2021 AMG Mercedes F1 Team

[zibby43]

Been a long time since Lewis had a poor race start.

Lewis didn't have a poor start in fact it was decent. Max however had an amazing start in second gear and then benefited from a slight dry patch.

I was just taking Lewis’ words at face value, as he said he didn’t get a good start in the post-race press conference.

[erudite450]

Been a long time since Lewis had a poor race start.

Lewis didn't have a poor start in fact it was decent. Max however had an amazing start in second gear and then benefited from a slight dry patch.

Hamilton didn't cover the inside line and allowed Max in there. It was the root of all of his problems today. Overall a disappointing drive from him up until the red flag, but a decent recovery after catching a lucky break nevertheless.

He probably underestimated the space on the inside. He packed his car in the middle to cover off the two Red bulls but yeah, he should've just focused on Max.

[AMG.Tzan]

Wolff instead of thinking why Russell attempted a pass on Bottas, he should start thinking why a Mercedes ended up being challenged by a Williams while the other Mercedes was challenging for the lead!

What i'm saying is that the time has come for Mercedes to get rid of Bottas! He is a nice guy and he has performed better than Gasly, Albon, Perez when in the same car with a champion or a potential champion! But Russell is way faster and is the future of the team...so no need to wait for it any longer now! I don't see Verstapen jumping ship to Mercedes...

Russell would have been challenging Verstapen today if he was in Bottas's Mercedes...

[MKlaus]

Wolff instead of thinking why Russell attempted a pass on Bottas, he should start thinking why a Mercedes ended up being challenged by a Williams while the other Mercedes was challenging for the lead!

What i'm saying is that the time has come for Mercedes to get rid of Bottas! He is a nice guy and he has performed better than Gasly, Albon, Perez when in the same car with a champion or a potential champion! But Russell is way faster and is the future of the team...so no need to wait for it any longer now! I don't see Verstapen jumping ship to Mercedes...

Russell would have been challenging Verstapen today if he was in Bottas's Mercedes...

this is same that i think.
bottas has always been poor in wet conditions. last year hungary was the same. he had a poor qualifying and topped with another poor race. toto should focus on getting rid of bottas, than piss off his high potential prospective employee. toto needs a better global perspective than george, instead of getting lost in hamilton's mojo that is making the current year's situation look better than it is.

[mkay]

It was very impressive. Today's race also highlighted what may be one of Merc's main weakness - tyre warm-up.

I'm not sure if it's a weakness, as much as a different philosophy on how the tires should be warmed up.

It was telling, that even with dirty air and a damaged front wing, Lewis was right on Max even though the tires were heavily worn.

Warming the tires up slowly might have a positive impact on their longevity.

To be clear, I didn't mean it as an inherent weakness of the car, but in today's conditions - which are by no means representative (how often are we going to get sub-10C air temps and sub-20C track temps?) - it was definitely hampered by the slow warm-up.

And don't forget that this same warm-up issue contributed to BOT's poor qualifying yesterday as well.

Been a long time since Lewis had a poor race start.

How do we think the team is going to do in Portimao? RBR was close last year on merit, but I think we can throw out comparisons to last year with how much the cars’ handling profiles have changed for ‘21.

Portimao was a weird one, though I chalk it up to the track being unknown to most teams and Pirelli at the time.

Qualifying was tight by 2020 standards, with VER 3 tenths off pole, LEC 4 tenths off (with a monster lap) and Racing Points 6 tenths off. That said, Merc got pole on mediums (as it couldn't get the softs going) whilst everybody else used softs.

That said, Merc utterly dominated the race after the chaos of the first few laps. HAM lapped everyone bar VER, LEC and the former finished 35 seconds off.

Depending on the upgrades RB and Merc could be bringing to Portimao, I suspect it will be another close affair for pole. Portimao doesn't have the kind of fast corners where Merc is currently struggling as most of the fast corners are rather power-limited which is good news, but they absolutely need to get the softs working in Q3 this year.

