Reminded me a bit of Miami last year where Perez thought he could fight for the championship and then Verstappen just KO'd Perez and left him limping the rest of the season.
He also had to remain accident free while overtaking quite a few cars, in a race where there were crashes left right and centre. Sure he got lucky but he also made his own luck by driving an incident free race.
Say what you want about the guy, his attitude, or on track antics oft times, you cannot take today’s drive away from him. I’m not a fan of any of the former, but I concede, begrudgingly, today’s drive proved him to be one of the greats. The belligerent fastest laps at the end of it all were such a statement too. I can’t; I just can’t 😅
I don't get the Safety Car for "teams are on the wrong tires". Some had already switched to full wets. Surely this should be up to the teams to screw up instead of relying on the organizers to save them staying out on inters.
Even if everyone was on full wets, they bring it out for visibility and hydroplaning. I think that's part of the reason no one switched to full wets. They knew if conditions got bad enough to need them, the SC would come out and there might be a red flag too.
From memory, Tsunoda, Lawson, Hulk, Perez, Zhou, and I think there was 1 more. Their strategy was paying off with lap times 3s faster and that was just getting started. Sad to seen a great strategic choice like this turn to shit because teams know the race director will be overly cautious and protect teams from having to make risky strategy calls.
How do you even fix that? At this point driving on the wrong tyre is an optimal strategy. Either:
Driver stays on inters and calls for red flag cause it's undrivable
Driver on inters crashes because they should be on wets, causing a red flag
someone (like RB today) pits for wets and gets punished because someone else crashed out and caused a red flag
Also I'm not fooled by drivers moaning about how wets suck and have no grip; as long as inters are even 0.1 a lap faster than wets, everyone will want to run inters. I don't think there's place for two wet weather compounds since everyone will pick the 'faster' one regardles of weather.
Still cannot figure out why Stroll thought it was a good idea to drive through the gravel getting beached after he crashed, he could have made a 180 and stay on the tarmac.
F1 cars have reverse, which would've gotten him on safe ground. I think he tried a 180 but there wasn't enough tarmac to work with with the barriers being so close, so he beaches himself.
He lost the lead again and went off a few times and the team topped it off with bad strategy calls (+Lando wanted to come in even earlier) has nothing to do with luck i think.
It is though? I am in no way disregarding Max's drive, he was brilliant today, but the interview question was specifically about the VSC and red flag, which is 100% luck. Red Bull and Alpine got a free tyre change while every other team lost time and positions for the pit stop.
Plenty of stuff the FIA should fix after this race. They should change the rules to not allow modifications to the car during a red flag in the future for a start.
Edit: You can hear what the interviewer asked here. I don't think he's commenting on Max's drive, just pit strategy. He also did acknowledge the mistakes he made during the race, so there's that.
It's difficult to root for Norris to catch up to Verstappen when he's clearly not up to the task in all conditions.
conspiracy hat on: Red Bull is surely right that other teams are cheating with water in the tires. Look what happens when it's wet so they have no use for it.
If heaven exists, senna must be smiling - he saw one of the GOATs drive his car in tribute and then saw his spiritual successor drive the race of his lifetime at his hometown track
17 fastest laps and finishing 19 seconds ahead of Ocon begs to differ. Max would've won even if he had pitted under the safety car and he would've beaten Norris even without a safety car. Nobody had the pace Max had. The red flag made his race easier but it didn't "make all the difference".
You can't ignore that Max was given a free pitstop. Would Max have won even if he hadn't? Maybe. But after he was given the free pitstop, it was a sure thing that he was going to be in the top 3 ahead of George and Lando.
Sheesh. You get open track position in such conditions you can rattle off fast laps. Nobody said he wasn't a great driver. It just fell his way. Thin skin much?
While I'm a Verstappen fan I really want this to stop. It's not exciting and as an additional thing it might lead teamsvto leave their drivers out in dangerous conditions hoping to gain track position in case of a red flag.
It just worked out for him. Something like this usually happens during monsoon races. If it makes you feel better, he was able to stay out on ragged tires due to excellent car control. Of course, so did Ocon.