Topic: Motosport General discussion tread --- Formula1, MotoGP, WTCC, ETCC, DTM..... - page 355. (Read 144195 times)

It was nice to see how Verstappen managed to get up from P7 to P2 just in few laps. He had no chance against Hamilton and his pace, but Max managed to minimize loses - P2 with fastest lap and he is still 8 points ahead Lewis
After such long break we finally saw Alsono on the podium.
And also, I liked Qatar track, expected that it will be worse. But I'm not so positive about tracks of remaining two races....
I guess it's related with kerbs, which is really harsh there. Also, old asphalt, which wasn't changed since 2004 when track was built is also don't good thing for tyres.

I'm so glad that Ham won this race as we can see clearly that they are the one who are fighting with their total spirit in order to win that championship. Honda and RedBull, another race when they look mediocre and they simply have no answer to the raw power of Mercedes engine. They lost 6 points and it could've been 7 if Lewis was about to pit again for that fastest lap but Safety car ruined all.

A normal race in F1 today,another race in defense from Redbull and they managed to lose only six points to Hamilton by making Verstappen doing the fastest lap of the race.Now only two races remaining and just 8 points difference is going to be a great ending to the F1 Championship.The upcoming race is the newest in F1 calendar and it is thought to be one of the fastest and longest tracks,like 7.xx kilometres long,a city track.
I think it is going to be another damage limitation race for Redbull and then they are going to play all in in Abu Dhabi.

It was a race for the most part...  There were some moments there for Perez and maybe some other driver but that’s about it.  And it’s weird that tires were getting punctured.  Happened once at quali with Gasly and during the race with both Williams, Bottas and I think another driver.  Norris pitted too which prolly was an anticipation of a puncture.

2021 F1 Qatar GP Results

1   Lewis Hamilton   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team   57 Laps
2   Max Verstappen   NED   Red Bull Racing   + 25.743s
3   Fernando Alonso   ESP   Alpine F1 Team   + 59.457s
4   Sergio Perez   MEX   Red Bull Racing   + 62.306s
5   Esteban Ocon   FRA   Alpine F1 Team   + 80.570s
6   Lance Stroll   CAN   Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team   + 81.274s
7   Carlos Sainz   ESP   Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow   + 81.911s
8   Charles Leclerc   MON   Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow   + 83.126s
9   Lando Norris   GBR   McLaren F1 Team   + 1 Lap
10   Sebastian Vettel   GER   Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team   + 1 Lap
11   Pierre Gasly   FRA   Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda   + 1 Lap
12   Daniel Ricciardo   AUS   McLaren F1 Team   + 1 Lap
13   Yuki Tsunoda   JPN   Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda   + 1 Lap
14   Kimi Raikkonen   FIN   Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen   + 1 Lap
15   Antonio Giovinazzi   ITA   Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen   + 1 Lap
16   Mick Schumacher   GER   Uralkali Haas F1 Team   + 1 Lap
17   George Russell   GBR   Williams Racing   + 2 Laps
18   Nikita Mazepin   RUS   Uralkali Haas F1 Team   + 2 Laps
DNF   Nicholas Latifi   CAN   Williams Racing   
DNF   Valtteri Bottas   FIN   Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team   

This is the first time that i have seen this news and i have to say, that this completely surprises me. I just read trough that statement that you posted and it seemed that he received the penalty for not slowing down enough during his last lap in the qualifying during the yellow flag. I have to say, that this penalty seems very severe and drastic to me. He did not put someone in danger with his actions and his round was still slower than hamiltons so it was not like that he gained a position because of his last round so it did not have any influence at all on the ranking. This penalty can have big impacts on the championship.. let's see what happens in the race.

Hilariously inept start from Bottas, losing five places in about five seconds. Verstappen seven places clear of Bottas already! I know he's going to a lesser team next year, but really is he good enough for any drive in F1?

Alonso is the only real obstacle for Verstappen now, so you'd expect him to finish in second, with Hamilton racing away out front.

Max getting 5 grid penalty is something that I did not see coming. We all know Hamilton has enough pace and talent to keep going at first and nobody will even touch him today, it will be like Max at Austria for sure. Max only has one hope to be at the second place by the end of the race, that is all he can hope for at this point. Plus Hamilton used his old engine I believe for this race, now that he is giving time for his new engine to breathing room in a perfect situation like this, I am 99% sure that the last 2 races will be very very wild.

Even though Hamilton is behind right now, unless he crashes out, has a flat tire or anything like that I am pretty sure Hamilton has the bigger chance to win the title this year. I know as a person who is behind in ranking right now that sounds weird, but the last 3 races will favor Mercedes more than RB.

Official 5 penalty positions to Verstappen at the start of the race.



Source: https://twitter.com/Gianludale27/status/1462397863326105607

And 3 for Bottas.

Yes, it's confirmed for both. Could it prove important that Bottas is ahead of Verstappen now? In theory yes, but you'd expect Bottas won't prove any obstacle for Max.
It's all in Hamilton's hands now, really. This looks like a Hamilton win with Verstappen second, barring any crashes or other unpredictable events... but of course there is a lot of unpredictability!

Yes I'd love it if the stewards stopped handing out grid penalties to the title rivals. But will be nice I suppose to see Max carving through the field, after Lewis did it last time.

