F1 2021 Season

First topic message reminder :

The season opening Australian Grand Prix & the Chinese Grand Prix have been postponed.

Bahrain Grand Prix on the 28th March to be the first race of the 2021 season.

Formula 1 to revert to 2pm race start times at European races this year.

F1 practice sessions will be shortened to one hour during Fridays across the 2021 season.

Cognizant have been announced as Aston Martin’s new title sponsor. They will be called ‘Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team’.

Alex Albon will drive in DTM this season, on selected race weekends

Lando Norris has confirmed he has contracted Covid, while staying in, Dubai.

Didn’t they come into the straight side by side and Hamilton pulled a very small lead but less than a cars length, so when they got to the corner he wasn’t far enough ahead and had to stay wide to avoid hitting Perez’s car? Certainly didn’t look much faster on the straight in that drag race.

Adrian Newey will be back with his team this weekend after a length absence following a cycling accident. Got to admit I wasn’t aware he was away. But his return should help with the balance issues Red Bull have been suffering in recent races.

Vettel and Russell will complete the back row in Austin. Both have taken new power units
Bottas has a 5 place penalty for his 6th ICE

Hamilton likely to take the 5 place penalty in Mexico

Alonso takes entire new PU. Joins Vettel and Russell at the back.

CoTA qualifying
Verstappen
Hamilton
Perez
LeClerc
Sainz
Ricciardo
Norris
Bottas
Gasly
Tsunoda

2 tenths a decent margin in the end. Still, limited the damage by beating Perez

Jeff Navarro wrote:CoTA qualifying
Verstappen
Hamilton
Perez
LeClerc
Sainz
Ricciardo
Norris
Bottas
Gasly
Bottas
Tsunoda

Nearly - Bottas starts in P9.  Hopefully Red Bull can begin to bridge the 36 point gap Mercedes have over them in the Constructors Championship.

Ps: Apparently Alex Albon has been in the AlphaTauri garage this race weekend passing on his experience to Tsunoda to help him get closer to Gasly.

Pps: It seems Perez who was the last car on track caught some rain as it started to fall on the last part of the track which caused him to slide on turn 15. If it wasn't for that he could have got his first career pole.

Pretty dull race, RB just look quicker round here.

Mazepin really doesn’t understand how blue flags work.

Good stop and Hamilton now chasing down Verstappen for the win

Verstappen looks like he will hold on. Think RB tactically made that more difficult than it should have been.

Given Hamilton’s likely penalty in Mexico, looks like advantage RB/Max now for the title

Pretty measured drive from Max. Lost it on the start but the RB had enough in hand to cover off the Mercedes while being on a worse strategy. Not sure Lewis and Mercedes could've done much more, just think RB had the better car this weekend

Masterful drive by Verstappen. Will be a crushing loss for Mercedes after Red Bull got the strategy wrong.

Where Ferrari and Vettel crumbled, Max and RB answer. Mexico and Brazil coming up, Merc are gonna have to dig really deep

As many stating now, Hamilton needs a Verstappen DNF at some point.

That really was a superb drive by Max - thought Hamilton would easily get him by the end, but really worked the tyres well. Think Merc are going to be pretty annoyed they didn't win that one, they were much quicker down the straights...not sure Max would've got Lewis if they just held track position by coming in early.

RB in control now - but as we've seen all season, Max is more prone to crashes/getting involved in incidents that cost him points than Lewis, so certainly by no means over. You'd think RB will be better at Mexico than the Merc tho

Mexico could be very interesting if Mercedes/Hamilton have to take an engine pen. Even with the straight line speed advantage, I feel Ferrari can be awkward in Mexico. The Ferrari is essentially a poor man’s Red Bull.
I’d still be tempted if I was Mercedes to take a pen in São Paulo.

At this stage I do wonder whether it's worth just rolling the dice on the current allotment of parts. If Max walks away with a big haul in Mexico and Lewis isn't on the podium it becomes pretty dicey altogether and RB can start managing it home. Though it is surprising to me that Mercedes need these number of spares. Wonder if they're bluffing with Bottas to a degree.

