2017 Hungarian Grand Prix - Hungaroring, 28-30 July

[Treble]

What! Only 19 points between LH & VB!
Botas doing a lot better than what I expected at the start of the season.
Lewis will have to start to pull finger, VB could very well finish the season ahead of him.

Seb is unavoidably going to get a grid penalty for engine/gearbox change and then there's no way they will beat Mercedes in that race, so there's easily 13 points to win over Vettel for Lewis in just 1 race (should he bring in a Win and Vettel get p4 tops) and we're back as we were before Hungary.

Binotto in the press conference at Hungary explained that they are just rotating their turbos, the older turbos have received reliability updates so they are as good as new. They do not think they will be penalized. I say stay tuned.

I remember a discussion here on the forum where a mod made a point about Ferrari couldn't make updates (reliability too) on the used turbos. So now we find out that Giantfan was right? When Binotto told that?

Edit: http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/07/28/f ... o-changes/
Giantfan was right they update the used turbo for reliability.

[Phil]

All Im saying is Bottas drove aggressively few laps to defend against Vettel (who he wasnt even racing). He literally took one for team and Hamilton, and some here have decency to talk about Ferrari not ordering driver with 100pts less then WDC leader to pass freely and leave actual WDC leader, who is driving with mechanical issue, to finihs 3rd at most.

Yes, he was racing Vettel. I actually did an analysis that explains it pretty well that Bottas was well and truly racing for himself in Barcelona. At that point he was on a different strategy and potentially also driving for the win. He did not take one for the team and Hamilton

viewtopic.php?p=699298#p699298

PS: Feel free to reply there or in the Barcelona race topic if you have something to add.

[Powy]

2017 Hungarian Grand Prix Strategy Analysis by Mercedes

[Juzh]

All Im saying is Bottas drove aggressively few laps to defend against Vettel (who he wasnt even racing). He literally took one for team and Hamilton, and some here have decency to talk about Ferrari not ordering driver with 100pts less then WDC leader to pass freely and leave actual WDC leader, who is driving with mechanical issue, to finihs 3rd at most.

Yes, he was racing Vettel. I actually did an analysis that explains it pretty well that Bottas was well and truly racing for himself in Barcelona. At that point he was on a different strategy and potentially also driving for the win. He did not take one for the team and Hamilton

viewtopic.php?p=699298#p699298

PS: Feel free to reply there or in the Barcelona race topic if you have something to add.

Bottas himself told the press his job that day was to hold up vettel and nothing more.

[NathanOlder]

He went to Barcelona to hold up Vettel pmsl.

[ferkan]

All Im saying is Bottas drove aggressively few laps to defend against Vettel (who he wasnt even racing). He literally took one for team and Hamilton, and some here have decency to talk about Ferrari not ordering driver with 100pts less then WDC leader to pass freely and leave actual WDC leader, who is driving with mechanical issue, to finihs 3rd at most.

Yes, he was racing Vettel. I actually did an analysis that explains it pretty well that Bottas was well and truly racing for himself in Barcelona. At that point he was on a different strategy and potentially also driving for the win. He did not take one for the team and Hamilton

viewtopic.php?p=699298#p699298

PS: Feel free to reply there or in the Barcelona race topic if you have something to add.

Bottas himself told the press his job that day was to hold up vettel and nothing more.

Some of those guys are very hard to deal with...

Hun - Ferrari running 1-2 with their WDC leader (and driver with almost double the pts of his teammate) starting on pole and nursing car with mechanical issue

"Why does Ferrari not waive to Vettel to let Kimi past? Kimi is faster! He should win, he is faster! Hey guys Kimi is faster and Ferrari is not giving TOs to Vettel to let him pass. This is clear n1 driver strat from Ferrari!".

Ferrari finishes 1-2, letting Kimi would definitely cost them 1-2 and Vettel would be behind in WDC.

Spain - Bottas uses old engine (that by Mercs admission was near end of its life cycle). Vettel leads the race and is 12s ahead of Bottas. Vettel pits, passes Ric, Bottas stays on track to block him, he does so and is being as aggressive as he can be for 3 laps. Vettel passes him, Bottas engine goes in few laps.

"Great job from Bottas and team! Holding Vettel so that Hamilton can gain time on him, true team spirit. Sad about his engine blowing up but he did great for team!"

All analysis you need. And btw, Bottas racing Vettel in Spain? Yea right

[Schuttelberg]

I'm a bit confused. I don't understand why this "SWAP" didn't happen at Bahrain where Kimi was further behind than Verstappen was.

If you ask my opinion, you have to respect HAM for his sportsman spirit. It was a very very respectful thing to do. However, the Bahrain non-swap leads me to believe there is more to this than just 'fair status' between the two drivers.

My hunch is that at the time, BOT wasn't a confirmed fixture in the Mercedes-Benz plans for 2018, now he is. So it makes no sense to have a disgruntled driver. Also, his own performance has been solid and instilled faith in the team compared to that time where they were willing to put all their eggs in the HAM basket.