Actually, he got 5 position penalty, while Bottas got 3 places penalty, it's already confirmed:
https://mobile.twitter.com/F1/status/1462400945363599367
Well, I think it's right decision by stewards because they really didn't followed rules. But it's pity that fight for title can end in such way, as you say, we all want to see fight until last race

It is claimed that Max Verstappen has got a 10-position grid penalty because of double yellow flags. But I haven't seen any official statement from the F1 side yet. I hope that it isn't true. I hope to see a competition for the championship even in the last race too. But I wouldn't like to see Verstappen starting from the 12th place. In that case, he will need to show a bigger performance to claim his position back and compete with Hamilton for the 1st position. In any case, I still expect Hamilton to win this race as his effort has been insanely great for two weeks.

The Yamaha team closed the 2021 season on a sweet note with a proud performance from our racing champions!

In the footsteps of Fabio Quartararo who won the MotoGP world champion followed by Toprak Razgatlioglu in the World Super Bike (WSBK) and Dominique Aegerter in the Supersport World Championship, Yamaha pocketed the Triple Crown at the end of the 2021 season!

---

#SemakinDiDepan #TripleCrown #MotoGP #WSBK #SupersportWorldChampionship

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CWhnSrkLZI1/

I also hope for the sporty nature of the fight in tomorrow's race. Although of course there are big questions about Max's behavior in the race when competing with Hamilton, and Leclerc has already spoken out in the sense that if Max is not punished for this, then he will also act tougher in defending his position and now it will be more difficult to overtake. If Hamilton had a consistent improvement as a result of previous practices, then only the third place of Bottas raises small questions, when before that the Finnish driver had the best results at the end of the second and third practices. Despite that, Verstappen said about the lack of pace against Mercedes, but this did not prevent him from taking second place in qualifying.

Oh right I forgot about it.
Also now I can remember in the top 10 we also have 4 drivers with medium tires, Sainz for sure and I'm guessing the  2 Mercedes and Max, while the other 6 have red tires.

Still need to see if it will be possible overtake in this track, fast is fast but will see.

Perez can start with the hard tires and maybe can be a help to Verstappen in the final stages of the race.I thought in this track Mercedes to be much more powerful and having big gap to Redbull but this is not the case,it is just a normal pole position difference in time and managing the tires will be crucial in tomorrow race.A lot to happen here,maybe it can be a title decider if someone of the leaders fails his engine or make a big error.For betting as always I prefer head 2 head rather than trying to figure out the winner,the podium or the winning car.

On this track, all the cars were closed to the top while 1 week ago they were at 1 sec, the mystery of the Formula 1.
What a disaster for Redbull with Perez, how he can fail with the Redbull and not go in q3...

Mercedes seems to be too god for Max, also as I said I think Alpha Tauri went up on their Honda with the risk to burn their engine.

It really looks like that Mercedes (and especially hamilton) are quit far ahead of the rest of the pack. Maybe it will be similtar to the mexican where Mercedes was also stronger in the qualifying than red bull but then in the race Verstappen totally dominated the race and was never in danger of getting caught and perez was even close to get the second place from hamilton, but to be honest i don't believe that because today mercedes looked even stronger than in the qualifying of Mexico. Therefore I think it will be very hard for Verstappen to win this race.
I also doubt though that he wants to provoke a crash with hamilton because that is just way to dangerous.

It was obvious already that one of the Mercedes drivers was going to take the pole position in the qualifying session today. Because their performance in the practice sessions was marvelous. And in the qualifying, I was delighted with Hamilton's superb performance. He has the track record now and taken the pole position also. The gap between him and Verstappen was 0.4 sec. Considering these drivers are competing for the title, this gap was really big. We will see if Verstappen will still be able to be faster than Hamilton in the race and surprise everyone by winning it. But it seems like a far possibility to me. If nothing goes wrong, I expect Hamilton to win the race and Verstappen to end right behind him. And I don't think that any of these drivers will have the fastest lap at the end of the race. Most probably, Bottas or Perez will have it.

Bottas had a whole f1 career so far on "help Hamilton win the title" and he has achieved that. There are tons of people who belittle that approach but every single team does have those kinds of drivers, the second driver is almost always there to help the first one, Bottas is just way too good at what he does. Sure he just lets Hamilton pass and he has done that for 5 years now but that doesn't change the fact that it was his job and he did it amazingly.

He always needed to be great on qualifiers so that he would be at the front with Hamilton, and he always needed to learn how to defend very well and both of those things are his special talents and he mastered them perfectly. Yes, he may not be fighting for a title season in season out like how Rosberg was for Hamilton but that doesn't change the fact that he did his job perfectly and now he is slowly getting out.

Hamilton does look very strong here, nearly half a second clear in qualifying. Even if Verstappen gets the jump on him at the start, you'd expect Hamilton to reel him in quite easily.
On paper, with Bottas third and Perez nowhere, Mercedes should have a clear tactical advantage. In practice though I think it's meaningless, as Bottas won't be good enough to hinder Verstappen at all. Even if he undercuts him with an early stop, Verstappen will just cruise past him on the track.




Yes, agreed, I think he's demonstrated that enough times this season. The big issue here is how the rules will be interpreted after the weird decision last weekend. The message is that it's now okay to defend a corner on the inside by forcing an outside attacker off the track... I expect we'll see that tested a few times during the race. It was just Verstappen last weekend, but now everyone can do it.