venkyhere wrote: ↑08 Nov 2025, 00:50
Emag wrote: ↑08 Nov 2025, 00:40
venkyhere wrote: ↑08 Nov 2025, 00:38
What did you mean in Interlagos v COTA, by 'more camber' - the 'helpful one' or the 'hurting one' (positive or negative term confuses me whether it's for tyre or for track) ?
I usually mean both kinds when I don't specify, but English is not my first language so perhaps I am using the word wrong. There's also those troublesome "sudden drops" in some of the corners as well which can be particularly tricky for these cars which run very low to the ground.
Well I think most corners on this track have helpful' camber (a less extreme version of Zandvoort) and I recollect only one of the corners (from the onboards, can't recollect which exact corner) where the camber was 'opposite'/unhelpful ; on this track. Which means, the car's 'yearning for grip' is lesser than if there was no camber at all. And there are no 'both cambers in one corner due to wild elevation change' (like the corkscrew in LagunaSeca).
A 'normally lead pack car' can't lose 0.4s to competition, over a 35s duration - that's straightaway 1.1% performance loss - typically the performance gap between a P1 car and a P20 car. The word 'broken' was accurate by Max.
I just meant that in general, when you have camber you can no longer make 1:1 comparisons with performances on tracks which have flat corners. And something is obviously off, because Max had the 13th fastest S2 in sprint quali. Slower than McLaren, Mercedes, Aston, Ferrari, RacingBull, Sauber and Williams.
But the thing is, they have a lot of data on the Mexico floor already. I don't think they would have risked using it with Max if that was what's causing this horrible performance. Worst case scenario, they would have just swapped it out after FP1 into Sprint Quali. Max is good enough to immediately adapt anyway.
Also the Mexico performance is being significantly downplayed in my opinion. Qualifying was tricky, but the race was really good. Not McLaren/Lando level of good, but 2nd fastest by a decent margin I would say. It just got tricky starting with mediums which were absolutely horrible in Mexico, and getting caught up on battles that lost him a lot of time and tire condition on that first stint. And it's not like McLaren's pace completely disappeared you know. They were not that great in Monza and Baku, but on the rest of the races, their clean air pace was highly competitive. So Max being 2nd to a McLaren when he doesn't have track position doesn't really seem out of the ordinary.
TLDR : Unless something comes out from the RedBull camp officially, I don't think the Mexico floor is to blame. Especially after seeing them run it from the get-go with Max here.
