Grand Prix Rejects

Qualifying under way.

Will Max pull something out or will it be a straightforward Mercedes benefit event?

Further down the order, Russel seems to have the potential to outqualify Haas or Alfa Romeo. Hope to see Williams off the back of the grid.

EDIT: I think Albon's about to become a Q1 casualty.

As so often in recent years, it does feel a bit, "Oh, if only the Mercedes weren't there!"

Having Racing Point and McLaren look to be in such good shape to perhaps mix it with the Red Bulls and Ferraris is very interesting. At least Bottas got pole - if he can keep Hamilton behind him it might help close up the field a bit.

Nice to have it all back, anyway!

Well, that was a thoroughly enjoyable qualifying! Bottas makes it onto pole, despite switching his profession to lawnmower during his final run. Hamilton, so near but so far. I fully believe Bottas will fight this one to the end, and it'll be closely run.

But as high as third is a joker in the pack, Verstappen starting on the medium tyre. I expect him to be slow off the line as a result, but if the soft tyres go off quickly his gamble could pay off hugely. Seeing McLaren and Racing Point up there gives me high hopes for the coming season and Norris did a stellar effort to qualify 4th.

Also that Formula 2 race was gold (despite Zhou's dreadful luck), we've got a really exciting grid. Even if Raghunathan's no longer on it. Ilott did what he had to do while Schumacher threw a podium away. Shoutouts to Marcus Armstrong, as soon as he changed tyres he was off like a rocketship - and his defending against Shwartzmann on worn tyres was beautiful.

If you're Charles Leclerc, what's worse? Narrowly making it out of Q2 and being miles off your teammate's pace or narrowly making it out while your teammate does not? From a championship-fighting perspective, I would say the latter. And of course, that's what happened. Ferrari's engine advantage seems to be totally gone - indeed of the customer Ferrari cars only Grosjean escaped Q1, and the Frenchman was firmly bringing up the rear in Q2.

Russell was firmly mixing it with the Alfa and Haas cars in qualifying, I think we'll get to see his wheel-to-wheel racing ability - and get an idea of just how good he truly can be. Latifi was worryingly slow: I can forgive him due to being a rookie who's also race-rusty, but he'll have to improve before long to have a meaningful F1 career.

Psyclepath wrote:Well, that was a thoroughly enjoyable qualifying! Bottas makes it onto pole, despite switching his profession to lawnmower during his final run. Hamilton, so near but so far. I fully believe Bottas will fight this one to the end, and it'll be closely run.

But as high as third is a joker in the pack, Verstappen starting on the medium tyre. I expect him to be slow off the line as a result, but if the soft tyres go off quickly his gamble could pay off hugely. Seeing McLaren and Racing Point up there gives me high hopes for the coming season and Norris did a stellar effort to qualify 4th.

Also that Formula 2 race was gold (despite Zhou's dreadful luck), we've got a really exciting grid. Even if Raghunathan's no longer on it. Ilott did what he had to do while Schumacher threw a podium away. Shoutouts to Marcus Armstrong, as soon as he changed tyres he was off like a rocketship - and his defending against Shwartzmann on worn tyres was beautiful.

If you're Charles Leclerc, what's worse? Narrowly making it out of Q2 and being miles off your teammate's pace or narrowly making it out while your teammate does not? From a championship-fighting perspective, I would say the latter. And of course, that's what happened. Ferrari's engine advantage seems to be totally gone - indeed of the customer Ferrari cars only Grosjean escaped Q1, and the Frenchman was firmly bringing up the rear in Q2.

Russell was firmly mixing it with the Alfa and Haas cars in qualifying, I think we'll get to see his wheel-to-wheel racing ability - and get an idea of just how good he truly can be. Latifi was worryingly slow: I can forgive him due to being a rookie who's also race-rusty, but he'll have to improve before long to have a meaningful F1 career.

What has also been another discussion point is that, when it came to qualifying, three teams were significantly slower than last year - the three Ferrari engined cars of Haas, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo, which were 0.6s, 0.9s and 1.1s slower than they were last year in qualifying. Furthermore, Ferrari were also consistently one of the slowest cars through the speed traps and markedly slower (about 12kph) than they were in qualifying in 2019.

I was expecting Ferrari to be a bit off the pace in Austria, given the lack of upgrades and the speculation over what impact the rule changes would have, but I wasn't expecting them to have slipped that far back in the running order. They seem to have lost the strength of their straight line performance, and the car looked significantly worse in terms of handling too - both Leclerc and Vettel looked ill at ease with the car.

