Topic: Motosport General discussion tread --- Formula1, MotoGP, WTCC, ETCC, DTM..... - page 71. (Read 137544 times)

The F1 race of tomorrow promises to be a good one judging by the places how the drivers are lined up,it is pretty disperse between them all with some good drivers like Perez and Sainz starting way behind,together with Hamilton.I think there will be no surprises unfortunately for tomorrow race as most likely Redbull is going to dominate the race,we know Ferrari is great at a single lap being a super fast car but rarely we have seen a Ferrari behaving well in the race except that time where Sainz won actually a race with Ferrari during this year.

Not just for Bagnaia, calm is also necessary for Martin in the final race tomorrow.
The pressure that Martin is facing could lead to risks for him because Martin's emotions after getting points in the sprint race will peak because the distance between Bagnaia and Bagnaia is already small.

For Bagnaia, another important thing apart from avoiding accidents and not dropping out, is that the results of the sprint race must be used as an evaluation to get the desired results in tomorrow's race.
Pecco must forget the thought that he could already be world champion if he doesn't want to fail.

Bagnaia played very calmly in today's sprint and managed to finish fifth and Marti managed to reduce the points gap with Bagnaia to 14 and for today no one can blame Martin because he managed to get a podium for him, for tomorrow's race it will certainly be very interesting for us to see Whether Martin can get his first podium like today or whether the incident that happened in Qatar will happen again.

Bagnaia will just try to stay calm and not take too many risks that could harm him in tomorrow's Sprint and Race sessions, because from the qualifying session this is also the case where Bagnaia always enters the pit early and also always stops early even though he still has time for one more lap. Martin continued to blame the front tire for shaking, which made Michelin respond because all the tires were distributed the same and nothing was different in any way. And I will wait for the Sprint which will be held soon because maybe this Sprint will be really fierce.

With the qualification result, Pecco has a great chance to lock the world champion in the sprint race with some possible scenarios.
The best scenario is if Pecco win the sprint race while Martin finish on 3rd or even worse.
As long as Pecco gain 5 or more points than Martin in the sprint race, he will be the 2023 champion.
Without a doubt it is a big pressure to Martin as he has to play all out in the sprint race to finish in better position than Pecco or at least to finish behind Pecco if he want to keep his chance for the championship title.

Russell also topped FP3 with Hamilton lagging way behind.  It looks like Hamilton to finish the podium at 2.90 might not value at all.  Lol.  But let's see at qualifying...  That's when the drivers take it more seriously.  FP1 and FP2 are more for tweaking the cars.  FP3, they take it a tad more seriously and find out how fast they really are on the track.  Quali is when they take off the gloves are and pull out all the stops.  But then again if Hamilton was just sand bagging, he wouldn't be way behind in FP3.  Lmao.  

Anyway, last race of the season guys...  Hope it's a good one.

In any case, Bagnaia got the better starting position in qualifying. Martin now has even more pressure and has to attack, Bagnaia will take the race safely today and wait and see what happens, the important thing for Bagnaia is not to have an accident and not drop out.

Yeah but I didn't get surprised when I saw this many 3rd drivers on track unlike many people. Because it is the final race of the season so the teams want to give their 3rd drivers a chance to gain some extra experience. Apart from that I assume they are obliged to have their 3rd drivers on track in FP1 at least for once during a season.

I'm quite excited about the ongoing fight between Ferrari and Mercedes for the 2nd spot. That slight gap can surely be closed here so Mercedes had better be wide awake in Abu Dhabi. 

It was a story last week that may still be a question mark as to whether Martin was actually on very bad tires or not. However, this week Martin also has to focus more on the last round by no longer thinking about what happened in Qatar last week, because his target this week is to win the Sprint and Race sessions which will be quite important for Martin.

I also think like that and in two sessions (including the session I'm watching now) it was very clear that Martin really insisted on being at the front so he could get a better position during the Sprint and Race later. Now the Practice session is underway and there is still enough time for each rider to set the best time to enter Q2.

1   George Russell   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   1m26.072s
2   Felipe Drugovich   BRA   Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team   1m26.360s
3   Daniel Ricciardo   AUS   Scuderia AlphaTauri   1m26.433s
4   Valtteri Bottas   FIN   Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake   1m26.453s
5   Oscar Piastri   AUS   McLaren F1 Team   1m26.631s
5   Lance Stroll   CAN   Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team   1m26.665s
7   Carlos Sainz   ESP   Scuderia Ferrari   1m26.676s
8   Robert Shwartzman   ISR   Scuderia Ferrari   1m26.703s
9   Pierre Gasly   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   1m26.720s
10   Yuki Tsunoda   JPN   Scuderia AlphaTauri   1m26.725s
11   Logan Sargeant   USA   Williams Racing   1m26.742s
12   Frederik Vesti   DEN   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   1m26.815s
13   Jack Doohan   AUS   BWT Alpine F1 Team   1m26.865s
14   Theo Pourchaire   FRA   Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake   1m27.093s
15   Patricio O'Ward   MEX   McLaren F1 Team   1m27.114s
16   Jake Dennis   GBR   Oracle Red Bull Racing   1m27.208s
17   Isack Hadjar   FRA   Oracle Red Bull Racing   1m27.244s
18   Zak O'Sullivan   GBR   Williams Racing   1m27.460s
19   Kevin Magnussen   DEN   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   1m27.462s
20   Oliver Bearman   GBR   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   1m27.569s

Source: https://www.crash.net/f1/results/1041750/1/f1-abu-dhabi-grand-prix-2023-friday-practice-results

Many 3rd drivers in this 1st hour of practice.

