Topic: Motosport General discussion tread --- Formula1, MotoGP, WTCC, ETCC, DTM..... - page 85. (Read 137563 times)

I agree, but not like they are going to fire him on the middle of the season, they are going to look for another driver after the season is over. We still have plenty of races left, and could Perez make a comeback and keep his position? Maybe, if he ends up being the second (or even a few times first) this season and keeps that up for all the races that is left, I think he could still convince the team to keep him. However, we have seen him not do all that well so far, and I do not see a reason why he would get any better suddenly. The real question would be who to get instead of him, Daniel Ricciardo is a great driver but feels like he is way too old to become a second driver to them, I think a young talent, someone 24 or younger should be the point, that would allow them to get a talent that could give them at least a decade with them and would make more sense however there aren't that many of those available right now.

Perez is so done indeed. He gained only 3 positions in this whole race. It is really hard to believe when we consider the power of his car. Maybe he doesn't drive the same car with Verstappen probably. But it must still be faster than all other cars technically. I don't know what is going wrong on Perez side because of that. 

At the same time Perez must have still given what Red Bull wanted from him. Because he is still the second-placed driver in the standings. Hamilton's being out in this race prevented the gap with Perez from being closer. As long as Perez doesn't drop down from the 3rd place Red Bull might not think of replacing him yet.

The time for Perez is over, he never deserved an RBR, and he does not deserve it now for sure.

Riccardo will take his spot IMHO

It was interesting race, despite all these penalties for track limits. That accident between Hamilton and Russel was completely Lewis fault. And it's a bit strange because this season it's more common that George is making huge mistakes. Perez performance was simply disgraceful today and he is just lucky that Riccardo got injury and Lawson isn't experienced enough to get seat in Red Bull.
Another awesome race for Mclaren with double podium and in constructors cup they're getting close to Aston Martin.
But damn, this race was so difficult phisically for drivers. I never saw before drivers trying to rest their hands on straights. Sargeant had even to retire and was barely able to get out of car by himself.

It was one of the really surprising starts this season. Hamilton wanted to overtake Russell from the outside at turn 1. However they touched and Hamilton was out of the race. Russell was criticized a lot for causing his teammate to be out at the beginning already. Russell was able to return to the race and he even finished in 4th place.

But Mercedes and Hamilton got a big hit by that poor incident. Maybe they could have been on podium with both of their drivers.

Sainz couldn't even race interestingly. It was another shock to me because he seemed really good until then. It was a good day for McLaren with two drivers on podium of course after all these incidents. 

It is not Max fault,honestly I don't remember more boring seasons since the era of Schumacher at Ferrari as they had absolutely no competition while in this actual season at least we have seen some sort of it,Ferrari won a race,McLaren won a sprint race,in those seasons of Ferrari dominance no other team could win a race and even the team mate Barrichello when were winning some races the order from the team came,let Schumacher pass,never seen more boring team orders than these.Schumacher was near being Champion and nothing would have changed if they let Barrichello pass.

As for Piastri I think we can all agree it is a great driver,coming here in the debut season and winning something.

Yeah, Max winning the world championship was predicted and everyone expected it seeing how he performed this season. He deserves this title and congratulations to him. I hope that next season the racing can be even more exciting, because this season is quite boring.
And for Piastri and Lando, I see that these two young drivers have quite potential in fighting Max and RBR. Hopefully these two McLarens can provide interesting competition in the next season.

And yeah Max won the title and for me, this is the most boring season I can remember.
I think in the last decade I've missed around 10 GP, 5 are from this season.

There is no competition.


BTw Piastri is a great driver.

The guy has a lot of potential if he keeps on driving like this. I've been eyeing at him for a few weeks now and he's really good at a lot of technical aspects of the track that they're racing on. It's not every time that a driver on his debut gets to be better than the rest of the flock who has been driving in F1 for years. Mad respect to this guy, and hopefully he continues this good performance under McLaren in order to contend for future championships.

No one cares if Max won it on a Saturday or a Sunday,the good thing out of this is that he is the fiance of the daughter of Nelson Piquet who happen also to be the last driver on F1 to have won a F1 Championship on a Saturday,so just a good coincidence as for the rest we all knew who was the Champion of 2023 from a long long time ago.

The real news is that Piastri guy winning a race,a Sprint race but nevertheless a race and he is on his debut season,he has shown signs of great driving but today with that driving he showed that he really deserves the title at McLaren and most likely they at McLaren are preparing for a very good race tomorrow.

It was only matter of time, but now it's official - Max Verstappen is World Champion for the 3rd time. Such things doesn't happens on Saturday often in F1. But he didn't even had to do much today. There was 3 safet cars in such short sprint, but despite that, there was enough good racing. Very happy for Piastri win, it's amazing to see what he is doing in debut season. Medium tyres weren't working very well in early phase of sprint, but later drivers with these tyres had huge advantage.
That accident where Ocon and Perez made sandwhich from Hulkenber was Ocon's fault, but I'm wondering how many times in their careers Perez and Ocon got involved together. Remember what they were doing being teammates in Force India...

The fact that Max won his third in a row and nobody mentioned it so far should be one example why many found this season boring. Even last year it was head to head for a little while with ferrari, they still won easily but gave sense that it was close for a while. I think the issue is not Max winning, Hamilton won too, but perez is just sooooo bad, they are not even close. If we saw perez fight a littke harder maybe that would have been fine. In the end kudos to rebull and max for getting the double once again, they fully deserved it, they did everything they suppose to do perfectly and thats why its impoetant. I believe that we are going to endup with them doing more experiments on the cars from here on out, should be easy for them to take the risk and max likes risks so Iam sure he will gladky take it. They already started working on next years car even before the summer break, so I am sure they will win it next year as well

The Mercedes duo showed their best performance in this qualifying, which they did not show in the previous race. But even though their performance is quite good, I'm not too sure that Mercedes can win the race since Max and RBR still have the upper hand. However, it is possible that Hamilton might overtake Perez in second place, because Perez has not shown his best performance recently.

