very competitive here, but Toto Wolff continues the underdog story that Red Bull will be stronger than them because it is a street track. Im not sure about the Red Bull saga because in Spain or Portugal, I cant remember exactly Max with DRS could not match Hamilton top speed. Yes, Lewis was on a low-downforce RW but Max have both slipstream and DRS. Mercedes will gain a lot of time on the straight if we judge by Swhat we saw in Spain. The problem are those slow corners where Max will be king. In the middle I think it will be a very weak track for Ferrari.
