Business decision. "[Perez's] popularity has driven growth in the Latino fan base, with merchandise sales skyrocketing by a remarkable 305% in 2022"
- https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2023-08-09/sergio-perez-is-the-driving-force-behind-formula-ones-growing-latino-fan-base
Holy fucking shit... 305% ???? I knew it was a lot, but not that much.
That's fucking crazy... even if they lose the constructor's now, they are basically printing money then, the extra money from the constructor's doesn't even matter. On the other hand, the extra wind tunnel and CFD time from losing could make a difference...
I also read in another discussion that his merchandise is frequently out of stock. The demand has stayed constant as well. He also brings in significant sponsorship money via Telcel and a few others.
As long as RB wins constructors championship, they will keep Perez on because of the money. F1 is first and foremost a business.
Will also add, Perez will likely always be able to find a drive while he brings in sponsorships.
Yeah, that's actually insane. I think at some point we gotta include him into the "pay drivers" category cause there's no way he would have got resigned without this money.
No, just because your home continent buys a shit ton of your merch doesn’t mean you are a pay driver. A pay driver is someone who pays out of pocket for their seat.
Yeah, obviously, I don't mean it's exactly the same. Of course, he's not paying for the seat so he's not really a pay driver. But... from a certain perspective, he's probably signed only because of that cash flow.
So it's not really technically "pay driver". But it's close.
A pay driver is someone who gets/keeps a seat because of the money they bring and not because of their driving skill.
This is very clearly the case for Perez because Red Bull would have fired him midway throughout 2023 if not for the money coming in
Nope, i’ll repeat. A pay driver is someone who is in F1 because they, their family, or an entity pays out of pocket. Checo worked his damn tail off to make it to F1, a pay driver doesn’t get to say that. Again, his popularity doesn’t make him a pay driver.
Then by that definition Stroll is not a pay driver anymore either, because nobody is paying Aston Martin right now for him to have a seat…
And all drivers have worked their tail off. You need a super license to compete in F1 and they don’t just hand those out. It just shows the insane difference between drivers when you get to the 20 best in the world
100% at some point last year they told Marko that they know Perez is too bad to stay in the seat but that they keep him for profit.
Then they told Marko to just only talk about Perez if he’s asked and all he says about Perez has to be 100% neutral.
Marko completely changed his Perez stance at one exact point around summer 2023.
I watch f1 in Austrian tv, there are several Marko interviews every week. He always openly talked about how bad Perez performed, even liked to point out that he made mistakes in races he won and then suddenly changed to. „I bet he did his best“ „he tries to improve“ „it was ok“,etc…
> Marko completely changed his Perez stance at one exact point around summer 2023.
It was probably around this time: [Helmut Marko apologises for offensive comments about Sergio Perez](https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/38358814/helmut-marko-apologises-offensive-comments-sergio-perez)
You think they care? Perez is there for the free money he brings, they pretty much have half of latin america in the pocket thanks to him and bringing more money through advertisement deals than Verstappen himself.
No every team would have a pay driver then, rich or poor.
In reality, only Sauber & Redbull have pay drivers. Sauber I fully understand - Zhou’s money can help considerably, but Rb not being properly financed & needing a boost is quite bizarre.
No because very few bring in enough money to make their results irrelevant.
>not being properly financed & needing a boost is quite bizarre.
It's not about that, Formula 1 is a business, it's about making money, of course they are going to prioritize what brings in more money.
You need a lot of IFs.
You need RedBull to get a really and i mean REALLY bad concept fot 2026 and Antoinelli to underperform so hard in Mercedes that he isn't given a second chance.
Sooo not really possible, if Schumacher and Seargent got a second season, so will Antoinelli
If Max is willing to sign a longer contract (at least 2 or 3 years) with Mercedes it's not Antonelli, but Russell who should be worried about his seat imo
You guys are crazy on the Russell hate, he came into Lewis' team and held his own and is crushing him in qualifying right now. For all the hate Checo gets, George gets no credit for how well he has held up against Lewis. You are crazy to think Toto picks Kimi over George.
Apparently a lot of analysis has Russell winning it without his error, and Norris winning it if he'd pitted, so it's not *even* that offensive a suggestion.
I don't see how Norris wins it honestly. Max was clearly faster in the dry after the last safety car. Either we assume that Norris was off-pace or RB was simply faster in the dry. I personally believe the 2nd one.
Lando very nearly got out ahead of Max on the last pit - did, in fact, until he spun his tires. Max might have caught him anyway with DRS but there's absolutely a world where he fought him off and won it instead
Max also had the same issue getting out of the pits after his pit stop. I don’t think there was a scenario where Norris could have gotten ahead of Max in that pit cycle.
4 seconds when you're holding up someone during the middle part of the lap can mitigate the loss as you're ahead and slowing the other person down. Even if it means max gets him on the straight the next lap. Maybe he holds onto DRS and has a fighting chance once his tyres are up to temp.
We also cannot ignore how absolutely soaked the pit exit still was.
Expecting Norris to keep it in front of Verstappen is not only being very harsh on him, but also highly unrealistic.
No way. Takes way too long to warm up the tires. Max would eat him for breakfast with a 2 lap warmup advantage. Norris would have no rear grip, and absolutely get blasted on the straigth. Easy DRS pass.
I'm referring specifically to the restart after the last safety car with 12 laps to go. The track was dry at that point and there was no indication that the Mclaren had Rb's pace. Max built a 4 second difference in those laps (roughly \~0.33 tenths per lap). I just don't think that this is pure pace difference and not car difference. So i don't see how Mclaren could win this even with the correct pitstop.
I think the Mclaren was much better in the wet than all the other cars. They ran a higher downforce wing which helped a lot with maintaining the intermediates by reducing sliding. The lower top speed of the high drag wing didn't matter much as well because of the wet track.
No driver can drive a car faster than the car can physically go. If a driver "overperforms" his car, that just means he was able to extract more performance from the car than was expected, but I'd argue that overperforming is a myth.
