After yesterday, neither did I. Has some technical directive come out to slow the Red Bulls as it seems more cars are able to get much closer or is it just the track?
Zhou, Hulk, Bottas making it to the top 10 and the McLaren's locking the top 10 and no RBR on pole, quite like the new format if this can continue, because that was great all the way through.
Mercedes looks like a rocket ship at this track, as Hamilton likes to say. George been up there if not for he's team messing it up. Red Bull looks poor here behind both Mercedes and McLaren.
Just Merc and Macca making some steps and not a fab last run from Max. I wonder how much they have left to extract from this Red Bull. They said a while back they were already focusing on 2024,. Is that being cokey or are they already at the limit of this incarnation?
Probably but Lewis seems to be suggesting Red Bull have lost the DRS advantage they had. We will see if Red Bulls are as good as normal in the race.
The only way that would work out would be if RBR had something that sat outside the regulations or skirting them and were told to quit or face some kind of punishment. Bur it's pretty tough to keep that kind of thing quiet without other teams kicking up some kind of stink in unison.
I think the team ( Newey ) have simply struck gold with this car and it’s taken until now for others to catch up . Nothing sinister IMHO .
I think it’s partly circuit-based - this is a track where you’re almost always turning and so the RBR straight line and DRS efficiency is more nullified here perhaps than other circuits? For example I’d imagine Max wins at Spa comfortably? Max had good long run pace Friday and so he’s the favourite today again, but no doubt about it McLaren have certainly closed the gap a good chunk and on certain circuits, so will Mercedes. Hopefully today with both Lewis and two McLarens, they can make life hard for Max. Big question is what has happened to Ferrari and Aston Martin?
Interesting comment from Lewis. If the objective was to reduce wastage, be greener, then why not look into the wet tyres which he implied are thrown away after each race, whether used or not. Do these tyres have a shelf life? While flying them around the world makes no real sense, maybe they do that anyway, transporting unused ones between european circuits would be sensible.
Just read an article where Alonso is asked why after 2 race seconds Aston Martin have fallen back. One he mentioned other teams upgrades and the other is the newer more durable tyres that apparently have been introduced which have been better for some teams than others.