As for the "Ferrari should have let RAI win" arguments? It's a bloody joke. The guy has no hope in hell of winning the WDC and as confessed by him, he blew his chance on Saturday. There is always a reason why RAI hasn't won apart from RAI himself. The bitter truth is that only one Ferrari driver is capable of winning the championship while Mercedes has two with a solid balance. They're a smart team and while HAM is the resounding favourite and better pilot of the two, in motorsport anything can happen (MAL '16) and in that event, Mercedes can still win the WDC with BOT.

Just my 2 cents. But again, massive massive respect for HAM. I'm very suspicious however of Mercedes' intentions and find all this 'team ethos' talks absolute bull sh!t. Wolff's reaction after the swap is a very resounding proof to this argument.

[FW17]

WHAT THE HELL!!!????

Norris Lando does a 17.8?

0.3 slower than Alonso's Qualifying Time!

Did Honda suddenly find 0.7 Secs

[NathanOlder]

Lando is very good. Been saying it in the the testing thread when people asked who Norris was

[outsid3r]

WHAT THE HELL!!!????

Norris Lando does a 17.8?

0.3 slower than Alonso's Qualifying Time!

Did Honda suddenly find 0.7 Secs

Ultra softs compared to ALO's super softs - but still an impressive performance for a rookie. And you are in the wrong topic, there is a dedicated thread here if you like

[GPR-A duplicate2]

I'm a bit confused. I don't understand why this "SWAP" didn't happen at Bahrain where Kimi was further behind than Verstappen was.

Two aspects.

One - Bahrain allows overtaking and if Lewis had to press the issue, he could have done an overtake as Bottas was struggling for pace (he has done it so often on Nico, on tracks which allowed overtaking). Not just because he had bloated tyres due to excess pressure, but also after changing the tyres, he had no pace that Lewis had.

Two. Most likely, it was about the thought process. Valtteri was trailing Lewis by 20 points at the start of Bahrain GP, whereas both Lewis and Vettel were tied on points. It was clear that Ferrari was a championship contender and it was no more an internal Mercedes race. Bottas hadn't won a GP yet either and that was an influencing factor for Mercedes to keep Lewis as their DeFacto championship contender. Now the situation is, Bottas is not too far with 10 races having completed and tough though, but looks like a championship contender, the thought process has changed at Mercedes. It's an evolving world and what held true at the beginning of the season, isn't now, which can always happen.

[ClarkBT11]

Hamilton lost his chance to win when he didn't qualify on the front row. Vettel drove a great race considering his mechanical failure he was dealing with. Kimi's only chance to overtake Vettel was strategy, and that privilege was taken away from him due to poor performances and bad luck with engine management in past races. Ferrari has backed their horse, Mercedes need to back theirs before it's too late. I think that's what Lauda want's to do and Toto doesn't​. "Earth to Toto your not dominating anymore".

[dans79]

I remember a discussion here on the forum where a mod made a point about Ferrari couldn't make updates (reliability too) on the used turbos. So now we find out that Giantfan was right? When Binotto told that?

Edit: http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/07/28/f ... o-changes/
Giantfan was right they update the used turbo for reliability.

No he was not right, you cannot go back and update a component that has already been used. All you can do is use is as is.

I think a lot of the confusion around this topic is related to the fact that Binotto is not a native English speaker, so you have to read his quotes with that in mind.

“Certainly it is somehow a concern in the fact that we had failures on the turbo at the start of the season and we have to replace them at the very start and you introduce turbo number three, turbo number four,”

“But having said that we introduced as well on the following turbos some modifications for reliability. They are running well at the moment.”

What he is saying in my opinion is: "We had some turbo failures at the beginning of the season, so we had to introduce newer ones that had reliability updates."

In other words 1 or 2 of the earlier turbos are an inferior design that wasn't reliable, and the later turbos are an improved design that is more reliable. Thus Ferrari has at-least 2 specs of turbos in service.

Why a lot of fans (including me) believe Ferrari will take a penalty, is because they are most likely using the old spec just for practice and then the new spec for Qualifying and the race. Thus to not get a penalty, 1 or 2 turbos would have to take on a much larger proportion of the workload, and that's not realistic.

[Mandrake]

I still believe neither Merc nor Hamilton actually thought they would have to return the place to Bottas. They all thought they are gonna get Kimi or both Ferraris.

[ClarkBT11]

Lewis said he would of stayed out on the SS if he knew what was going on in the race, but he didn't due to radio complications. I don't no what pace or stint length Hamilton could of managed on the SS, he's been able to put in fast laps at the end stints in the past races. Having fresher tyres at end still would leave a big task to overtake on track. I feel he's lost some fire in his belly when it comes to overtaking. A contributing factor to that could be how any buttons and managing everything is needed compared to early years in his career. Or too used to driving away in the distance..