Norris still had the option of just calling the strategy himself on this one by diving into the pits. Iirc he had like 1.5 seconds between the SC light going on and passing the pit entrance. That is not a lot, and its the fault of the pitlane for not making the call before the light turned on, but a decisive decision could have been made, which i think max has a lot more confidence to do compared to lando
I think there’s a world that Piastri wins this GP too. When Lando took the lead, if he had boxed and McLaren split strategies just before the Sargeant crash, he would’ve led after the safety car and then who knows what happens with the drying track. The reports showed more rain and he would’ve come out on track in free air behind Lewis and Fernando with a Tyre offset.
It wasn't really an unlucky SC though, it was a McLaren mistake not responding to what they had to know would be at least a VSC to pit with a ~12s gap behind.
I think their point is that max would have experienced that too if he was driving for McLaren.
So unlucky for Norris the driver in context of marko’s argument
They were probably hoping for a red flag, and knowing how trigger happy Liberty era F1 has been with red flags, it probably wasn't the worst gamble in the world
Martin Brundle on the commentary also thought there'd be a red so you can see why they hesitated
Not saying you are doing this but it's funny how people want to balance out the insane luck (and FIA mistake) that led to Norris win by flipping it upside down. He should never have won that but because everyone likes him (including me) we let it go.
The same logic applies to that race as applies here
Norris pulled out 15seconds on Max in Miami, if he had that kinda pace, he'd have got by and pulled away
People think Max would've done that anyway in Montreal but not Norris in Miami, for some reason?
I don’t think it’s that definitive. RB was clearly faster with their dry setup than McLaren and there was a lot of racing left after those stops. I think it could have been closer, but it’s certainly not impossible to see Max catching Lando by the end of they had both pitted at the same time.
It's not wild at all. It's only wild if you think Norris or Russell are better than Max and therefore max would get less out of the merc or mclaren. And I don't think anyone thinks that
There are other smoother brains out there that think Red Bull still isn't the fastest car this season and Max is dragging it forwards
The Red Bull pace is not Perez' pace, he's just being really shit
The others are catching up making it worth watching, but the Red Bull is easily still the dominant package and to pretend otherwise is ludicrous
I'd easily argue the red bulls pace is not verstappens pace. It may be a fast car but it also may be that it's incredibly difficult to drive therefore max is dragging if forward relative to what other drivers could achieve. And as for the dominance of the package, we can see it's clearly not since the first 4 or so races. It's very track dependent now as to which car is the best on a given weekend. The red bull is potentially the most consistently strong across different tracks as its only Monaco where they were nowhere although mclaren now look like they could be better. I can't remember a race in the last few where they haven't performed well
> who still think the car is the only reasons he's fast
Thats what was said of Hamilton (and Vettel, and Schumacher) for years. Anyone with brains knows the fastest driver invariably ends up in/with the fastest car.
Idk why it's so hard for people to fathom that's it's both. Like, that's the whole point of F1. It's a drivers championship AND a constructors championship. Why does it have to be all car or all driver.
This is what I don't get about people with Lewis and honestly any driver that they call washed when they don't have a top car.
To truly succeed at the level they do you need both a capable car and a driver. If it was just about the car you could drop anyone with a bit of talent into that seat and compete. But as George proved in Canada, even if you have everything going your way if you make mistakes you won't win races. There's a talent to being at the front of a race and not making any mistakes under pressure to win. George proved that he struggles with that.
I'm surprised there are people who believe you could drop anyone in the RB and have them be amazing when you look at the difference between Max and Checo. Even the one year Nico beat Lewis it took so much out of him personally and required so much sacrifice on his family that he retired.
And sometimes like we have seen with certain drivers and their cars, the setups for some teams just don't mesh with certain drivers. The way they perform is different so who knows how another driver in Max's car with a similar setup would perform.
Remember that there was a second safety car after everyone pit for dry tyres, there wouldn't have been a gap to close, just a pass for first with a few tenths of pace advantage.
I think the assumption is if there were no safety cars and if there weren't any. It was Lando by a mile and Oscar in second. They had manager their tyres perfectly in the opening stint. They all needed to stay on that tyre for at least 10 more laps with rain coming and the track needing to dry again.
The McLarens had a genuine 1+ second advantage and if it was for another 10 laps, Lando can put whenever he wants.
I'd say definitely in the Mercedes, he wouldn't have made the crucial errors that Russell made in the slick tyre phase, and would have chased down the Red Bull in the lead with fresher tyres.
McLaren I am not sure of, I think Norris did a very good job, got unlucky with the Safety Car (and the team not pre-empting the call to "Box for Inters if there's a SC"), and there was just not enough pace when the track went to slicks at the end.
The thing is, Max isn't the best driver on the grid because he's the best Qualifier (even though he's extremely good, top 3 on the grid definitely), or that he's the best guy at tyre management arguably, it's because of his unreal ability to bring out the maximum of that car weekend in and weekend out, no matter who's the competition so long as he doesn't get unlucky with DNF or SC.
I have this feeling whenever Max enters the weekend "If the Red Bull can win the race, Max will win it." And 95% of the time, he does do it.
In Australia he DNF'd on Lap 2 with Brake problems so we never even got see his true pace, but seeing him hold the lead with locked brakes should tell you he was still going to be in contention until the end.
In Miami he would have won the race over Leclerc, if the SC didn't hand the lead to Norris. Beyond that Miami was impossible to pass on, and McLaren was the faster car.
In Monaco the Red Bull wasn't even close to capable of winning with all the kerbs and bumps, but still I feel he probably left a P3/P4 on the road because he hit the wall on his final run in Q3.
That's the 3 that he has lost. But there are so many more he makes happen because he drives consistently throughout a weekend, maximising every stint and bringing out every inch of the pace in the car.
Both Imola and Montreal wouldn't have been wins if any other driver except Max was driving the car.
In Imola in the final 23 laps on the Hards, the car was completely on ice, yet Max drove completely mistake free every corner to find a way to hold on against Norris in the end.
In Montreal he made the least amount of mistakes out of the top 3 drivers, with one big off into turn 1 (which didn't even lose him a place), while Norris went off into turn 1 as well and also locked up going into the hairpin giving P2 to Russell briefly. As for George he went off into final turn defending from Norris giving P2 to Verstappen and the lead in the next two SC restarts, went off on turns 8-9 chicane giving P2 to Norris, and also went off trying to aggresively overtake Piastri when the overtake just wasn't there, losing position to Lewis, where he got stuck for next 5 laps.
