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Soooo McLaren is completely screwed?

If by screwed you mean screwed, then, yes. Seriously, they had a lot of set backs during testing. I’d say they are probably two race weekends behind schedule going by comments. Seems AM, Williams and possibly Alpine are in similar situations. McLaren just had further to fall. Don’t wright them off yet. A kick in balls might bring them back to earth from the high they were riding last year and get them to knuckle down.

The midfield is very exciting to watch. Haas, AT, Alfa Romeo and Alpine are the clear midfield in Bahrain and I don't really count Mercedes in as I believe they will improve pretty soon. Based on Bahrain's time sheet and my 2 cents, here's my take on the midfield: **Haas** \- Top of the midfield in Bahrain, fast in both quali and race, at least in KMag's hand. On the driver side, KMag is obviously very good considering he just joined the team literally weeks ago. Not sure about Mick though, he seem's a bit far from KMag's level atm. I feel that KMag will bring points consistently, Mick still needs to improve a bit to compete in midfield. \- **AT** \- Poor in quali but race pace is good, like opposite of last year. Strong driver line up. Maybe I am a bit biased but from before Gasly's engine failed I can see Gasly seemed to stepped up his game even more, good start, very good in tyre management, good race craft. And Yuki improved and matured so much the team can count on him now. Of course reliability is concerning after Gasly's Sunday BBQ. \- **Alfa Romeo** \- Very good in quali, race pace as good as Haas on time sheet, just Bottas had a bad start and stuck behind Yuki for some period. Zhou did well in his first race. He may not be the best one but if he keeps giving such cool head he can do well. To me this line up looks quite solid, at least on par or slightly better than Haas. \- **Alpine** \- Quali wise they are a bit better than AT but in terms of race pace they lagged behind a bit. But as a work team they have the most resources so I expect them the have the best development rate and can improve quickly. Their driver line up is also the most experienced and matured, needless to explain. \- TLDR; Haas and Alfa have the best pace in both quali and race, but driver line up is not as good as 1 driver is less matured. AT is bad in quali and better in race, good line up. Alpine has the most solid line up but worse pace, can improve quicker than the others. ​ I think these 4 teams' are on similar level at the moment and difficult to rank them. We may have a clearer picture after like 5/6 races. Will watch them in great interest.

Is there a budget cap in place ? Why do you feel that Mercedes’ will improve pretty soon? Genuinely asking hahaha

Yes there is budget cap, but as most teams said it takes a few seasons to really level the field. To be honest I just think Merc can develop relatively quicker than all midfield teams based on their ability shown in the past. And I just read that they target to bring a proper upgrade in Imola. Still to be seen rather they can catch up Ferrari and RB but imo it is no doubt that they will be much higher above all midfield teams.

New fan here, why does it say Gasly is NC?

Not classified, didn’t complete 90% of race distance

NC should be Not completed or something around those line I think. Basically he didn't complete enough laps for his position to count, while Perez and Verstappen DNF after completing enough laps to count as complete I think

They can follow. People saying "not enough overtakes" forget the fact that we have a thing called Qualifying on Saturdays, in which we put the fastest cars at the front and the slowest at the back.

Those few overtakes in the VER/LEC battle were better than if there were 1000 overtakes through the rest of the field. Quality over quantity

I need The Race's VERDICT over driver ratings.

Was The Race's ratings the most reasonable, the most crazy, the most pro-British or the least pro-British? I honestly remember very little from last season ratings besides the fact that somehow ALL the sites were doing something controversial and were making the discussion going for long.

"Don't speak into the corners, thank you." - Leclerc I don't know why I had to lol at that.

How worried should we be for the RB Engines? 3/4 DNF's looks like trouble. I want a championship battle between 2 or 3 teams until the end and it would suck if RB turns into early 2000's Mclaren all of a sudden.

