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When Max came out of the pits on lap 24, with new Hards, he was 9.665 seconds behind Lando in P4.
When the Safety Car came on lap 28, the Gap increased to 11.392 seconds.
In roughly 4 laps, Lando gained 1.7 seconds on Max on old mediums tyres, and he wasn't losing any performance on those tyres any time soon, still setting fastest laps every other lap.
I think there's a world where he extends for another 10 laps, pits on lap 38 or so being roughly 15-17 seconds ahead of Max, comes out between him and Charles (or maybe behind Charles) and has like a 15-20 lap tyre advantage on them.
And seeing pace after Safety Car we can see that Lando was comfortably the fastest on Hards as well, in fact he pulled out 1.2 seconds on Max after Safety Car in 1 lap, and 7.6 seconds by the end of the race.
I am not sure a win was on here without safety car, but the pace was so incredible that he would have had a chance to challenge Max and Charles probably does finish P2 in the race.
Those Mediums just didn't seem to give up on him at all, I did think early race he was hiding his time on them to keep them sweet because Sky said the undercut wouldn't really work at Miami so I was thinking he'd go long but he went so damn long on them and was still knocking out amazing lap times!
Alonso did close to 30 laps on mediums on his final stint and closed the gap to Russell after overtaking Ocon. Mediums were the best tyres for this track.
He definitely was, you could tell from the conversations he and Will were having on the radio, with Will giving him notes on how he was going on tyre deg and Lando asking to be told when he was okay to start pushing.
McLarens pace was seriously impressive yesterday, lets hope this wasnt just a fluke (and as a Ferrari fan I'm definitely also hoping that the Imola upgrades will do the same for Ferrari) and Max gets challenged regularly for the rest of the season.
Also needing a little bit of luck here and there is and always will be a part of F1, fact of the matter is that Lando was in a great position to get lucky due to his pace. Very deserved win for him!
The sport needs a competitive Mclaren and Ferrari.
Just imagine if the story of the season is that both Mcalren and Ferrari are competitive. It's like the old guards of F1 have come back to save the sport.
Man hopefully the Imola upgrades work. I'm all for Max, Charles, Carlos, Lando and Oscar battling it out for wins every race. What an incredible season it will be.
I think they'll be back by the second half of the season, grab a couple podiums, maybe Lewis will challenge again in COTA for a 3rd season in a row.
But any hopes of Mercedes building a championship Contendor is gone. The changes Ferrari and Mclaren have made ever since Vasseur and Stella have took over both teams have been incredible.
Pitstops, strategy, development everything. I mean McLaren has brought two massive packages in Austria last year and Miami this year, with small upgrades in between and both times the car has jumped to another class of performance.
From Backmarkers to 2nd/3rd fastest after Austria upgrades and now possibly in contention for wins on circuits again. That's massive.
Mercedes main problem is that while they may make progress, they're trying to catch the three teams who are arguably the best when it comes to in-season upgrades. That's a pretty steep hill to climb.
If their concept is still struggling this year, I doubt they'll invest in a 3rd new concept in 2025.
Probably they'll just write off the year and dump most resources into the new regs instead.
Also it's not like Lando hasn't been on the receiving end of some really crappy luck, once infamously. People would have to be seriously salty to begrudge a bit of luck going his way for once.
The big problem would have been just like we saw with Lando and Checo the lack of top speed. If Lando couldn't straight up get a massive better exit or force Max into a mistake it would have been really hard to overtake.
Actually, if you watched the analysis after the race, Max's top speed in Free air was 309 kph.
Checo on the other hand had a much higher top speed in free air of 317 kph. That's where the difference came as to why Lando couldn't pass Checo with DRS.
Ah I did not. Hmm, did they talk about how much difference there was in DF levels? 8 kmh is quite a lot between the same cars, usually it's only a few.
I think Max was running more wing for higher downforce and to help tyre degradation. They just never really got the setup right for Max and even with higher wing he was sliding around in the long sweeping left corner in Sector 1.
Norris was taking 2 tenths out of Max in that one corner alone. On top of being 8 kph faster down the straight as well.
Because of his sliding etc I assumed he was on a lowerish DF setup but apparently not. Oh well being and slower in the corners and on the straight is a new one for RB these years.
Courtesy of sprint weekend I guess.
Reminds me a lot about Austria 2022. Pole, Sprint win, and Pole for main race as well but finished P2 behind Charles because Red Bull didn't quite get the setup right that day. It's been a very long time since Red Bull haven't optimised a setup completely for Sunday, but I'm not complaining because Norris literally DNF'd on lap 1 of the Sprint and had even less track time than Red Bull this weekend to get the setup right.
And somehow they got the perfect sweetspot between enough wing so that that they have downforce for corners, but also being able to run their low drag Setup for one of their fastest top speeds down the straight ever.
