2025 Belgian Grand Prix - Spa-Francorchamps, July 25 - 27

[SB15]

No way that McLaren is legal, 8 tenths faster in S2 than the next team is insane pace. Holy!

[FittingMechanics]

No way that McLaren is legal, 8 tenths faster in S2 than the next team is insane pace. Holy!

How about that Red Bull. Faster by 3-4 tenths on a McLaren in short S1 (and S3).

I guess both cars are illegal?

[SB15]

No way that McLaren is legal, 8 tenths faster in S2 than the next team is insane pace. Holy!

How about that Red Bull. Faster by 3-4 tenths on a McLaren in short S1 (and S3).

I guess both cars are illegal?

The Magic of Low downforce, They're even slower than the Mercedes in S3. Even if it is mostly high and medium speed corners in S2, 9 tenths is crazy.

[basti313]

No way that McLaren is legal, 8 tenths faster in S2 than the next team is insane pace. Holy!

How about that Red Bull. Faster by 3-4 tenths on a McLaren in short S1 (and S3).

I guess both cars are illegal?

The Magic of Low downforce, They're even slower than the Mercedes in S3. Even if it is mostly high and medium speed corners in S2, 9 tenths is crazy.

Yes. I guess it is the same like Silverstone. RedBull can not even use the possible downforce, because the car will understeer too much once they add rear downforce.
McLaren tries to get the Q sessions, which you win with some downforce in S2, and then control from the front. Additionally sensitive choice with the weather forecast.

[venkyhere]

The way McLaren and Redbull have setup their cars for this weekend !! it's exactly what would be called 'opposite poles' in engineering parlance. I don't think I have ever seen so much contrast in how the laptime is posted, by two different cars.

The McL39 is insane. 0.8s faster in S2 alone. And not the whole S2, mind you ; just two sets of 150-250kph corners (medium speed) .
Any corner/straight that is above 250kph, the RB21 trounces everyone. But since the 'duration' spent in such high speed sections is half the time as the medium speed, the gain is nearly half the McL39 has in S2, ie around 0.4s. It all works out so beautifully. Watching the onboards of both cars, the McL39 is stable like a mosquito with the direction changes through S2 & the RB21 looks bad exactly here, but makes up some deficit by being planted like a leech through Pouhon. It's insane how these ground effect cars have peaked. I expect Q times to be more than 1s faster, compared to the previous 'dry' Q here.

[Seanspeed]

Visibility is the biggest issue. If they can’t see then you end up with high speed car on car collisions like in Silverstone. Car on car collisions have proven to be extremely dangerous as with the Hubert and Correa incident in F2.

Post Jules Bianchi they can only race until cars start to spin or go off. Once you have cars off you need tractors to recover them, you can’t have heavy vehicles and marshalls inside the barriers with F1 cars circulating at race speed any more. At that point it’s going to take so long (and probably keep happening) you may as well red flag and re-start when conditions improve.

That collision in Silverstone only happened AFTER they bunched up the cars with the safety car and let conditions get down to inters time again(which also ironically means the cars are going faster again...). lol

And only like ONE car had gone off beforehand(Leclerc going across the grass). The lesson with Bianchi was to call a safety car when there's a parked car in any kind of potentially dangerous spot. That was not relevant here.

[SchuMassa]

Hamilton should receive an immediate 10 place grid penalty for his antics.

[SB15]

Man F*** these GE cars man, they're so sensitive to even the slightest wind gust... I can't wait for next year.

[cplchanb]

Hamilton should receive an immediate 10 place grid penalty for his antics.

what antics?

[LHamilton]

So we are allowed to improve times during double yellow? Because surely that was double yellows for Hamilton there, being in the firing line in the braking zone.

EDIT: First google I got;

"Lap times set by drivers who run through a double waved yellow flag sector of a track will be automatically deleted starting from this weekend’s United States Grand Prix race meeting, in a move designed to ensure that drivers don’t attempt to set meaningful lap times while double waved yellows are shown."

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... QGD8MvWots

I guess we are selective when to enforce safety.

[FittingMechanics]

Looked like they turned off the yellow for a couple of seconds. This was surely a mistake but you can't punish a driver if stewards made a mistake and turned off yellow.

[renault rs26]

Looked like they turned off the yellow for a couple of seconds. This was surely a mistake but you can't punish a driver if stewards made a mistake and turned off yellow.

Saw that but it looks like it was only on TV graphics, Bearman's onboard shows he passed yellow flag without lofting until he reached corner.

[SchuMassa]

Hamilton should receive an immediate 10 place grid penalty for his antics.

what antics?

Deliberately forcing waved yellows.

[cplchanb]

Hamilton should receive an immediate 10 place grid penalty for his antics.

what antics?

Deliberately forcing waved yellows.

thats just a dumb take. why would he screw himself just to screw over others like that.....

[SchuMassa]

what antics?

Deliberately forcing waved yellows.

thats just a dumb take. why would he screw himself just to screw over others like that.....

Of course, the spin was not intentional. Stopping on the edge of the track, hoping to ruin everyone else's lap was.