Having started from 17th on the grid, Max Verstappen made perfect use of the mixed weather and track conditions to fight through the field and win the Brazilian Grand Prix, leading Ocon and Gasly as both Alpines join the World Champion on the podium.
Which gets back the the point either way there will always be winner and losers and reasons some rules won't work between different catagories someone will always be unhappy.
This reasoning could be applied to dismiss literally any calls for any kind of rule changes ever, which isn't a reasonable position. It's basically saying that the rules as they are literally at this point in time is all that anybody should ever want, and anybody who would like to see changes should just stop watching. It's a quite extreme argument.
That reasoning is perfectly valid when people are calling for changes but not providing any real improved solutions. They're just knee-jerk reacting because this time their favoured team/driver got the short end of the stick, without putting much further thought into it. If you change the rules to make it so that you can't swap tyres under a red flag, or it doesn't count towards your mandatory stop, suddenly the other half of the field (who haven't pitted yet) will be screwed. You haven't solved anything, you're just swapping around the losers. I think the way we have it now is safer (because you can always go out on a new tyre that is right for the conditions), and fairer. Even if you lose a few positions during a red flag you still come out with new tyres fighting for positions with the cars around you, everyone is in phase and it's easy to understand for viewers. If you were forced to go back out on old tyres or it didn't count towards your mandatory stop (most races are one stops), that's pretty much race over for that guy and it becomes a nightmare for casual viewers to understand who is battling who. Keep it simple, keep it safe, it all evens out in the long run.
If you were the main beneficiary of an incident where a SC is called and pit because of it where perhaps your opponent who pitted maybe 10-15 laps earlier is stuck between do we pit and give up more track position or say out and hope we can get a big enough gap where the tyre offset come back to bite. Maintain the same position as you were both with fresh tyres and a level playing field from then on in
Well, but this is part of race management, right? Usually an early stop profits under the point of undercut and gaps with fresh tires. Staying out with the SC chance is a strategic discission.
If you were the main beneficiary of an incident where a SC is called and pit because of it where perhaps your opponent who pitted maybe 10-15 laps earlier is stuck between do we pit and give up more track position or say out and hope we can get a big enough gap where the tyre offset come back to bite. Maintain the same position as you were both with fresh tyres and a level playing field from then on in
Well, but this is part of race management, right? Usually an early stop profits under the point of undercut and gaps with fresh tires. Staying out with the SC chance is a strategic discission.
Of course.
My overall point is that they can both be considered playing at luck.If people complain about red flags and the ability to change tyres - largely but not completely because my fav driver was disadvantaged. Then IMO you have to accept sometimes the SC has the exact same effect.
If you were the main beneficiary of an incident where a SC is called and pit because of it where perhaps your opponent who pitted maybe 10-15 laps earlier is stuck between do we pit and give up more track position or say out and hope we can get a big enough gap where the tyre offset come back to bite. Maintain the same position as you were both with fresh tyres and a level playing field from then on in
Well, but this is part of race management, right? Usually an early stop profits under the point of undercut and gaps with fresh tires. Staying out with the SC chance is a strategic discission.
Of course.
My overall point is that they can both be considered playing at luck.If people complain about red flags and the ability to change tyres - largely but not completely because my fav driver was disadvantaged. Then IMO you have to accept sometimes the SC has the exact same effect.
Yes, it is the same. You can gamble on SC chance, the same as you can gamble on a red flag as we have seen it in Saudi.
I do not think the words "disadvantaged" or "luck" that are now used are really correct as it is strategic discissions.
So I do not think Lando or McLaren can complain about "luck". They can complain about the way they were driven into their strategic discission and the strategic discissions of others. But everything including the red flag chance was on the table.
there is so much postmortem about 'red flag tyre change' rules, how it is unfair etc etc...
I wonder how many of us listened to the different team radios around the time when the 'dangerous weather VSC' was called - if not yet seen, it's available somewhere in the middle of 'Jolyon Palmer's analysis' in F1tv where almost all team radios are played. That itself is a resounding summary of what attitude each driver had, about driving in those conditions. Visibility was almost nil, and race control tried their best, with an actual safety car, to avoid red flag, even though it was 'undriveable' (not because of the water alone, mostly because of the spray which is tremendous in this ground effect era) and was easy 'red-flag-the-race' conditions.
The super-late, yet perfectly timed red flag in quali, the refusal to red flag the race, the refusal to 'decide then and there' and wait for end of race, to NOT hand out time penalty for a clear breach of start procedure, all were aimed to 'make the championship interesting' (there is no 'special love' towards Norris or 'special hate' for Verstappen, the aim is to manipulate as much as possible, to 'make the championship fight' go down to the wire). Unfortunately, Colapinto crashed and forced the hand of race control, to actually call a red flag. That gave an advantage to Verstappen, and despite their best efforts, almost killed the WDC fight.
This is what happened. And we are going in circles discussing the same thing again and again.
Well, but this is part of race management, right? Usually an early stop profits under the point of undercut and gaps with fresh tires. Staying out with the SC chance is a strategic discission.
Of course.
My overall point is that they can both be considered playing at luck.If people complain about red flags and the ability to change tyres - largely but not completely because my fav driver was disadvantaged. Then IMO you have to accept sometimes the SC has the exact same effect.
Yes, it is the same. You can gamble on SC chance, the same as you can gamble on a red flag as we have seen it in Saudi.
I do not think the words "disadvantaged" or "luck" that are now used are really correct as it is strategic discissions.
So I do not think Lando or McLaren can complain about "luck". They can complain about the way they were driven into their strategic discission and the strategic discissions of others. But everything including the red flag chance was on the table.
And this was really the point I was making.
I don't think you can say waiting for a red flag was luck and dismiss waiting for a safety car as tactical. They both have the same overall effect. Using a SC/Red Flag that can change the outcome of a race. Considering I think waiting for a SC is a tactic pretty routinely used and accepted then I tend to see red flags as the same thing.
The super-late, yet perfectly timed red flag in quali, the refusal to red flag the race, the refusal to 'decide then and there' and wait for end of race, to NOT hand out time penalty for a clear breach of start procedure, all were aimed to 'make the championship interesting' (there is no 'special love' towards Norris or 'special hate' for Verstappen, the aim is to manipulate as much as possible, to 'make the championship fight' go down to the wire). Unfortunately, Colapinto crashed and forced the hand of race control, to actually call a red flag. That gave an advantage to Verstappen, and despite their best efforts, almost killed the WDC fight.
This is what happened. And we are going in circles discussing the same thing again and again.
Kudos!!! Perfectly worded! It‘s not about fair stewarding but about commercial value.
