Almost missed this race since it had been so long between races I forgot F1 was still a thing.

Yeah, boring race. The only real interesting thing was waiting to see if Ocon and Hulk could somehow get into the pits just at the end because of a Safety car or something. That fizzled out though and all we got was the possibility of some press getting run over by Ocon on pit lane.

horrible start to the season but i have hope that the european circuits can pull it back. bring on spa etc

Glad Checo is making a fight out of it for the championship

Would be a great battle if every race were a street course.

The thing about Checo is that I actually think he can be on par during the races with Max and now he has a car that puts him in 2nd in qualifying at least without really needing to try too hard against Ferrari so makes his job easier to stay with Max at those non-street circuits.

Yeah, this is how the year started every time with Hamilton and Bottas. "Looks we might have a battle this time" and halfway the season: "Nope. The skill gap is too big".

Perez needs a street sprint race to have a real advantage. There is definitely not enough of those in a season. Max hates sprint races for several reason but one of them is that even though he is fast right at P1 most days he normally doesn't get the car fully to his liking until P3. Funny thing is that Mercedes is driving the same shitty car this year because they thought they made progress in Brazil last year while in reality it was just another badly setup RedBull that made Verstappen slower than normal.

Perez won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix where Max started P15. Max look liked the fastest man the entire weekend.
Perez won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix where Max got F-ed by the pitstop.

No way Perez has any chance of becoming WC without a lot of bad luck to Max. Especially when we get to regular tracks again

The difference between Bottas and Checo though is that Bottas is a much better performer at qualifying than he is at racing versus Lewis while the gap between Checo and Max is much smaller for their racing ability. As long as Red bull continue to have the advantage they do Checo should still be a good chance to qualify 2nd and be in the hunt against Max. Or even if he is 3rd behind Leclerc that he can go on an alternative strategy and try to win it that way. There is nothing really he can lose as the worst position he can come in the championship is 2nd

I just want to say how ludicrous that was and how lucky no one was run over. You expect that sort of thing maybe in Brazil but how they weren't on top of it that Ocon still had not completed his compulsory pit stop I don't know

This is true, but Checo was closing fast and might have passed him on track soon with DRS or in the pits.

But yah, basically the best case scenario for Checo is that he is even with Max on pace or very slightly better and worst case is that he is getting blasted by half a second every lap.

Max would need a handful of DNFs and Checo pretty much has to podium every race and avoid any bad luck. Even if that happens, Max is still probably a sizable favorite.

It's wishful thinkng, but at least Checo is in the same ballpark and we can dream instead of Max already having the championship sewn up 5 races in.

the Fastest man does not always win the world drivers championship.. its always been this way. Sometimes Steady as she goes wins.

I do not see a scenario where Red Bull realistically let Checo into a position where he is challenging Max for the title.

They can afford not to appease Checo because if he leaves for another team, he is not a championship contender. There are no other teams on the grid that could challenge for the title that are going to take Checo as a #1 driver purely because there are more talented drivers around.

If they favour Checo to Max, you can definitely see Max taking his services elsewhere and there would not be a single team who would not want him. Red Bull can't afford to risk that.

In summary, whilst Max is at Red Bull there is, in my opinion, no way that anyone other than Max wins a championship.

1987?



Yeah probably but for the spectacle of the sport they need to make it seem like he's a chance or the sport will look at new ways to put the squeeze or even greater squeeze on them given that Mercedes still hold a lot of sway.

so you're saying that Max is a whiny, entitled ****?

George seems to agree

https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/65490297

I'm all for the inter driver drama....given Red Bull are so far ahead it's fun to have some feuding behind the scenes

George is the last person on the grid that gets to call someone else entitled. All drivers blame the other driver during the race but George is the only one who even after the race and after seeing footage still insists it was his corner when it is obvious it wasn't. This is the guy who hit Bottas on his helmet after causing the crash and only admitted fault for that after Toto made him. The latest one with Max he clearly locks up and drives into Max who left enough space and then blames Max. I wish Hamilton had a better car and could challenge for wins again but Mercedes messing up right when George joined is just sweet karma.

I hope Nyck Debris is going to step the **** up, otherwise he can wave his hand goodbye at the end of the year. Helmuth Marko is very easy going with those things. Upto now, Nyck has been terrible.

Agree. He has been one of this year's disappointments.

Even worse is that in Dutch newspapers he was all arrogant about being better than Tsunoda. Would not be surprised if he doesn't make the end of the season.

I think it is a lesson not to jump and sign someone that only drove one race last year and was impressive against a mediocre team-mate to a full year's racing contract. I would have gone with Herta,

Captain Hindsight. Nyck was an F2 champ, Formula 1 WDC and did very well in Monza in an actual F1 race. So he had a pretty good CV.

SPICY

lol Leclerc lol Verstappen

Can only blame themselves

That's the Loleclerc that we were all waiting for.

Kinda crazy that with Max starting way back, if there is some first lap crash and Max gets knocked out that Perez could be the points leader.

It was so Ferrari.

How fast does Max come through the pack today?

This guy knew in last year's thread: