FDD wrote: ↑12 Oct 2022, 15:20
Interesting, Mattia Binotto (it.motorsport.com google translate):
“That there have been changes to the funds to apply the TD39 yes, that we have affected performance no. I keep saying that that was not the reason why we lost competitiveness, especially as Hungary came before Belgium ”.
“Already in Hungary we had lost our brilliance. It wasn't the TD that affected our performance, but Red Bull's ability to develop their car hurt us. We didn't find as much performance as they did, but in the rest of the grid, apart from Mercedes that started further away, we kept our position… ”.
There may a certain political motivation to the above phrasing given the cost cap issues going on - Binotto saying that Red Bull’s development rate won them the championship may well be in anticipation that a team whose overspend in 2021 was only just discovered is unlikely to have changed their accounting methods in 2022.
Re tyre deg in Japan, a few things:
- Leclerc was right behind Max going into the pits but lost ~4 seconds in the pits when he was held to allow Perez to stop and avoid an unsafe release
- this put a car in between (I think it was Mick) who Leclerc had to immediately overtake
- he then close in on Max by something like 2 seconds on the following laps. After that he dropped away dramatically
So it’s not like Max was able to push immediately and Charles wasn’t - Charles went much harder out of the gate than Max.