LM10 wrote: ↑17 Sep 2023, 02:52
AR3-GP wrote: ↑17 Sep 2023, 00:48
Paa wrote: ↑17 Sep 2023, 00:30
It could be tyre temp related. I did not have live timing to confirm, but it seemed that Max was visibly more aggressive with his outlaps. Even warming up the tyres into the last corner. Also usually S3 was his best sector compared to others, while other teams usually overheated their tyres by S3.
Also Max set his only competitive time in Q1 when he went out-hot-cold-hot laps. Car looked ok on the second hot lap.
I just don't understand why didn't they try two outlaps if really this was the issue.
I also noted that on Q1. Max looked more comfortable by far on the second run on used softs. And then RB never used that strat again.
Horner said more in another interview that it’s the tires. Perez said it too. Tires not in the window. Car is useless even more so than expected.
Well, a car which is all over the place will have difficulties warming up the tires/keeping the tires in their window.
RedBull has not a single time had balance issues when it mattered this season.
Since yesterday both drivers and especially Max (the one who usually is on rails with his car out of the box) have had problems from the start and they couldn’t manage to solve them. In the end Max ended qualifying 1.2 seconds off the pole time. That’s shocking to say the least.
A team which have shown sublime performances across all types of tracks (Monaco and Baku included as examples of street circuits), all of a sudden forgot how to setup the car or make the tires work? I don’t know…
We did observe the fluctuations in Red Bull's performance previously. It's just that they were still out of reach of the opposition. RB had tire warming problems in Canada, Spa, and Zandvoort for those who follow the radio and don't just think "dominant car, everything is easy" when they win.
They already predicted this would be a horrible track for them and they still managed to find a decent setup in FP3 in addition to Perez have a very strong race run on Friday. Then for completely irrational, and imo irresponsible reasons most likely motivated by Verstappen himself, they made unproven and untested setup changes AFTER FP3, that destroyed the FP3 balance which Verstappen said was "not bad" at the time. The rest is history.
and fwiw, both cars should have made Q3 and would have done so without crucial errors from both drivers in T1. Verstappen lost 4 tenths! in T1-T3. Perez simply spun the car entirely. They would have been in Q3 otherwise. The Q2 knockout is simply a red herring. The car is not as bad as the drivers made it seem today.
The sooner we look at the facts, the less likely we are to be surprised next weekend.
A lion must kill its prey.