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

[PlatinumZealot]

COTA was supposed to be Mercedes territory and Red Bull turned up faster.

Mercedes' handling was detuned for some reason, they might still be faster elsewhere.

I am pinning hopes on this. Toto played it too safe for my liking.

Too safe on the ride height/or whatever it is they tuned.
Too safe on the engines.
Too safe on the strategy.

All Max has to do now is win 2 races and trail Lewis home to win the WDC. Only man that can stop him is Bottas. Bottas must finish second when Lewis wins and that only will happen on a Mercedes dominant track or a track that's hard to overtake.

[ispano6]

The end of the race had my stomach churning hah! It looked like Max would get overtaken the last lap, but Lewis seemed to have spent his tires and Max left enough and had Honda power down the straight to keep Hamilton at bay. It was an immensely satisfying end to a weekend of tons of walking and ups and downs. Perez deserved a better race and held on despite the circumstances and Yuki did well too. Was glad to see that Yamamoto was up on the podium too! Overall, the best man-machine-team package won!

It's interesting to see that Otmar and the AMR team already in the airport along with Button, DiResta and the sky sports crew eating and ready to fly out.

[ringo]

The end of the race had my stomach churning hah! It looked like Max would get overtaken the last lap, but Lewis seemed to have spent his tires and Max left enough and had Honda power down the straight to keep Hamilton at bay. It was an immensely satisfying end to a weekend of tons of walking and ups and downs. Perez deserved a better race and held on despite the circumstances and Yuki did well too. Was glad to see that Yamamoto was up on the podium too! Overall, the best man-machine-team package won!

It's interesting to see that Otmar and the AMR team already in the airport along with Button, DiResta and the sky sports crew eating and ready to fly out.

What made me realize it was over was Bottas attempts at Sainz. Even with a much better car and fresh engine Bottas made no inroads.
Lewis had no chance on Max at all. The speed difference was too small.
I knew Max was holding up well when the gap would change by -0.3 in lewis favour then you see Max respond to it and that would repeat itself despite Lewis having younger tyres.
The redbull was very strong. It was not as strong as in Austria but enough to manage a car with fresher tyres and a 4 second gap.

[Ryar]

Circuits should have a replica upper deck. As soon as cars are about to be lapped, they should be directed to move to the upper deck. That way, the protagonist racing would be clean and back markers can enjoy uninterrupted fighting too. That would be called Next Level racing.
With the exit of Grosjean, Magnussen and Kvyat, the field was supposed to be well behaved. At least it's not Thunder Hollow anymore, but it was stupid to be shown balck flags to let the leader pass, costing him heaps of time.

[Zynerji]

Circuits should have a replica upper deck. As soon as cars are about to be lapped, they should be directed to move to the upper deck. That way, the protagonist racing would be clean and back markers can enjoy uninterrupted fighting too. That would be called Next Level racing.
With the exit of Grosjean, Magnussen and Kvyat, the field was supposed to be well behaved. At least it's not Thunder Hollow anymore, but it was stupid to be shown balck flags to let the leader pass, costing him heaps of time.

I'd rather no more blue flags. Instead, lapped cars get the black flag but can defend until passed, and the leader gets a point.

Player killer F1!

[jumpingfish]

Something unlucky needs to happen to max for him to drop 25 points. And even if he drops 25 points, he still has the car to claw back a 13 point deficit to Lewis and win the championship.

No no no. Max does not need DNF as you wish, he has already lost the victory on the last laps in Baku with Hamilton's third place. If the champion hadn't made a mistake, which cost him 18-25 points (depending on the finish of Perez), Max would still stay behind in the championship. Maybe you wish that it is not Max, but Ham, who goes out of the race or his car gets accidentally damaged, as it happened in bowling in Hungary, huh? I think there will be good footage for TV how Mercedes with a damaged car heroically fighting wheel-to-wheel with Schumacher on the Haas, right?

No need to wish other DNFs, by doing this you belittle both Hamilton and Mercedes. Let the fate of the title be decided in a fair fight and not because of retirements and damage to cars. In Austin there was such a great race and I want the same in the last 5 races.

[Manoah2u]

Something unlucky needs to happen to max for him to drop 25 points. And even if he drops 25 points, he still has the car to claw back a 13 point deficit to Lewis and win the championship.

No no no. Max does not need DNF as you wish, he has already lost the victory on the last laps in Baku with Hamilton's third place. If the champion hadn't made a mistake, which cost him 18-25 points (depending on the finish of Perez), Max would still stay behind in the championship. Maybe you wish that it is not Max, but Ham, who goes out of the race or his car gets accidentally damaged, as it happened in bowling in Hungary, huh? I think there will be good footage for TV how Mercedes with a damaged car heroically fighting wheel-to-wheel with Schumacher on the Haas, right?

No need to wish other DNFs, by doing this you belittle both Hamilton and Mercedes. Let the fate of the title be decided in a fair fight and not because of retirements and damage to cars. In Austin there was such a great race and I want the same in the last 5 races.

stop attacking another poster for your own inability to read correctly. he doesn't want a DNF for max, he's only saying how max has a comfortable lead for the championship

i mean for real, really uncalled for behaviour.

[_cerber1]

Let the fate of the title be decided in a fair fight and not because of retirements and damage to cars. In Austin there was such a great race and I want the same in the last 5 races.

There is no need to talk about an honest fight this season, the very regulations of the current year are not written honestly in relation to the participants.

