GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => General F1 Discussion => Topic started by: Monty on October 28, 2019, 09:53:33 AM
-
Mercedes gamble worked for Hamilton and he drove a perfect race to bring it home first. Bottas redeemed himself after the rookie crash in Qualifying. Vettel showed why he is a multiple champion by making good strategy calls from the cockpit. Leclerc showed that even though he is a great driver he still has lots to learn.
Verstapen showed (yet again) that he is a big mouthed jerk that would be better suited to stock car racing than F1. Ricciardo showed what he could do if only he had a decent car. Perez had a well deserved result in front of his adoring fans.
-
Someone mentioned on chat that it seemed Hamilton’s whining about being pulled in too early may have been a ploy to make the other teams think he would need another stop.
I think that was correct and the teams and drivers didn’t push hard enough to catch him.
-
The biggest problem was that the tyre performance was really varied - hard tyres lasted between 22 (Sainz) and 51 (Riccardo) laps, depending on which car they were attached to. Trying to plan anything when the tyres last almost 250% of the time on one make of car than another - and it's not necessarily following the usual tyre degredation pattern - is very difficult. While it is clear in retrospect that one-stop was optimal, not every team had that as an option... ...and if Leclerc's pit stop had gone to plan, he'd have been ahead of Vettel after his stop (and arguably ahead of Hamilton, at which point he'd have been managing the race - one of his strengths - rather than trying to catch his rivals on fury and unknown tyres alone - one of his weaknesses). Which is, of course, why Ferrari split its strategies in the first place.
As for Mercedes, it probably knew that if anyone was going to make one-stop work, it was Lewis... ...but Lewis had naturally declined to trust the tyres he wasn't wearing yet.
-
It was a great race for showing a lot of drivers' true colours. Hamilton and Vettel putting on WDC displays, Bottas showing steady performance, LeClerc showing he has the skill, but still learning, and, of course, Max is quickly setting himself to be one of the best drivers who won't win the championship. Red Bull will eventually find someone who is just as skilled yet more reliable.
I think it's the first time I've seen where all the DNFs were cars that could've finished, but simply elected not to. (Of course, we don't know what sort of problems might have been hidden... wearing out brakes, power unit issues)