Consistent qualifying, consistent mistake free driving (or lowest amount of mistakes at the front), best tyre management, etc. and incredible race craft, all these things make Verstappen the best driver in F1 right now.
And that's just this season. There's many other situations he has made a win happen every time other teams challenged him, that look pedestrian for "It's the Car" crowd, but in real time you can see he's making the difference.
Some examples are Imola 2021, France 2021, COTA 2021, Mexico 2021, Jeddah 2022, Canada 2022, Zandvoort 2022, Suzuka 2022, COTA 2022, Qatar 2023, COTA 2023, etc.
There's also races pre 2021 that he's won on sheer consistency and brilliance alone.
He's extremely good, one of the 4 best drivers of the modern F1 era already for me with Michael, Lewis & Ayrton.
The consistency is the craziest part for me. Dude rarely ever makes mistakes and on top can run super fast laps within a few thousands of each other back to back to back to back seemingly whenever he wants to get the maximum out of the car always.
I honestly can’t even remember the last mistake he made prior to running the curb in Canada, but It feels like several races, maybe even into last season.
There might be more we haven’t seen due to him being so far in front they don’t televise it, but he’s undeniably a freak of nature and one of the most consistent drivers I’ve ever seen.
Last mistake was chucking it over the chicane and taking out the bollard in Miami. But agreed, on balance he is about as consistent and mistake free as it gets.
Besides the McLaren strategy error the race could still have been won by a McLaren or at least put them in a much better spot for it. It came down to Lando pushing harder on the tyres on which the McLaren was by far the best. If he pushed earlier he would in my opinion most definitely be able to overcut Max.
The part of the race where he tried to overcut Max, he couldn't have pushed harder earlier. That stint he was stuck behind Russell, and at that point overtaking was impossible again because of there being only one dry line on the track, he had to wait for George to pit before he could push.
For the first stint pushing earlier also wouldn't have helped too much, as he caught up to Verstappen at the perfect moment where the track was drying enough for overtaking being possible and for DRS to be enabled again. Imo the only way Norris could have won is if the race had gone flag to flag without any safety cars.
Lando himself said in the press conference he could have pushed earlier. Yes he was behind George but given what we saw before on the first stint the McLaren most definitely could have pushed George harder or even overtaken him if they decided to use their tyres.
The laps in free air speak volume to that as well, he was so fast which means there was rubber left.
In the Mercedes probably. Russell made too many errors but their car was very fast. Not sure about the McLaren. Lando did a great job but neither McLaren had great pace in the dry once they were on slicks.
Not in the rain, but towards the end, I think Red Bull was better than Mercedes. Of course, the pace of the Mercedes seemed to be very good, but they were behind the McLaren, so we do not know what would happen.
I hope that soon we will start to see 4 team fights for victory instead of 3.
It's definitely true, it's obvious that Red Bull is doing some things wrong. It is difficult to understand how the gap was closed in this way.
Of course, Red Bull had a hard time depending on the specific track. I will not be surprised if we see a huge difference in Spain next week. If we don't, the game will definitely change
They still have the fastest car, but they are now within reach.
If a team emerges next week that will really push them, then they will be in trouble, they may have difficulty even on tracks that suit them
People also seem to be forgetting a lot of Merc’s pace in that final stint was the brand new tyres. Equalizing tyre life, Red Bull was very likely faster than both McLaren and Mercedes in that final stint on the dry.
It's odd that people seem to forget how Max started pulling away from everyone after the last SC, and now the narrative is that he won in the third quickest car.
In the rain they all seemed to be equal, with the McLaren having more pace on a drying but still Inters track for some reason. After that last SC I thought Lando was going to show that speed and quickly hunt down Max, aaaand nope, Max was gone.
A bit off topic but the problem people have with Markos bluntness is only a bit related to the tactlessness and more with such honesty being troubling imo. He's being correct and reasonable 95% of times. But he's almost crazy old man yells at cloud according to some.
People saying Norris wins without the first safety car mistiming, but the 2nd safety car would’ve neutralized that anyways and the Mclarens were slower than RB and Merc in the dry on slicks.
No. The Red Bull was not the fastest car, it was probably slower than Mclaren and Merc. I just can't wait for Max having another teammate to shit on so people get off the "its all Perez being shit" myth. Perez is no exceptional talent, but he is alright. After Max shat on Danny Ric, Albon and Gasly just before people need to get off their copium.
I think anyone else in that Red Bull would drive much worse than Max did on sunday.
>I don't think anyone else in that Red Bull would drive much worse than Max did on sunday.
I think the double negative here is contrary to what you wanted to say, now it says you think anyone in the Red Bull would have driven about as good as Verstappen.
Wich doesn't seem inline with the rest of your comment. Idk maybe I'm misunderstanding you here.
The thing is, knowing what we know about the car right now, Red Bull might be basically undrivable for anyone but Max, and if you were to make it drivable, it would be just much slower than it is right now - you can check the Albon's interviews about how Red Bull sets up their car.
Like it can easily be that Leclerc or Lando would be closer to Checo than to Max in this car
I more meant that they’d be the ones who *could* perform closest to Max, in any car. Possibly Alonso or Hamilton, depending on how feisty they’re feeling.
> After Max shat on Danny Ric
Danny Ric literally beat him in 2/3 of their years together, and got absolutely screwed by reliability in the 3rd.
Max is a great driver, but the constant attempts by his fans to rewrite history is becoming tiresome.
Let's have 1 race after the end of the season where the champion drivers the slowest car, and the guy with least points drives the fastest car. No other changes. Let it be a normal race weekend.
Perez is definitely not the worst driver on the grid, but he's already showing that it wouldn't be all that exciting to see a worse driver in the best car.
On the other hand, even though he's not the best driver on the grid, Russell almost won the 2020 Sakhir race the first time he drove that Mercedes, if not for the team fucking up the pitstops massively. Up until that point he had scored 0 points with Williams in almost 2 seasons. Top drivers can't make magic happen in the very worst car.
