2021 British Grand Prix - Silverstone, July 16 - 18

[taperoo2k]

Right if we put the actual crash in a box another question appears. Mercedes have just found pace after an upgrade they really didn't have time to validate and tune in before the races and qualifying. What happens when they do?

Remember Mercedes have gone from one of the slowest in a straight line in Austria to the fastest in Britain due to being able to remove the barn door at the back of the car.

Simple answer - They'll bring the fight to Red Bull and we'll get an even more intense title fight. Newey probably has upgrades planned to respond to Mercedes. I think the more complex question is - does this upgrade improve Mercedes qualifying pace and race pace or just the race pace ? Or was it track specific to Silverstone ?

Though at some point both teams will have to fully commit resources to the 2022 cars. No point throwing everything at this season's title fight, when you might then hobble yourself for 2022 and beyond, having to play catchup with a cost cap in place. It's a delicate balancing act.

As for tuning an upgrade ? I guess it depends on how it alters the performance of the car, it might need some simple tweaks or it might need extensive changes. Most of which they can model in the simulator, then correlate that with on track data. Mercedes have got race data to look at before the next race, so I'd guess the eagle eyed amongst us will be looking for subtle or big changes on the Mercedes, and Red Bull also in case they've got updates as well.

[Jambier]

Of course it is really upsetting for MAX and RB to have fallen in Hamilton trap.

And that's the point, isn't it? Max had everything to lose there and he just carried on as he normally does expecting other drivers to back out. Hamilton backed out earlier in the lap to avoid an accident when he was on the outside and Max went up the inside. So it's not as if Max doesn't know what others do in that situation.

It wasn't a trap by Hamilton. Hamilton attempted a pass and Max chose to turn in to the corner regardless. The only trap was that Hamilton and others have normally gone "oh, it's Max, he'll crash in to me if I don't back out". This time that didn't happen. Max fell in to the trap of believing that everyone else will get out of his way because he has made a career of being aggressive. On Sunday that methodology bit him back. The trap was all of Max's own making.

If you drive aggressively against others, eventually you're going to get bitten.

Max is fighting for the title. He needs to be circumspect now, not aggressive. It's about getting points through the whole season, not winning every corner. Sometimes the other guy is just a bit faster than you. So you bag the most points you can and move on to the next race. If Max was even half aware of F1 history as he should be, he'd know this. Heck, he only had to be paying attention to Hamilton during his title runs. Hamilton will try to get the win, of course, but he generally won't risk it all on the first lap. At Silverstone, Hamilton had nothing much to lose, Max had a lot to lose. That's where a driver has to switch from aggressive, win-at-all-cost to more measured bag-the-points-and-move-on mode.

Agreed with you

Max was too agressive for someone leading the championship, he was driving as before, when he had an inferior car.
And I'm sure that Hamilton was a bit agressive, because he knew he was the one behind.

Let's call that the "old" man giving a lesson to the young one trying to get his crown.

[Restomaniac]

Right if we put the actual crash in a box another question appears. Mercedes have just found pace after an upgrade they really didn't have time to validate and tune in before the races and qualifying. What happens when they do?

Remember Mercedes have gone from one of the slowest in a straight line in Austria to the fastest in Britain due to being able to remove the barn door at the back of the car.

Simple answer - They'll bring the fight to Red Bull and we'll get an even more intense title fight. Newey probably has upgrades planned to respond to Mercedes. I think the more complex question is - does this upgrade improve Mercedes qualifying pace and race pace or just the race pace ? Or was it track specific to Silverstone ?

Though at some point both teams will have to fully commit resources to the 2022 cars. No point throwing everything at this season's title fight, when you might then hobble yourself for 2022 and beyond, having to play catchup with a cost cap in place. It's a delicate balancing act.

As for tuning an upgrade ? I guess it depends on how it alters the performance of the car, it might need some simple tweaks or it might need extensive changes. Most of which they can model in the simulator, then correlate that with on track data. Mercedes have got race data to look at before the next race, so I'd guess the eagle eyed amongst us will be looking for subtle or big changes on the Mercedes, and Red Bull also in case they've got updates as well.

All very true. I can’t however shake the feeling that if we had had normal practices then for the first 10 minutes Mercedes would have been running around with rakes on.

Yes they have CFD and wind tunnels however that’s not the same as live data.

[El Scorchio]

Hopefully Ferrari gets a win in Budapest.

On the strength of today and Monaco- they could be right up there!

