2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix - Jeddah, Dec 03 - 05

[politburo]

Hamilton summoned to stewards for allegedly not respecting double waved yellows, so presumably a 5 place grid drop unless they can show otherwise à la Sainz last time out.

Giving race penalties for infringements in free practice just sounds wrong.

[Tvetovnato]

Strat 5 for Hamilton’s laps on the softs in the end, all of them. No complaints of tyres not in the window on the radio either. Feels like there is still a bit of sandbagging going on.

Don't they to go Strat 2 for Q3?.

That’s what I mean. So by using strat 5, they are not using all there is.

[Wouter]

[jz11]

Strat 5 for Hamilton’s laps on the softs in the end, all of them. No complaints of tyres not in the window on the radio either. Feels like there is still a bit of sandbagging going on.

"a bit"? it has been like this for few races already, we won't see what is what till Q3 basically

hence I'm laughing a bit at the titles for the FP related articles - Mercedes dominated blablabla, now suddenly Max is 0.2 up, it means zero in these circumstances, it is all about matching tyre/car performance to the sim they currently rely on, if the performance on track on correlates with the sim, they can do whatever they want in FP basically, run the sim and determine the best possible options, and not knowing what scenario they were running exactly and what was the fuel load, it is impossible to predict anything from looking at the FP times, might as well look into a crystal ball and tell who is doing well and to expectation and who isn't

[wogx]

[zubster]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FFxjGxfX0AI ... name=small

If that's the case, I guess that's the championship sealed in that case. Bit of a damp squib but that's racing I guess.

[Tizz]

wow, this is a penalty for Hamilton for sure. Super dangerous there with Mazepin

And with Gasly first... what the hell was he doing? Trying to get a penalty so Toto would give him a new engine again?

I think a driver can hardly see anybody coming from behind in time. It's his engineer that's fallen asleep... It would be utterly insane to get your car smashed in such a way, not being able to run quali and throw away the season.

[politburo]

Any qualifying predictions anyone?.

[Tvetovnato]

I just saw it, did they wave for the car leaving track to give Hamilton space or what? The yellow flashed for 0,1 secs and then it went green again..

[Marty_Y]

What a rubbish way to end the season.

[Tizz]

Any qualifying predictions anyone?.

Yeah, it will be exciting.... That's as far as I go.

[zubster]

What a rubbish way to end the season.

Yeah agreed if it happens but what can you do I guess.

[search]

wow, this is a penalty for Hamilton for sure. Super dangerous there with Mazepin

And with Gasly first... what the hell was he doing? Trying to get a penalty so Toto would give him a new engine again?

I think a driver can hardly see anybody coming from behind in time. It's his engineer that's fallen asleep... It would be utterly insane to get your car smashed in such a way, not being able to run quali and throw away the season.

of course, yeah, but it's also not the driver at fault for unsafe releases, for example, and it's still him who gets the penalty.

But as someone pointed out before, I also can't remember any penalties of that kind of handed out for a practice incident. A reprimand (hitting the allowed limit, if true, and therefor still ending in a penalty) would be a different story, and not too unlikely, though, I think.

[politburo]

wow, this is a penalty for Hamilton for sure. Super dangerous there with Mazepin

And with Gasly first... what the hell was he doing? Trying to get a penalty so Toto would give him a new engine again?

I think a driver can hardly see anybody coming from behind in time. It's his engineer that's fallen asleep... It would be utterly insane to get your car smashed in such a way, not being able to run quali and throw away the season.

The engineer has to do better, he told Ham only after the incident and Ham probably couldn't see him coming since there is a barrier in the line of sight of the rear-view mirrors. I think it will be a more lenient outcome by stewards because it was free practice.

[politburo]

Any qualifying predictions anyone?.

Yeah, it will be exciting.... That's as far as I go.

I like that one. I think so as well, it's up in the air which tyre is faster, which should make Q2 very tense.