2024 Miami Grand Prix - Miami Intl. Autodrome, May 03 - 05

[venkyhere]

After looking at that floor-damage clip, my perspective has changed completely.
Notwithstanding the RB20 config leading to non-deal balance on H tyres, Max drove almost 2/3rd the laps with underfloor damage and poor tyre grip, and still maintained P2. Hats off.
So Max/RedBull fans can breath a sigh of relief -
"VER wasn't relegated to P2 purely on pace delta, the car was injured"

That doesn't mean Landos win wasn't 100% on merit. Hitting the bollard was Max's mistake.

Yes, agree.
My comment was more a friendly poke at Max fans. No doubt Redbull had setup their car sub optimally andcLaren was faster.
The SC simply eliminated Norris' qualifying woes and granted him track position. He still had to drive faster than others and did a stellar job of it.
Nevertheless, driving a damaged car fast enough to still be clear of Ferraris,was commendable by Max. Credit where credit is due.

[chrisc90]

Of more concern to me is the placing of that bollard and its risk, once free, to others when loose.

It came up and over the driver protection and should never be in place on a race track. That's incompetence in risk assessment and management from track inspection etc.

Regardless of which driver hit it, that should never happen. If it had transported further along the straight before falling off, then the risk goes much much higher.

It can pass through the cockpit protection longways, that should be of significant concern to FIA and all parties in these races.

No driver should experience that coming towards them, it should never be part of track architecture.

It's a lightweight piece of plastic. The marshall picked it up like nothing.

The driver's main concern was a free Safety Car pitstop, although that chunk of plastic isn't something you want lodged in the floor or anything similar.

Have you ever hit a bollard on track? Ive hit one of the thin curved ones and the noise it made as it hit off a 12mm plywood splitter, up my bonnet and windscreen was rather loud. Not to mention it chipped the plywood, made a scratch up the bonnet and marked the glass. I think its perfectly reasonable to share concern if that hit a driver.

Aint nobody wanted to drive into a plastic bollard at 100mph sideways or lengthways.

[venkyhere]

Another wild thought :
In light of so many safety car incidents completely turning races on their head, for example
- crashgate by Piquet jr
- Latifi in Abudhabi
etc..

What about teams employing one or two guys just to stay eyes peeled on the onboards from guys like Magnussen, Sargeant etc and forewarn their team of a stupid mistake/crash that is most likely about to happen in the next few minutes ?
Can help strategy calls, if there is room to make a sudden change.

[Sieper]

Agree, but without a SC Max would have won the race. Unfortunate but OK, next time better and Lando was the quickest. Without the qualy issue he would have won the race totally on his own merit

[Hoffman900]

Another wild thought :
In light of so many safety car incidents completely turning races on their head, for example
- crashgate by Piquet jr
- Latifi in Abudhabi
etc..

What about teams employing one or two guys just to stay eyes peeled on the onboards from guys like Magnussen, Sargeant etc and forewarn their team of a stupid mistake/crash that is most likely about to happen in the next few minutes ?
Can help strategy calls, if there is room to make a sudden change.

NASCAR and Indy Car teams / drivers are so much more responsive in this situations. Partly because their organizations are consistent on it being a FCY, as opposed to FIA “maybe it’s a standing yellow, maybe it’s a FCY, maybe it’s a red flag, maybe it’s a yellow to a red?”… good luck guessing. The other, besides just practice of being in these scenarios more, is that they don’t strategize by committee halfway across the world. There are still a lot of “in the moment” gut calls. Sometimes it works, but sometimes you’re quicker than an engineering bureaucracy.

[Sieper]

Now with lap2 DRS we get more DRS trains, closer field, more impact of any (V)SC. Usually to the detriment of the frontrunners when already pitted.

[michl420]

Fun fact. If I am correct, this was just the second time in history of F1 that we hear "god save the KING" (after Russel brasil 22)?!

[Sieper]

Really. Does UK change the lyrics depending on the current ruling monarch? You learn something every day.

[chrisc90]

Really. Does UK change the lyrics depending on the current ruling monarch? You learn something every day.

Yep.

[mzso]

Hi!
Did they tell Norris to stay out for a lap, because of the botched SC entry?
Otherwise he wouldn't have been first after the pitstop.

[101FlyingDutchman]

It seems do it’s better to have little to no deg on tyres to promote closer racing. The tyre saving formula needs to end. Let them get at it and don’t penalise drivers for trying to overtake by destroying their tyres

[TeamKoolGreen]

So it looks like Alpine is ahead of Williams now.

The Alpine drivers really showcased themselves driving nearly a whole lap side by side without contact or even awkward movements.

Gasly and Ocon are solid F1 talents

[PlatinumZealot]

I wonder if there will be revised SC protocols after this to make sure it actually picks up the race leader.

Not picking him up early didn't give the leader a huge advantage this time.
Norris was just a few turns ahead of it after he pitted, if he was more than half a lap before pitting then it would have been huge time gain for him.

[PlatinumZealot]

Agree, but without a SC Max would have won the race. Unfortunate but OK, next time better and Lando was the quickest. Without the qualy issue he would have won the race totally on his own merit

I think so as well. The RedBull was not easy to pass and the McLaren was not that good at making passes. This one was luck for sure to get him ahead of Max, then Norris did the rest to drop Max like a bad habbit.

[venkyhere]

Gasly and Ocon are solid F1 talents

Of course. Put either of them in the other Aston Martin and Alonso will have tough competition.
I would go so far as to say that Ocon has better racecraft than Gasly. And when it comes to squeezing laptime out of a dying/dead tyre, where other drivers give up, Ocon manages to eke out not too bad laps. Only Lewis and Max come to mind, of his contemporaries, who have similar dead-tyre working skill.