Are McLaren going to go med soft with Piastri? Lewis went okay for a while and complained he'd come in too early, temps have dropped and he's well over half distance.
Superb drive from Lando and a 1-3 for McLaren to really start to put them in a strong position for the Constructors.
If Max has a bad weekend, so does Lando. If Lando wins, Max is second. The best race of Landos career but it's not enough.
Pretty much disaster for the title race. This was the one red bull were supposed to cough up 20 points to norris
Not that exciting at the front, but some reasonable action behind the front 2. Despite losing more of his lead, I don’t think the outcome could, realistically, have been any better for Max. Teams have three weeks to work on their cars again now and we can expect to see RedBull and Ferrari turn up to Austin with some bendy front wings for the final stage of the season - still all to play for.
Brief open message to the verstappen clan. Don't let the door hit you in the arsenal on the way out potty mouth. Utter spoilt brat who is old enough to know better.
please log in to view this image Thank you Daniel. I don`t think that it`s right that another team can manipulate this fastest lap bonus point for another team. Perhaps this fastestl-lap idea should be scrapped if it can be used in this way. No benefit at all to Daniel`s team to pit and put on brand new soft tyres except to claw away another point off Macca. It`s as if Red Bull really do have two cars on the grid.
I’m not a fan of the fastest lap bonus point and would happily see it go - the point generally just goes to whoever is on the fastest tyres at the end and there’s no clever strategy with it - a car with a huge lead will stop 2 laps from the end, bolt on the softs and take it barring a yellow flag - otherwise the point generally goes to the winner. As such it’s usually obvious what will happen from 10 laps out and it’s often not awarded for sporting merit, but for circumstance. In this instance I don’t like the way Andrea Stella has come out a questioned the integrity of those involved. He’s not the first though and the RedBull / RB relationship gets constantly called into question despite the fact that there’s never been any evidence of illegal technical collusion (unlike the pink Mercedes) and the cars obviously race hard on track (Tsunoda particularly, acts like he’s trying to prove a point whenever he’s racing a RedBull). You can come up with lots of reasons this might have happened, Personal interest, Daniel added a fastest lap to his stats at what looks like the end of his career and as a bonus helped his best mate out. Engine Manufacturer interest - no idea if this is allowed in F1 or not, but seems common in IndyCar. An ambitious RB strategist wants a promotion to the big team and wanted to prove they can look at the big picture. Honestly, I suspect there’s a general (real or perceived) understanding that what’s good for RedBull is good for RB and similarly with Ferrari/Haas and maybe even Merc/Williams to a lesser extent. Meaning these teams know that they have to try and do their best, but if they can help the mothership at no cost to themselves they might as well try to have some (real or perceived) credit in the bank. It’s going to be hardly ever relevant so either we don’t care due to insignificance or as you say dump this point that has little sporting merit anyway.
“Given this may have been Daniel’s last race, we wanted to give him the chance to savour it and go out with the fastest lap,” Mekies said. Officially, it`s not Daniel`s last race. He is still in the Red Bull drivers pool and could be called back at any time. It was done simply to deny Lando of that extra point and thre is nothing to say that it won`t be tried again. This was gamesmenship and so unsportsman like pure and simple. It isn't right that one company can have two teams in the race that can effectively manipulate the results like that.
Alternatively, the fastest lap (not just the point) can only be contested and awarded to a driver in the top 10 at the finish, stopping a back marker stealing the fastest lap and nulling the point. I.e. irrespective of a back marker doing the fastest lap they are not counted as a competitor for fastest lap.
This is my piont (no pun intended) exactly.That fastest lap point was of no use whatsoever to Daniel. I just hope this championship doesn`t come down to a single point.
There's rules against this isn't there? Or at least I thought. Went back to Red Bull with his tail between his legs and still cowing to them on thee eve of his execution. Quite sad really given his potential.
I couldn`t find any rules on the internet after having a quick look. I googled F1 fastest lap rules. What we know for sure is that they've never tried to do this when Max is the one with the fastest lap. If they want to award an extra point,the best way would be for qualifying on pole. This has left Daniel with a tainted memory instead of any past thoughts of the good things about him.
There's no rules from stopping someone getting that fastest lap point. didn't It get done in the past when it was tighter but within one team rather than from "outside" It's very clear red bull jnr we're told to do this and that brings up all sorts of things a senior team could tell a junior team to do to bring in a new level of cheating. The reality has been that if people didn't step in these teams would go to the wall so at that time red bull stepped up and kept that team going. That outweighs a few dodgy calls for the fia.
It`s fair enough for RBR to keep the old Minardi team afloat but they shouldn`t expect favours from them in return down the track.
There will always be suspicions whenever RB do something that benefits RBR, but I'm quite happy to accept the ' Danny's last race' excuse.
No tainted memory from me . I like to think the team did it so he would get something out of his last race ( if it is his last race ) If it was RB helping RBR , so what
Don't care if RB wanted to give Ricciardo a last race send off,we all know what this really was, Just imagine if this had happened in the last race Lando needing 8 points to pass max`s total and only gets 7. This goes to show how much RBR are now worried about Macca.
It's certainly a tool all teams have available to them. Red bull don't need rb racing to do it. They just need perez not to be crap to do it. Then it's completely legal.