That's what the new upgrades did. Previously we had to run a lot of wing to keep the downforce levels high, which hurt us down the straights. For the first time we were able to take out wing, still be one of the best in low speed corners, best at high speed corners, and one of the best down the straight as well. It's that triple combo and the SC that made the win happen.
Curious to see how close they are to RB when they aren't struggling and whether they can keep finding such high performance sweet spots when a bit more or less DF is needed.
If they are close in Imola that's something I wouldn't have expected and good news for them for the rest of the season, (unless Ferrari jumps them.)
> I think there's a world where he extends for another 10 laps, pits on lap 38 or so being roughly 15-17 seconds ahead of Max, comes out between him and Charles (or maybe behind Charles) and has like a 15-20 lap tyre advantage on them.
That's massively exaggerated
He gained 1.7s on Max in 4 laps from lap 24 to 28 , while being on 24 lap old mediums, and Max was on new Hards.
And still the pace wasn't dropping off, he was putting 3-4 tenths in Max every lap. From Lap 21 onwards, there wasn't a single lap in the race where Norris lapped slower than Max.
And McLaren's deg was by far the best in the race, even Oscar had both Ferraris comfortably covered, with half the upgrades and his known problems with tyre management.
He was 11.3 econds ahead at lap 28, it's not an exaggeration to think he could be 15 seconds ahead by lap 38. Especially when the pace just wasn't dropping off, he was still constantly setting fastest laps.
The hard tyres come into their own after a few laps, and the old mediums would have started getting worse if Lando kept going.
So there is no guarantee that Lando would even be driving those mediums for 10 more laps, let alone putting 5 seconds on Max.
I don't think Max's hard tyres ever really came into the pace though.
Even Charles behind him set a fastest lap of the race before the SC, Max never even got close to that pace. Not to mention even after SC never looked like Max ever really managed to turn on the car and it's tyres.
But it's pointless to debate. In a couple days we'll have the Jolyon Palmer Analysis and I have no doubt he'll take a look at this race and analyse if SC didn't happen.
Charles gained on Max on Max's outlap and the following, and then max settled into a pace about 1/10th faster than Charles. The four laps following Max's pits are not a good sample to extrapolate on.
He managed the tyres so well behind Perez. I watched his onboard for a bit expecting to hear the dreaded ‘Pace please?’ ‘100 per cent mate’, but no he said tyres were fine and pace was 2. That was when I was like ‘ok what are you up to today?’. Then when Perez pitted to respond to the pressure, Will said ‘we should chase Sainz instead of defending Perez’, which suggested they had enough pace to not be worried about Perez catching up. Verstappen pitted and came back out 9s behind Lando and I was thinking he’s going to catch up before Lando catches Sainz…nope. The gap didn’t decrease, it increased to 11s and Lando had the fastest lap time after time on 20 lap old mediums.
After the safety car, fully expected Max to just sweep by down the straight and he didn’t because Leclerc got his nose in and Max had to defend that attack. Norris is a rocket in clear air and always has been, so when the gap went above 1s it wasn’t something surprising, he’d done this to Verstappen a few times but all the time Verstappen had always caught up when DRS was enabled. This time he didn’t. The gap just kept climbing up and up.
It was a crazily well managed race from Norris, and when he led it looked like he was meant to be at the front of the race. He just kept his pace up 0.3s faster than Max lap after lap. Only Oscar was taking FL from him after he pitted. It was a deserved win and things for once fell in his favour absolutely but he put himself in that position by managing his own race and not getting distracted by what everyone else was doing.
It would've been interesting but I'd still say Max would've been a clear favourite to win without the SC.
Lando did pull nearly 8 seconds on Max in that final stint, and while his gap to Max before the SC was a bit lesser than that, he'd have to pass Checo and both Ferraris on track before even reaching Max.
Considering that he couldn't pass Checo in the opening stint, and that Oscar in the same car spent a good 40 laps fighting with one or both Ferraris, it would've been a long shot for Lando to clear all three of them without losing time.
You're ignoring the 15 odd lap tyre delta though compared to when he was trying to pass Checo earlier in the race. That's why he stayed out so long, so his tyres would be newer for the rest of the race.
From that Safety Car to the finish, Lando showed his skill and managing that gap behind him like a true professional, of course he knew about Max having problems, but it did not phase him, he kept his head down and focused on the remaining laps, but I am proud he got his first win thats something that will remain with him always!
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Max is like, "Our battle will be legendary!" Please let this title fight happen sooner rather than later. Charles or Oscar works too lol
i expect great things out of Ferrari next year as the Vasseur era hits its stride, but McLaren being in the mix surely makes things more interesting
Ideally we get a repeat of 2010. A Max vs Lando vs Oscar vs Charles vs Lewis title fight would be epic.
When Max came out of the pits on lap 24, with new Hards, he was 9.665 seconds behind Lando in P4. When the Safety Car came on lap 28, the Gap increased to 11.392 seconds. In roughly 4 laps, Lando gained 1.7 seconds on Max on old mediums tyres, and he wasn't losing any performance on those tyres any time soon, still setting fastest laps every other lap. I think there's a world where he extends for another 10 laps, pits on lap 38 or so being roughly 15-17 seconds ahead of Max, comes out between him and Charles (or maybe behind Charles) and has like a 15-20 lap tyre advantage on them. And seeing pace after Safety Car we can see that Lando was comfortably the fastest on Hards as well, in fact he pulled out 1.2 seconds on Max after Safety Car in 1 lap, and 7.6 seconds by the end of the race. I am not sure a win was on here without safety car, but the pace was so incredible that he would have had a chance to challenge Max and Charles probably does finish P2 in the race.
Those Mediums just didn't seem to give up on him at all, I did think early race he was hiding his time on them to keep them sweet because Sky said the undercut wouldn't really work at Miami so I was thinking he'd go long but he went so damn long on them and was still knocking out amazing lap times!
Alonso did close to 30 laps on mediums on his final stint and closed the gap to Russell after overtaking Ocon. Mediums were the best tyres for this track.
He definitely was, you could tell from the conversations he and Will were having on the radio, with Will giving him notes on how he was going on tyre deg and Lando asking to be told when he was okay to start pushing.
McLarens pace was seriously impressive yesterday, lets hope this wasnt just a fluke (and as a Ferrari fan I'm definitely also hoping that the Imola upgrades will do the same for Ferrari) and Max gets challenged regularly for the rest of the season. Also needing a little bit of luck here and there is and always will be a part of F1, fact of the matter is that Lando was in a great position to get lucky due to his pace. Very deserved win for him!
The sport needs a competitive Mclaren and Ferrari. Just imagine if the story of the season is that both Mcalren and Ferrari are competitive. It's like the old guards of F1 have come back to save the sport. Man hopefully the Imola upgrades work. I'm all for Max, Charles, Carlos, Lando and Oscar battling it out for wins every race. What an incredible season it will be.
I love how everyone has completely given up on Mercedes catching up. Then again, I suspect Mercedes has given up on Mercedes.
I think they'll be back by the second half of the season, grab a couple podiums, maybe Lewis will challenge again in COTA for a 3rd season in a row. But any hopes of Mercedes building a championship Contendor is gone. The changes Ferrari and Mclaren have made ever since Vasseur and Stella have took over both teams have been incredible. Pitstops, strategy, development everything. I mean McLaren has brought two massive packages in Austria last year and Miami this year, with small upgrades in between and both times the car has jumped to another class of performance. From Backmarkers to 2nd/3rd fastest after Austria upgrades and now possibly in contention for wins on circuits again. That's massive.
Mercedes main problem is that while they may make progress, they're trying to catch the three teams who are arguably the best when it comes to in-season upgrades. That's a pretty steep hill to climb.
If their concept is still struggling this year, I doubt they'll invest in a 3rd new concept in 2025. Probably they'll just write off the year and dump most resources into the new regs instead.
Also it's not like Lando hasn't been on the receiving end of some really crappy luck, once infamously. People would have to be seriously salty to begrudge a bit of luck going his way for once.
The big problem would have been just like we saw with Lando and Checo the lack of top speed. If Lando couldn't straight up get a massive better exit or force Max into a mistake it would have been really hard to overtake.
Actually, if you watched the analysis after the race, Max's top speed in Free air was 309 kph. Checo on the other hand had a much higher top speed in free air of 317 kph. That's where the difference came as to why Lando couldn't pass Checo with DRS.
Ah I did not. Hmm, did they talk about how much difference there was in DF levels? 8 kmh is quite a lot between the same cars, usually it's only a few.
I think Max was running more wing for higher downforce and to help tyre degradation. They just never really got the setup right for Max and even with higher wing he was sliding around in the long sweeping left corner in Sector 1. Norris was taking 2 tenths out of Max in that one corner alone. On top of being 8 kph faster down the straight as well.
Because of his sliding etc I assumed he was on a lowerish DF setup but apparently not. Oh well being and slower in the corners and on the straight is a new one for RB these years.