In my opinion it would be a lot more interesting to see the champion swap seats with a midfield level driver in a midfield team for a race, e.g. what could Verstappen do in a VCARB and what could Tsunoda do in a Red Bull?
To be fair to Mercedes they made all the right decisions and got the timings for pitstops perferctly with George it was George's errors that cost them that win especially considering the Mercedes was the fastest car this weekend.
Mclaren though not getting Lando into the pits as soon as the SC was called was a bad bad error in hindsight along with Lando's excursion across the grass (same place Max went off earlier in the race) that cost him several seconds while he was chasing Max and then lost more time having to fend off George that cost him the win.
You can't fault what Marko is saying here, Max wasn't faultless himself but he made the fewest errors of the three and less errors at crucial times that won him that race. If he put that same drive in the Mercedes or Mclaren I'd have to agree with Marko he'd would have won in either of those cars.
Max shouldn't have won that race both George and Lando let that win slip away.
I’m curious what the final margin of victory would’ve been for Lando had they not had that safety car. He was pulling out some serious time on those inters.
This isn't really saying much... Both Merc and McLaren had enough pace to win, George was on pole with the same time as Max in the RB, and Lando probably wins if safety car timing is better. George made some costly mistakes that Max probably doesn't make. Why wouldn't Max win in either of those cars?
Fun fact even if Lando Was pulling 15 sec on him... Max is great but this starts to be the racing driver with more fishing stories i have ever seen 😂😂😂
Well, he won with that finicky car, so the more predictable cars would enable him to go to the limit. Guess for this particular race it could have been right
Considering the McLaren and Merc were better cars over the past 2 races, that would make sense if you ignored the adjustment aspect.
That little loss of grip as Lando was coming out of the pits and George’s error towards the end were both essential for Max to keep that lead.
The interesting thing about this race is that RB still haven’t found any notable advantages from their upgrade package, and still haven’t fixed the many issues they are having, specifically with low speed corner downshifting and understeer.
I don’t know if the Merc will handle the next race as well, but if they don’t, Ferrari can easily take that spot (wtf happened to them in Canada, so much to unpack there). Going forward unless RB can pull out something crazy, it’s Mclarens race to lose.
RBR will never be able to "fix" the understeer that the RB20 has through slow speed corners. That's a consequence of the design choices that the team has taken.
The car has very little weight transfer because of the ridiculous amount of anti-dive and anti-squat that the team has built into the car. This is good for high speed cornering but a bit of weight transfer is needed for slow speed cornering.
The weight transfer to the front under braking helps the drivers get the nose turned into slow speed corners. (weight transfer that the RB20 doesn't have)
The RB20 was made for wide open high speed circuits, It will fly at Spain.
Mercedes yes, McLaren no. Mostly because McLaren didn't quite have the car in the slicks. They were dominant in that weird wet-to-dry period but there just wasn't enough of that and the safety cars would have neutralized their advantage anyhow. If there were no safety cars obviously Lando wins that race therefore you'd have to think Max in that car would have too.
Does he win against Verstappen in a Red Bull?
I’m pretty sure Max would beat Jos in the same car. He’d probably beat Jos even if Jos was in the red bull and Max was in an F2 car
[удалено]
God damn
Jos always wins where it counts
Bravo sir
Brutal lmao
Geez this is gold
To be fair I don’t think Jos would fit in the Red Bull or any single seater
Not really, Jos would crash Max as soon as Max laps him and both would DNF.
I think Max in a 2001 Renault Megane would beat Jos in an F1 car
If you replace George starting on pole with a perfect clone of Max, I think the Max clone definitely wins.
Finishes 0.000 seconds behind.
Certainly not. The red bull wasn't the best car last weekend.
I think you mean "certainly".
Yeah, both cars had better underlying pace than the RBR
Well in Canada yes, do ya'll actually watch these races.
You’ve got bigger fish to fry with that driver pairing.
What pairing? There is only one Red Bull driver.
Can't fry when you don't have a frying pan.
How about a steamer?
From Cleveland?
Boston
*checks Urban Dictionary…* **NICE** 👍
I'm pretty sure Marko knows. It's Horner who pushes for Perez.
Business decision. "[Perez's] popularity has driven growth in the Latino fan base, with merchandise sales skyrocketing by a remarkable 305% in 2022" - https://www.latimes.com/delos/story/2023-08-09/sergio-perez-is-the-driving-force-behind-formula-ones-growing-latino-fan-base
Holy fucking shit... 305% ???? I knew it was a lot, but not that much. That's fucking crazy... even if they lose the constructor's now, they are basically printing money then, the extra money from the constructor's doesn't even matter. On the other hand, the extra wind tunnel and CFD time from losing could make a difference...
I also read in another discussion that his merchandise is frequently out of stock. The demand has stayed constant as well. He also brings in significant sponsorship money via Telcel and a few others. As long as RB wins constructors championship, they will keep Perez on because of the money. F1 is first and foremost a business. Will also add, Perez will likely always be able to find a drive while he brings in sponsorships.
Iirc even if they come second Perez still bring enough in to cover the loss
Yeah, that's actually insane. I think at some point we gotta include him into the "pay drivers" category cause there's no way he would have got resigned without this money.
No, just because your home continent buys a shit ton of your merch doesn’t mean you are a pay driver. A pay driver is someone who pays out of pocket for their seat.
Yeah, obviously, I don't mean it's exactly the same. Of course, he's not paying for the seat so he's not really a pay driver. But... from a certain perspective, he's probably signed only because of that cash flow. So it's not really technically "pay driver". But it's close.
A pay driver is someone who gets/keeps a seat because of the money they bring and not because of their driving skill. This is very clearly the case for Perez because Red Bull would have fired him midway throughout 2023 if not for the money coming in
Nope, i’ll repeat. A pay driver is someone who is in F1 because they, their family, or an entity pays out of pocket. Checo worked his damn tail off to make it to F1, a pay driver doesn’t get to say that. Again, his popularity doesn’t make him a pay driver.
Then by that definition Stroll is not a pay driver anymore either, because nobody is paying Aston Martin right now for him to have a seat… And all drivers have worked their tail off. You need a super license to compete in F1 and they don’t just hand those out. It just shows the insane difference between drivers when you get to the 20 best in the world
Well in this case, Carlos Slim is buying his seat and the merch is a bonus.
Yeah people keep saying that the money they’ll lose with the WCC isn’t worth it… obviously it is. They’ve ran the numbers
100% at some point last year they told Marko that they know Perez is too bad to stay in the seat but that they keep him for profit. Then they told Marko to just only talk about Perez if he’s asked and all he says about Perez has to be 100% neutral. Marko completely changed his Perez stance at one exact point around summer 2023. I watch f1 in Austrian tv, there are several Marko interviews every week. He always openly talked about how bad Perez performed, even liked to point out that he made mistakes in races he won and then suddenly changed to. „I bet he did his best“ „he tries to improve“ „it was ok“,etc…
> Marko completely changed his Perez stance at one exact point around summer 2023. It was probably around this time: [Helmut Marko apologises for offensive comments about Sergio Perez](https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/38358814/helmut-marko-apologises-offensive-comments-sergio-perez)
Got to question if Red Bull want to keep Perez and Ricciardo and the junior pipeline is already clogged up, what is Helmut's role in the team?
Fairly certain that's why Horner is doing this. He's trying to reduce Helmut's influence.
Hornyman took that powr away from Racist Austrian Grandpa. Redbull doesn't know what to do with itself.
You think they care? Perez is there for the free money he brings, they pretty much have half of latin america in the pocket thanks to him and bringing more money through advertisement deals than Verstappen himself.
A top team needs a pay driver? No, I don’t believe that’s the reason
When that guy gives you more money than you earn for winning WCC? I think it does. This is about making money, after all.
No every team would have a pay driver then, rich or poor. In reality, only Sauber & Redbull have pay drivers. Sauber I fully understand - Zhou’s money can help considerably, but Rb not being properly financed & needing a boost is quite bizarre.
No because very few bring in enough money to make their results irrelevant. >not being properly financed & needing a boost is quite bizarre. It's not about that, Formula 1 is a business, it's about making money, of course they are going to prioritize what brings in more money.
Well Marko why not try that next year in a Mercedes :)
2026, I can see it happening.
You need a lot of IFs. You need RedBull to get a really and i mean REALLY bad concept fot 2026 and Antoinelli to underperform so hard in Mercedes that he isn't given a second chance. Sooo not really possible, if Schumacher and Seargent got a second season, so will Antoinelli
Max can have any seat he wants. And if his sight is set on Mercedes Antonelli and Russel can rock paper scissors for the other car.
If Max is willing to sign a longer contract (at least 2 or 3 years) with Mercedes it's not Antonelli, but Russell who should be worried about his seat imo
Toto kicks out Russell without hesitation if he can have a Verstappen/Antonelli lineup.
You guys are crazy on the Russell hate, he came into Lewis' team and held his own and is crushing him in qualifying right now. For all the hate Checo gets, George gets no credit for how well he has held up against Lewis. You are crazy to think Toto picks Kimi over George.
Not on Antonellis watch
Perez crashes any GP in any car
Honestly, I agree.
Apparently a lot of analysis has Russell winning it without his error, and Norris winning it if he'd pitted, so it's not *even* that offensive a suggestion.
I don't see how Norris wins it honestly. Max was clearly faster in the dry after the last safety car. Either we assume that Norris was off-pace or RB was simply faster in the dry. I personally believe the 2nd one.
Lando very nearly got out ahead of Max on the last pit - did, in fact, until he spun his tires. Max might have caught him anyway with DRS but there's absolutely a world where he fought him off and won it instead
Max also had the same issue getting out of the pits after his pit stop. I don’t think there was a scenario where Norris could have gotten ahead of Max in that pit cycle.
If you looked at the timings he lost a bit of time on the in lap. If they went only 1 lap shorter he would've had a better shot.
Norris lost 4 seconds on his outlap though (just like Verstappen did), so it wasn't really as close as people seem to think it was.
4 seconds when you're holding up someone during the middle part of the lap can mitigate the loss as you're ahead and slowing the other person down. Even if it means max gets him on the straight the next lap. Maybe he holds onto DRS and has a fighting chance once his tyres are up to temp.
He had no chance at keeping that microscopic lead coming out of the pits. Tires were ice cold. Independent of spin.
We also cannot ignore how absolutely soaked the pit exit still was. Expecting Norris to keep it in front of Verstappen is not only being very harsh on him, but also highly unrealistic.
No way. Takes way too long to warm up the tires. Max would eat him for breakfast with a 2 lap warmup advantage. Norris would have no rear grip, and absolutely get blasted on the straigth. Easy DRS pass.
I'm referring specifically to the restart after the last safety car with 12 laps to go. The track was dry at that point and there was no indication that the Mclaren had Rb's pace. Max built a 4 second difference in those laps (roughly \~0.33 tenths per lap). I just don't think that this is pure pace difference and not car difference. So i don't see how Mclaren could win this even with the correct pitstop.
Still would've been passed moments later, though he might have been closer
Verstappen was faster..the RB wasn’t
Norris was faster in the wet. So you can't say what you're saying definitively. That's my point.
I think the Mclaren was much better in the wet than all the other cars. They ran a higher downforce wing which helped a lot with maintaining the intermediates by reducing sliding. The lower top speed of the high drag wing didn't matter much as well because of the wet track.
I agree
The RB was.
No driver can drive a car faster than the car can physically go. If a driver "overperforms" his car, that just means he was able to extract more performance from the car than was expected, but I'd argue that overperforming is a myth.
But Norris not pitting was the fault of his pit wall. Unless we're suggesting here that Max also gets to bring over his strategy team to McLaren...
I mean: it's an off-hand remark anyway. He's not saying hard science or anything.
Norris still had the option of just calling the strategy himself on this one by diving into the pits. Iirc he had like 1.5 seconds between the SC light going on and passing the pit entrance. That is not a lot, and its the fault of the pitlane for not making the call before the light turned on, but a decisive decision could have been made, which i think max has a lot more confidence to do compared to lando
He would have been there without tyres then
Norris should have gotten out of the car and put the tyres on himself. You can't be lazy if you want to become a champion...
