2021 São Paulo Grand Prix - Interlagos, Nov 12-14

[Wouter]

“Supposedly illegal”. Ok.

DNF for Max talk, and don’t get me wrong. Ok.suppose I won’t then. But you are the tenth guy in this thread talking about it. Useless.

Siep, even racism was thrown in last night .. thou shallt not bother, it's just the darkside of a tsunami of irrelevant public opinions these days. There is no more dialogue, just monologues by people that often even can't spell their surname correctly.

. Well said @langedweil!

[AeroDynamic]

So yesterday we had air temp of 17'C, today I am reading it will be 23'C. So not too different, I thought it was looking like it could be nearly double the temp from yesterday, around 30'c

I guess the track temp has potential to be much higher with it being earlier in the day.

If True, hopefully the conditions don't cause a huge disparity in performance between the RB and the MCS, I'm getting a little bored of watching the cars take turns in being the 'better car' by a significant margin in conditions. I'd like to see them equally competitive again at a circuit; it feels like it's been awhile. USA looked close but track position was too important and it only looked close because Lewis won the lead.

[AeroDynamic]

Max's honesty in his interview with Brundle is something I really respect.

[NathanOlder]

Nice piece on Sky there with Glock and Massa, apparently they haven't spoke to each other since that race in Brazil. last week Massa said Hello to Glock and here on sky they went through the whole deal in Brazil 13 yrs ago.

[jurinius]

Small things will make difference. Mercedes drivers are looking less nervous than the RedBull ones. Just noticed how stressed was Max watching a Ferrari going wheel to wheel alongside him. Now it is Champion's League, they better keep their head up and look at all opportunities.

[Marty_Y]

[Marty_Y]

[Mogster]

One thing I did notice yesterday was how high Hamilton's engine was revving behind cars that had DRS.

Not sure I've ever heard one so high in the hybrid era and if it's the same today I do wonder if that will damage the engine.

The rev limit has been 15k since 2014 I think. They use lower revs usually because of the fuel flow limit and efficiency.

[JPower]

Curious to see who benefits most from the temp change. It'll be much warmer on track today than yesterday. Could lead to setup and tire deg variability.

[TimW]

I must admit Toto is a poor loser the way he is whining about the penalty. They started the nitpicking on technical regulations themselves, and that can always backfire.

I also don't understand why people keep being sour about it here. IMHO the FIA did not have any other option than DSQ. They disqualified Vettel for a similar situation. Letting this go would be opening a can of worms.

And as I see it Lewis is still very much in contention for the win.

[politburo]

Yes they are putting the engine through more revs. This is good for ERS charging.

What I agree with is that today is a new day and the track will come to Redbull. They dont magically forget how to setup their cars for their dominant tracks as we saw in Mexico.
So a DNF is Hamilton's only hope. Max will pass Bottas in the pits. And I am not wishing bad luck on max, I know his fans are ready to pounce, but I am being realistic.
Hamilton can also suffer a first corner accident and that's the end of his championship run.

What interest me the most is how will Bottas drive. Will he let Max waltz right past him, and if Hamilton is in P-2 and he is in P-1, will he step aside and give Lewis the win?

Dude, stop trying to pit RedBull like they are so fast here they have been slower all weekend than Hamilton, and you cannot change setup since The Qualifying session, its what they have. All that is not going to change the fact Ham has been faster, Hamilton is looking like LeBron did in the 2012 NBA EastConf finals, he is in a winning sate of mind, sometimes there is nothing you can do when greatness wants to show exactly why they are great, he's not 7 time world champ just because of Merc alone.

Hamilton might win this race, ofcourse a bit of luck is needed on the first lap. But I'm just going to watch and admire the greatness. Like yesterday, 20th to 5th in 23 laps?. What more over 72 from 10th?.

[DChemTech]

I’m pretty sure the ‘legal’ illegally gaining RB wing helped RB gain a lot more advantage over the season in terms of pts than 0.2mm advantage MCS had in qualifying on Friday

Why do you put legal between punctuation marks? It was legal until the FIA changed the rules.
The situation was similar to when you would go driving after drinking one beer, legally, then get held up by the police, and get fined because the government decided to suddenly change the drinking limit to half a beer in the time between you leaving the pub and being held up.

You're twisting things. The FIA never changed 'the rules' they changed the tests that were in place to protect the sport and its competitors from any teams breaking the rules.

The wing passed the tests that were designed to prevent wings doing what the RB wing was doing, but it succesfully circumvented those tests so it could be declared 'legal' but, in practice, it didn't abide by the rules at all. So they changed the tests not rewrote the rules.

