2021 Mexican Grand Prix - Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Nov 05 - 07

[Dee]

Seems like Mercedes won’t come close to Max this weekend. Higher engine mode, yet half a second away.

FP1 was the only session they did this. It was for PU calibration purposes.

I was surprised to see Ferrari struggle so much here. Was expecting them to be competing for pole.

Ferrari were running extremely low/conservative engine settings and Sainz was using the old spec engine. They are right behind Merc in Sector 2 and 3

[zibby43]

[PlatinumZealot]

Anyone still anxious about team orders at Red Bull??

Perez's race pace was close if not equal. So team orders still on the cards.

ON the Mercedes side of the garage, Bottas seems quicker. Hamilton is trying to squeeze more out of the set up though. Could be serious gains yet.

[dans79]

Max's stints were the same length as Hamiltons on the softer tyre

Max

lap
9    out lap
10   1:17.301
11   1:54.166
12   1:43.455
13   1:17.619
14   in lap

Valtteri

lap
7   out lap
8   1:36.822
9   1:18.032
10  1:46.536
11  1:47.223
12  1:21.997
13  1:46.312
14  2:08.344
15  1:22.628 
16  1:56.817
17  1:17.725
18 in lap

Valtteri's stint was twice as long, he had two race pace laps in the middle (1:21.997, 1:22.628 ), and did his fastest lap on the last lap.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files ... es_v01.pdf

Again, Max and Lewis had similar stints. I wasn't talking about Bottas

That doesn't really matter, if Valtteri can do a stint like that so can Lewis!

[casper]

At this stage, all teams are using very old engines so it's just logical not to go flat out in free practice. I won't read too much in FP run times.

[ringo]

Easy Redbull win!
Perez need to step up to the plate and challenge for the win. It could be his last chance to get a win at home!
Vamos Checo!!

[godlameroso]

Whoever is fast from 4 - 11 will be fast everywhere.

[Ryar]

The hard tyre appears to be the faster tyre today. In longer runs, all the drivers using hards were faster than their team mates on other compounds.

It's so funny that every british tv commentator is rooting for Checo to win and quoting "home race" as the reason, but sounding so naive, without realizing how easily they are giving away their ulterior motive of rooting for thier own country man to not lose much in the championship race.

[lh13]

Easy Redbull win!
Perez need to step up to the plate and challenge for the win. It could be his last chance to get a win at home!
Vamos Checo!!

You sound hilarious. Keep it up!!

[Mansell89]

Seems like Mercedes won’t come close to Max this weekend. Higher engine mode, yet half a second away.

FP1 was the only session they did this. It was for PU calibration purposes.

I was surprised to see Ferrari struggle so much here. Was expecting them to be competing for pole.

Ferrari were running extremely low/conservative engine settings and Sainz was using the old spec engine. They are right behind Merc in Sector 2 and 3

I thought Ferrari looked so slow- I honestly expected them to be exceptional on the low speed sections here but the car looked heavy and unresponsive.

I hope you’re right and they really were detuned to the max, but Le Clerc really looked like he had his hands full.

Hopefully the track comes to them a bit on Saturday and they make a good set up adjustment

[101FlyingDutchman]

Easy Redbull win!
Perez need to step up to the plate and challenge for the win. It could be his last chance to get a win at home!
Vamos Checo!!

You sound hilarious. Keep it up!!

To quote Martin Brundle: not in a month of Sundays will SP be allowed to win unless MV is out of the race

[Tizz]

Both Merc`s drivers didn`t run the M tyre all day long and I wonder why? Presumably, they`ll use them in FP3 hence qualify in Q2 but to have no data still baffles me ...

Regarding race simulation laps, VER (13 laps) and PER (11 laps) were testing just the M tyres posting times in lower 1.21 and higher 1.20 ... the Merc`s drivers were on average at least 1 sec. slower on the S tyres, then they switched to the H tyre and BOT did the same high 1.20 times as VER was doing, low fuel being maybe the main factor for that ...

Or the soft maybe overheat quickly.

[Bill_Kar]

What's baffling is that Mercedes is a lot slower both on the high speed section and the stadium section as well.

Presumably, they have some issues riding the kerbs. I wonder whether they can do something about it or not.

But definitely, MV is, by far, the favourite here.

[Tizz]

Max's stints were the same length as Hamiltons on the softer tyre

Max

lap
9    out lap
10   1:17.301
11   1:54.166
12   1:43.455
13   1:17.619
14   in lap

Valtteri

lap
7   out lap
8   1:36.822
9   1:18.032
10  1:46.536
11  1:47.223
12  1:21.997
13  1:46.312
14  2:08.344
15  1:22.628 
16  1:56.817
17  1:17.725
18 in lap

Valtteri's stint was twice as long, he had two race pace laps in the middle (1:21.997, 1:22.628 ), and did his fastest lap on the last lap.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files ... es_v01.pdf

Where these really racesims? They don’t look anything like the stats for racesims on other tracks I’ve seen. To base any conclusions on this for the race seems odd.

[search]

nah, it's from the quali simulation, completely irrelevant in terms of race pace - only interesting thing about it is, that Bottas softs were pretty old already when he started his longrun afterwards