[MKlaus]

It was very impressive. Today's race also highlighted what may be one of Merc's main weakness - tyre warm-up.

I'm not sure if it's a weakness, as much as a different philosophy on how the tires should be warmed up.

It was telling, that even with dirty air and a damaged front wing, Lewis was right on Max even though the tires were heavily worn.

Warming the tires up slowly might have a positive impact on their longevity.

To be clear, I didn't mean it as an inherent weakness of the car, but in today's conditions - which are by no means representative (how often are we going to get sub-10C air temps and sub-20C track temps?) - it was definitely hampered by the slow warm-up.

And don't forget that this same warm-up issue contributed to BOT's poor qualifying yesterday as well.

it didn't hinder lewis taking pole. it's more bottas not understanding how to get the best out of the car than problem being the car.

[mkay]

I'm not sure if it's a weakness, as much as a different philosophy on how the tires should be warmed up.

It was telling, that even with dirty air and a damaged front wing, Lewis was right on Max even though the tires were heavily worn.

Warming the tires up slowly might have a positive impact on their longevity.

To be clear, I didn't mean it as an inherent weakness of the car, but in today's conditions - which are by no means representative (how often are we going to get sub-10C air temps and sub-20C track temps?) - it was definitely hampered by the slow warm-up.

And don't forget that this same warm-up issue contributed to BOT's poor qualifying yesterday as well.

it didn't hinder lewis taking pole. it's more bottas not understanding how to get the best out of the car than problem being the car.

It didn't, but at the same time HAM's worst sector on his final Q3 lap was Sector 1 (only sector where he lost time against his prior lap), so it could have been damaging had VER and PER not made any mistakes on their final laps.

[zibby43]

It was very impressive. Today's race also highlighted what may be one of Merc's main weakness - tyre warm-up.

I'm not sure if it's a weakness, as much as a different philosophy on how the tires should be warmed up.

It was telling, that even with dirty air and a damaged front wing, Lewis was right on Max even though the tires were heavily worn.

Warming the tires up slowly might have a positive impact on their longevity.

To be clear, I didn't mean it as an inherent weakness of the car, but in today's conditions - which are by no means representative (how often are we going to get sub-10C air temps and sub-20C track temps?) - it was definitely hampered by the slow warm-up.

And don't forget that this same warm-up issue contributed to BOT's poor qualifying yesterday as well.

Been a long time since Lewis had a poor race start.

How do we think the team is going to do in Portimao? RBR was close last year on merit, but I think we can throw out comparisons to last year with how much the cars’ handling profiles have changed for ‘21.

Portimao was a weird one, though I chalk it up to the track being unknown to most teams and Pirelli at the time.

Qualifying was tight by 2020 standards, with VER 3 tenths off pole, LEC 4 tenths off (with a monster lap) and Racing Points 6 tenths off. That said, Merc got pole on mediums (as it couldn't get the softs going) whilst everybody else used softs.

That said, Merc utterly dominated the race after the chaos of the first few laps. HAM lapped everyone bar VER, LEC and the former finished 35 seconds off.

Depending on the upgrades RB and Merc could be bringing to Portimao, I suspect it will be another close affair for pole. Portimao doesn't have the kind of fast corners where Merc is currently struggling as most of the fast corners are rather power-limited which is good news, but they absolutely need to get the softs working in Q3 this year.

Good recap that helps match the timing sheets with how the weekend unfolded. Thanks.

While the Merc may’ve had a handling imbalance that has been sorted by better setup tools, I think they’re still struggling a bit to get the best out of the softer compounds over a single lap, and the loss of their dominant advantage last year is just exposing that struggle a bit.

The fact that Merc gets another 2 weeks to tinker with the data, finish upgrades, and continue working on the deployment issue is helpful to them.

