Are they stretching it to try and run the softest tyre final stint?
With the benefit of hindsight - would have been the best option as Hamilton would’ve been far enough ahead when the safety car came out to pit and stay in the lead. No way to predict that though!
Leclerc will be absolutely fuming. If they bring him in for softs when the safety car was called he'd surely have won that.
Yeah, but they couldn’t bring both in as they were too close together. Someone had to lose out and, to be fair, Sainz needed to come in, LeClerc didn’t.So correct move imo.
Watched the race back as I went out during the red flag and missed it live. Thought it was an absolutely brilliant race , Sainz drove superbly and I'm not really sure what Leclerc has to complain about, that conversation with Binotto in Parc Ferme after the race looked pretty heated.
Leclerc will be absolutely fuming. If they bring him in for softs when the safety car was called he'd surely have won that.
Yeah, but they couldn’t bring both in as they were too close together. Someone had to lose out and, to be fair, Sainz needed to come in, LeClerc didn’t.So correct move imo.
Aparently 9 seconds between them so Ferrari could have brought them both in when the safety car called. Ferrari "Strategy" was awful today.
The Halo that so many felt was unnecessary has probably saved at least 3 lives now. For Zhou to get out of that basically unharmed is incredible.
I think there was a better than 50% chance that Hamilton would’ve won without the safety car, he was just starting to fly on younger hard tyres than that two Ferraris, plus Leclerc had wing damage, so possibly robbed again by the safety car.
Pleased for Sainz, seems a very likeable chap. Kept his cool throughout all the chaos, including dealing with some weird suggestions from his team.
Ferrari finding new and extraordinary ways to screw up Leclerc’s race. Nice as it is to see Sainz win, he is not winning the championship. Leclerc probably won’t either, but he has a chance. With Verstappen dropping big points, they had to maximize Leclerc’s points and sacrifice Sainz, imo. Very un Ferrari like to favour the ‘second driver’.
Great to see a three way fight at the front. Lewis has been a bit lacklustre this season. He’s had some bad luck and has been having to get over the disappointment of last season while having is fillings shaken loose by an absolute dog of a car, so it’s perhaps understandable. However, he came alive for a while today - vintage Hamilton pumping in fantastic lap times while making his tyres last better than anyone else. Shame he was napping a bit at the end and let Perez back through, although the straight line speed on the Red Bull would’ve got him eventually I think. Hopefully Mercedes can get that car good enough to win some races by the end of the season.
Another win for the new regs as well, as the ability of cars to follow, even on equally new tyres, surely contributed to the excitement at the end. A welcome bit of entertainment after a few poor races. Shame Schumi Jnr couldn’t get Verstappen at the end.
Leclerc will be absolutely fuming. If they bring him in for softs when the safety car was called he'd surely have won that.
Yeah, but they couldn’t bring both in as they were too close together. Someone had to lose out and, to be fair, Sainz needed to come in, LeClerc didn’t.So correct move imo.
Aparently 9 seconds between them so Ferrari could have brought them both in when the safety car called. Ferrari "Strategy" was awful today.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but I didn’t think he was that far ahead. Fair enough if he was.
Although, even if you’re right, the Ferrari team felt stopping both would’ve hampered their second stop and would’ve allowed Hamilton to gain a place. As Binotto explains here:
You could argue miscalculation, both because if your 9 second figure is correct, then it seems they would’ve had time to stop both, but also because they finished 1st and 4th, when they may have finished 1st and 3rd, but that then assumes Perez and his excellent restart wouldn’t have overhauled Sainz like he did Hamilton.
At the end of the day, Ferrari have been dreadful strategically for a while. In fact, Red Bull have had their strategy so on point for the last couple of years that they’ve made both Ferrari and Mercedes look like idiots. Usually, I’d be quite happy to see Ferrari bollocks their title chances up, but this year I’m a temporary Ferrari fan because my hope this season is simply “Anyone but Verstappen”.
According to this article, the gap between LeClerc and Sainz was only 3.5 seconds when the safety car was called. No way you can pit both cars in that situation.
According to this article, the gap between LeClerc and Sainz was only 3.5 seconds when the safety car was called. No way you can pit both cars in that situation.
But then why not pit the bloke who clearly has the best chance in the Championship then - I know the teams care more about the Constructors, but the way Ferrari are behaving, they're a long way from either.
According to this article, the gap between LeClerc and Sainz was only 3.5 seconds when the safety car was called. No way you can pit both cars in that situation.
But then why not pit the bloke who clearly has the best chance in the Championship then - I know the teams care more about the Constructors, but the way Ferrari are behaving, they're a long way from either.
Sainz’s tyres were older and could never have kept anyone at bay. LeClerc had a lot more life in his tyres, so if you had to pit one and leave one out, it made sense to pit Sainz. It wasn’t 100% nailed on that LeClerc wouldn’t be able to hold on. In retrospect, they could have done something else, but if the gap between them was just 3 or 4 seconds, I don’t blame them for their decision at all. They just played the odds and it didn’t quite work out for them.
Leclerc has more points than Sainz right now, but Sainz has more podiums, and whilst both seem to have mistakes in them, I think they are so evenly matched overall that Ferrari can't say which one is definitively the number 1 driver, which is harming them
Time to re establish the French GP at a venue that has one of the largest motor racing attendances of the year anywhere, is easy to get to on the motorway network and has a mix of road and circuit. Le Mans. The attendance at the 24 hours in 2019 was over a quarter of a million people. If they ran the race there in the week after the 24 hours race a lot of fans would stay for both. Magny Cours is so far in the middle of nowhere even the French cant find it, and stripey Paul Ricard has the wrong type of demographic for F1 despite being a good circuit. Spa should not be lost whilst Zandvoort is only in the calendar for the Dutch folowing. In pure racing terms, Monaco should be dropped, very few people attend other than "to be seen" and it is way to expensive for the average F1 fan.
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But Hamilton is a dirty driver!!
No way to predict that though!
Be interesting to see how things go in Austria
Four hours to get out of the campsite, not so great.
Another win for the new regs as well, as the ability of cars to follow, even on equally new tyres, surely contributed to the excitement at the end. A welcome bit of entertainment after a few poor races. Shame Schumi Jnr couldn’t get Verstappen at the end.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferrari-explains-decision-not-to-pit-leclerc-under-late-british-gp-safety-car/10332622/
You could argue miscalculation, both because if your 9 second figure is correct, then it seems they would’ve had time to stop both, but also because they finished 1st and 4th, when they may have finished 1st and 3rd, but that then assumes Perez and his excellent restart wouldn’t have overhauled Sainz like he did Hamilton.
At the end of the day, Ferrari have been dreadful strategically for a while. In fact, Red Bull have had their strategy so on point for the last couple of years that they’ve made both Ferrari and Mercedes look like idiots. Usually, I’d be quite happy to see Ferrari bollocks their title chances up, but this year I’m a temporary Ferrari fan because my hope this season is simply “Anyone but Verstappen”.
They'll be replaced by Las Vegas and South Africa
Apart from a great disco... the race @ Zandvoort was fecking awful last year.
But seriously no chance of dropping Zandvoort with Max doing what he is doing.
Gutting to lose Spa….. and Monaco is a borefest now.