2021 Austrian Grand Prix - Spielberg, July 02 - 04

[MtthsMlw]

May someone give me a rundown of tomorrow's starting tyres?

[politburo]

Lando has been mighty impressive this year. Lando and Max have been the outstanding drivers delivering race after race.

Gasly has also been excellent.

[langedweil]

Mercedes still using their massive rear wing because according to simulations its 'optimal'. Meanwhile McLaren trim their rear wing and almost take pole with the same engine, hopefully that puts to bed the engine disparity too.

Agree ...

[Sieper]

Ferrari made the right decision. It is definitely better to start on hard tires.

Well they have a free choice now anyway so why try
And they still have to run a softer compound anyway

Because if they would have went through on reds the choice was gone. They had to try it.

[Sieper]

Mercedes has some inward looking to do.

Either the floor changes hurt them that bad or they got complacent and totally whiffed the design. I think it’s a bit of both.

This is really, really what they should do. Also in the press. Merc power was on pole by 4 hundredst of a second.

[ringo]

Boils down to the design concept. The floor.
Mercedes and Aston Martin are handicapped for the season.
Can Mclaren maintain pace for the whole race tomorrow?

What would spice this race up is if Lando overtakes Max at the start and Max drops back to fighting Lewis and Bottas.

[matt_b]

Lando driver of the season by a mile so impressive what he does in that car compared to Danny Ric who is no slouch.

[darkpino]

Mercedes should have been on pole. Mercedes had the pace to take pole today. Too many mistakes.

They are losing nearly 2 tenths in S1 alone, honours even else wise. Not just to Max but to Norris as well. The RedBull is just the better package. We've now seen it be very fast at tracks like Monaco, a tight track with many traction zones. Baku with it's low-radius, low-speed corners and long-straights. Paul Ricard which is harsh on the front tyres, and has a good mix of all corner types. Now A1 Ring with it's 3 straights and elevation changes. Let's face it, it is RedBull's championship to lose.

I agree

[Scorpaguy]

With Gas and Yuk starting behind the Mercs...hoping for some youthful exuberance to give us a bit of "Stuka" action into turn 1. Merc may have to fight for this one.

[zibby43]

Mercedes has some inward looking to do.

Either the floor changes hurt them that bad or they got complacent and totally whiffed the design. I think it’s a bit of both.

Well they’ve *lost* 1s of performance (minimum) at every track compared to last year with every vital component of the car frozen except for aero surfaces and 2 tokens, with the only changes being floor/rear brake ducts/diffuser.

So yeah, the changes finally did them in. And the higher-rake teams did a good job.

[darkpino]

What struck me; maybe the budget cap hurts Mercedes also more then others as they also had the biggest budget (en therefore lost also the most?)

[politburo]

Boils down to the design concept. The floor.
Mercedes and Aston Martin are handicapped for the season.
Can Mclaren maintain pace for the whole race tomorrow?

What would spice this race up is if Lando overtakes Max at the start and Max drops back to fighting Lewis and Bottas.

That would be entertaining, but is it likely?. If at all nobody crashes in the first corner Both Perez (assuming he doesn't get a penalty for what he and Vettel were doing at T9-T10 at the end of Q2) and Hamilton will go past Norris. We saw this last week when Norris was ahead of Perez and Bottas for 8-9 laps but really he was not even defending against either one of them when they overtook him.

[Pyrone89]

Hamilton hoping for rain tomorrow, just said that on camera. Could be they decided to stick with more downforce for that.

[RZS10]

It will boil down to whether Lando will get Max at the start, last week he said he would only go all out if he had a shot at winning otherwise he'd drive his own race thinking of the WCC, i doubt his approach will change much tomorrow.

[Hoffman900]

What struck me; maybe the budget cap hurts Mercedes also more then others as they also had the biggest budget (en therefore lost also the most?)

The budget cap shouldn’t cause them to lose 1s, on avg, of performance.

The rules were made to spice things up and it did.

At least with the new cars, the design concepts shouldn’t be so different that the organizers can swing performance so much with the rules.