2021 Bahrain Grand Prix - Sakhir, March 26 - 28

[dans79]

Why isn't Russell in the second Mercedes?

He has time. Bottas ran a great race IMO. The bad pitstop really hurt him.

Yep, that Pitstop ensured he was never going to finish higher than third. Bringing him in to take the fastest lap and ensure one more point was a nice strategic move!

[DChemTech]

Abusing track limits on your own to gain 100ths and going completely off track to gain position are completely different.

I suspect RBR thought that if they maintained position then the positions could be reversed after the race (highly likely). I suspect they also thought Max would take the position back on the next lap and everything would be fine...

A gain is a gain. Doesnt matter how big it is. In soccer, if you make the ball cross the sideline, its a throw. Doesnt matter how close the nearest opponent is, where it happens, etcetera. That just makes a lot more sense to me. A track limit is a track limit, regardless of what your doing. The limits for overtaking should be the same as the limits for driving, period.

[Mogster]

Abusing track limits on your own to gain 100ths and going completely off track to gain position are completely different.

I suspect RBR thought that if they maintained position then the positions could be reversed after the race (highly likely). I suspect they also thought Max would take the position back on the next lap and everything would be fine...

A gain is a gain. Doesnt matter how big it is. In soccer, if you make the ball cross the sideline, its a throw. Doesnt matter how close the nearest opponent is, where it happens, etcetera. That just makes a lot more sense to me. A track limit is a track limit, regardless of what your doing. The limits for overtaking should be the same as the limits for driving, period.

That’s not practical though is it?

Ham’s repeated abuse of track limits was called out and it stopped. You can’t punish every driver for exceeding track limits around the whole track for the whole event, it’s impractical and would turn the whole race into a penalty totting exercise.

You can’t allow overtaking outside track limits, everyone understands this... even Max. It wasn’t even a borderline case.

[zibby43]

Christian Horner when asked if Red Bull ultimately lost the race with its strategy decisions:

“No, definitely not. Mercedes had very strong pace at the beginning of the race. We couldn’t create a gap to cover them, their degradation looked impressive."

- The Race

That most likely means in 2 weeks time, Red Bull will have to trade off someone one lap pace for better tire degradation, thus narrowing the gap.

You were onto something re: your comments that Merc were really selling out, so to speak, on setting the cars up to be kind to the tires. Good stuff.

Also, with respect to what you said above, by that same token, Merc had very good deg at one of their worst circuits. Accordingly, they now know they have pace to play with. But I’d always rather have that deg advantage on a Sunday.

[PlatinumZealot]

Huh, just heared Buxton and Fittipaldi (on post race F1 youtube) argue that Verstappen 'was already past HAM' when he went over the line (and they just had the other guy, what's his name who does the 'tech/analysis' bit explain why taking a wider line as Max did meant he'd end up outside of those kerbs (or have to subsequently go off throttle, and let HAM go out of the corner). But, after all of it, they had a few minutes earlier explain Norris why he let Leclerc past again, then took him next lap (if you had an - arguable - advantage at that turn, be the smart one to give the place back while you are strong).

What do you think? I dunno, but the reasoning seemed a bit off; didn't we have that already, it didn't really look like HAM was 'crowding' VER to me, but I am not a racer.

Anyway great race to watch, hope there's a lot more of this calibre this season!

That's filed under *Lasting advantage*
If a wall or grass were there he could not have done that. He was able to punch the throttle aim into the space and maintain the lead.

Hamilton knew this already. Its called "hanging them out to dry." it's supposed to be a slower line out there not a faster one.

[NathanOlder]

No it's not. One was done before the warning and without any other cars nearby. The other one was done after the warning and in an overtaking maneuver. If you can't put these things into context then I don't know what to say.

Yeah yeah. Admit to the crime, do the time. Besides, if you look at Max's pass he was clearly ahead of Hamilton before leaving the track. Red Bull could have argued that Hamilton didn't leave him any room. In any case, Hamilton fans got their egos lifted, Red Bull Honda fans had a pole-to-win robbed. I'm sure it will fuel Max's determination, and not make him lose confidence like some people here are saying.

Red Bull couldn't have argued that Hamilton didn't leave him any room since they were side by side going into turn 4. Max decides to run wider and thus carry more speed which leads him also having a snap of oversteer which puts him at the wrong side of the kerb. Max was ahead of Hamilton when he made the pass, but couldn't stay on track to finailze the move. You can't use the argument of "being infront" if the driver then needs to go off track to finalize the move. Hamilton fans probably got their egos lifted, but did RB fans get robbed? No. Not really.

