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Open Wheel Racing 2021, anyone there to watch?

Spartanforlife4 said:
I was a little confused on Merc's strategy today as well. They went S-M-M for Russell, and M-M-S for Hamilton, which is fine, you don't need to match your drivers, but they only left Hamilton out there three more laps on the starting tire. Seems like they could've started him on softs and maybe he would've had a couple seconds more here or there. Maybe they were expecting a safety car at some point since the commentators said there's a 2/3 chance at Hungary, but one never came.
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Seemed that they were trying to keep up with Max a little better- who had undercut him pretty badly by then. If they could have kept up during that middle stint, the end of the race would have been a lot different.
 
MichVandal said:
Seemed that they were trying to keep up with Max a little better- who had undercut him pretty badly by then. If they could have kept up during that middle stint, the end of the race would have been a lot different.
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I wonder if S-M-S might have been the play, especially with how good Hamilton is at conserving tires, but Verstappen was on another level today. Even after ruining his fresh tires with that spin out he was still pulling away from the pack until Hamilton went on softs.

I don't know where Ferrari goes after this. Leclerc has the best car on the track, this was supposed to be their year with Merc struggling, and now Merc can actually take 2nd place in the WCC at Spa and LeClerc could actually fall to fourth in the WDC.

It's really too bad Merc wasn't competitive until the last four or five races. If you take Max out of the picture, there are only 32 points between 2nd and 6th. That would be some insane parity for the championship coming out of the August break.
 
MichVandal said:
I know that, but at some point, daddy’s money is not worth it.
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The contract ends this year.

Latifi's dad kept Williams alive during the pandemic by paying bills beyond what he was paying for his son's ride. When the Williams family sold it to Dorilton, the new owners say they always honor contracts. They don't do business any other way. So, they kept Latifi through this year.

He'll be gone the minute the checkered flag waves at Abu Dhabi. Which is why you keep hearing rumors of Piastri at Williams next year.
 
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Spartanforlife4 said:
I'm no expert, but I don't think they had a strategy. It was purely knee-jerk reaction. Each driver has to use two different compounds of tires. Since Ferrari had used mediums for their first two stops, they were going to have to go to softs or hards for the last one. They got a little flustered by how early Verstappen went in for his final stop, and because it was too early to try to finish on softs, they went with hards, despite the data from other teams that they weren't going to work. Rather than try to catch up on Max late in the race on fresher tires (like Hamilton), they decided to pit as close as possible. Hards weren't working because it was too cool. The interesting thing is that Sainz performed much worse with the softs than Hamilton did.
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They made two key mistakes with Leclerc. The first one was to have his first pit stop so early, matching those with the soft tires. The advantage of the medium tire is they can go longer than the softs. So, why waste that advantage (even if there is a short term loss in the middle stint) by going just as long as those with soft tires? They gave away speed to the soft tires and gave away the stint length advantage.

The second one was as you mentioned -- they reacted to Verstappen's second pit stop. It looks like they panicked. They should have just continued running their own race, understood hards were not going to work (it wasn't just Haas which demonstrated the hard tires weren't working, I think Alpine showed that, too), run the second mediums as long as they could, and then go to softs. And if they ran the first set of mediums as long as they should have, this would have perfectly placed them with the softs on a short stint with a light fuel load down to the end.

I was a little confused on Merc's strategy today as well. They went S-M-M for Russell, and M-M-S for Hamilton, which is fine, you don't need to match your drivers, but they only left Hamilton out there three more laps on the starting tire. Seems like they could've started him on softs and maybe he would've had a couple seconds more here or there. Maybe they were expecting a safety car at some point since the commentators said there's a 2/3 chance at Hungary, but one never came.
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I think Mercedes was hedging their bets against the weather, so they split their two drivers' strategies.

Since soft tires are the best on wet conditions which don't need rain/intermediate tires, they setup Russell in case it rained early and setup Hamilton in case it rained late. If it never rained (which for all intents and purposes, it did not), Hamilton had the best strategy overall. But, I don't think they were aiming for that. It certainly appeared by the radar that it was going to rain at some point. So, Mercedes took that into consideration and set their drivers up on opposite strategies for opposite times the rain may come. When the rain didn't come early, it appears they adjusted Hamilton's strategy (though it does still seem a bit short for that first stint).
 
Caught a couple laps of NASCAR doing the Indy road course. Funny going from F1 who is being very stringent on track limits this year to NASCAR where the racing line is to actually go about five car widths outside the boundary in some spots.
 
Summer break was supposed to start quietly, but it starts with Alonso singing a multi year deal with Aston Martin. Interesting.
 
Spartanforlife4 said:
Caught a couple laps of NASCAR doing the Indy road course. Funny going from F1 who is being very stringent on track limits this year to NASCAR where the racing line is to actually go about five car widths outside the boundary in some spots.
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NASCAR will do the same at Watkins Glen both in Turn 1 and especially the Outer Loop.

You should have seen the first year Indy ran COTA. I think they went into the next town on Turn 19...
 
I don’t understand Alonso. Alpine has been better than Aston this year and I think next year will be the same.


Re: Indy, it appears Milwaukee is coming back in 2024 along with a race in Mexico.
 
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Russell Jaslow said:
Meanwhile, back to Ferrari's strategy mess. These guys really rake the Prancing Horse over the coals:

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/w...t-our-verdict/
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This was a great read, thank you.

This though:

Pitting for the first time on lap 25-28-ish and then fitting the softs for about 15 laps would have left Ferrari another 27 laps on a second set of mediums. With the lower fuel load I’m pretty sure that would have been a better solution.
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Lower compared to what? Is this a comparison of Hungaroring vs other courses? Is this just meaning later in the race hence less mass in the tank?
 
Kepler said:
This was a great read, thank you.

This though:



Lower compared to what? Is this a comparison of Hungaroring vs other courses? Is this just meaning later in the race hence less mass in the tank?
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Lower compared to the beginning of the race. That’s why lap times get shorter as the race progresses.
 
MichVandal said:
Lower compared to the beginning of the race. That’s why lap times get shorter as the race progresses.
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TIL, thank you!

So is the idea that you can put the softs on later because the lower weight means more laps before they fray?
 
Kepler said:
TIL, thank you!

So is the idea that you can put the softs on later because the lower weight means more laps before they fray?
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Exactly.
that plus the late dampness is why Hamiltons pace was so much better than George. Had it been more damp at the start, Russell may have gotten a much better lead to hold onto.
 
Silly season:

e5x8b51abcf91.jpg
 
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