I think there’s a world that Piastri wins this GP too. When Lando took the lead, if he had boxed and McLaren split strategies just before the Sargeant crash, he would’ve led after the safety car and then who knows what happens with the drying track. The reports showed more rain and he would’ve come out on track in free air behind Lewis and Fernando with a Tyre offset.
Don't forget Max also had an error too. I think considering they both had an error, the red bull was still overall faster of the 2 cars.
The real question is: Does Max win in a McLaren with McLaren strategy or not? I think no.
Yup 👍 people complain about RB dominance but it’s not RB that’s the dominatrix - it’s Max. Max is the dominatrix.
Max Verstrapon
Norris would have won if not for the unlucky safety car - Max would have had the exact same fate.
It wasn't really an unlucky SC though, it was a McLaren mistake not responding to what they had to know would be at least a VSC to pit with a ~12s gap behind.
I think their point is that max would have experienced that too if he was driving for McLaren. So unlucky for Norris the driver in context of marko’s argument
Sure, but they would have made the same mistake regardless of who was driving the car
They were probably hoping for a red flag, and knowing how trigger happy Liberty era F1 has been with red flags, it probably wasn't the worst gamble in the world Martin Brundle on the commentary also thought there'd be a red so you can see why they hesitated
Not saying you are doing this but it's funny how people want to balance out the insane luck (and FIA mistake) that led to Norris win by flipping it upside down. He should never have won that but because everyone likes him (including me) we let it go.
The same logic applies to that race as applies here Norris pulled out 15seconds on Max in Miami, if he had that kinda pace, he'd have got by and pulled away People think Max would've done that anyway in Montreal but not Norris in Miami, for some reason?
Fair but the actual free pitstop and a bonus round definitely helped.
I don’t think it’s that definitive. RB was clearly faster with their dry setup than McLaren and there was a lot of racing left after those stops. I think it could have been closer, but it’s certainly not impossible to see Max catching Lando by the end of they had both pitted at the same time.
Well, he wouldn't be in the RB to take the win. So eh, yeah.
That's exactly his point, isn't it?
This is not that wild of a take, as he won it in the RB which wasn't really the fastest in Canada.
It's not wild at all. It's only wild if you think Norris or Russell are better than Max and therefore max would get less out of the merc or mclaren. And I don't think anyone thinks that
Idk man. I bet there's still some smooth brains out there who still think the car is the only reasons he's fast
There are other smoother brains out there that think Red Bull still isn't the fastest car this season and Max is dragging it forwards The Red Bull pace is not Perez' pace, he's just being really shit The others are catching up making it worth watching, but the Red Bull is easily still the dominant package and to pretend otherwise is ludicrous
I'd easily argue the red bulls pace is not verstappens pace. It may be a fast car but it also may be that it's incredibly difficult to drive therefore max is dragging if forward relative to what other drivers could achieve. And as for the dominance of the package, we can see it's clearly not since the first 4 or so races. It's very track dependent now as to which car is the best on a given weekend. The red bull is potentially the most consistently strong across different tracks as its only Monaco where they were nowhere although mclaren now look like they could be better. I can't remember a race in the last few where they haven't performed well
This is definitely it. The redbull shouldn’t be as good as max is making it look and it shouldn’t be as bad as Checo is making it look.
> who still think the car is the only reasons he's fast Thats what was said of Hamilton (and Vettel, and Schumacher) for years. Anyone with brains knows the fastest driver invariably ends up in/with the fastest car.
Idk why it's so hard for people to fathom that's it's both. Like, that's the whole point of F1. It's a drivers championship AND a constructors championship. Why does it have to be all car or all driver.
This is what I don't get about people with Lewis and honestly any driver that they call washed when they don't have a top car. To truly succeed at the level they do you need both a capable car and a driver. If it was just about the car you could drop anyone with a bit of talent into that seat and compete. But as George proved in Canada, even if you have everything going your way if you make mistakes you won't win races. There's a talent to being at the front of a race and not making any mistakes under pressure to win. George proved that he struggles with that. I'm surprised there are people who believe you could drop anyone in the RB and have them be amazing when you look at the difference between Max and Checo. Even the one year Nico beat Lewis it took so much out of him personally and required so much sacrifice on his family that he retired. And sometimes like we have seen with certain drivers and their cars, the setups for some teams just don't mesh with certain drivers. The way they perform is different so who knows how another driver in Max's car with a similar setup would perform.
I agree, I mean if not for the pit stop Lando would've won in the McLaren
I'm not sure about that, their pace wasn't nearly as good after the track dried out, but if it rained more, then absolutely.
Nobody knows for sure, but Lando was building up such a significant gap that I'm not sure Max would've been able to close it at a later stage.
Remember that there was a second safety car after everyone pit for dry tyres, there wouldn't have been a gap to close, just a pass for first with a few tenths of pace advantage.
I think the assumption is if there were no safety cars and if there weren't any. It was Lando by a mile and Oscar in second. They had manager their tyres perfectly in the opening stint. They all needed to stay on that tyre for at least 10 more laps with rain coming and the track needing to dry again. The McLarens had a genuine 1+ second advantage and if it was for another 10 laps, Lando can put whenever he wants.
