2021 United States Grand Prix - Austin, Oct 22 - 24

[Wouter]

Nice to see how everyone makes up excuses why the W12 is not as fast as the RB16B.
Both cars were on the tarmac like a train, both equally good, but Mercedes has opened their PU completely
and Honda is always very conservative, so that PU can open even further.
Conclusion: The difference is in the PUs. Honda's PU is finally the most reliable and strongest PU on the field right now.

.
Where was their power at Monza and Sochi when Verstappen couldn't get past McLaren?

Mercedes has reliability issues because they open the PU way too much because they want to beat Honda.
Honda, on the other hand, did not find it necessary to release a lot of power, because they are going to release a little more power every last race. That started yesterday and the result was visible.
Hamilton only 0.015 sec faster than Perez! Perez who normally qualifies a lot slower than Max.
I wonder how many ICE's Mercedes will have to use to keep up with the reliable Honda PU.
Bottas now has 3 new PU's in the pool. That is not normal in the last part of the season!
That's what you get when you have to use the PU way too aggressively, then you can't race it for 7 races, like Honda can.

[NL_Fer]

It is obvious Hamiltons PU is tuned down, compared to Bottas’ brand new ICE. Maybe even up to 0,5s… assuming Hamilton can be 0,3s quicker than Bottas.

[Juzh]

It is obvious Hamiltons PU is tuned down, compared to Bottas’ brand new ICE. Maybe even up to 0,5s… assuming Hamilton can be 0,3s quicker than Bottas.

How is it obvious that Hamilton's 1 race old PU is up 0.5s slower than Bottas new PU?

[search]

Bottas now has 3 new PU's in the pool. That is not normal in the last part of the season!

it was reported that the Monza ICE is not usable anymore, so it's likely to be two only. I guess they mixed the other PU compenents with the ICE introduced this weekend.

[AeroDynamic]

I don't know if he was close enough to get a benefit but I'm pretty sure that last run was the only one where Hamilton got a tow of Bottas

Lewis was towing bottas around, I think it was his turn to do it. Max was towing checo around I think.

MCS probably went for broke getting a tow off Bottas in the last attempt. Figuring P2 was imperative to have an opportunity off the line.

I hope those two wont take eachother out

Did you even watch qualifying?
Q2 - ham behind bot
Q3 first run - ham ahead bottas
Q3 second run - ham behind bottas

Not that it matters anyway because in all instances following car was waaaay to far behind to benefit from any slipstream. For example on last Q3 run hamilton was around 13s behind bottas, so all this conversation about slipstream is pointless. On this track any downforce disruption is more detrimental to laptime than what you can gain on back straight with slipstream.

Yeah I did, I said what I remembered - Lewis towed Bottas around atleast once. But you’re right it wouldn’t have been that beneficial

[atanatizante]

One reason Merc was losing in qualy was due to high track temps that caught them out Merc this time coz basically RB16B has a wider tyre window operation when it comes to the softer range of the tyres, especially C4 soft tyre, as we could easily see that in Bahrain, Azerbaijan, France, Austria and Nederlands ...

The second reason is the fact that Merc was concentrating their car setup on the medium tyre which will be the race tyre, the one they`ll start and most important they`ll use at least 2 times in the race, as James Allison was hinting at Sky, for COTA being a high wear track ...

A bit of an unknown quantity about C2 hard tyre, although they seem to perform better at the harder range of the tyres, nevertheless it`s nice to see that they have at least 2 tenths in their pocket on the medium ones, of course after FP2 sim race analysis ...

And last but not least, it`ll be interesting to see had BOT will do a longer first stint in order to block VER with the ease of his superior top speed ...

Verstappen was even faster in Q2 relative to Hamilton when they both had the medium.

You`re right! They`ve took a little step back on performance just not to break the car over the bumps here: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... s/6706617/

Looking at the qualy times from 2019 it seems they are almost 1 sec. slower this time and this could be down to heavier cars now (some 42kg more? equal to almost 1 sec. here ...).

Knowing that 2021 tyres are a lot harder than the 2019 ones, and bearing in mind HAM`s experience both for 1 stop strategy last race and his ability to manage the tyres, could he also mirror the same strategy now? He could do a long first stint on medium tyres, had he wouldn`t pass VER and even a longer second stint on hard ones but essentially this time he would run in free air a long time and with a lighter car ...

[Zynerji]

A safety car will probably happen at some point, then it's a scramble anyways...

[atanatizante]

After FP1 Merc has taken a step back regarding top speed and this was due to modifying their ride height just to better run the bumps but mainly not to crack something in the race, something we could see in 2019 with VET and now with VER rear wing in FP3 ... so that`s why they spend all the FP3 session trying to set up the rear of the car, which was so poor in HAM`s hands and complaining over the radio during the session ...

I`d also say they`ve taken another step back for safety reasons also after seeing their top speed in qualy, presumably for using a lower mapping PU mode, after seeing that BOT, RUS and VET were forced to change their PU just for this reason ...

In the bellow classification, HAM has had the same 318km/h as VER & PER had until the last run in Q3, when he had BOT`s tow that boosted his top speed at 323km/h:

[djones]

The talk that Mercedes run their engines higher in practice is frankly ridiculous. There is not a single sensible reason they would want to put anything other than the lowest amount of stress on it.

