2021 Dutch Grand Prix - Zandvoort Sept 3 - 5

[cplchanb]

it really just goes to show that this car is designed to primarily suit max

Or it's just built in the direction which is fastest? It's not like Benetton for instance deliberately made a car that was hard to drive, they just made the fastest car they could. It's not up to them to reinvent the wheel so Verstappen Snr, Herbert, Alesi or Berger could drive it better. Same goes for Red Bull.

think about it though... had the car been more balanced towards other drivers other than max it probably wouldve had compromises that would slow the cars overall pace down. max has been with the team since 2016 as markos prodigy so development since then was always going to be centered around him. they wont admit it, but max is their #1 driver like schumacher at ferrari hands down.

[Jolle]

Lewis will start on older tyres because of Q2 being red flagged and on the less grippy side of the track, the race is now Max's to lose.

Nah… because great chance it’s going to be hard to overtake and Mercedes/Hamilton have a history to be good on race pace, it might come down to having the undercut at the right moment. Or, going for a one vs two stop. They are just to close.

[NathanOlder]

Lewis will start on older tyres because of Q2 being red flagged and on the less grippy side of the track, the race is now Max's to lose.

Were they not just the tyres they did 1 lap on, out and straight back in.

also remember the Mercs were 6 tenths slower on those sets. so potentially took a lot less out of them. We know the car is almost as fast, so being 6 tenths slower is a lot less energy going in to the tyres.

[DChemTech]

Vd Garde just mentioned that Max told him he made a mistake shifting up, and went from 4 to 6 in one go, right around the DRS line. They speculated this may have lead to the DRS issue, and he lost a bit of time due to being in the wrong gear.

[flynfrog]

Lewis will start on older tyres because of Q2 being red flagged and on the less grippy side of the track, the race is now Max's to lose.

Might be hard to counter a 2 on 1 pit strategy.

[JordanMugen]

it really just goes to show that this car is designed to primarily suit max

Or it's just built in the direction which is fastest? It's not like Benetton for instance deliberately made a car that was hard to drive, they just made the fastest car they could. It's not up to them to reinvent the wheel so Verstappen Snr, Herbert, Alesi or Berger could drive it better. Same goes for Red Bull.

think about it though... had the car been more balanced towards other drivers other than max it probably wouldve had compromises that would slow the cars overall pace down. max has been with the team since 2016 as markos prodigy so development since then was always going to be centered around him. they wont admit it, but max is their #1 driver like schumacher at ferrari hands down.

Yes, that's what I meant. Red Bull, like Benetton, have simply built the fastest car possible, accepting that it will be a little tricky to drive.

I think Red Bull admit quite openly that Max is the number one driver, that is not a secret! They only asked for Perez to be within 3 tenths, they weren't expecting Perez to match or beat Verstappen. But at the same time, they are not going to waste resources making large changes to the car on Perez's request, just as they did not do this for Gasly, and why they were so frustrated with Gasly who constantly asked for big changes to the Red Bull.\\

It's up to the second driver to drive the car with the same technique as the lead driver -- to look at the lead driver's data traces and duplicate those data traces. This applied to Vettel as Ferrari's second driver it was up to Vettel to duplicate LeClerc's data traces, and currently to Perez as Red Bull's second driver and Ricciardo as McLaren's second driver -- they are simply asked to duplicate the technique and data traces of Verstappen and Norris respectively.

None of these teams have the desire to design a completely different car for the second driver, that's an unreasonable amount of work and wasted duplication of effort!

[NathanOlder]

So tomorrow Max needs to gap Bottas by a pitstop otherwise he finds himself behind him and a rolling road block, on a track where A, passing is very hard. B, the only real passing spot is where the Merc has an advantage over RedBull. Max may be on pole, but Merc certainly have a strong hand for tomorrow.

[PlatinumZealot]

Vd Garde just mentioned that Max told him he made a mistake shifting up, and went from 4 to 6 in one go, right around the DRS line. They speculated this may have lead to the DRS issue, and he lost a bit of time due to being in the wrong gear.

Thanks. That little mistake almost cost him pole. Hmm. I still feel his car is set up on the nose. Heavily loaded front wing. Definitely a qually biased set up and one that should give him blistering outlaps but at the expense of outright tyre life. Will be interesting tomorrow for sure.

[ispano6]

Gasly already had Covid, before he was vaccinated. But Kimi talked to a lot of people about his leaving the F1.

Kimi is probably a breakthrough case, was vaccinated but tested positive. Anyone of the drivers could still test positive for carrying it in the nostrils despite having it before or being vaccinated and would have to quarantine unfortunately.

[Ryar]

Vd Garde just mentioned that Max told him he made a mistake shifting up, and went from 4 to 6 in one go, right around the DRS line. They speculated this may have lead to the DRS issue, and he lost a bit of time due to being in the wrong gear.

Thanks. That little mistake almost cost him pole. Hmm. I still feel his car is set up on the nose. Heavily loaded front wing. Definitely a qually biased set up and one that should give him blistering outlaps but at the expense of outright tyre life. Will be interesting tomorrow for sure.

So far, everything points to Incidents filled circus tomorrow. Pit stops would come free.

[nimoraca]

If only we could have Lewis and Max in the same car for a season so that all these "expert" discussions on who is extracting more from the car could end. The truth is we might never know for sure. Trying to compare Lewis vs Max by comparing them against other drivers just leads nowhere. By that logic, Lando is much faster than Max because he is beating Ricciardo with a much bigger margin than Max did in their last year together. He was also not as dominant against Sainz in their 2015/2016 seasons certainly not more that Leclerc is now. It is all speculation, we are watching a team sport where the besta combination of car/driver is going to have the best chance of winning. Nothing more than that.

[JordanMugen]

If only we could have Lewis and Max in the same car for a season so that all these "expert" discussions on who is extracting more from the car could end.

Sure, but at least we can compare Lewis and George directly in the 2022 season, so that will be a good battle.

[ispano6]

Max's DRS opened for the beginning of sector 3 but it seemed it didn't for the last straight. When he crossed the line it appeared the DRS closed from a barely open position. Maybe there was an actual issue.

For the race Perez could go long, maybe even start on mediums and go long enough to hold up the Mercedes. Will need to count on some fast pitstops.

[xaero]

If only we could have Lewis and Max in the same car for a season so that all these "expert" discussions on who is extracting more from the car could end.

How come you can write something logical like this when Lord Max is head and shoulder's above anyone who ever graced F1 cockpit and dragging poor RB to pole after pole

[DChemTech]

Vd Garde just mentioned that Max told him he made a mistake shifting up, and went from 4 to 6 in one go, right around the DRS line. They speculated this may have lead to the DRS issue, and he lost a bit of time due to being in the wrong gear.

Correction, max himself just mentioned on dutch TV the upshift mistake was around corner 3, due to the bumpy track. The DRS is a separate issue, and not sure why it happened- he did activate it.