It also looks like we could have a very interesting battle between the McLaren's and the Racing Point cars too, and the question of whether they could possibly take the fight to Albon on raw pace will be intriguing. Verstappen is a bit of a wildcard in terms of strategy, but the handling of Red Bull's car also looks a little off - we've seen two spins in the practice sessions for Verstappen and one for Albon, and the rear end has looked a bit skittish.

On another note, it seems that Hamilton was being investigated for possibly speeding when a yellow flag was displayed for Bottas running off track, but no further action is being taken. What is a little concerning though is the reason for it - that the FIA wrongly displayed both green flags and yellow flags, with the FIA therefore accepting fault for showing misleading information to the drivers on track.

If that is the case, that is a bit worrying that their systems are not really working properly and resulting in misleading messages being sent to the track side warning systems - because that really should be a safety critical system.

What a disaster from Ferrari though! It's never good when a driver says that the car won't be good BEFORE First Practice of the first race of the season. But this was pretty shocking. Vettel in P11 on the grid.

To paraphrase a certain commentator, if you asked Vettel now whether he was thinking of retiring or not at the end of the year, he would probably tell you it's a pretty short debate

Rob Dylan wrote:What a disaster from Ferrari though! It's never good when a driver says that the car won't be good BEFORE First Practice of the first race of the season. But this was pretty shocking. Vettel in P11 on the grid.

To paraphrase a certain commentator, if you asked Vettel now whether he was thinking of retiring or not at the end of the year, he would probably tell you it's a pretty short debate

And, to add insult to injury, their 2020 car is not only significantly slower than their 2019 car - being 0.92s slower - it is also 0.46s slower than their 2018 car.

To be one of a handful of outfits whose 2020 car is significantly slower than their 2019 car is bad enough, but when a two year old car is significantly faster, well, that is only going to make the speculation around what they were doing increase sharply.

Hamilton demoted three places after Red Bull appealed.

So from what I understand, the FiA did not have the footage of Hamilton's car yesterday when making the decision. No joke. They were apparently the only people without footage.

Very dodgy stuff. Either it's complete negligence, or top-heavy bias for front-running drivers. I don't like it.

Early reject of the race nominations from me: the above nonsense, and the storm-in-a-teacup politics thing regarding the drivers and taking a knee etc, before the race. I just want to see some F1, honestly. Let's not ruin an F1 race with politics now

He'll be 2nd by lap 10, and only that many cos it's a short lap.

Too real

It'll probably be a very good race from 3rd down. Disrupting the Merc 1-2 will entirely depend on if Max can make the most of starting on medium tires.

Verstappen's car has just expired. Oh well.

EDIT: Stroll struggling and Ricciardo stuck in gear. We're a few retirements away from 1990s era reliability.

Vettel

Maybe Merc will break their gearboxes...

EDIT: Russel out. Pity, he had driven really well this weekend, imo.

SC. Now that's interesting, if Merc have to save their gearboxes, but Albon (on softs) and Perez are right on them...

EDIT II: Kimi's wheel fell off.

God Kimi is out as well. Williams could actually score some points today...

(This is like old f1 from the 90s!)

inb4 the FIA insist on code being put into the ECUs that cause 2-3 randomly selected engines to shut down per race because unreliability is exciting.

Hamilton pushes into Albon, even though Albon's basically all the way outside. Nice job there. Best driver ever and all that tho'.

Leclerc is close to pulling a podium out of this race despite being in a total shitbox. That's not F1 driving, that's witchcraft.

EDIT: Ha! 5 second penalty Lewis.

EDIT II: Albon's car dies.

EDIT III: Kvyat ded. Bloody hell.

LANDOOOOOOOOOOO! Unrejectification with a podium and a fastest lap!

East Londoner wrote:LANDOOOOOOOOOOO! Unrejectification with a podium and a fastest lap!

He pulled that one out in a big way. Class.

I'm not sure what to think about that Hamilton-Albon incident. On the one hand, it is gutting for Albon to have this happen to him again, and it would be been wonderful to see what he could have done if he'd made the move stick and been able to chase after Bottas. But on the other hand, I did feel it looked slightly harsh for Hamilton.

As was said on the Sky commentary, it almost felt quite retro at times with these reliability issues all over the place. But it all added to the mix, and it was a far better race than I'd feared it might be after qualifying yesterday.

I've never been a particular fan of McLaren down the years, but especially given everything that's been happening down at Woking recently it was nice to see the old warhorses in the thick of the battle again. So pleased for Norris too, acing that time trial he'd been set over the past few laps.

I'm pleased Mercedes didn't seem to ask Bottas to move over - but, thinking world championship-wise, would he have really wanted to anyway?

I do wonder how much Mercedes were just being over cautious about their issues, though.

But a very enjoyable race - let's hope next week is as good!