RedBull can't argue about not leaving space, not after what Max did to Charles in Austria a few years back.

[Just_a_fan]

Abusing track limits on your own to gain 100ths and going completely off track to gain position are completely different.

I suspect RBR thought that if they maintained position then the positions could be reversed after the race (highly likely). I suspect they also thought Max would take the position back on the next lap and everything would be fine...

A gain is a gain. Doesnt matter how big it is. In soccer, if you make the ball cross the sideline, its a throw. Doesnt matter how close the nearest opponent is, where it happens, etcetera. That just makes a lot more sense to me. A track limit is a track limit, regardless of what your doing. The limits for overtaking should be the same as the limits for driving, period.

What happens in soccer is irrelevant.

Track limits should be track limits. I don't think anyone disagrees. But the race director told the drivers in the briefing that T4 was ok to drive over the edge of the track except for when overtaking. Overtaking off track is never allowed. The race director actually changed the rule mid race thanks to RedBull making a cheeky radio call about it and telling Max to drive off track there. So it's a bit of karma against Horner for making that call as it brought attention to the issue.

Ideally, the cars should remain between the lines at all times, when driving alone or when overtaking. But one of those is much easier to police than the other.

Perhaps tracks should just be lined with barriers. There would be no argument then.

[ringo]

Yep too early to say Max wont be champion.
He has the best car that seems to be half a second a lap quicker than a mercedes and he has a great team behind him with the best pitstops and strategy.
The only thing stopping Max from being champion now is his head.
Once he is on pole and doesnt let Lewis cone withing 8 seconds after 15 laps each race he is a champion. It's those moments with undercuts and strategy overlaps where Lewis can deffend for the win where max will get into trouble.
And then there is rain.. if it rains a lot this year Hamilton will win all of those races.

Personally, I think as Mercedes gets more on top of their cars set up, the gap will become much smaller, maybe even reverse.

it's obvious at least in the hands of Lewis he's figured out how to extract every ounce of life from the hard compound.

This is the best start to a season for Redbull in a long time. Their car will only get faster as they understand the tyres more. It is more likely for redbull to increase the gap to the field based on their usual development rate.

[NathanOlder]

Yep too early to say Max wont be champion.
He has the best car that seems to be half a second a lap quicker than a mercedes and he has a great team behind him with the best pitstops and strategy.
The only thing stopping Max from being champion now is his head.
Once he is on pole and doesnt let Lewis cone withing 8 seconds after 15 laps each race he is a champion. It's those moments with undercuts and strategy overlaps where Lewis can deffend for the win where max will get into trouble.
And then there is rain.. if it rains a lot this year Hamilton will win all of those races.

Personally, I think as Mercedes gets more on top of their cars set up, the gap will become much smaller, maybe even reverse.

it's obvious at least in the hands of Lewis he's figured out how to extract every ounce of life from the hard compound.

This is the best start to a season for Redbull in a long time. Their car will only get faster as they understand the tyres more. It is more likely for redbull to increase the gap to the field based on their usual development rate.

I think they only seem to improve more than others because they usually start slowly. This time they seem to be on top of it from the start. Where as Mercedes have had a bad start and seem to be further from extracting maximum from their car.

Neither team will update much on the car as focus will fully be on 2022, but both teams can work hard on understanding their current car. And you have to say RedBull have a better understanding right now than Mercedes do, so for me, Mercedes have more to gain with their current car.

[Just_a_fan]

A quick shout out to Max for his safety car restart. Well carried out to minimise the risk from the tow on the long straight. Presumably the team will have discussed it and had that plan in place, but still needed to be put in to action. Bravo, Max.

[zibby43]

Abusing track limits on your own to gain 100ths and going completely off track to gain position are completely different.

I suspect RBR thought that if they maintained position then the positions could be reversed after the race (highly likely). I suspect they also thought Max would take the position back on the next lap and everything would be fine...

A gain is a gain. Doesnt matter how big it is. In soccer, if you make the ball cross the sideline, its a throw. Doesnt matter how close the nearest opponent is, where it happens, etcetera. That just makes a lot more sense to me. A track limit is a track limit, regardless of what your doing. The limits for overtaking should be the same as the limits for driving, period.

What happens in soccer is irrelevant.

Track limits should be track limits. I don't think anyone disagrees. But the race director told the drivers in the briefing that T4 was ok to drive over the edge of the track except for when overtaking. Overtaking off track is never allowed. The race director actually changed the rule mid race thanks to RedBull making a cheeky radio call about it and telling Max to drive off track there. So it's a bit of karma against Horner for making that call as it brought attention to the issue.