From what I’ve hear the engine situation for Mercedes isn’t to dissimilar to what happened to Yamaha last year in MotoGP.
The main danger is a DNF especially at high altitude in Mexico and/or Brazil.
They could roll the dice and pray for the best, but you’d imagine a DNF for Hamilton realistically would hand Verstappen the championship.

If they don't take one of the next two, that might be it anyway, particularly if Perez can build on his form.

Andretti motorsports have ended talks with Sauber Group.
Sauber Group wanted €600m for the team. Andretti doesn’t see the value in a fairly average team at present.
Zhou should be confirmed very soon as the second driver.

Verstappen already has three DNF's - one while leading (tyre blowout - Azerbaijan), one being taken out by Hamilton (Silverstone) and one when he ended up on top of Hamilton's car (Monza). Hamilton has one DNF - when Verstappen parked his car on top of his. Silverstone and Monza were both sprint race weekends. There is still one of those to go in Sao Paulo which follows the next race in Mexico.

Maybe Bottas can forget to brake for turn 1 again

Verstappen 3 non points finishes vs Hamilton 2 non points finishes.
Verstappen Baku, Silverstone and Monza
Hamilton Baku and Monza.

Probably also fair to point out Hungary if we're comparing events

There's no doubt Lewis is certainly less prone to these DNF/issues that Max seems to have - only really the restart at Baku being his main error costing him points?
Still mad to think what happened in that race! Mazepin can always say he beat Lewis Hamilton in a full race

I wouldn’t say Hamilton is less incident prone. He crashed at Imola when the red flag saved him from a non points finish.

Everyone crashes/spins, even Max. Not sure what pointing out DNF’s proves. Just part and parcel of an F1 season.

As for the championship as a whole, it’s been a strange one. For me, there’s been too many races dictated by unavoidable incidents or engine grid penalties, that have really denied us from witnessing a really great spectacle. I’d say the bad luck Verstappen has experienced, has been greater than Lewis’, and it’s that which has actually kept the season exciting, and not the actual racing.

It will be billed as a classic season, purely because of who’s involved, and it being the end of the Merc dominance, but in reality, it’s been quite a low quality affair, in terms of driver performance, especially from Lewis. There’s actually been very sparse wheel to wheel action, between the two protagonists. It promised so much after Bahrain, but apart from half a lap in Silverstone, and the Monza incident, we’ve seen very little memorable action from the top two, to consider this a classic season. 2012 was a far superior season, in terms of action and unpredictability.

I’m expecting Max to get over the line, and if he takes Mexico/Brazil, then the season end may just be anti-climatic. Hamilton needs a Verstappen DNF, similar to Silverstone, to realistically get back in the fight. He won’t do it by pace alone.

I do think ultimately, max being taken out by both mercs back to back at Silverstone and Hungary is the reason this is still a fight. But I think plenty to be enthused about from this season, it's been a proper fight with both teams having race winning form throughout the whole season, unlike the Vettel fights when Ferrari imploded after the midseason break.

Beyond that, McLaren and Ferrari having a good tussle for third place as they both try to rebuild to title winning form, plenty of standout drives further down the grid, Alonso doing some Alonso things etc.

It's been a good year. I do hope we dont end up with reliability ruining the rest of the season, and both contenders manage to keep it clean.

Horner suggesting Red Bull may take another engine penalty after the Mexico/Brazil double header.

Las Vegas ‘optimistic’ they’ll become the third American race on the calendar. Seems like they will outbid New York.

At the end of the day I think most people would like to see a system where different teams don't get too far ahead of other teams - such as what happened with Ferrari-Schumacher and with Mercedes-Hamilton where everything becomes too predictable - and the car has too much of an advantage over other cars.

During the hybrid era it seems there have been changes to the regulations that have maybe had the intention of closing up the field, but it seems each time Mercedes have been able to respond better and still keep ahead - except for this year, although this year it is still only a "two team competition". Ferrari seemed to have pulled something out of the bag engine wise, but that was later found to be not in the spirit of the regulations and was banned.

Probably one of the big changes in an attempt to level up the field is the cost-cap plus resource limitations (testing and wind tunnel and modelling time restrictions). This may also reduce the need for some teams to have paid seats rather than the most talented drivers (or drivers with the most promise).