Trying to leave my anti-Hamilton bias aside:

In practical terms, it seems to be generally accepted that the leading driver can squeeze out the overtaking driver on the outside exiting a corner as long as the overtaking car hasn't got his nose in front.

Hamilton would've probably had to commit at corner entry to a line that left Albon enough room on exit, and he likely didn't think Albon had the grip to be ahead by then. Thus he committed to a slightly wider line on the presumption that he could track out to within a car width of the exit.

Maybe a little unlucky. But then again, it's more deserving of a penalty than Vettel running over the grass at Canada last year.

I really enjoyed that, mainly for the 0 points accrued by Red Bull, isn't karma marvellous...

The unreliability was the best thing, I don't suppose that will last for long but it was nice to have a race that was more like the old days of random breakages.

I forgot to say, I felt sorry for Williams that there were all those failures and they still didn't score!

FIA/FOM must be really thankful for those safety cars, it really saved what was looking to be a very dull race.

Unless that was their plan...

Pacific Edge wrote:FIA/FOM must be really thankful for those safety cars, it really saved what was looking to be a very dull race at the front.

Unless that was their plan...

Fixed that for you. Lots of action today, just had to look for it.

We should start every season in July!

I don't agree with Hamilton's penalty, but... it's understandable. I don't feel bad for Albon, though. Who I do feel bad for is Leclerc, who probably thought he had signed a long-term contract with a top team.

UncreativeUsername37 wrote:Who I do feel bad for is Leclerc, who probably thought he had signed a long-term contract with a top team.

Think about how Sainz must be feeling. Ricciardo would be grinning ear-to-ear if he wasn't already grinning ear-to-ear.

More seriously, if Ferrari were "not complying with the letter and spirit of the engine regulations" during 2019 then the effect of (i) meaning that they didn't continue to develop their engine concept along an unequiviocally legal path (providing options and an off-ramp should they be exposed) and (ii) being stuck with the least powerful engine on the grid for 2020 as a result of the development limitations is bad for three teams, six drivers and the sport a a whole. Surely this situation demands more transparency?

Is there an engine development freeze for 2021 now - will Ferrari's situation continue?

Out of pure speculation... Norris got the gap down to 4.802 seconds with fastest lap to take the podium-what if he hadn't quite managed to go so fast and ended up crossing the line 5.000 seconds behind Hamilton-what would happen then?

MyHamsterRacedAnOnyx wrote:Out of pure speculation... Norris got the gap down to 4.802 seconds with fastest lap to take the podium-what if he hadn't quite managed to go so fast and ended up crossing the line 5.000 seconds behind Hamilton-what would happen then?

Timing software goes out farther than it "reports". When I worked at the drag strip, the time slips and scoreboard only showed to four digits past the decimal point, but the computer could (allegedly) go to 10! It would merely show you as having a winning (or losing) margin of victory of .0000

MyHamsterRacedAnOnyx wrote:Out of pure speculation... Norris got the gap down to 4.802 seconds with fastest lap to take the podium-what if he hadn't quite managed to go so fast and ended up crossing the line 5.000 seconds behind Hamilton-what would happen then?

I'm curious about this one too. Anybody know what the rule is? Perhaps on countback Norris would have taken it because he had zero penalties to Hamilton's one?

Row Man Gross-Gene wrote:

MyHamsterRacedAnOnyx wrote:Out of pure speculation... Norris got the gap down to 4.802 seconds with fastest lap to take the podium-what if he hadn't quite managed to go so fast and ended up crossing the line 5.000 seconds behind Hamilton-what would happen then?

I'm curious about this one too. Anybody know what the rule is? Perhaps on countback Norris would have taken it because he had zero penalties to Hamilton's one?

If you add on the qualifying lap time, it would go to Hamilton. But you could make the argument that whoever started further back on the grid covered a slightly further distance in the same length of time. Which would also be Hamilton in this situation thanks to his grid penalty...

I know that MotoGP uses driver's fastest lap as a tie-breaker, it has happened in some lower class races.

If Norris would have been 0,198 seconds slower on his final lap he would have still had the faster lap than Hamilton. However FL would have gone to Bottas in that case.

What I don't understand is why Mercedes didn't order Hamilton in front of Bottas to open up enough of a gap to keep him in 2nd. The only thing I can think of is the optics of the first car over the line not winning the race, being seen to be manipulating the result, stuff like that, but since when have F1 teams cared about that sort of thing? I guess there's the reliability concern they had as well, but surely they had enough of a performance advantage to open up a 5 second gap on Leclerc without the gearbox falling to bits?

Ferrari and Vettel really are falling out publicly over the last week, aren't they? All sorts of articles that are popping up, and people genuinely talking like Vettel's not going to last the year.

I guess it has been a while since Räikkönen has been in the seat, they must be missing him