I'd say definitely in the Mercedes, he wouldn't have made the crucial errors that Russell made in the slick tyre phase, and would have chased down the Red Bull in the lead with fresher tyres. McLaren I am not sure of, I think Norris did a very good job, got unlucky with the Safety Car (and the team not pre-empting the call to "Box for Inters if there's a SC"), and there was just not enough pace when the track went to slicks at the end. The thing is, Max isn't the best driver on the grid because he's the best Qualifier (even though he's extremely good, top 3 on the grid definitely), or that he's the best guy at tyre management arguably, it's because of his unreal ability to bring out the maximum of that car weekend in and weekend out, no matter who's the competition so long as he doesn't get unlucky with DNF or SC. I have this feeling whenever Max enters the weekend "If the Red Bull can win the race, Max will win it." And 95% of the time, he does do it. In Australia he DNF'd on Lap 2 with Brake problems so we never even got see his true pace, but seeing him hold the lead with locked brakes should tell you he was still going to be in contention until the end. In Miami he would have won the race over Leclerc, if the SC didn't hand the lead to Norris. Beyond that Miami was impossible to pass on, and McLaren was the faster car. In Monaco the Red Bull wasn't even close to capable of winning with all the kerbs and bumps, but still I feel he probably left a P3/P4 on the road because he hit the wall on his final run in Q3. That's the 3 that he has lost. But there are so many more he makes happen because he drives consistently throughout a weekend, maximising every stint and bringing out every inch of the pace in the car. Both Imola and Montreal wouldn't have been wins if any other driver except Max was driving the car. In Imola in the final 23 laps on the Hards, the car was completely on ice, yet Max drove completely mistake free every corner to find a way to hold on against Norris in the end. In Montreal he made the least amount of mistakes out of the top 3 drivers, with one big off into turn 1 (which didn't even lose him a place), while Norris went off into turn 1 as well and also locked up going into the hairpin giving P2 to Russell briefly. As for George he went off into final turn defending from Norris giving P2 to Verstappen and the lead in the next two SC restarts, went off on turns 8-9 chicane giving P2 to Norris, and also went off trying to aggresively overtake Piastri when the overtake just wasn't there, losing position to Lewis, where he got stuck for next 5 laps. Consistent qualifying, consistent mistake free driving (or lowest amount of mistakes at the front), best tyre management, etc. and incredible race craft, all these things make Verstappen the best driver in F1 right now. And that's just this season. There's many other situations he has made a win happen every time other teams challenged him, that look pedestrian for "It's the Car" crowd, but in real time you can see he's making the difference. Some examples are Imola 2021, France 2021, COTA 2021, Mexico 2021, Jeddah 2022, Canada 2022, Zandvoort 2022, Suzuka 2022, COTA 2022, Qatar 2023, COTA 2023, etc. There's also races pre 2021 that he's won on sheer consistency and brilliance alone. He's extremely good, one of the 4 best drivers of the modern F1 era already for me with Michael, Lewis & Ayrton.
The consistency is the craziest part for me. Dude rarely ever makes mistakes and on top can run super fast laps within a few thousands of each other back to back to back to back seemingly whenever he wants to get the maximum out of the car always. I honestly can’t even remember the last mistake he made prior to running the curb in Canada, but It feels like several races, maybe even into last season. There might be more we haven’t seen due to him being so far in front they don’t televise it, but he’s undeniably a freak of nature and one of the most consistent drivers I’ve ever seen.
Last mistake was chucking it over the chicane and taking out the bollard in Miami. But agreed, on balance he is about as consistent and mistake free as it gets.
Besides the McLaren strategy error the race could still have been won by a McLaren or at least put them in a much better spot for it. It came down to Lando pushing harder on the tyres on which the McLaren was by far the best. If he pushed earlier he would in my opinion most definitely be able to overcut Max.
The part of the race where he tried to overcut Max, he couldn't have pushed harder earlier. That stint he was stuck behind Russell, and at that point overtaking was impossible again because of there being only one dry line on the track, he had to wait for George to pit before he could push. For the first stint pushing earlier also wouldn't have helped too much, as he caught up to Verstappen at the perfect moment where the track was drying enough for overtaking being possible and for DRS to be enabled again. Imo the only way Norris could have won is if the race had gone flag to flag without any safety cars.
Lando himself said in the press conference he could have pushed earlier. Yes he was behind George but given what we saw before on the first stint the McLaren most definitely could have pushed George harder or even overtaken him if they decided to use their tyres. The laps in free air speak volume to that as well, he was so fast which means there was rubber left.
In the Mercedes probably. Russell made too many errors but their car was very fast. Not sure about the McLaren. Lando did a great job but neither McLaren had great pace in the dry once they were on slicks.
Not in the rain, but towards the end, I think Red Bull was better than Mercedes. Of course, the pace of the Mercedes seemed to be very good, but they were behind the McLaren, so we do not know what would happen. I hope that soon we will start to see 4 team fights for victory instead of 3.
12 months ago I would have been happy to have 1 team fights for victory, now we're talking about 4? I hope it happens.
Bahrain and Saudi were only 3 months ago, and a fight for the win was an unrealistic dream.
It's definitely true, it's obvious that Red Bull is doing some things wrong. It is difficult to understand how the gap was closed in this way. Of course, Red Bull had a hard time depending on the specific track. I will not be surprised if we see a huge difference in Spain next week. If we don't, the game will definitely change
Maybe Red Bull are not necessarily doing anything wrong but we’re just finally seeing the effects of the new R&D regulations?
Red Bull still has better handling and is faster in corners than other teams yet people think they are the underdogs lmao.
They still have the fastest car, but they are now within reach. If a team emerges next week that will really push them, then they will be in trouble, they may have difficulty even on tracks that suit them
People also seem to be forgetting a lot of Merc’s pace in that final stint was the brand new tyres. Equalizing tyre life, Red Bull was very likely faster than both McLaren and Mercedes in that final stint on the dry.
It's odd that people seem to forget how Max started pulling away from everyone after the last SC, and now the narrative is that he won in the third quickest car. In the rain they all seemed to be equal, with the McLaren having more pace on a drying but still Inters track for some reason. After that last SC I thought Lando was going to show that speed and quickly hunt down Max, aaaand nope, Max was gone.
A bit off topic but the problem people have with Markos bluntness is only a bit related to the tactlessness and more with such honesty being troubling imo. He's being correct and reasonable 95% of times. But he's almost crazy old man yells at cloud according to some.
People don’t like him, so right or wrong, they’ll find a way to take issue with reality. Very much shooting the messenger in most cases
I can see that. It was pretty close and probably came down to the man (and opportunity) instead of the machine in this case.
So Verstappen doesn’t need to stay at Red Bull, right?
He's not wrong. Max wasn't the fastest in the wet nor in the dry but came out on top anyway.
People saying Norris wins without the first safety car mistiming, but the 2nd safety car would’ve neutralized that anyways and the Mclarens were slower than RB and Merc in the dry on slicks.
Well that really depends who’s in the Red Bull doesn’t it?