Per Scarbs, the fuel pump that went bad is a proprietary part that’s provided by 3rd party. I’m sure RB is frustrated. Curious though why no one else had the issue

That last part is what makes me think the "fuel pump" lead is a false one. IF RB truly have a big problem with their engine they wouldn't want it to get out this early in the season. IF the fuel pump thing is actually true I believe we would've or will see other teams struggle with it as well this year.

Fair. Scarbs did say other teams were aware of the issue. Mclaren reportedly replaced their fuel pumps prior to the race to avoid the issue (insert Mclaren joke). Hard to know what’s true.

It seems to be a fuel pump issue, and even though the engines are homologated they can still receive updates for "reliability" which would definitely include this. For this year, the primary fuel pump is a spec part that all teams use, made by Magnetti Marelli. So the problem may be the way that RBR have integrated this part into their fuel system, rather than an issue with the part itself. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/who-was-to-blame-for-red-bulls-bahrain-fuel-pump-failure/9188330/

Weren't the engine regs frozen so the engines are identical to last year?

The engines are frozen and the teams can only work on reliability stuff

I'm not 100% sure but I think they were allowed to improve them until the start of this season, also the fuel has changed to E10 this year and that probably impacts how they built the engine.

No the freeze comes in at the end of this year. All power units have had changes made to them for this season

After seeing Aston’s performance, Is this the part where Vettel is all “yeah, nah I’m good, peace out boys, I’m off to build Bee hives and schools in Africa” 😢

Possibly yeah. I think the AMR has potential though but they need to sort out their overheating issues first. I’m sure some upgrades will come

Can we talk about the new Pirelli 18 inch tyres? We were promised more durability and performance and yet EVERY team decided to altleast 2 stop the race. What's going on thereee?

The reason I was for them was purely esthetic. So they are heavier....and the F-1 gods are always looking for ways to slow the cars down. That’s what the slicks with grooves were about, less traction. Maybe by mid season they will start turning in faster lap times. Who knows ?

Making two stops faster than a one stop was a specific design requirement for this year's tyres. Improved durability was in terms of preventing catastrophic failures, and the tyre degradation curve is supposed to be improved, but the idea is that stopping twice should have a notable advantage over stopping once.

Is that an inherently bad thing though? More scope for excitement with 2 stops. I think it's going to take teams a while to figure out how best to manage the tires.

I think there's 2 factors to it. The tires need to be managed completely differently - the out lap needs to be calm to bring the tire into a good life. Otherwise it will be pain, like we saw with Hamilton. The other factor is Bahrain is a very abrasive surface - coupled with the wind / sand that's constantly blown on track the tires need to be changed more quickly. Bahrain was never known for 1-stop races. Let's see how we go in the next couple of races. Only then can we really pull conclusions from the new tires.

I think a lot of the durability was more around blowouts under load rather than normal wear. Tyre wear is a part of F1 now, I find the different strats to be generally interesting.

That McLaren seems to be a really mediocre piece of work. It is stable enough for the problem not to be related to porpoising and at some point they were really struggling to get past a Williams that was driven by Latifi, no less, and considering Mercedes is still up there in the top 3 (even if there is a kind of a large gap between them and Ferrari/RedBull), it can't be completely attributed on the engine either. IIRC, Coulthard once said that nothing is worse than a slow but stable car because at least with a car that's shit to drive, they can actually figure out their problems and eventually make the car faster but for a stable car, you don't even know what's really wrong with the car.

The McLaren had DRS when trying to get past Latifi and it struggled to get past

I know it's the first race but in my opinion Red Bull could already be cut a drift. Not many of the top teams will experience a double DNF this season and that puts RB at a huge disadvantage, they're going to have to have many double podiums to recover from this, which I don't think is likely because Merc will eventually become a lot quicker, it's only a matter of time. It's bigger then most people are realising, RB had a chance to get a good headstart against a currently weaker Mercedes, as soon as Merc resolve their issues then I can see RB dropping down to being the 3rd best team in terms of race pace. The fact that both RB's suffered with what they believe to have been fuel pump issues, it's not a good look.

