2022 French Grand Prix - Le Castellet, July 22 - 24

[cplchanb]

we shall see what happens tomorrow. have ferrari fixed their long run pace? if it was like yesterday all rb have to do is sit back and wait for lec to chew through his tires and then run longer... who knows maybe ham over the race distance may do a silverstone.

[JPBD1990]

Huge if true. Ferrari seem surprisingly confident given everyone else screaming black and blue that their race pace was terrible. Let’s see

[SametPeker89]

seems like Ferrari is full of confidence with their race pace and against tire degradation. They keep 2M and 1H fresh where RB does vice versa. Post quali interviews support this preference. We will see tomorrow for sure

[Mogster]

So is Lewis doing his usual "okay it's mid season I'll just automatically go faster than my rival" thing, or did him and George still have different wings going into quali?

Sky said before Q1 that both Mercs were running the same spec, lower downforce, setup. The team had converged on the setup Russell had been running.

[Sieper]

Not surpised redbull is way ahead here. The track layout hinted at that. Once they get setup sorted theyre usually out of reach.
Perez on the other hand seems to ve having issues setting his car up but lets see how much he improves come qualy.
But i wont predict an easy win for RB, anything can happen.. and it usually does!
A merc win is out of the question, even a slow Perez can run down and pass mercedes in race trim if charles and max crash out for some reason.

Well, in this phase of the season chances for Merc are slim, but Sainz is out of the way so they have two mercs against Perez should Charles and Max crash. In fact, if redbull really is faster here we might see Charles be enormously agressive. Max has more to loose íf he is faster.

"IF" redbull is faster? there wasn't enough evidence from watched FP3 that Max is clear?

No you must always leave some wiggle room when predicting the future.

[napoleon1981]

Charles is usually very quick to talk about concerns with race pace when practice hasn’t gone well, but he seemed optimistic in post quali interviews and didn’t mention race pace concerns whatsoever. Will be interesting to see.

Also as a layman, wondering if anyone smarter than me can comment. Nico Rosberg said multiple times that more downforce will therefore put more load through the tyres and cause worse tyre wear. That seems contrary to everything we know about f1? It’s always the car with the most downforce that goes faster, has better tyre wear, etc.

Surely the car with lower downforce is going to scrub them across the track more - eg understeer across the front, which we definitely saw from max, and oversteer or poor traction, eg out of the last corner.

I’m just surprised to hear the argument that more downforce will cause more tyre wear. I haven’t heard that one before…

I have heard it before, it will be interesting to see if that turns out to be true. The fact is that Charles relies on higher corner speeds, which puts more load/energy in the tire. Max will have to be careful not to slide around. I think Miami was a race where the ferrari had much more downforce, but then also appeared to have worse tire wear/overheating.

[organic]

[ismail1991]

Looking strong for Ferrari. I am curious how much place can Sainz get back with the pace he has.

[falonso81]

Looking strong for Ferrari. I am curious how much place can Sainz get back with the pace he has.

P6 seems easy enough. A SC or anyone up front having problems will be bonus for him. Judging from his monstrous pace though i would bet he can catch the Mercs pretty quickly.

[hollus]

Regarding Ferrari having suboptimal starts in the recent past, it mught be history:
https://www.racefans.net/2022/07/22/fer ... ew-clutch/

[PlatinumZealot]

I'm worried Ferrari might've screwed themselves using a hard this morning.
Come sunday Red Bull will be able to do Medium-Hard-Hard and Ferrari won't.

Ferrari is faster when they use scrubbed tyres for the race. They have been doing it all this year. Binotto says they don't know why but it just works for their car.

[PlatinumZealot]

A DNF from Max would bring the championship in nice position going into the summer break! Not saying I'm wishing this to happen.. But the small wins here and there for Fearri wont cut it

[GrizzleBoy]

A DNF from Max would bring the championship in nice position going into the summer break! Not saying I'm wishing this to happen.. But the small wins here and there for Fearri wont cut it

Bottas: Did someone say my name?

[chrisc90]

A DNF from Max would bring the championship in nice position going into the summer break! Not saying I'm wishing this to happen.. But the small wins here and there for Fearri wont cut it

Bottas: Did someone say my name?

Bottas aint under the direction of Toto anymore Ferrari dont need to resort to cannonball tactics

[Tvetovnato]

So is Lewis doing his usual "okay it's mid season I'll just automatically go faster than my rival" thing, or did him and George still have different wings going into quali?

Car is more predictable to drive, so hamilton can really drive it how he wants, and Lewis has experience in managing tyre temps in qualy. I think Russel was taking advantage of a car that was bouncing all over the place in the earlier rounds and Lewis maybe wasn't getting the feedback he wanted from the car, and maybe Russel's youth means braver and more risk when pushing a bouncing car? Whatever the reason Hamilton doesn't seem bothered finding pace since Barcelona.

Maclarens are looking good!

He hasn’t found any particular pace since Barcelona, he’s been on it the whole time, it’s just that things have fallen his way lately as opposed to the first few races. It’s just mainstream F1 drama media that have put that narrative, without looking for further analysis than seeing the race results and points standings and deducing things from those parameters alone. Which is a bit painful.