[holeindalip]

Hopefully this is the teams one and only Boogie weekend this season. In spite of it they're still leading both championships.

Toto just told Sky he believes Merc are quicker in race trim now.

Lewis definitely looked faster on warn inters even with damage. I'm unsure how much faster he was on the mediums, as max was in heavy traffic right after the pit stop, and then Lewis had his off.

Honestly, I think if Lewis hadn't had the off they would be tied on points as I don't think Lewis would have scored fastest lap because of the drs benefit he got from Lando.

I’ll have to rewatch again but I thought ham set the fastest lap the lap after he passed lando and then cruised to the end...there’s no way he set the fastest lap in dirty air behind lando..

[e30ernest]

Prior to Lewis crashing into the barrier, he and Max were trading fastest laps. I think at the worst, the Merc was an equal to the Red Bulls in this race. Realistically, I think the Mercs had the edge in raw pace. So last race, Lewis won in the inferior car, this race, it was Max's turn.

[holeindalip]

Prior to Lewis crashing into the barrier, he and Max were trading fastest laps. I think at the worst, the Merc was an equal to the Red Bulls in this race. Realistically, I think the Mercs had the edge in raw pace. So last race, Lewis won in the inferior car, this race, it was Max's turn.

Was it though, Lewis had damage at turn 1 and it’s hard saying since Bottas was out for a Sunday drive in 9th spot all day...

[e30ernest]

Prior to Lewis crashing into the barrier, he and Max were trading fastest laps. I think at the worst, the Merc was an equal to the Red Bulls in this race. Realistically, I think the Mercs had the edge in raw pace. So last race, Lewis won in the inferior car, this race, it was Max's turn.

Was it though, Lewis had damage at turn 1 and it’s hard saying since Bottas was out for a Sunday drive in 9th spot all day...

When the inters on the Merc warmed up he was keeping pace with Max, sometimes taking fastest laps too. Towards the end of the stint Lewis had whittled down Max' 5-6 sec advantage to just a little under 2. When the mediums warmed up too Lewis was quickly catching up to Max (although backmarkers were likely a factor too).

[mkay]

Prior to Lewis crashing into the barrier, he and Max were trading fastest laps. I think at the worst, the Merc was an equal to the Red Bulls in this race. Realistically, I think the Mercs had the edge in raw pace. So last race, Lewis won in the inferior car, this race, it was Max's turn.

Was it though, Lewis had damage at turn 1 and it’s hard saying since Bottas was out for a Sunday drive in 9th spot all day...

When the inters on the Merc warmed up he was keeping pace with Max, sometimes taking fastest laps too. Towards the end of the stint Lewis had whittled down Max' 5-6 sec advantage to just a little under 2. When the mediums warmed up too Lewis was quickly catching up to Max (although backmarkers were likely a factor too).

Post-race, Horner confirmed it was mostly down to tyre wear. VER's inters were nearly gone whilst HAM's weren't. Both were negotiating traffic at the time, so traffic isn't entirely to blame for the gap going down so quickly (actually had gone down to as little as 1.2s).

[El Scorchio]

Exactly. The tyres are the difference here. The W12 seems kind- too kind(!)- on it's tyres. It's a problem in the first few laps, where it's clearly not as fast as the RB but then it reaps big rewards later in stints where time can be gained back substantially, seemingly.

[El Scorchio]

Russell is under contract to Williams this season. They have to agree to let him go, which of course they won't. They can't just pull driver swaps like RBR can do with AT whenever they feel like it.

The only realistic swap I see this season is IF Bottas is not performing well and putting WCC chances at risk, then maybe they swap in one of the reserve drivers- probably Hulk.

We also have to question what the actual 'true' pace of the Mercedes is, and how much extra above that is coming out of Hamilton. Would anyone else have got that car on pole or won Bahrain? Very doubtful. Look at how Bottas was stuck behind Stroll, whereas Hamilton scythed through the field from ninth.