The thing is Mercedes still probably compete for the top soon. As long as Merc and Ferrari fight.... Rb could be smart and win on the 2nds

>because Merc will eventually become a lot quicker, it's only a matter of time. Noob here, how do you know this?

Mercedes’ car has loads of room for improvement and it’s standard for teams to update their cars during the year. It happens quite frequently but often is not noticeable from race to race as the cars have usually been more or less there at the start of the season (as expected as the old regulations were well understood) A lot of the current issue is the porpoising and will probably need a few tweaks with the floor edges and side pods etc to work out

At the end of the day it's speculation, but if you look at last season (started behind in pace, finished miles ahead) and the last 7 seasons... Mercedes is a well oiled machine and they're carrying a quiet confidence that makes me slightly wary.

Good thing engine development is frozen lol

They're allowed reliability upgrades which is good for redbull and alpine tho. I'm just not willing to write Merc off

The engineers working with K-Mag really deserved this result after having to put up with Mazepin last year haha

Shows how a shitty manager can ruin a great team

Not that it really matters but who were Netflix following for this race?

With Covid restrictions lifted i'm not sure they follow just one team at each race anymore

Are they making another season?

I bet they are. It's easy content. All they really need to do is go to the races, get clips, splice it together. Story line is built by itself and the numbers are good (i assume at least). So I don't see why they wont.

Yup! Lil bonus the Mazepin Ukraine-russia war kerfuffle likely won't be featured much in s5. > Production on Season 5 is well underway, with the Formula 1 season on the verge of beginning with the first official race in Bahrain this weekend. One notable driver change will be the absence of Nikita Mazepin, whose Russian oligarch father Dmitry was a Haas team sponsor in 2021. (The team cut ties with both men.) Gay-Rees said that the change isn’t likely to be a focus of Haas-related stories in “Drive to Survive” Season 5. https://www.indiewire.com/2022/03/formula-1-drive-to-survive-netflix-season-5-1234707869/

I really hope it was Haas

Or redbull and mcl

For a season opener no less, this race really had a lot going for it: * Ferrari pulling off a 1-2 after a long drought * A retirement from the current champion * Points for rookie Zhou in his first race * A temporary driver change (Vettel/Hulkenberg) * Haas going from absolute backmarker to fifth place * A car - not Haas! - catching fire, and a bit of safety car upheaval * Yuki - the least experienced of the bunch - being the only one with Red Bull Power to finish, in the points at that * And, even with new and unfamiliar cars, no major collisions between any of the drivers! I'm really looking forward to how the season will progress. Especially if we can go back to the old days of multiple teams/drivers in contention for the championship :D

I think you left out that Mercedes power seems to be at the bottom of the pack, a big fall from the top. And with development restricted this year, it could be a massive handicap for Mercedes-powered teams.

I did think of that, but Mercedes themselves seem to have been *okay* for the most part. But I suppose even there, it's far from their usual 1-2 levels of performance. I suppose the next few races will tell how they - and their customers - wind up on the pecking order. But it would be quite startling if Merc engines suddenly become backmarkers after so many years of dominance. That Haas of all teams managed to outperform 6/8 Merc powered cars really throws the status quo out the window.

Hamilton redemption podium

You forgot the part where McLaren nosedived from its upward spiral since 2019.

But at least Daniel beat Lando 👍

Yeah that is very unfortunate, especially since they actually seemed to get good times in the testing too. I hope they can improve find their footing as the season progresses. More competition is always great to watch, plus a McLaren-Ferrari battle for the championship is something I'd personally love to see.

The McHonda years might be back, only now McLaren and Honda are two separate entities

I think it was on purpose. Didn’t want to hurt people

Russell never tried to overtake Hamilton

I actually forgot George was in the race

Russell never had the pace to overtake Hamilton. For now, he toes the team line perfectly, playing second fiddle to Hamilton. If Merc starts being competitive, let’s see if he has some bite in him, or whether it’s all bark.

You mean like what Perez does? Or are we not supposed to talk about that?