In terms of Honda being more reliable, it might be this year as Mercedes seem to have a design flaw. But a big factor here is also the more efficient aero concept of the Redbull this year. The Honda is not as powerful as the Mercedes, but it does not really need to be when the Mercedes essentially have an aero handicap this year due to the rule changes. They have to run the engines hard to keep up with a car that is fast on the straights due to more efficient aero.

[JordanMugen]

Nice to see how everyone makes up excuses why the W12 is not as fast as the RB16B.

No excuses here! The W12 had good balance on Friday but poor balance on Saturday, the RB16B had poor balance on Friday but good balance on Saturday. The W12 looked hooked-up on Friday, yet the RB16B looked hooked-up on Saturday. It could be as simple as setup changes, track temperature etc.

[Dee]

The talk that Mercedes run their engines higher in practice is frankly ridiculous. There is not a single sensible reason they would want to put anything other than the lowest amount of stress on it.

In terms of Honda being more reliable, it might be this year as Mercedes seem to have a design flaw. But a big factor here is also the more efficient aero concept of the Redbull this year. The Honda is not as powerful as the Mercedes, but it does not really need to be when the Mercedes essentially have an aero handicap this year due to the rule changes. They have to run the engines hard to keep up with a car that is fast on the straights due to more efficient aero.

Am I in the twilight zone as I'm sure that RB always suffer in the straights because of their aero design. High rake will do that to you.. I'm the opposite of you, I'm looking forward to seeing how Honda perform against Mercedes when every car has to be using the same base height this year (within reason)

[Juzh]

One reason Merc was losing in qualy was due to high track temps that caught them out Merc this time coz basically RB16B has a wider tyre window operation when it comes to the softer range of the tyres, especially C4 soft tyre, as we could easily see that in Bahrain, Azerbaijan, France, Austria and Nederlands ...

The second reason is the fact that Merc was concentrating their car setup on the medium tyre which will be the race tyre, the one they`ll start and most important they`ll use at least 2 times in the race, as James Allison was hinting at Sky, for COTA being a high wear track ...

A bit of an unknown quantity about C2 hard tyre, although they seem to perform better at the harder range of the tyres, nevertheless it`s nice to see that they have at least 2 tenths in their pocket on the medium ones, of course after FP2 sim race analysis ...

And last but not least, it`ll be interesting to see had BOT will do a longer first stint in order to block VER with the ease of his superior top speed ...

Verstappen was even faster in Q2 relative to Hamilton when they both had the medium.

Looking at the qualy times from 2019 it seems they are almost 1 sec. slower this time and this could be down to heavier cars now (some 42kg more? equal to almost 1 sec. here ...).

You drunk mate? 2019 cars were 9 kg lighter, not 42 kg . Why don't you double check before posting something that's as easy to check as typing "2019 f1 car weight" in google and checking first result?
https://racingnews365.com/how-much-does ... -car-weigh

In the bellow classification, HAM has had the same 318km/h as VER & PER had until the last run in Q3, when he had BOT`s tow that boosted his top speed at 323km/h:

Hamilton didn't have any slipstream on any lap and his top speed was the same at around 323 kmh in first and second Q3 lap. Again, why are you just posting false information?

first q3 lap


second q3 lap



Hamilton's top speed on his best lap in FP1 was 315 kmh:

[atanatizante]

...
You drunk mate? 2019 cars were 9 kg lighter, not 42 kg . Why don't you double check before posting something that's as easy to check as typing "2019 f1 car weight" in google and checking first result?
https://racingnews365.com/how-much-does ... -car-weigh

My bad mate! Promise to double-check before posting from now on ...

...

...

Hamilton didn't have any slipstream on any lap and his top speed was the same at around 323 km/h in the first and second Q3 lap. Again, why are you just posting false information?

Ok, my bad again. I was misled about his 318km/h top speed that he did in Q1 ... so if he didn`t have any tow in that run that means he just changed his PU mode to a higher one? I thought you couldn`t change it and have the same PU settings both in qualy and the race or am I wrong again?

[djones]

The talk that Mercedes run their engines higher in practice is frankly ridiculous. There is not a single sensible reason they would want to put anything other than the lowest amount of stress on it.

In terms of Honda being more reliable, it might be this year as Mercedes seem to have a design flaw. But a big factor here is also the more efficient aero concept of the Redbull this year. The Honda is not as powerful as the Mercedes, but it does not really need to be when the Mercedes essentially have an aero handicap this year due to the rule changes. They have to run the engines hard to keep up with a car that is fast on the straights due to more efficient aero.

Am I in the twilight zone as I'm sure that RB always suffer in the straights because of their aero design. High rake will do that to you.. I'm the opposite of you, I'm looking forward to seeing how Honda perform against Mercedes when every car has to be using the same base height this year (within reason)

Mercedes are having to run bigger wings which are inherently more draggy to gain back the downforce lost through the rule changes. Rule changes which suited the high rake cars. I'm not sure if that was designed to try and slow Mercedes down... it's possible I guess.

Either way, it's meant Mercedes are having to use less efficient ways to produce downforce compared to most of the other teams that follow the high rake concept.

[Wouter]

In the bellow classification, HAM has had the same 318km/h as VER & PER had
until the last run in Q3, when he had BOT`s tow that boosted his top speed at 323km/h:

Lewis hadn't a tow from Bottas. Bottas was 11 sec in front of him.