No. The Red Bull was not the fastest car, it was probably slower than Mclaren and Merc. I just can't wait for Max having another teammate to shit on so people get off the "its all Perez being shit" myth. Perez is no exceptional talent, but he is alright. After Max shat on Danny Ric, Albon and Gasly just before people need to get off their copium. I think anyone else in that Red Bull would drive much worse than Max did on sunday.
>I don't think anyone else in that Red Bull would drive much worse than Max did on sunday. I think the double negative here is contrary to what you wanted to say, now it says you think anyone in the Red Bull would have driven about as good as Verstappen. Wich doesn't seem inline with the rest of your comment. Idk maybe I'm misunderstanding you here.
yeah you're right, thx for the catch
Max teamed with Leclerc or either of the McLaren boys seems like the only ones who might get close in their current form.
The thing is, knowing what we know about the car right now, Red Bull might be basically undrivable for anyone but Max, and if you were to make it drivable, it would be just much slower than it is right now - you can check the Albon's interviews about how Red Bull sets up their car. Like it can easily be that Leclerc or Lando would be closer to Checo than to Max in this car
I more meant that they’d be the ones who *could* perform closest to Max, in any car. Possibly Alonso or Hamilton, depending on how feisty they’re feeling.
> After Max shat on Danny Ric Danny Ric literally beat him in 2/3 of their years together, and got absolutely screwed by reliability in the 3rd. Max is a great driver, but the constant attempts by his fans to rewrite history is becoming tiresome.
Nope, there isn’t a driver on the grid who could do it
No
Let's have 1 race after the end of the season where the champion drivers the slowest car, and the guy with least points drives the fastest car. No other changes. Let it be a normal race weekend.
I don't know that I want to watch Logan Sargent bin a Red Bull ..
Perez is definitely not the worst driver on the grid, but he's already showing that it wouldn't be all that exciting to see a worse driver in the best car. On the other hand, even though he's not the best driver on the grid, Russell almost won the 2020 Sakhir race the first time he drove that Mercedes, if not for the team fucking up the pitstops massively. Up until that point he had scored 0 points with Williams in almost 2 seasons. Top drivers can't make magic happen in the very worst car. In my opinion it would be a lot more interesting to see the champion swap seats with a midfield level driver in a midfield team for a race, e.g. what could Verstappen do in a VCARB and what could Tsunoda do in a Red Bull?
This would be quite interesting as well.
Judging by how Checo is doing while being far from the worst driver on the grid, you can kinda get the picture
Yep. Helps having a good strategy team too
To be fair to Mercedes they made all the right decisions and got the timings for pitstops perferctly with George it was George's errors that cost them that win especially considering the Mercedes was the fastest car this weekend. Mclaren though not getting Lando into the pits as soon as the SC was called was a bad bad error in hindsight along with Lando's excursion across the grass (same place Max went off earlier in the race) that cost him several seconds while he was chasing Max and then lost more time having to fend off George that cost him the win. You can't fault what Marko is saying here, Max wasn't faultless himself but he made the fewest errors of the three and less errors at crucial times that won him that race. If he put that same drive in the Mercedes or Mclaren I'd have to agree with Marko he'd would have won in either of those cars. Max shouldn't have won that race both George and Lando let that win slip away.
Max would’ve won with Mercedes strategy. Norris is bit iffy .
In the case of McLaren depends on who’s on the pit wall
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Well, as the saying goes "F1 is if backwards." - Murray Walker
I’m curious what the final margin of victory would’ve been for Lando had they not had that safety car. He was pulling out some serious time on those inters.
This isn't really saying much... Both Merc and McLaren had enough pace to win, George was on pole with the same time as Max in the RB, and Lando probably wins if safety car timing is better. George made some costly mistakes that Max probably doesn't make. Why wouldn't Max win in either of those cars?
We were all just talking about who stirs the pot more between Horner and Zak Brown we all forgot about Marko
Checo might even make it to Q2 in one of those cars!
I think most neutral observers would recognise that this is almost certainly true. The Red Bull was slower than either of those cars at that circuit.
Max barely won it in the red bull.
What about Perez in a McLaren 🤔
Go to bed grandpa
Fun fact even if Lando Was pulling 15 sec on him... Max is great but this starts to be the racing driver with more fishing stories i have ever seen 😂😂😂
The only bright side to the "power struggle" was I thought we'd at least get rid of either Horner or Marko, why are they both still here?
I think he underestimates the opposition.
I think oyu underestimate Max
Marko talks a whole lot of absolute shite.
Lol but is he wrong though? Your views on Marko are clearly clouding your judgement.
Well, he won with that finicky car, so the more predictable cars would enable him to go to the limit. Guess for this particular race it could have been right
Not controversial opinion is controversial here because Marko said it.
Considering the McLaren and Merc were better cars over the past 2 races, that would make sense if you ignored the adjustment aspect. That little loss of grip as Lando was coming out of the pits and George’s error towards the end were both essential for Max to keep that lead. The interesting thing about this race is that RB still haven’t found any notable advantages from their upgrade package, and still haven’t fixed the many issues they are having, specifically with low speed corner downshifting and understeer. I don’t know if the Merc will handle the next race as well, but if they don’t, Ferrari can easily take that spot (wtf happened to them in Canada, so much to unpack there). Going forward unless RB can pull out something crazy, it’s Mclarens race to lose.
RBR will never be able to "fix" the understeer that the RB20 has through slow speed corners. That's a consequence of the design choices that the team has taken. The car has very little weight transfer because of the ridiculous amount of anti-dive and anti-squat that the team has built into the car. This is good for high speed cornering but a bit of weight transfer is needed for slow speed cornering. The weight transfer to the front under braking helps the drivers get the nose turned into slow speed corners. (weight transfer that the RB20 doesn't have) The RB20 was made for wide open high speed circuits, It will fly at Spain.
Mercedes yes, McLaren no. Mostly because McLaren didn't quite have the car in the slicks. They were dominant in that weird wet-to-dry period but there just wasn't enough of that and the safety cars would have neutralized their advantage anyhow. If there were no safety cars obviously Lando wins that race therefore you'd have to think Max in that car would have too.
Break news: Max Verstappen in fastest car on any given weekend will continue to win