venkyhere wrote: ↑07 Sep 2025, 17:34
Thank god he gave the place back in lap2 itself (it was a bit notty from Norris on Lap1turn1, letting the brakes go and force Max off track, but it's not a crime) and won it back on pure merit.
The medium stint knocked the stuffing out of the McLarens.
The hard stint was even better, matching the pace of the Mclarens on softs.
As I posted in my analysis (a few hrs before the race start) with the lap plots, somehow, pitlane DIY to remove flap area on the already lowDF rear wing has helped improve pace in all the four key corners - that is proof that the new floor is working superbly. They tried this DIY job last year and failed miserably, most probably because the floor wasn't good enough.
This gives me hope for tracks like Baku and Vegas. Another thing I noticed is the traction on the exit from the first two chicanes (T1-2 and T4-5) - it seemed better than the McLarens.
It felt like the old spec of the RB21 had too much rear downforce, which made it harder to balance the car in corners, always leading to understeer or instability, maybe they tried to bring the Cp a bit more forward.
Max this weekend never really complained too much about cornering performance besides in FP2 where he said he needed better entry into parabolica I think. But they were experimenting with setups and probably fixed the small problems.
Max was quicker in the beginning of the medium stint by like 0.4s, by mid of the stint the gap narrowed to about 0.1s and by the end of the M stint (last 6-8 laps) the MCL was lapping about 0.2-3s faster. Max was about even in the 1st sector, about 0.1s off in the 2nd sector and around 0.2-0.3 faster in the final sector. Which I found a bit surprising, I thought the straights in sector 1 would have helped Max a bit more, with sector 3 being more even.
I'm not quite sure about Baku yet, there's a possibility of being strong because I don't think the long straight suits the MCL, so they will have compromises to make. But hopefully this new spec brings Max into contention for wins at least another 4 races, for a more exciting end to season.
