Good spot. I see people say Redbull did not have the pace, but the car did. Max simply was pressured to wear out his tyres too quickly. We have seen this many times, Rosberg, Vettel, Bottas. Drivers need to open their eyes and not let Hamilton "drive their car from behind" to do what he wants. After the first stop Lewis was playing mind games by gambling on using the pace in his tyres to come right up to Max to keep the pressure on.cheeRS wrote: ↑09 May 2021, 19:54Verstappen made another mistake, albeit a small one. But you don’t win a WDC by making mistakes over and over.
He came in too early, without being called it. This delayed his pits too by around 2 seconds.
And the idea that they could stay out and not cover off Merc’s undercut was just utterly naive - although that was the team’s fault and not Max’s directly.
He had 5 laps fresher tyres, but he gambled on pushing to come right behind Max to bear down with pressure. Max may have thought for a second he just has to save tyres and respond to Lewis if the W12 came within 2.5s.
When Lewis eventually came with that 2.5 gap, Max was being pushed to overdrive the car.
I think the cars were equal today. We see this from Bottas who was steadily behind Max and not able to make any inroads. As bad as people think Bottas is; he can respectably drive the car to its pace which shows from his podium finishes.
Max was panicking and that's what caused him to dive into the pits. It's also why his pace degraded so rapidly in the end.
I think Max still can learn from the races to better manage the stints. The redbull was not the better car today, but neither was Mercedes. Hamilton was just doing what he always does, and that's modulate his pace, apply pressure, and play mind games with the car he is hunting down.