Delighted for Hulkenberg, far too good a driver to not have a podium, probably also a race win. I think Sauber is reaping the benefits of staffing up ready for Audi times, along with the leadership of Binotto/Wheatley, there are a lot of mid grid or better elements to the team now.
Slamming on the breaks like that with a field that was struggling with visibility seems totally worthy of a penalty to me. If anything he's lucky that there wasn't a massive pile up otherwise the outcome could have been far worse. I get he needs to get heat in to the brakes and tyres, but it was incredibly irresponsible. Own it, learn from it and move on!
Happy to see Lando take his first home win, but I was really annoyed how Lando and Piastri basically ignored Hulk on the podium. They should have drenched him.
When I saw it through first time, my thoughts were that Max had gone past him obviously surprised/caught out, but that the rest of the pack had closed in, but also looked well under control and therefore that he couldn’t have braked that hard; so maybe that the lead two had got totally out of phase, combined with some hard, but not excessive braking from Oscar. Now some details have come out it seems there was an element of bad luck in that Oscar had accelerated as the safety car lights went out and then braked relatively hard, both to warm brakes and tyres, but also to start making a gap. As he’d become the pack leader during that period/manouvre, the obligation not to drive erratically, when controlling the pack was in force. In raw data he braked with about 2x the pressure George did in Canada, but in the wet. I’m not going to say the penalty was unfair, I can see the arguments for it. I do think there was mitigation in the circumstances, such that the stewards probably should really have been considering the range of 5s to no penalty, rather than handing out the standard. Having said that, 5s probably wouldn’t have changed the result as Oscar would probably have lost track position anyway. One to learn from but not necessarily feel bad about I guess.
He is spectacularly unlucky, but (and I say this as a big Leclerc fan), that was a very poor weekend from him. He was incredibly quick in the FPs, but then (like Lewis) didn't put it together for qualifying. The initial strategy was a gamble that didn't work (and as soon as they went around Stowe on the formation lap, I was really hoping they wouldn't pit, as it was clearly too wet), and the Ferrari is clearly a dog in the wet, but he drove really poorly for his level. Saying all that, the last person that needs telling that will be him (the most self-critical driver on the grid). In mitigation, those weekends happen. I just hope it's dry at Spa....
Leclerc has been poor this season compared to last season, feel the Ferrari is probably the 2nd best car this season just over the Red Bull and Mercedes.
Not really. On either front. He had a run of 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 3rd coming into this weekend, which is hardly poor. He's fifth in the championship, and largely outperforming his more illustrious team mate in both qualifying and races. It's not his best right now, but he hasn't been poor. Ferrari may have the second quickest car in specific dry and warm conditions, but the set up window is very small with it, and it's a dog to drive because of the raised rear to counter the plank wear issue (which should hopefully be resolved by the new suspension coming at Belgium). So I'd slightly (if not wholly) disagree with both those points. The Red Bull is better for Max (because that's who it's for), and the Merc is about equal to the Ferrari - when it's cool the Merc is better, when it's hot the Ferrari is.
Yeah, the redbull is hard to judge, it's designed to get the best out of Max, for the no. 2 it's like trying to wear someone else's tailor made clothes when you're a little bit bigger.
One other thing on that, it's all very well saying Ferrari have the second best car (v questionable), but you also have to very much factor in that they're Ferrari. Which automatically loses you about two or three positions a race.
I think it’s impossible to really rank the 2/3/4 cars, circumstances play a huge role and driver performance/capability -especially living with extreme compromises, heavily distorts the picture. The RedBull seems prone to understeer, which in it’s base setup makes it the slowest of the four and definitely doesn’t fit the “designed for Verstappen” idea. If you set it up in an extreme way to oversteer it’s potentially the 2nd fastest, but that’s only possible at certain track types and comes with the compromise of being undriveable for anyone RedBull have tried, but Max. The Merc is similar to the RedBull in that, if you can find its window it can match the McLarens, but again it needs circumstances to be right. It doesn’t have the same understeering characteristics, so isn’t inherently slow, but it struggles with tyre wear and overheating, making it weaker in the race. When Merc have tried extreme setups, the drivers have generally struggled with them, which does make you wonder if Max could get more out of the car and potentially more than he can from the RedBull. The Ferrari seems like it’s probably the second most “sorted” car, but it’s held back by the limitations they have that mean they have to protect the plank and so at most circuits so far this year they’ve actually been 3rd/4th. I do expect them to be solidly second once they get on top of their issue. For the Ferrari it’s hard to imagine Max would have made a big difference until now, they seem boxed in by having to protect the plank, rather than struggling to find more pace.
