2023 Japanese Grand Prix - Suzuka, Sep 22 - 24

[GrizzleBoy]

Nah. As we saw Hamilton wasn't fast enough to pass George and it would have just ended in a DRS train.

George didn't even have the traction to use the DRS Lewis gave him to fight Sainz. How do you assume he was going to be able to keep Lewis and a faster Sainz behind?

Either Sainz would get Lewis on traction elsewhere and then get George, or Lewis would get George and then Sainz would get George, which isnwhat happened.

Go watch the replay, Russell had DRS on the straight when he got passed by Sainz.

I didn't mean he couldn't get DRS, I mean he didn't have enough traction on the straight to even make use of having the DRS giving him higher top speed.

Meaning there was absolutely no way he could've kept Ham or Sainz behind unless BOTH of them purposely decided to drive slower than Carlos, which was obviously never going to happen.

Merc needed to have had the balls to tell George to make way for Lewis when he still had a 2s gap to Sainz to protect their points at that point, but instead they for some reason just allowed the situation to play out in a way that put Sainz right on both their asses and put their own points haul in jeopardy at that point.

There is a first driver at Mercedes, but I don't think they're willing to acknowledge that for whatever particular reason.

[FittingMechanics]

Norris really mopped with piastri, +17s in the end. He'll have to work on his race pace, it happened a few times now.

Keep in mind Piastri saved almost 10 seconds of race time with his VSC stop and undercut Norris twice. Norris also lost 5 seconds under the VSC due to Perez block. Norris basically finished 35-40 seconds ahead of him when you correct for it. It is absolutely shocking.

PIA was regularly about 0.5s slower than Norris, this fits with your calculation. I thought Norris would cook his tires but it seems that he knew his business.

[AR3-GP]

Meaning there was absolutely no way he could've kept Ham or Sainz behind unless BOTH of them purposely decided to drive slower than Carlos, which was obviously never going to happen.

He was keeping Hamilton behind until he was ordered to drop back.

[JordanMugen]

Verstappen: "You've built a rocket ship. Well done."

Cracking stuff! Superb WCC win by Red Bull Racing Honda RBPT!

It sounds like Verstappen has a good chance of ticking the WDC box at the Qatar sprint?

[Spoutnik]

George didn't even have the traction to use the DRS Lewis gave him to fight Sainz. How do you assume he was going to be able to keep Lewis and a faster Sainz behind?

Either Sainz would get Lewis on traction elsewhere and then get George, or Lewis would get George and then Sainz would get George, which isnwhat happened.

Go watch the replay, Russell had DRS on the straight when he got passed by Sainz.

I didn't mean he couldn't get DRS, I mean he didn't have enough traction on the straight to even make use of having the DRS giving him higher top speed.

Meaning there was absolutely no way he could've kept Ham or Sainz behind unless BOTH of them purposely decided to drive slower than Carlos, which was obviously never going to happen.

Merc needed to have had the balls to tell George to make way for Lewis when he still had a 2s gap to Sainz to protect their points at that point, but instead they for some reason just allowed the situation to play out in a way that put Sainz right on both their asses and put their own points haul in jeopardy at that point.

There is a first driver at Mercedes, but I don't think they're willing to acknowledge that for whatever particular reason.

That's the key issue...
Russell is +70 pts off in the Championship, and he's inexperienced he has to calm down

[dialtone]

George didn't even have the traction to use the DRS Lewis gave him to fight Sainz. How do you assume he was going to be able to keep Lewis and a faster Sainz behind?

Either Sainz would get Lewis on traction elsewhere and then get George, or Lewis would get George and then Sainz would get George, which isnwhat happened.

Go watch the replay, Russell had DRS on the straight when he got passed by Sainz.

I didn't mean he couldn't get DRS, I mean he didn't have enough traction on the straight to even make use of having the DRS giving him higher top speed.

Meaning there was absolutely no way he could've kept Ham or Sainz behind unless BOTH of them purposely decided to drive slower than Carlos, which was obviously never going to happen.

Merc needed to have had the balls to tell George to make way for Lewis when he still had a 2s gap to Sainz to protect their points at that point, but instead they for some reason just allowed the situation to play out in a way that put Sainz right on both their asses and put their own points haul in jeopardy at that point.

There is a first driver at Mercedes, but I don't think they're willing to acknowledge that for whatever particular reason.

oh right I agree.

[FittingMechanics]

That's the key issue...
Russell is +70 pts off in the Championship, and he's inexperienced he has to calm down

Not sure why drivers cause rifts in the team fighting for P5? Russel could have easily swapped - it's not going to affect the championship.

[dialtone]

Meaning there was absolutely no way he could've kept Ham or Sainz behind unless BOTH of them purposely decided to drive slower than Carlos, which was obviously never going to happen.

