search wrote: ↑19 Oct 2025, 13:27
looks mainly due to different tire management to me. Norris often saves tires at the start of the lap to be faster in the end, so just combining the best sectors results in a misleading number,
I think with how hot it was yesterday it's mostly tire temps and getting "lucky" with the bumps and with the wind. Don't think Lando could pump out that S1 performance consistently, so his "best sectors" are definitely a bit misleading. Still think he could have gone 1or 2 tenths quicker though, perhaps not enough to beat Max, but should have been comfortably ahead of Leclerc.
In general, RedBull are less draggy than McLaren but I think for this particular race it mostly has to do with differing setups. McLaren seem to have more downforce. I think with the amount of downforce these cars generate at +200 kmh, they're not really downforce limited on the esses of S1 though. Especially the top cars, so I believe McLaren have too much downforce actually and they're giving up time in S1 but their car should be easier to drive in general, particularly in S3. Probably things would have been different had they not double DNF-ed in the Sprint. Without having any extra data like the rest of the teams, they went for the "safe route".