They and Leclerc particularly, really deserve a win this season. Not that Sainz doesn't, but Leclerc has come closer.

[ispano6]

It says that the car is making more rear downforce from the diffuser throat. They will have designed it for that reason and to allow the rear wing reduction. But as for tuning it, unless they're going to spend hours in CFD / the wind tunnel fiddling with the bits they've bolted on, there's not much else to "tune" is there? Perhaps very small changes to wheel geometry but I wonder whether even that.

It's impressive they found a setup for it with the reduced FP running this weekend. Another consequence of the weird format is maybe that is biased towards the simulation rich teams.

Anthony Davidson did drive the W12 on Silverstone a couple weeks back and worked on the simulator afterwards. Weren't Mercedes and Lewis saying the rules hit them harder and that Honda brought performance upgrades? Wasn't it simply that their car was underdeveloped at the beginning of the season? Toto wasn't kidding when he said the upgrades they were going to bring would destroy the competition.

[richardn]

That image doesn't mean anything since it doesn't go back far enough to show where Max started to turn. This corner is different in that they don't brake for it if they are on the racing line and so the question you have to ask yourself is where is Lewis going to go since he is on the dirty part of the track. His trajectory is taking him to the same part of the track as where Max is which was already wide of the apex and mean Lewis is running deeper then he should be. This means that the position in the images shows Lewis to be in a false position where he shouldn't actually be if he was to make the corner. A position he is only in because he has made a mistake and he is clearly not going to make the corner. Some will say why should Lewis not go for this but then the same should be applied for Max not wanting to give this spot up and who was actually on the racing line. This is Senna vs Prost 1990 Suzuka all over again with Lewis playing the part of Senna.

Is there a 'dirty' part of the track at this point? It was the first lap.

PS this was nothing at all like Suzuka 1990. This crash might just as easily punted either or both drivers out of the race. It would have likely been more harmful to the driver chasing in the championship (Lewis).

[Wouter]

Waking up thinking 'did that really happen?'

[Shrieker]

Max fans need a reality check. Especially those who think Hamilton deliberately tried to take Max out, or set up a trap or something.

Go watch Imola and Catalunya first corners. Max tries to mow Hamilton, and the latter jumps out of the way to avoid contact and damage. To think that you can bully a 7 time world champion into submission indefinitely, you have to be naive at best.

[basti313]

Of course it is really upsetting for MAX and RB to have fallen in Hamilton trap.

And that's the point, isn't it? Max had everything to lose there and he just carried on as he normally does expecting other drivers to back out. Hamilton backed out earlier in the lap to avoid an accident when he was on the outside and Max went up the inside. So it's not as if Max doesn't know what others do in that situation.

It wasn't a trap by Hamilton. Hamilton attempted a pass and Max chose to turn in to the corner regardless. The only trap was that Hamilton and others have normally gone "oh, it's Max, he'll crash in to me if I don't back out". This time that didn't happen. Max fell in to the trap of believing that everyone else will get out of his way because he has made a career of being aggressive. On Sunday that methodology bit him back. The trap was all of Max's own making.

If you drive aggressively against others, eventually you're going to get bitten.

Max is fighting for the title. He needs to be circumspect now, not aggressive. It's about getting points through the whole season, not winning every corner. Sometimes the other guy is just a bit faster than you. So you bag the most points you can and move on to the next race. If Max was even half aware of F1 history as he should be, he'd know this. Heck, he only had to be paying attention to Hamilton during his title runs. Hamilton will try to get the win, of course, but he generally won't risk it all on the first lap. At Silverstone, Hamilton had nothing much to lose, Max had a lot to lose. That's where a driver has to switch from aggressive, win-at-all-cost to more measured bag-the-points-and-move-on mode.

Agreed with you

Max was too agressive for someone leading the championship, he was driving as before, when he had an inferior car.
And I'm sure that Hamilton was a bit agressive, because he knew he was the one behind.

Let's call that the "old" man giving a lesson to the young one trying to get his crown.

I don't know...without the Ying Yang if the penalty is ok or not, we all know that this is not consistent. In the end Lewis was lucky on three points:
- His front axle did not collapse like the rear on the RedBull
- He did not receive a drive through. With a drive through he would have ended like in Italy last year at the end of the pack.
- They called a red flag bacause of the hard impact on the tire barrier. With a different angle, maybe tecpro barrier the crash would have resulted in a normal safety car. Lewis needed a new front wing, that would have put him to the back of the pack as well.