He was keeping Hamilton behind until he was ordered to drop back.

easy floor mopping both of them if they did that.

Russell was going to be traction limited out of the chicane, Sainz with DRS was going to pass Ham that would be traction limited to avoid contact with Russell and Sainz was going to pass one and then the other if not both on the same lap. This isn't singapore.

Merc should have let Lewis through immediately, no idea what they were thinking.

[organic]

[rifrafs2kees]

[Juzh]

Norris really mopped with piastri, +17s in the end. He'll have to work on his race pace, it happened a few times now.

Keep in mind Piastri saved almost 10 seconds of race time with his VSC stop and undercut Norris twice. Norris also lost 5 seconds under the VSC due to Perez block. Norris basically finished 35-40 seconds ahead of him when you correct for it. It is absolutely shocking.

Yep, putting whole race into perspective doesn't paint a pretty picture. Piastri basically in perez/albon/gasly vs max territory in terms of race pace.

[Cs98]

Nah. As we saw Hamilton wasn't fast enough to pass George and it would have just ended in a DRS train.

George didn't even have the traction to use the DRS Lewis gave him to fight Sainz. How do you assume he was going to be able to keep Lewis and a faster Sainz behind?

Either Sainz would get Lewis on traction elsewhere and then get George, or Lewis would get George and then Sainz would get George, which isnwhat happened.

Because if you want to make it hard to pass in a DRS train you order them in terms of pace, slowest to fastest. So Lewis was faster than George, but we saw he wasn't fast enough to pass him without George moving aside. And Sainz was slightly faster than Lewis, but not fast enough to pass Lewis. Once you invert Lewis and George you put the slowest car right in front of the fastest car, in dirty air. That's easy for Sainz who also had better straight line speed. Keeping them in order would've likely saved them P6. And if you want to invert you can do it on the final lap.

[Spoutnik]

Nah. As we saw Hamilton wasn't fast enough to pass George and it would have just ended in a DRS train.

George didn't even have the traction to use the DRS Lewis gave him to fight Sainz. How do you assume he was going to be able to keep Lewis and a faster Sainz behind?

Either Sainz would get Lewis on traction elsewhere and then get George, or Lewis would get George and then Sainz would get George, which isnwhat happened.

Because if you want to make it hard to pass in a DRS train you order them in terms of pace, slowest to fastest. So Lewis was faster than George, but we saw he wasn't fast enough to pass him without George moving aside. And Sainz was slightly faster than Lewis, but not fast enough to pass Lewis. Once you invert Lewis and George you put the slowest car right in front of the fastest car, in dirty air. That's easy for Sainz who also had better straight line speed. Keeping them in order would've likely saved them P6. And if you want to invert you can do it on the final lap.

Interesting analysis but it doesn't work because 1/Merc has a weak top speed 2/Carlos had fresher tyre (if tyres were equal to Lewis a DRS train would've been possible)
We saw that because 1/Carlos was all over Lewis gearbox before George let him through 2/ Even with Lewis DRS we saw Ferrari top speed against Russell. I don't think it would've been so different against Lewis

[GrizzleBoy]

Nah. As we saw Hamilton wasn't fast enough to pass George and it would have just ended in a DRS train.

George didn't even have the traction to use the DRS Lewis gave him to fight Sainz. How do you assume he was going to be able to keep Lewis and a faster Sainz behind?

Either Sainz would get Lewis on traction elsewhere and then get George, or Lewis would get George and then Sainz would get George, which isnwhat happened.

Because if you want to make it hard to pass in a DRS train you order them in terms of pace, slowest to fastest. So Lewis was faster than George, but we saw he wasn't fast enough to pass him without George moving aside. And Sainz was slightly faster than Lewis, but not fast enough to pass Lewis. Once you invert Lewis and George you put the slowest car right in front of the fastest car, in dirty air. That's easy for Sainz who also had better straight line speed. Keeping them in order would've likely saved them P6. And if you want to invert you can do it on the final lap.

Carlos was almost getting side by side to Lewis at the hairpin, because Lewis had to go at George's pace.

There was no guarantee that Sainz would stay behind Lewis while they all tootled around at George's dead tyres pace. This is a track where you can overtake all over the place with traction differences.

There was no need for Sainz to even prematurely be in Lewis' DRS in the first place if Merc had the stones to make sure George knew he had to get out of Lewis' way.

This is also ignoring the fact that Lewis was just as close to attacking Charles as he was to defending from Carlos.

George talked about the team game, but he cost the team pushing Lewis off in Singapore, then crashing, and the tried to get the team to throw away even more points to Ferrari today for his own good.

[rifrafs2kees]

Singapore street track is the other significant factor that allowed Sainz's drs trick to work. That wasn't going to work here with cars sporting vastly different age boots.