No excuse for Perez and Stroll to perform this badly compared to their team mates.  I mean wtf..  I know their cars are maintained and tweaked by a different team of engineers but bottom line it's really the same car.  :/  Maybe I get Stroll performing that worse than Alonso.  But Perez?  He should be pulling his own weight and help the team get the points to win the constructor's championship.

Anyway looks like Hamilton and Russell were sand bagging the practice session.    Alonso looking good too. 

And what do you guys think of Sainz top 6 finish at 1.94?    Those odds could get chalkly after the sprints.

George Russell really stepping up on Qatar. That's still almost half a second difference but he can sure as hell come close to Max if he wanted to. Hamilton also comes in with a very good 3rd place in qualifying leaving the two Mercedes at the top of the food chain together with Max. If this continues until race day, both of these Mercedes drivers will have a chance to steal the win from Verstappen, although that's highly unlikely given how smooth the Red Bull's driver has been.

Mercedes were quite surprising to me in qualifying today. I didn't expect them to be in top places honestly. As Piastri's lap time was also deleted Hamilton went up to 3rd place. But we will see if Mercedes drivers can use this advantage really positively. Because qualifying and race are totally different things.

McLaren had a really poor day today. Norris could have started in 2nd place also but his lap time was also deleted as far as I was able to see. He will need to climb even more positions than Piastri as it was his only lap time. Sainz and Perez were also poorly performing drivers indeed but I think they will both gain many places during the race.

Mercedes definitely had a good run, didn't expected to see them there, but that's going to be great for the race. Tomorrow it could be the first time ever a drivers championship is decided with a sprint race if I am not mistaken. If Max does just a little better than Perez, which we all know that he will, Max will be the world champion even before the race on Sunday. Thats going to be quite weird, there isn't a champions place for a sprint race normally, and celebration before the race feels so weird however that's what its going to be like. I guess its quite important to make sure that everything is set up, and rest of the season will once again feel a little bit more empty. Its still quite good to watch second place fight though, every other team is fighting so great against each other, that will be great to witness.

Mercedes out of nowhere got a strong pace ? well , Perez do have to fear about his 2nd place in Championship because I have a feeling Lewis will have a word to say about this.

Great to see Oscar Piastri doing so fine once again and by all means , getting 6th place in Qatar qualifiers could be big for sprint race when I do expect him to gain at least 1 place.

Ferrari they let us down during this qualifying session as personally I had more hopes from them after they had 2 great races. 

2023 F1 Qatar Grand Prix - Qualifying Results
Pos.   Driver   Nat.   Team   Q1   Q2   Q3
1   Max Verstappen   NED   Oracle Red Bull Racing   1m25.007s   1m24.483s   1m23.778s
2   George Russell   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   1m25.334s   1m24.827s   1m24.219s
3   Lewis Hamilton   GBR   Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team   1m26.076s   1m24.381s   1m24.305s
4   Fernando Alonso   ESP   Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team   1m25.223s   1m25.241s   1m24.369s
5   Charles Leclerc   MON   Scuderia Ferrari   1m25.452s   1m25.079s   1m24.424s
6   Oscar Piastri   AUS   McLaren F1 Team   1m25.266s   1m24.724s   1m24.540s
7   Pierre Gasly   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   1m25.566s   1m24.918s   1m24.553s
8   Esteban Ocon   FRA   BWT Alpine F1 Team   1m25.711s   1m24.928s   1m24.763s
9   Valtteri Bottas   FIN   Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake   1m26.038s   1m25.297s   1m25.058s
10   Lando Norris   GBR   McLaren F1 Team   1m25.131s   1m24.685s   No Time Set
11   Yuki Tsunoda   JPN   Scuderia AlphaTauri    1m26.058s   1m25.301s   
12   Carlos Sainz   ESP   Scuderia Ferrari   1m25.808s   1m25.328s   
13   Sergio Perez   MEX   Oracle Bull Racing   1m25.991s   1m25.426s   
14   Alex Albon   THA   Williams Racing   1m26.118s   1m25.707s   
15   Nico Hulkenberg   GER   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   1m25.904s   1m25.783s   
16   Logan Sargeant   USA   Williams Racing   1m26.210s       
17   Lance Stroll   CAN   Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One Team   1m26.345s       
18   Liam Lawson   NZL   Scuderia AlphaTauri   1m26.635s       
19   Kevin Magnussen   DEN   MoneyGram Haas F1 Team   1m27.046s       
20   Zhou Guanyu   CHN   Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake   1m27.432s


Qualifying results, pole position for MAx.


Tomorrow we will have the second qualify for the sprint race.

We have left the qualifying session behind in Qatar. Perez and Sainz had a really poor session unfortunately. Both of them were eliminated in Q2 already. Their times were both horrible compared to the 10th placed driver - 0.7 sec. But hopefully both of them will make up for this bad result in the race.

I expect more from Perez especially considering that he has a faster car than Ferrari. He is still an inconsistent driver recently. His performance in Japan was just horrible. It was like his mind was on something else during the race. 

Apart from that it was a really comfortable pole for Verstappen. The race should also be very comfortable for him.