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Okay, a more understandable reaction by VER.Juzh wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 13:26So I went trough verstappen's onboard and team radio. One thing they need to sort out is brakes. Verstappen was told to lift and coast after 6 corners I kid you not. And after than probably 3 times per lap, every lap. At one point Verstappen says he's barely braking at all with so much lift off and it's impossible to race like that.
Brake problems seem to subsided once car was lighter, leclerc drove off and verstappen settled into his own rhythm, not trying to attack anymore. Yeah, can't really race like that a whole lot.
About the undercuts. Verstappen really could be ahead of leclerc, or at least side by side into T1, had they decided to push after pitting. This would put Verstappen on ideal racing line into T1 and leclerc on the compromised inside, the opposite of what we got. Verstappen was basically cruising on the outlap, doing lift and coast and just generally not being on the limit, at one point even being told gap was too big for an undercut. This turned out to be completely false. Ok, first time it could be argued they weren't anticipating it (3.9s deficit - a lot for undercut to work), but second time it was just silly, why not at least try it? Gap before pitting was almost the same as the first time at 4s and it's not like they had much to lose. Daft decision by RB. Completely understandable Max was livid.
Could it be that they were genuinely very worried about the car finishing if he pushed? Pushing hard for a couple of laps might have killed the brakes. Better to be close and attempt to put pressure on Leclerc than have a glorious lap in the lead before DNFing with brake failure.
It makes a difference if you scrape a load of rubber off the top of the tyre through orange peeling because they're too cold for the load you're demanding of them. Hamilton had that problem after trying to keep a place on the outlap and ended up pitting for new tyres early.
But that was on the hard, a horrible tyre, and mercedes was struggling more anyway. I still think it was worth a shot, I'm not a fan of just consolidating positions and be done with it, who knows what can happen later on? You don't need to look far, just back to Jeddah last year. Red bull gambled and didn't pit under SC and profited from a red flag not long after. If you don't try you can't succeed.PhillipM wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 13:55It makes a difference if you scrape a load of rubber off the top of the tyre through orange peeling because they're too cold for the load you're demanding of them. Hamilton had that problem after trying to keep a place on the outlap and ended up pitting for new tyres early.
Could be, but when push came to shove Verstappen was able to attack leclerc for 3 laps in a row while being in hot, dirty air, so I think they had enough margin for a one solid outlap in clean air. On top of that they didn't use any high powered modes for outlap, just normal cruise as far as I can tell. He was told to use overtake down to T4 to defend just after the overtake so they must have had some power in reserve at that stage.Just_a_fan wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 13:54Could it be that they were genuinely very worried about the car finishing if he pushed? Pushing hard for a couple of laps might have killed the brakes. Better to be close and attempt to put pressure on Leclerc than have a glorious lap in the lead before DNFing with brake failure.
No idea if this might have been the case, but if the team were telling him to be careful for so much of the race, they must have been very concerned about the issue.
It was all a bit strange, whatever the reasoning behind it.Juzh wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 14:34Could be, but when push came to shove Verstappen was able to attack leclerc for 3 laps in a row while being in hot, dirty air, so I think they had enough margin for a one solid outlap in clean air. On top of that they didn't use any high powered modes for outlap, just normal cruise as far as I can tell. He was told to use overtake down to T4 to defend just after the overtake so they must have had some power in reserve at that stage.Just_a_fan wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 13:54Could it be that they were genuinely very worried about the car finishing if he pushed? Pushing hard for a couple of laps might have killed the brakes. Better to be close and attempt to put pressure on Leclerc than have a glorious lap in the lead before DNFing with brake failure.
No idea if this might have been the case, but if the team were telling him to be careful for so much of the race, they must have been very concerned about the issue.
What is strange is that preseason is meant to find out these problems. But they didn't and at first opportunity in real time, the components fail to meet the expectations. What is the point of collecting millions of miles of data if they don't push the components to find the reliability. There have been instances in the past in testing, where teams used to drive until the car runs out of fuel which was a good way to iron out these exact sort of issues.Juzh wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 13:26So I went trough verstappen's onboard and team radio. One thing they need to sort out is brakes. Verstappen was told to lift and coast after 6 corners I kid you not. And after than probably 3 times per lap, every lap. At one point Verstappen says he's barely braking at all with so much lift off and it's impossible to race like that.
Brake problems seem to subsided once car was lighter, leclerc drove off and verstappen settled into his own rhythm, not trying to attack anymore. Yeah, can't really race like that a whole lot.