This is exactly what Ferrari did with its engine; it circumvented the FIA montiors/tests that were in place to prevent the engine behaving the way it was, so that they could make the engine do things the rules said you could not do. Do you feel the FIA changed the 'rules' Ferrari were following?

It's not like they said "hey your wings may bend this much" and changed how much it may bend. They were never supposed to bend that much in the first place.

No, you are wrong. The rules said "wings may not bend", but thats physically impossible because everything bends under load. So you need some quantitative statement about what degree of bending is maximally allowed, and that statement was in the static load tests, that RB did meet until the FIA decided to change the limits. And because those limits were the only quantitative statements, a limit change does amount to a rulechange. Now the rules were bad, they should have included a maximum degree of bending under any load or so, but they didn't. And hence, RB did not break the rules, until the FIA decided to change them midseason, which is very bad practice IMO.

Now, some have argued that RB had a wing that was designed to flex more substantially above the test loads. That could be, but all accusations that have never been confirmed. And even then, a rule on maximum on-track deflection or so would have clearly prohibited such behavior instead of having to introduce mid season rule changes. And if the wing was really not legal, RB shouls have been disqualified instead of all this shady stuff.

But hey, theres a whole topic on this, lets discuss it there if you want.

[Mogster]

I must admit Toto is a poor loser the way he is whining about the penalty. They started the nitpicking on technical regulations themselves, and that can always backfire.

I also don't understand why people keep being sour about it here. IMHO the FIA did not have any other option than DSQ. They disqualified Vettel for a similar situation. Letting this go would be opening a can of worms.

And as I see it Lewis is still very much in contention for the win.

He’s questioning why RBR are being allowed repeatedly, and without penalty, to break parc-ferme to tinker with their rear wing for “safety” reasons.

[Starkblood80]

I must admit Toto is a poor loser the way he is whining about the penalty. They started the nitpicking on technical regulations themselves, and that can always backfire.

I also don't understand why people keep being sour about it here. IMHO the FIA did not have any other option than DSQ. They disqualified Vettel for a similar situation. Letting this go would be opening a can of worms.

And as I see it Lewis is still very much in contention for the win.

From what I’ve seen, the majority of Mercedes fans have accepted Hamilton’s DSQ at the same time I can see why Toto is annoyed.
On a slightly different note, I think this stewards decision could lead to more DSQ’s if say a car is damaged during a race let’s say by going over a kerb which then technically renders a component not legal.

[the poster below]

Why do you put legal between punctuation marks? It was legal until the FIA changed the rules.
The situation was similar to when you would go driving after drinking one beer, legally, then get held up by the police, and get fined because the government decided to suddenly change the drinking limit to half a beer in the time between you leaving the pub and being held up.

You're twisting things. The FIA never changed 'the rules' they changed the tests that were in place to protect the sport and its competitors from any teams breaking the rules.

The wing passed the tests that were designed to prevent wings doing what the RB wing was doing, but it succesfully circumvented those tests so it could be declared 'legal' but, in practice, it didn't abide by the rules at all. So they changed the tests not rewrote the rules.

This is exactly what Ferrari did with its engine; it circumvented the FIA montiors/tests that were in place to prevent the engine behaving the way it was, so that they could make the engine do things the rules said you could not do. Do you feel the FIA changed the 'rules' Ferrari were following?

It's not like they said "hey your wings may bend this much" and changed how much it may bend. They were never supposed to bend that much in the first place.

No, you are wrong. The rules said "wings may not bend", but thats physically impossible because everything bends under load. So you need some quantitative statement about what degree of bending is maximally allowed, and that statement was in the static load tests, that RB did meet until the FIA decided to change the limits. And because those limits were the only quantitative statements, a limit change does amount to a rulechange. Now the rules were bad, they should have included a maximum degree of bending under any load or so, but they didn't. And hence, RB did not break the rules, until the FIA decided to change them midseason, which is very bad practice IMO.

Now, some have argued that RB had a wing that was designed to flex more substantially above the test loads. That could be, but all accusations that have never been confirmed. And even then, a rule on maximum on-track deflection or so would have clearly prohibited such behavior instead of having to introduce mid season rule changes. And if the wing was really not legal, RB shouls have been disqualified instead of all this shady stuff.

But hey, theres a whole topic on this, lets discuss it there if you want.

Specifying a degree of bending that is substantially proportional to load (or doesn't substantially deviate from a linear deformation relationship) might have made it harder to play with material structure for high speed bendiness, but easier to leave the language vague to catch teams as they attempt the workarounds.