The track will also improve a lot cause sand is on track here always every year in the 1st hour.

The last two seasons here I have seen Mercedes doing better than Ferrari and most likely this will be the same in this weekend too so I would be surprised if Mercedes does not win the second place,of course taking into consideration that they will do well as in the last 2 seasons.If Ferrari performs like last race and also Mercedes performs that badly as they did in the last race then most likely Ferrari will get the second spot,I am curious to see if the bookies offer a market for this as it would be a good one to have a bet to enjoy the weekend,we cannot enjoy Verstappen winning every race.

Oooh, you're right.  Without including Red Bull in the mix as they have good down force and will be fast on these turns, I guess it's safe to say that Mercedes has the slight advantage over Ferrrari?  If so then there could be value in Hamilton to the podium at 2.90.  The books are giving Norris and Perez the edge over Hamilton but not really sure how those guys fare this weekend and usually they're not really worth the line they're given by the bookies.

And here's where the books contradict themselves...  They give Perez an edge over Hamilton but in the Red Bull both cars to finish in the podium market 'No' is at 1.72.

Mercedes will surely go balls to the wall with this one in order to snag the second place. They have to prove that they are still a good racing team than Ferrari who has had a lot of reliability issues in their car for the season. While Sainz is driving pretty good for Ferrari and often times step up when Leclerc is having problems, Hamilton is still a good driver that knows how to push his car to the max when needed. With these many curves and bends, Ferrari better take the lead from Mercedes early on and keep a comfortable gap specially during the straights which Ferrari is very good at.

We are really close to finish this season in Formula 1. There is still a competition between Mercedes and Ferrari for the second position in the constructor standings. The point gap is only 4 now. This big competition must be the main reason why Toto Wolff complained about Sainz's not getting a grid penalty first in Las Vegas. 

Sainz still showed a great performance and finished ahead of both Mercedes drivers. Here Ferrari will need to stay ahead of Mercedes once again if they want to capture the position just at the end of the season. This track isn't like Las Vegas though but let's see.

Very difficult to predict how Ferrari will go, usually on fast tracks it goes very well.
The problem with this track is that there are many 90-degree bends.

Perhaps the main question we need to ask ourselves is, how will Mercedes go?

Martin has stated that he had a very bad rear tyre (hence his statement in an interview "They stole the title from me"), which may or may not be true, but with the one-size-fits-all tyres you have to be a bit unlucky if he really has a very bad tyre.

I would say the only way Martin has a chance of winning the championship is if Bagnaia crashes in the sprint race and Martin wins, then the pressure on Bagnaia in the Sunday race would be huge, otherwise Martin always has the pressure to win.

Ferrari can make the race a bit more beautiful however I doubt they can impact the performance of winning against Redbull,sure they won just by 2 seconds against Ferrari the last race in Las Vegas but I guess it was because all the drivers were racing there for the first time and all the engineers of all the teams had not enough data as to be fighting as they will do in Abu Dhabi which they have tons of data available from these last years and will be put to good use.

The straight speed in here helps a lot but without DRS I don't think it will matter,Ferrari needs to stay in DRS zone in order to have a chance here.

After Ferrari's performance last week, how do you think they'll look this week?  The track has a couple of long straights that Leclerc and Sainz could take advantage.  And there's the factor that Ferrari could be improving their car by a lot even compared to the start of the season even though it's late at the end of the season.  Could be good news for next season.

Sched for this coming F1 weekend.  It was a boring season but at least we had a few laughs.  

2023 F1 Abu Dhabi GP Schedule
Track:  Yas Marina Circuit



Nov 24, Friday:  Practice 1  13:30 - 14:30
Nov 24, Friday:  Practice 2  17:00 - 18:00
Nov 25, Saturday:  Practice 3  14:30 - 15:30
Nov 25, Saturday:  Qualifying  18:00 - 19:00
Nov 26, Sunday:  Race  17:00

5 Stellar Battles in the Abu Dhabi GP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxFecBe7erI

Enjoy...

Maybe Bagnaia will only consider himself to play safely in order not to crash, even though Bagnaia must continue to fight without being too relaxed in this last round. Because I'm quite sure that Martin will try to win in the Sprint and Main Race this week in order to prevent Bagnaia from becoming world champion because that's the only thing he can do even though he still has to hope for other bad things for Bagnaia. And on the other hand, several other tough riders will also be an obstacle for both of them, because in the last round all riders want to take the best position and performance.

Ferrari is strong only in fast track but not in all of them.
They are strong in high speed but not in high-speed turns.

Abu Dhabi can be one of these races.