Mr.S wrote:There was no textbook fanboy rant on Hamilton. It was a complement. Hamilton is someone whose ultimate speed cant be questioned & he gives his 100% every lap. I dont believe he is someone who knowingly would not drive the car at its 90-100% just to sandbag.
That & there is nothing called "leisurely driving" in an F1 track. That is pure BS. The other issue is provide me 1 source where they say Mercedes are going madly aggressive every lap & Mclaren are driving leisurely. I would gladly accept I wrote BS & I will eat my own words.
Otherwise there is no use making concocted stories.
Well, then I guess you'd say then that Schumacher also is incapable of taking it easy around the track. There's a value at times in being able to lay down
consistent lap times in testing, to eliminate that variable when comparing tires, setup, etc. That means that sometimes you don't drive 100%. If you look at what McLaren have been doing the past few days, you'll see that they've been running pretty much the exact same stint over and over and over - refueling most every time and trying different tires and setups. My guess is that their testing strategy is this: 1st test - systems tests and basic setup; 2nd test - tire wear and reliability; 3rd test - performance. I think they're paying special attention to tire wear and tire heat because of their exhaust, but that's has proven to be a contentious subject.
This was posted over at Atlas just this morning...
Been there this morning, mostly on the outside of turn 10 and seeing the cars do most of sector three (turns 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15)
Button's been on medium tyres the whole morning (at least, every time I saw him, he was on mediums) and the feeling was that the car is really planted on the ground, almost on rails. Sometimes I got the feeling he wasn't pushing as hard as he could, but it was pretty clear when he was on a fast one... cause the track's speaker inmediately announced that Button had just lowered the previous best lap.
One interesting thing was that, at turn 13, he was completely avoiding the kerbs and at 14-15 he touched them very slightly. That was in stark contrast to what Rosberg was doing, as he used inside kerb at 13. Conclusion? There's plenty of room for time improvements.
And with that, we've got things like Windsor's and others' comments on Hamilton and Button being super smooth around the course, and I've seen a lot of photos of the Merc bouncing over curbs and the same of the Mac taking wide lines.
That doesn't mean that the Merc sucks - it means that I don't think you can compare the times.
Opinion? Sure, but that's my point - last year and the year before, the best predictors of performance I think came from trackside opinions, not lap times. If you went by lap times, you'd have thought that Ferrari was going to walk it last year. But if you went by track observations, you knew that the Red Bull had it in the bag.
Feel free to dismiss all that if you want. Opinions are opinions. But don't call my posts BS, and don't accuse me of 'concocting stories'. Are we clear on that?