Worst case would have been both...no red flag and drive through. That would have left him without points.
So I can not agree on "a lesson", this was pure luck.

[ispano6]

Waking up thinking 'did that really happen?'

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6ou37nWQAA ... ame=medium

Seriously, and listening to the onboard radio people here saying Max was just fine getting out of the car himself.
Adrenaline will keep you up for a bit but it is going to hurt for days afterwards. He should have follow up check ups for his lungs, ribs, and head.

Alonso after he was given the green light to leave the track after his massive crash in Australia.

"To summarise a little, last week [in Australia] I was okay Sunday - some knee pain but not big things. I had the green light to leave the track and everything was okay," Alonso explained in Thursday’s official FIA press conference in Bahrain.

"On Monday I had a bit of overall pain, nothing too serious. Then I flew back, arrived in Spain and the pain was a little more, so we did a proper check and I had a small pneumothorax [collapse] on the lung.

"We took advice from the doctors to relax at home and repeat the scan last Monday - the pneumothorax is gone more or less but I had some rib fractures. And because F1 is a very unique position in the car, and with the g-forces, there was a risk the fractures could move into the lung.

"It’s not like broken leg or arm where you can deal with the pain; it’s the chest where there are organs, so we cannot do much more."

[Just_a_fan]

Waking up thinking 'did that really happen?'

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6ou37nWQAA ... ame=medium

It's good to see that the crash structures and high cockpit sides all worked as designed along with the tyre barrier to keep the driver safe.

I remember Hakkinen in Adelaide.

[Jambier]

Worst case would have been both...no red flag and drive through. That would have left him without points.
So I can not agree on "a lesson", this was pure luck.

What I mean, is the contact is a lesson to MAX

Of course then Hamilton got extremely lucky - as always - and will probably win the title, which will be a pain after all those year of Mercedes domination, people are tired with that.

But at least we have some drama for a 2021 season that was supposed to be another awful domination.

[basti313]

Worst case would have been both...no red flag and drive through. That would have left him without points.
So I can not agree on "a lesson", this was pure luck.

What I mean, is the contact is a lesson to MAX

Of course then Hamilton got extremely lucky - as always - and will probably win the title, which will be a pain after all those year of Mercedes domination, people are tired with that.

But at least we have some drama for a 2021 season that was supposed to be another awful domination.

Absolutely. Still, the worst thing on the crash for us was that we lost completely the fight on track. Everything after the SC restart was boring. I think except for some backmarkers vs. Perez at the beginning and Lewis flying past some Ferrari there was no real on track overtaking at all. If I am not mistaken not even some strategy attempts like undercuts.

The crash could have happend in the last lap...

[dans79]

What I mean, is the contact is a lesson to MAX

I agree he must and most likely will learn from this.

When you are in a championship fight and have a substantial points lead, you must know when to yield, and live to fight another day as the saying goes.

[Dee]

Hamilton himself in two quotes during the post press conference and take note of the order and thought process in quote 1; https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... nYFtQ.html

"I was pretty far up alongside him (Max) 1. but I then could see he wasn't going to back-out and 2. we went into the corner and 3. then we collided"

Then talking about the same move on Leclerc who he was also alongside and saying "At one point I backed out, just to make sure we didn't come together"

This wasn't a both of them were expecting the other to concede incident, this was Lewis fully knowing that Max wouldn't back off and still keeping his line. After the touch, he still ran wide on that corner, meaning that he was always ending up in Max's car, his trajectary was never one that was making that corner cleanly

There is a difference between expecting the other driver to back down and knowing he won't and still keeping your line

And now he has an extra 25 points, a win, millions of dollars worth of damage done to RB in a cost cap year, most likely penalties incoming for Max having to take an extra engine and gearbox and a rival who has had to be hospitalised after a 51G crash

It also puts his reactions after the race completely into context. Because Lewis knew there would be a crash, he wasn't guilty about it happening. He expected the crash, didn't feel bad that Max then crashed out, could celebrate his win fully. Never gave Max any care or consideration in his interview after the race or in any further interviews up until the point he was told he was in the hospital. Then he says, of course you never want things like this to happen....

How can you say, you never want things like this to happen after not changing your line when you knew there would be a crash otherwise?

People may be outraged at me saying this stuff but I am literally using Lewis's own words, so I may not be the person you want to be mad at

If you want to constructively discuss where I am wrong here, please do because I am soley basing this of what Hamilton has said and how he acted after the race

TDLR: Lewis intentionally crashed with Max to send a message that he wouldn't be pushed around any more