This is correct. Version 2 of the Race Director’s notes specifically states that T4 was not going to be monitored during the race.

After the radio call, it did start to get monitored (which is crazy), and both teams complied henceforth.

But the overtake had nothing to do with T4’s monitoring status. Completely separate issue. That pass would’ve been disallowed at every corner.

Credit to Max for going for it at least, and being a good sport about it afterward when it was correctly decided.

[zibby43]

Yep too early to say Max wont be champion.
He has the best car that seems to be half a second a lap quicker than a mercedes and he has a great team behind him with the best pitstops and strategy.
The only thing stopping Max from being champion now is his head.
Once he is on pole and doesnt let Lewis cone withing 8 seconds after 15 laps each race he is a champion. It's those moments with undercuts and strategy overlaps where Lewis can deffend for the win where max will get into trouble.
And then there is rain.. if it rains a lot this year Hamilton will win all of those races.

Personally, I think as Mercedes gets more on top of their cars set up, the gap will become much smaller, maybe even reverse.

it's obvious at least in the hands of Lewis he's figured out how to extract every ounce of life from the hard compound.

This is the best start to a season for Redbull in a long time. Their car will only get faster as they understand the tyres more. It is more likely for redbull to increase the gap to the field based on their usual development rate.

Mercedes’ early season development rate has always been outstanding as well. And their performance in the past has allowed them to make the conscious choice to switch focus to the next year’s car earlier than their rivals.

Whereas Red Bull always choose to develop to the end of the season.

Both teams will have tough decisions this year though, as these cars are development dead ends.

[LM10]

What a race. Hamilton deserved that, no doubt. Sublime drive.

RBR was the better car, Max did a good job as well, but I think that it would have been better to not overtake where he did, but wait a bit and get him on the long straight right after.

As for the T4 limits discussion, I think that Hamilton and Bottas both knew pretty well that they were not allowed to do that, but they did anyway because they knew the only consequence would be a warning which eventually came in the middle of the race. Max started doing the same after his engineer told him that Mercedes were doing it as well.
I’m pretty sure that such points are being talked about in the pre-race briefing. On top of that the limitation was there in qualifying already. There is no chance Mercedes didn’t know it.

See the post immediately above yours.

Well, if so, then Mercedes just paid more attention than others.

[El Scorchio]

Well, Mercedes have been pulling 6-7 tenths the last 2-3 years. So 3-4 tenths is indeed close. RedBull is better, but not as dominant as the Mercedes have been the past few years.

Edit: Also, if Mercedes can win the race with car issues, then it won't even be 'close' when they sort out the car issues.

No. It’s not ‘dominant’ or at least it wasn’t this weekend but it was still clearly faster on pure pace in like for like situations.

Don’t forget Verstappen had damage in qualifying that was claimed to cost at least a tenth and that diff problem today which still saw him pulling a two second gap in the opening laps before the alternative strategies kicked in.

Like it has been said a few times in this thread, Mercedes were always looking a bit better race-pace wise than qualifying pace. This has also been said that Mercedes were looking better on harder compounds than softer compounds. The cars are close, but RedBull is just ahead. That is my only point.

Probably going to have to agree to disagree on this as to what our different interpretations on ‘just ahead’ are. When it’s a 0.4 second qualifying gap the other way it’s usually talked about as a gulf in performance difference.

[El Scorchio]

Well, Mercedes have been pulling 6-7 tenths the last 2-3 years. So 3-4 tenths is indeed close. RedBull is better, but not as dominant as the Mercedes have been the past few years.

Edit: Also, if Mercedes can win the race with car issues, then it won't even be 'close' when they sort out the car issues.

No. It’s not ‘dominant’ or at least it wasn’t this weekend but it was still clearly faster on pure pace in like for like situations.

Don’t forget Verstappen had damage in qualifying that was claimed to cost at least a tenth and that diff problem today which still saw him pulling a two second gap in the opening laps before the alternative strategies kicked in.

I think if you want to go that route, you'd also have to admit to crediting all the times that Hamilton (and Bottas, though not always when winning) 'turned out' afterwards to really have had the thoughest job keeping the car/tyres/engine in one piece during the race. From what we saw/heard during the race, sure it might have not been quite a 100%, and I am sure it is harder than it sometimes looks from the outside, but not more than that sort of stuff seems for all of them at times (unless we get more solid facts about that).

Yeah that’s absolutely fine. If you’re going to call a spade a spade you have to do it both ways. Mercedes has enjoyed a performance difference in the past and now Red Bill is. But you’ve got people on this thread saying ‘equal cars’ today which is clearly not the case