2021 Dutch Grand Prix - Zandvoort Sept 3 - 5

[NathanOlder]

Red Bull are in a league of their own here. Wow. What a lap.

Looked like one hell of a tow though.

Not sure it helped that much though as he was only just fastest in S3

[carisi2k]

As soon as I heard that Anthony Davidson had bought it up my thoughts immediately turned to Mercedes hi jinx. We know that the UK sky commentators are not impartial at the best of times when it comes to Lewis or any British driver and with Ant also being a Mercedes employee this was obviously a Mercedes ploy to try and get Max penalised. The most painful part of the weekend is listening to the sky commentators. Oh how I miss Murray Walker and James Hunt......

[Wouter]

Red Bull are in a league of their own here. Wow. What a lap.

Looked like one hell of a tow though.

The gap with Hamilton is 0.794. Is the tow almost 0,8 sec?

[Jolle]

Red Bull are in a league of their own here. Wow. What a lap.

Looked like one hell of a tow though.

The gap with Hamilton is 0.794. Is the tow almost 0,8 sec?

Bottas was just 5/100’s slower through sector 3, so looks like there are w few tenths gained there by RedBull in tow.
Hamilton is usually a bit faster then Bottas, so, gonna be close in a few hours time.

[Ryar]

Red Bull are in a league of their own here. Wow. What a lap.

Looked like one hell of a tow though.

Not sure it helped that much though as he was only just fastest in S3

Max was up by over half a second after 2 sectors, so the last sector wasn't particularly differentiating in that lap.

[SiLo]

Red Bull are in a league of their own here. Wow. What a lap.

Looked like one hell of a tow though.

The gap with Hamilton is 0.794. Is the tow almost 0,8 sec?

No, his gap mostly came from the first sector and last sector. They were fairly close in the middle sector considering how little running Lewis has had.

I'm 99% certain Max will be on pole, but both Mercedes will be behind him.

[DChemTech]

Max had a ca. 0.5s gap after sector 2 already. But yeah, very good tow. AWS is predicting a 0.3s gap between max and bottas based on FP3 data; so if their calculations compensate for tow that would be some 0.2. But yeah, we'll see in quali.

[grubschumi13]

Max is simply in a league of his own. Putting that RBR where it does not belong.

[MV8]

I'm the only who noticed that Ferrari with Charles didn't even try to do a good lap with soft? This is the real qual pace?

[Juzh]

Red Bull are in a league of their own here. Wow. What a lap.

Looked like one hell of a tow though.

The gap with Hamilton is 0.794. Is the tow almost 0,8 sec?

He gained almost 20 kmh over start finish line with that tow compared to start of the lap (297 km/h vs 316 k/mh), so I'd say it was worth 2 tenths minimum, but he lost some time in final corner because perez was too close, overall probably 0.1s net gain at least.

[Jolle]

I'm the only who noticed that Ferrari with Charles didn't even try to do a good lap with soft? This is the real qual pace?

Track evolution like I said yesterday. Yesterday they were on point because they held the front end together in 8, 9 and 10. Now the track evolved and the rear is unbalanced and other cars find their front end grip.

[MV8]

I'm the only who noticed that Ferrari with Charles didn't even try to do a good lap with soft? This is the real qual pace?

Track evolution like I said yesterday. Yesterday they were on point because they held the front end together in 8, 9 and 10. Now the track evolved and the rear is unbalanced and other cars find their front end grip.

Do you think they could find the balance for Q?

[Mr.S]

Max was 0.5s ahead of Bottas in S1+S2 combined & only 0.05-0.1s in S3. I don't know how much the top was worth. I mean top speed @ the end of the straight doesn't show everything as only 1 part of it comes under S3, the end of the straight is coming in S1. He also ran too close to Perez in S3.

I think it is worth a tenth or slightly more but the 0.5s over Bottas is surprising. We will have Q1, Q2 & Q3 - So far after almost 1 hour of running, we may get to 1'08s (high) by Verstappen or very low 1'09s (The track will get quicker).

Mercedes & others haven't showed their full hand & have probably more in tank. But how much? Mercedes can't be this close to Alpine or Ashton Martin. Perez's pace is concerning. Just way too far behind in such a short track. I don't know if RB has the option to get Gasly & demote Perez to Alpha Tauri. If 2022 is a closer season & RB are (say) 3rd best car, Perez will struggle to crack Q2. Because RB & Mercedes are on average 0.5s quicker than other cars, Perez's qualifying weakness isn't costing that much !

[Jolle]

I'm the only who noticed that Ferrari with Charles didn't even try to do a good lap with soft? This is the real qual pace?

Track evolution like I said yesterday. Yesterday they were on point because they held the front end together in 8, 9 and 10. Now the track evolved and the rear is unbalanced and other cars find their front end grip.

Do you think they could find the balance for Q?

I have no clue. But my guess is not. Cars are usually setup over night in the sim back at base with Friday data. So, this is the car for the rest of the weekend.

[nimoraca]

Looking at the last few races (excluding spa) Mercedes gains about 5 tenths on Red Bull in qualifying (compared to practice 3). It might still get close in q3.