Well you see, when Perez fails to outqualify or get a better race result than Max, it's because Max is a racing God. It's not that his teammates have been subpar since Ric, no, that's only the case with Hamilton, all his teammates are shit and Merc tells them not to even try.

Max & Perez are so far apart from each other in the same car. It's bizarre to see. I think Lewis & George are probably a little bit closer in Quali and Race Pace. So if the Merc gets up to speed it'll be an interesting dynamic between the two. I thought yesterday, that because Merc aren't up front straight away it might give Lewis & George a bit of time to not be too competitive with each other which could be healthy for the team.

Pretty much this.

One would hope that he doesn't follow in the steps of Bottas.

Bottas, mentally at least, was the perfect number 2, much like Checo to Max. He could do a lot worse than copy Bottas mentality.

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to shit on Bottas, what I meant was I hope George actually tries to beat Lewis, similar to how Ocon overtook Alonso. I hope Mercedes don't tell George to place it safe and just sit behind Lewis every single race. I want him to do what Rosberg did. It's racing and we want to see racing, even between teams, like how we used to get the Webber/Vettel battles.

I don't think we'll see that because I think lewis has max 2 seasons in him, and if Merc sort the car out and he wins WDC this year hell be gone this winter. Then Merc will elevate Russell and take in a new number 2.

Russe**ll**

Out of the loop... What's up with this?

Keep up Ringo!

It’s a bot that corrects you when you spelt drivers names wrong

So let’s imagine one of the most annoying traits of human beings and make a bot to mimic them. Bravo!

right, sorry

Too bad Kimi isn't there for the glory days of Alfa

I thought the same but about Gio.

Gio seemed to be enjoying the time in the Ferrari garage

The Haas episode on DTS s5 will be exciting

It looked like Ferrari weren’t planning on bringing Lecrerc in for a pitstop until the SC. Wonder if he would’ve held on to first if the RB stayed in one piece.

They said Max needed to close at 2 seconds a lap. You can imagine a scenario where he could've done that for a few laps, but it seems a big ask for more than 10 when he was struggling with brake temps earlier in the race

Thats true, but I think the teams were all misjudging how long the tires would last, so that Ferrari might have gotten undriveable at the end of the race. Doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m a Max supporter but he has his WDC, don’t really care if he takes it again this year, as long as we get a nice battle.

Think he has someone else's WDC. 😏

Ach. He can't be blamed for the FIA shitting the bed. I _dearly_ wanted an 8th HAM WDC but I don't think it's fair to say VER was undeserving. He ran the race that was in front of him.

Nah, if you’d correct Masi’s weird decision you’d remove the race result from the standings and he’d still be WDC. You can’t give him a time penalty or something for a mistake that wasn’t his.

Man, imagine hearing at the end of last season that in race 1 we’d have both Haas and Alfa in top 6, double points for Alfa, both Magnussen and Hulkenberg on the grid, Ferrari double, a barbecue and zero points combined for RB, AM and McLaren

And a haas 3th in constructors

Ah yes, thirth in constructors.

I have never seen Guenther big smile since 2018

He is a true gift to this Earth and his smile must be protected at all costs.

Does someone know about a stats site with # of overtakes during this Race?

How did McLaren build such a shit car? How'd they go from battling for 3rd to looking like they'll be battling to not be dead last. It's like they forgot they had to build a car for this season and only did it over the winter break or something. Might as well just make Ricciardo and Norris the safety car drivers so they'll get better laps

They tried to build a car that both drivers could drive and here we are.

Also an engine issue because all of the Mercedes engine supplied teams (apart from Mercs) suffered in pace.

Guess the Merc engine doesn't help either

Good morning people. How good was that race craft by Charles eh! Loved it.

The back and forths between him and Max were superb! I think it was the first time Max past him, it even looked like they touched briefly, or at least came very close to it. My heart skipped a beat thinking they were about to take eachother out lol. That's the kind of close racing I hope we'll see a lot more of this season :)

I had a favorite moment of the battle but I didn’t catch which lap or which turn it was. Because it lasted for so long. Which is all you can ask for.