One of the things I don't like is the sprint race but apparently that has been introduced to make it more interesting for those attending on Saturdays.

LeClerc and Perez crash in FP1, at the same corner, and both broke their rear wings.

Max miles clear in practice. Perez behind the Mercedes though

Red Bull are gaining massively in the stadium sector. Unsure if Mercedes can realistically get enough gains on that straights you counter that.

Engines penalties for Yuki and Stroll.

GSC wrote:Max miles clear in practice. Perez behind the Mercedes though

Teams were closer on the race simulations than the one lap pace - will be crucial for the Mercs to get through Q2 on the mediums if they can, you’d imagine Max will have no issues doing that.

RB 1-2 by a country mile with P3 almost done.

Lando and Ocon heading to the back of the grid with new engines

Yeah, disappointing from Mercedes. Look beaten now.

As I said before, for the neutral, this championship will need a Verstappen DNF now to get an exciting climax to the season, otherwise this will be done before Abu Dhabi.

Lance Stroll crashes heavily in Q1, doesn’t effect him too much as he’s got a grid pen. But a big rebuild from the Aston Martin crew.

RB balls it up + Issues for RB and their rear wings

Mercedes front row lock out

FIA gotta look into those Red Bull rear wings. If they are malfunctioning it’s very dangerous, could lead to massive accidents.

Could be a pretty boring race tomorrow, if Red Bull's race pace isn't better than quali. Have to say I'm surprised, as I thought Mexico was a RB circuit.

But then Max has been complaining about lack of grip and handling issues. Doubt they will be rectified for the race.

Goes without saying Valtteri's pole is something of a hollow achievement. If Lewis doesn't get past him early on, Mercedes will engineer a swapping of places.

Only other surprise was to see Tsunoda in the top 10. Besides that, it'll be the usual scrap for the points places.

Bit amateur hour from Red Bull looking at the final runs again. If you going to try slipstreaming, you need to actually practice it like Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren did.
Red Bull tried to use Yuki and Checo as a double slipstream for Verstappen. But they seemed to be too close together.

I don't know what happened with Tsunoda - someone mentioned he got a message from his engineer that Perez was three or four seconds behind him pushing, so Tsunoda immediately breaked and went off track to clear the way for Perez ahead of the S curves.  Perez was confused what was happening and lost the corner and went off track.  Verstappen behind him took his foot off the accelerator thinking there had possibly been an accident with the likelihood of yellow flags, and before he realized there was no accident he had already lost momentum.

Perez said he got too close to Yuki. Basically the mistake was on Red Bull. Blaming Yuki just seems pathetic.

It seems that Tsunoda was on an outlap having previously given Gasly a tow on his fast lap.  Tsunoda has an engine penalty and so will be starting at the back of the grid, so Tsunoda's job in qualifying was to help Gasly get a fast time.  On the outlap he was taking in information from his engineer and when he heard Perez was four seconds behind and pushing took the run off area ahead of the S curve to allow Perez to pass.  Perez saw Tsunoda's car going off into the run off area creating dust which distracted Perez and he lost the corner.   Verstappen saw the dust ahead of the S-curve and as he was entering into it could see two cars moving around in the run off area.

ps: According to Perez, he was not distracted by Tsunoda and the dust, he had simply got too close to him before Tsunoda went off track.

Perez is quoted as saying "He wasn’t a distraction it was that I was too close to him and it forced me to brake. Once I did that I lost my downforce and I think I got a lot of dirty air, lost the car unfortunately and lost my lap,".

Horner/RB blaming everyone but themselves. Shock.

Going to be mental this run down to T1 tonight. Wouldn’t surprise me to see it end in tears.

Red Bull swapped the rear wings from Verstappen and Perez’s cars after FP3. Perez with the cracked one and Verstappen with the one from the sister car.
Perez also destroyed one rear wing in FP1.
Red Bull frantically trying to get more rear wings for São Paulo as these two are the last ones left.
There was also a video online showing bits of Verstappen’s rear wing falling apart in FP3.
Not safe in the slightest if you ask me.

Didn't Red Bull have to change all their rear wings because they were found to be too flexible at high loads. Reduced flexibility results in increased fracture / failure rates.