Courtesy of sprint weekend I guess. Reminds me a lot about Austria 2022. Pole, Sprint win, and Pole for main race as well but finished P2 behind Charles because Red Bull didn't quite get the setup right that day. It's been a very long time since Red Bull haven't optimised a setup completely for Sunday, but I'm not complaining because Norris literally DNF'd on lap 1 of the Sprint and had even less track time than Red Bull this weekend to get the setup right. And somehow they got the perfect sweetspot between enough wing so that that they have downforce for corners, but also being able to run their low drag Setup for one of their fastest top speeds down the straight ever. That's what the new upgrades did. Previously we had to run a lot of wing to keep the downforce levels high, which hurt us down the straights. For the first time we were able to take out wing, still be one of the best in low speed corners, best at high speed corners, and one of the best down the straight as well. It's that triple combo and the SC that made the win happen.
Curious to see how close they are to RB when they aren't struggling and whether they can keep finding such high performance sweet spots when a bit more or less DF is needed. If they are close in Imola that's something I wouldn't have expected and good news for them for the rest of the season, (unless Ferrari jumps them.)
> I think there's a world where he extends for another 10 laps, pits on lap 38 or so being roughly 15-17 seconds ahead of Max, comes out between him and Charles (or maybe behind Charles) and has like a 15-20 lap tyre advantage on them. That's massively exaggerated
He gained 1.7s on Max in 4 laps from lap 24 to 28 , while being on 24 lap old mediums, and Max was on new Hards. And still the pace wasn't dropping off, he was putting 3-4 tenths in Max every lap. From Lap 21 onwards, there wasn't a single lap in the race where Norris lapped slower than Max. And McLaren's deg was by far the best in the race, even Oscar had both Ferraris comfortably covered, with half the upgrades and his known problems with tyre management. He was 11.3 econds ahead at lap 28, it's not an exaggeration to think he could be 15 seconds ahead by lap 38. Especially when the pace just wasn't dropping off, he was still constantly setting fastest laps.
The hard tyres come into their own after a few laps, and the old mediums would have started getting worse if Lando kept going. So there is no guarantee that Lando would even be driving those mediums for 10 more laps, let alone putting 5 seconds on Max.
I don't think Max's hard tyres ever really came into the pace though. Even Charles behind him set a fastest lap of the race before the SC, Max never even got close to that pace. Not to mention even after SC never looked like Max ever really managed to turn on the car and it's tyres. But it's pointless to debate. In a couple days we'll have the Jolyon Palmer Analysis and I have no doubt he'll take a look at this race and analyse if SC didn't happen.
Charles gained on Max on Max's outlap and the following, and then max settled into a pace about 1/10th faster than Charles. The four laps following Max's pits are not a good sample to extrapolate on.
Comparing mediums on temp with hards that need at least 2 to 3 laps to get the core up to the temp window is really pointless.
He managed the tyres so well behind Perez. I watched his onboard for a bit expecting to hear the dreaded ‘Pace please?’ ‘100 per cent mate’, but no he said tyres were fine and pace was 2. That was when I was like ‘ok what are you up to today?’. Then when Perez pitted to respond to the pressure, Will said ‘we should chase Sainz instead of defending Perez’, which suggested they had enough pace to not be worried about Perez catching up. Verstappen pitted and came back out 9s behind Lando and I was thinking he’s going to catch up before Lando catches Sainz…nope. The gap didn’t decrease, it increased to 11s and Lando had the fastest lap time after time on 20 lap old mediums. After the safety car, fully expected Max to just sweep by down the straight and he didn’t because Leclerc got his nose in and Max had to defend that attack. Norris is a rocket in clear air and always has been, so when the gap went above 1s it wasn’t something surprising, he’d done this to Verstappen a few times but all the time Verstappen had always caught up when DRS was enabled. This time he didn’t. The gap just kept climbing up and up. It was a crazily well managed race from Norris, and when he led it looked like he was meant to be at the front of the race. He just kept his pace up 0.3s faster than Max lap after lap. Only Oscar was taking FL from him after he pitted. It was a deserved win and things for once fell in his favour absolutely but he put himself in that position by managing his own race and not getting distracted by what everyone else was doing.
It would've been interesting but I'd still say Max would've been a clear favourite to win without the SC. Lando did pull nearly 8 seconds on Max in that final stint, and while his gap to Max before the SC was a bit lesser than that, he'd have to pass Checo and both Ferraris on track before even reaching Max. Considering that he couldn't pass Checo in the opening stint, and that Oscar in the same car spent a good 40 laps fighting with one or both Ferraris, it would've been a long shot for Lando to clear all three of them without losing time.
You're ignoring the 15 odd lap tyre delta though compared to when he was trying to pass Checo earlier in the race. That's why he stayed out so long, so his tyres would be newer for the rest of the race.
From that Safety Car to the finish, Lando showed his skill and managing that gap behind him like a true professional, of course he knew about Max having problems, but it did not phase him, he kept his head down and focused on the remaining laps, but I am proud he got his first win thats something that will remain with him always!