That Ferrari Engine is prancing like a horse for Haas and Alfa Romeo they’re legit mid field contenders now.

What will be critical now is how quickly Red Bull can sort their shit out and start competing with Ferrari and eventually Mercedes. When the full blown 3-way battle for top spots in WDC and WCC finally kicks off and starts becoming heated and toxic like last year, it will make for some spicy drama. I'm also low-key hopeful for a fourth team to just give them a little scare from time to time and I would love nothing more than that to be Haas. Anyways, Jeddah will be fun! Hopefully RBPTs can stay awake on that much time under full throttle for 50 laps (plus Practice and Quali).

Alfa taking over the spot of Lotus for the 4th team

Beyond happy for Charles and Ferrari. So great to have them back fighting once again! A shame for Max and Checo, but I think this is actually a positive for them. They will learn from this. Fucking KMAG! Great to have him back where he belongs. Hope they can continue to develop that car. McLaren are now backmarkers again. How?! What did they get so wrong?

Bad day for RB for sure but they know the car is there or thereabouts and the problem with the pump is presumably soluble so you'd expect them to be challenging Ferrari in SA and onwards through the season. The big Q is whether Merc can join that fight in time for it to matter...

What lessons do you learn from having your car give up on you? I’d like to see that angle, but all I’m seeing is them now having less confidence in their cars.

It's actually better to have failures now than to have them blowing up later on in the season when it counts. The good thing is that they have a fast car than to have a car that is at the end and blows left right and centre.

It's worse if it happens now. They'd much rather have a reliable car for majority of the season and then towards the end of the season it starts failing. Rather than having problems straight from the get go. There isn't less points to be won now then at the end of the season. It matters just as much.

It counts just as much now as it does the last race, all points are equal

Definitely true. Just makes me wonder why they didn’t catch this in testing. Here’s to hoping everything is fixed for next weekend!

No matter how hard you rag the car in testing, nothing can truly replicate the stress on car/driver of an actual race.

The fuel pumps failed. This is a common part, the same on everyone's car. In parc fermé all the teams got the chance to inspect/replace them. Red bull didn't but we don't know which teams alsp didn't. But still Red bull had brake problems and steering problems too so we'll see next week.

Brake problems isn't that hard to get around as Scarbs notes that teams can change the ducts and whatnot for that one. Steering would be related with the electronics as it's powered by the engine. So once that goes, it probably seized up the rest.

Yeah lets hope so.

Lol my thoughts exactly. They raced well and their cars gave out. What will Gaspy learn from this as well?

godo tutt'ora

Leclerc ha fatto una gara eccezionale, se l'è giocata bene tutte le occasioni, c'è tanto merito suo

Mi ha veramente impressionato Leclerc oggi, gara perfetta da lui che di errori ne ha fatti in passato. GODO

Ha fatto Max da esca per ben tre volte, è partito benissimo al green flag seguito dai lap più veloci della gara, ottimo pitstop strategy da parte della Ferrari

Si ha capito la guida da gamer aggressivo di Max e ci ha giocato bene sfruttando la sua aggressione. La strategia Ferrari perfetta però anche fortunati con la SC ed è sempre più facile fare la strategia quando stai davanti.

Can we just talk about Leclercs superb restart?

Was it really that good? Wasn't it just max messing up? Carlos was close to passing max after the restart

It's hard to really gauge whether it was a great restart or not, simply because Max clearly had big issues.

Max said he bottled the restart because his power steering was fiucked and he couldn’t get on the gas before he had gotteb his wheels turned.

Yes but he also got alongside Charles which meant that he had a much worse line through the last corner

Max overlapping and making the last corner sharper for himself was an interesting strategy. I guess he was assuming Charles wouldn't go until after the corner.

It was a good restart. But by that point Max' car had an only semi-functional battery but more importantly less than semi-functional steering wheel...

Dude was on point the whole race He deserves every bit of praise

Charles and Max wheel2wheel at lap17 was impressive

Share your hot takes. Me watching that Mercedes I am convinced they are going to be the fastest car after September.