[darkpino]

I wonder if RBR is running more downforce in general as it’s for them a lot more easier to follow closely? We’ve seen multiple times that Max can follow the Mercedes very closely for laps while the Mercedes isn’t able to follow the RB16B (or in Bottas his hands either other car) within a second without a massive tire advantage?

[TNTHead]

What a polite conversation so far in the race thread! Without heated controversial events it shows we as a people are able to respectfully agree or disagree. Wonder how long this can be maintained...

[jumpingfish]

Something unlucky needs to happen to max for him to drop 25 points. And even if he drops 25 points, he still has the car to claw back a 13 point deficit to Lewis and win the championship.

No no no. Max does not need DNF as you wish, he has already lost the victory on the last laps in Baku with Hamilton's third place. If the champion hadn't made a mistake, which cost him 18-25 points (depending on the finish of Perez), Max would still stay behind in the championship. Maybe you wish that it is not Max, but Ham, who goes out of the race or his car gets accidentally damaged, as it happened in bowling in Hungary, huh? I think there will be good footage for TV how Mercedes with a damaged car heroically fighting wheel-to-wheel with Schumacher on the Haas, right?

No need to wish other DNFs, by doing this you belittle both Hamilton and Mercedes. Let the fate of the title be decided in a fair fight and not because of retirements and damage to cars. In Austin there was such a great race and I want the same in the last 5 races.

stop attacking another poster for your own inability to read correctly. he doesn't want a DNF for max, he's only saying how max has a comfortable lead for the championship

i mean for real, really uncalled for behaviour.

This is the second time he writes "Redbulls need reliability issues", so you shouldn't attack my post and try to touch me, as if I can't read.

Let the fate of the title be decided in a fair fight and not because of retirements and damage to cars. In Austin there was such a great race and I want the same in the last 5 races.

There is no need to talk about an honest fight this season, the very regulations of the current year are not written honestly in relation to the participants.

Was the floor cut only on Mercedes cars? If I'm not mistaken, it was Pirelli who insisted on lowering downforce for the sake of safety, and also the teams themselves rejected the modified tyres for 2021, which the Italians brought for tests in 2020. As a result, Pirelli brings the same tyres for 3 years in a row. It was a well-grounded decision to lower the downforce, because do we remember what happened with the tyres on Silverstone in 2020 on both Mercedes and Sainz on McLaren? Everyone is in the same boat, everyone has their floor cut for safety. Fair enough.

[Juzh]

...

This means they obviously turned it up in Q3. Because ICE maps are locked from Q1 onwards the only way of doing this is releasing more electrical energy and running the engine in a free load more for longer periods (open wastegates)

...

I thank you so much for your info and knowledge. But unfortunately I don`t follow you: had the ICE maps are locked from Q1 onwards how on earth could they change it in Q3?

Energy deployment and free load systems are separate from ICE maps. Those two did not fall under single engine map restriction back when it was implemented, they can be utilised in whatever way you like.

[basti313]

I wonder if RBR is running more downforce in general as it’s for them a lot more easier to follow closely? We’ve seen multiple times that Max can follow the Mercedes very closely for laps while the Mercedes isn’t able to follow the RB16B (or in Bottas his hands either other car) within a second without a massive tire advantage?

??? When was the Merc not able to follow?
I think this is a remarkable season. We not only have teams on level like RB vs. Merc and McLaren vs. Ferrari, we also have cars following each other closely. We had France with ~10 laps in DRS, we had the first and last stint here within one second, we had Stone sprint within one second. Same in the midfield, look at Ric vs. Sai, half the race with 1.x gap.

Look back some years...you could do 2-3 laps within 1.x sec and than your tires were cooked. Completely different game at the moment.

For the downforce:
Since the Stone update the Merc can put on more downforce. This was obvious in Hungary and partially in Turkey.
This will be interesting in Mexico where in the past teams run Monaco spec wings.

[Juzh]

I wonder if RBR is running more downforce in general as it’s for them a lot more easier to follow closely? We’ve seen multiple times that Max can follow the Mercedes very closely for laps while the Mercedes isn’t able to follow the RB16B (or in Bottas his hands either other car) within a second without a massive tire advantage?

Mercedes being bad in traffic is a myth propagated by sky and channel 4 to absolve hamilton when he's unable to overtake a car ahead for whatever reason there may be. It's actually the other way around, red bull is the hardest car to overtake in because often times they're battling mercedes who has more straight line speed and red bull runs less downforce to compensate which further makes your job difficult in dirty air because you're sliding more. Today even with much more pace on medium everyone knew Verstappen was never going to overtake hamilton on back straight because they're simply too slow there.
Same thing happened in monza, red bull ran toothpick wings to compensate for being down on power which made Verstappen lose 0.6s-0.8s trough ascari every single lap compared to ricciardo and then he burned up his tyres and so on. It's a cascading effect.

There's been a single exception to this rule this year in France where red bull went nuts with their wing level which for the first time ever allowed them to defend themselves on straights, but that was mainly down to mercedes not yet sorting out their car at that time and had to go completely opposite direction with their wing level.

[Big Tea]

I think the difference this season is more with Max than with the car. Yes the RBR is better, but Max is not making many mistakes. Not even little ones.
He has lost the rush of blood to the head moments where hanging back for a second means a clean pass and this saves not only cars but tyres.
He has developed into a 'no faults' type driver.