hape wrote: ↑24 Oct 2022, 09:57
Shal_Leg16 wrote: ↑24 Oct 2022, 06:41
chrisc90 wrote: ↑23 Oct 2022, 23:22
Yeah, Feel for Sainz getting cannonballed. He showed great pace all weekend and he made it 300m into the race. Very unlucky for him.
Charles has the pace to keep with Max for 2-3 laps, then just seems to drop off a cliff with the pace allowing the gap to open up.
It would be interesting to compare the top 3's lap times in that last stint.
if his car can reduce the insane tyre degradation he can entertain Max much more .
imo, of the 3-4 front running cars Ferrari is the worse in tyre deg. After 5 to 7 laps that all the performance is gone. more quickly if Charles engages in any battle.
Also thats the major reason Max is getting all the praises for being more mature and all. Actually he always knew Charles & his Ferrari cant hang around with him for more than 5 -7 laps thats why he has been less agrassive , coz he doesn't need to. after 5 laps he can make an easy pass.
Maybe RedBull has a trick to heat the tyres or Ferrari is missing something here but again CL was pushed on the outlap after pitting to mediums again. And again these tyres were shot in just a few laps. The first stint CL kept the tyres alive pretty impressive and still doing laptimes comparable to MV and LH already on new hard.
In order to keep the tyres alive, Leclerc was quite slow in the first stint as you can see from the following image:
Leclerc has only two options:
1: being 0.5 - 1s slower than RB while keeping the tyres alive
2: trying to keep up for a few laps, exploiting DRS if possible while putting a lot of pressure on the tyres
Both of these options have the same, identical outcome: finishing behind RB.
The car is simply not competitive. No amount of skills can compensate the current gap between the F1 75 and RB18.