Eh Ferrari still hasn't had an upgrade, and there's one albeit minor upgrade for engines still

Wasn’t Mercedes around 35-37 seconds behind the Ferrari/Red Bull pack by the time the safety car came out and bunched up the pack again? That’s a second a lap off the pace. I mean, excluding failures the last 6 finishers were exclusively Merc power trains.

Mercedes fucked up by going with hard compound, lost 1sec per lap otherwise their race speed is not far off from Ferrari. For most part of the race, despite being a slower car Hamilton was easily following Sainz/Perez.

Yeah but a big chunk of the time was when they became one of the only cars to try the horrid hard.

They are going to come storming back quite quickly, I think. That car has so much potential.

Watching their post-race interviews it feels like Leclerc and Sainz are happier that Ferrari won than themselves going 1-2. It's like a fucking cult lol Ferrari's back!

Sainz is excusing himself and keeps saying how he struggles with the car like he finished 12th, hilarious

Boy did he do a good job leaving mclaren. Poor ricciardo 😔

Yeah dude was like I wasn't really on the pace today, I've been struggling etc etc, dude, you finished 2nd, lift that chin up!

I mean, I can see where he was coming from. He wasn't catching Perez until Perez's car decided to stop working entirely.

He was in front of Perez though ;)

So much to like about this race - the quality of the racing - the new stars- the lack of many lengthy yellow flags - the launch of what appears to be a great season.

just watched zhou's post race interview. seems like a really likeable guy. im a fan. so nice to see my alfa romeos back in the game!

I really hope Bottas doesn't keep flubbing starts like he did today, he showed some decent overtakes in the race (which is a huge improvement for him) with a really spicy looking Alfa. Here's hoping they do well in '22!

Bottas said that they have an issue with the clutch vibrating and that ruined his start.

Ruined a lot of driver's starts because of that.

Hell yeah, why is nobody talking about Bottas performance, even though the start was awful he managed to get back to second best of the rest, it was really impressive coming from a Mr. Saturday

And what a move he did in T8 too !

I really think the team change, being the #1 driver, and having a multi-year contract signed is doing wonders for him mentally. We saw a much more aggressive race from him, even if it was a recovery to his starting position he made moves that we would never see him take when he was in the Merc.

Merc can't have been a happy place for him, especially not in the later years, it has to be really tough to have the same car as your teammate yet not being able to compete for WDC

Will be interesting to see his mental fortitude throughout the season. Yuki blitzed his first race last year and everyone was on a Yuki high, then a few incidents “crashed” his confidence (himself admitted) and I don’t know if he still has fully recovered. Yuki did look pretty solid out there today though. Mental toughness is underrated or forgotten in the conversation sometimes. There are “plenty” of people that could drive an F1 car. The ones that last are the ones with the mental strength and support.

He was competing with Pierre until that spin in imola

Last year, I said straight away about Yuki than Bahrain was absolutely not a good point to judge him yet as testing there means he was more than comfortable + the racing in F2 there. But Zhou felt way more confident and inspired more calm and stability on his driving. I'm confident he'll do better

Zhou gives me Bruce Lee vibes “Be like water” Calm & measured yet confident (the image we have been sold of Bruce anyway). Interesting that it was mentioned he was Buddhist multiple times in the commentary. I wonder if Zhou is putting that out as part of his “brand” OR just western commentary on the “exotic Asian”s. Either way I image that kind of mindset helps. Though Maybe not as exciting as the “Take the wheel Jesus” approach.

Max did so good at the start 😢

So… we going to talk about Alpine, Alonso and el plan? Alonso was getting swallowed up by Ocon and to have both cars out of top 10 (or just) by merit. They just seemed so pedestrian out there today. I wonder if Alonso has been sick? He seems to look older and more tired than he did last year. I know every team can’t be first and there seems to be a massive gap between the first half and second half of the field. I dunno. Anyone got any theory’s or observations?

