2021 Russian Grand Prix - Sochi, Sep 24 - 26

[El Scorchio]

Chaos! I bet Verstappen can’t believe his luck!

[RonMexico]

Championship swing

[godlameroso]

Incredible P1 for Norris! Excellent outcome for Mercedes.

[darkpino]

Make that 2, and another mistake of Mercedes. Unbelievable the amount of errors they made this season

[Mattyw]

Timing just wrong from Merc there

Great to see a very mixed grid again! Should be a great one tomorrow

[matt_b]

I knew Mercedes would find a way to botch it at the transition phase but fortunately Lewis is still P4 with slower cars ahead he can overtake in the race.

Red Bull will regret changing that engine now that was a poor decision

[RonMexico]

His gearbox might be in trouble, that's impacts on both wheels now. Disaster of a Q3 for Mercedes in general

[langedweil]

Great lap by Norris !!
He had that one coming for a while.
Nice grid for tomorrow ..

[sosic2121]

Lucky Hamilton, no significant damage to his car.

[Aesop]

Another mistake from Hamilton.

Pressure...

[Fulcrum]

That's 9 laps...The race is around 6 times longer than that, the tires are going to fall off a cliff and be horrendous to drive on in ~20 laps, there will be almost no grip in the rear, maybe you can nurse them for a one stop, but you'll be so painfully slow that it's not worth it.

So an, as yet, unobserved, yet humongous drop off in tyre performance. Okay then.

I'll stick with my prediction of a '1-stop' for Mercedes, with an unneccesary 2nd stop for fastest lap at the end of the race.

The drop off means if the opening stint starts in mid 40's on C2, then by lap 15 only mid 41's will be possible because you won't be able to put down the power in sector 3, by lap 20 you'll be doing 42's and you still have 32 laps to go. If you box on lap 14 you'll be doing mid 39's to high 38's because of fuel burnoff, and fresh tires, that's like 2.5 seconds pace difference per lap. Enough to overtake cars on older tires. Say I severely miscalculated, the hards are still not going to be able to do 30 laps for the same aforementioned reason. The pace drop off and the power of the undercut is too strong.

A 2.5 second per lap pace disparity means it takes ~10 laps to make up a pitstop loss. If your final stint is 14 laps, that gives you enough time to catch up, and gives you ~3 laps to get the overtake done.

Is there any evidence of such a drop off in performance though? I don't see it in the data.

[godlameroso]

Let's see, I called the weather, I called the fact that slicks would work. Tomorrow everyone gets free choice on starting tire, will be interesting to see who chooses what. [...]

[PlatinumZealot]

Congrats Lando!
And amazing by George Russell!

I don't think Mercedes would have gotten a second lap anyway. And tyre temps just never happened to Bottas.

As for Lewis. He's really getting old! old man Lewis! Will win tomorrow anyway. In a few laps he will DRS george and the slow Ferrari. He will have Norris in the undercut.

Perez.... Perez... Sigh.. Was expecting more from him.

[hudnut]

"Lewis Hamilton said he knows the "intense" pressure title rival Max Verstappen must be feeling as he battles for his first Formula One championship".
I don't think VER is the only one feeling pressure. Silly mistake.

[Artur Craft]

Chaos! I bet Verstappen can’t believe his luck!

Absolutely NOTHING to do with "luck"