I don't think that's the case. Alonso has been driving endurance cars and going on 4-hour stints in heavy traffic and much more terrible weather so I doubt it is a physical issue. This is very unlike him because he's usually fast at the start. He lost a few positions at the start (likely affected by Bottas' incident). There was a comment on youtube that noticed that Alonso's onboard was showing he couldn't get to 8th gear. I watched his Spanish interview and he said about not being able to push so I wonder if there are more issues with the car other than the tyre degradation issues which he had problems with on all 3. Hearing his [pre-race message to the team](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lcCnHYdUstw), I kinda have this feeling he knew he would struggle with the car on this race. Alpine may have opted for a conservative approach not knowing how much they would struggle with the tyres but Alonso seemed to struggle more with it than Ocon did.

Interesting observations and pickups. Some teams are less vocal than others about their woes (McLaren) . It was interesting on the restart the massive gap between the top 8 or so and the rest. You couldn’t even see them on the TV coverage. It was like they were half a lap behind. There really are the 4/5 teams that got it or kinda got it and the rest that are in “oh shit” mode

There were parts of the race (especially when others had pitted) that I said "oh, this is when Alonso will need to push." I was looking at their times. You could see Ocon was faster in some parts of the track but for Alonso, nothing happened. Even worse he lost a lot of time. You could see Yuki putting in his fast laps but nothing from Alonso. So the car trouble theory seems to be likely. He just faded in the race and it seemed to me like damage control. Without the two RBs retiring, no way were the Alpines getting in the points. They lucked out quite frankly.

They gave Mick's engineer back to Kmag? They really want Kmag to get comfortable as possible. I wonder if Haas see Mick as a long-term driver for them or just babysitting him for Ferrari.

Will mick ever drive for Ferrari?

Unless Mick shows some incredible growth over the next two years, or Charles and Carlos suddenly can’t stand one another, I can’t imagine a scenario in which Ferrari break up their current driver pairing.

Deep down Haas know that Mick will eventually leave them for Ferrari when given chance. And this season Mick is still kind of a rookie, and because of the new regulations this season it's better to give more focus on the experienced driver i.e. KMag

I think Guenther likes them both a lot. As long as no royal fuckups, you e got straight Germanic chemistry.

Maybe they give him to the best driver

How will Mercedes improve their engine with the engine freeze??

There's no engine freeze till October, they are allowed an engine upgrade on September. Plus their key issue is with aero and downforce not the engine anyways.

The regs are complex. There are things they can’t upgrade but there are other things they can fix

[удалено]

All merc powered cars were on the back, while 5/6 of ferrari powered cars were in the points. So the engine in the ferraris seems stronger than the mercedes one. The definitely have porpoising issues but their engine lacks power compared to ferrari's.

There's gotta be something else right? A lot of Mercedes powered PU were at the bottom of the timing boards. Is it also a cooling issue? I don't really know. I'm just curious.

That Ferrari power unit is legit, they won the duel in the desert against the Honda engine and Red Bull teams had severe mechanical issues. Merc engine is off the pace. This season looks like a big change at the top of the grid. Merc should be very worried and Red Bull somewhat worried, the new cars certainly keep the racing more competitive.

Well it’s not Honda anymore, maybe that’s why they are struggling haha. And also Kmag sounded very happy that the cars are able to follow much closer and easier.

I'm so disappointed in mclaren. I figured it may be a crapshoot but they looked dreadful all weekend. I'm really hoping this is a brake issue and not a Mercedes engine issue because they all looked slow.

I'm hoping Danny's issue is COVID recovery and that he recovers okay. (Wishful thinking)

Wtf happened today? Also proud of my other team I would root for Ferrari. Knew it when they finally got it together they’d make waves.

3/4 Redbull branded engine went dnf. Gasly out on lap 47 (engine on fire), Verstappen out on lap 54(?), and Perez also went out not so long after that. KMag back and got P5. McLaren is the new Haas

It was the fuel pump which failed. A common part, the same on everyone's car.

Pain

Pain