2017 FORMULA 1 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX RACE **SPOILERS**

Hahaha, yeah right....
Did you actually watch this race or any race this season??? When did a Mercedes tyre last for a stint to the "Pirelli guidline" without serious loss of performance??? Both Lewis and Bottas complained a lot earlier about their tyres in every single race...The Mercedes is not the easiest car on the tyres and certainly not when pushing at the front. Yes, Lewis could have kept the tyres by driving much slower and less aggressive dropping back behind the others at the end but why should he do that? The way he drove at the front made it clear that he was not nursing the tyres over the distance. Everybody knew it and certainly Vettel and Bottas, especially Bottas as he certainly saw how the tyres behaved. To compare Wherlein, someone in a slower car at the end of the field having nothing to loose with someone who is pushing at the front fighting for the WDC does not give your point more credibility.

And whether Bottas turned down the engine or simply backed off does not make any difference, he clearly had no need to push driving in a gap between Lewis and the rest of the field. Your desperate try to talk him down to make his team mate looking better is indeed very familiar with a former fchat member...

 

Hmmm, not a sign of a great driver. Jim Clark was always extremely easy on tyres, but admittedly the tyres were very different back then.

Pete

 

Better get your reading glasses out then as I more than frequently say that there are better drivers out there. Verstappen, Vettel, Ricciardo, Alonso...hell I even said that Elton is the better driver! You're not fooling anyone.

+1 and as Daytona said, Elton has always been very hard on tires.

+1
Staying on the tires would've guaranteed a 2nd place finish and Bottas (and as it happened Raikkonen!) could easily have cruised up to the back and be within the 5 seconds...A stop was the only option they had.

+1

+1

 

WHen i joined this forum i noticed a lot of unwarranted hate on Lewis so I made the mistake of trying to put forward a different point of view but it appears a lot of people take offence to that.

Lewis has never been hard on the tyres. Always had better tyre and fuel management than nico and nico was also a very very good driver.

I watch all of the races. Mercedes operate very well on the soft tyre but their operating window on the softer compounds is not very good and the deg is high. So yes as we have seen in the other races this year they are much worse than Ferrari on ultra ans super soft but that doesn't apply to soft.

But I'll leave you all to it...

 

APRIL 19, 2017

Mercedes drivers admit tyre problems



Mercedes' two drivers have admitted the team is struggling with tyre problems in 2017.

After three races, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel is leading the world championship, leaving triple back-to-back champions Mercedes to ponder the reasons.

"We have a bit to do at this test," said Lewis Hamilton, after staying around in Bahrain for the post-race test that began on Tuesday.

"We need to improve the car and our knowledge about the tyres so that we are in a better position in the next race," he is quoted by the DPA news agency.

The next race in Russia should at least be cooler, with Mercedes more comfortable in China than in hotter conditions like Melbourne and Bahrain.

"The softer compound has been more of a struggle with the tyres and also the hotter it is, more of a struggle," Valtteri Bottas admitted. "So it's definitely something for us to understand."

 

What do you mean? You will retire from F-Chat again?

 

LOLO=LOlo, never har on his tyres?????
perhaps you never saw him drive in the hungaroring...first year he cooked his tyres, second year (i was just wayting for him to blew them up agian...and sure he did!!).
Lewis is crap regarding tyre management..he's luck wa sthat for the past few years the Mercs were very easy on them.

 

As was lauda. Elton would do well to listen to niki, although 10 years in F1 a GOAT should have figured that out by now....very telling to me that Elton is always whinging about the tires....

 

You can claim for as long as you want that he's not hard on his tires, but he is and always has been. He has a very aggressive driving style. First year at Mercedes, don't you remember his endless whining on the radio, even wishing to just stop in Barcelona because he couldn't manage his tires? Nico managed just fine...

 

I seem to remember him sliding into the gravel in the pit lane because he screwed his tyres and losing serious points, and he couldn't make his tyres last within five of vettel in Australia of course. The Mercedes isn't good on tyres, but even mclaren and Mercedes engineers who like elton state readily he is harder on tyres than other drivers

 

Well...in case you are really not "toil" then you better go back and look at his posts, then you might get an idea where this "hate" is coming from...
Repeating the same "point of view" making baseless generalized assumptions like the following one will certainly not improve this forum...

Yeah right...Lewis is always two times better than anybody else, no matter what Nothing new...

 

Lewis haters, perhaps you might acknowledge or agree that Hamilton WAS hard on tires when he came into F1... but by his second season with Mercedes, he had learned to be much more easy on tires as required. In the last 3 seasons, he was frequently less hard on the tires than Rosberg, getting less degradation and longer stints.

It's a very fair criticism of his early years, but it hasn't applied for several years now. Hamilton did learn how to manage tire degradation and does it well. If the Mercedes car this year is hard on tires so far for both drivers... that's not Hamilton's fault, it's Paddy's fault , and James Allison (and the engineering team) will fix it.

 

I give up, it is simply not worth it anymore...Live on in your bubble where Lewis is best in everything and never to blame for anything.

 

... and hard on the competition

G

 

Unfair. He made a valid observation about Hamilton's management of tyres. I don't see any claim that Ham is, to quote your words, "best in everything and never to blame for anything." Why the grief? Is no one allowed to comment on him in a positive light? Don't get me wrong, I hate it too when people go overboard claiming he's the GOAT and walks on water because that's just unreasonable, but he is, whether you like it or not, a decent driver. He's not Palmer or Stroll or Massa or Raikkonen or Kvyat or… (you get my point).

No point getting all stressed about it.

 

Speaking of bubbles... I never said anything of the sort. Did you even bother to read what I wrote? Like the part where I agreed that Hamilton USED TO BE hard on tires? Straight FACT, though, is that Hamilton has not been hard on tires for at least the past two years - he developed the ability to go easy on the tires and manage them, and was able to manage the tires at least as well as Rosberg, if not better.

If you hate Hamilton so rabidly that you insist on pretending there are currently faults where they were addressed years ago, then the bubble (of blinding hatred) is yours alone.

It would be good if you gave up on the rabid Hamilton hatred, but I don't actually believe you.

 

Now you have to show me where I said anything like that...I rate Hamilton among the best 3,4 or 5 drivers in the current field and it does not come from nothing that he is multiple WDC and one of the highest paid drivers now but I do not see him above all the others neither in the moment and certainly not of those in the past (Senna, Schumacher, Clark, Fangio....).

But it is always the same: someone here in the forum says "Hamilton might have a deficit in XYZ..." and five minutes later one of his worshippers is coming around the corner saying "Hamilton is THE BEST in XYZ", no matter what XYZ is...And without giving any examples not to mention evidence it is called "fact". If someone counters and the worshipper is running out of arguments he can still label the other "hater".

q.e.d.

 

Elton isn't harder on his tyres, no, course not, that's why he was crying into his radio begging to pit early in the Australian GP while everyone else was okay, and ended up pitting on lap 18 because they couldn't stand the whining anymore.

Similarly, I seem to remember him moaning so much about his tyres in Monaco it cost him the win, and then he moaned about the team letting Nico stay in front of him.

Doesn't sound much like a man able to get the most out of his tyres at all

This is too funny, and too easy. Bottles outqualifying him at the weekend will undoubtedly be put down as pure luck, but guess what, bottles, a man who struggled to beat massa (who everyone says is a has been) on occasion, now gets to beat elton in the same car with just a couple hundred laps practice....... wouldn't happen to a genuine fantastic once in a lifetime legend! Hehehehe

 

I'm sorry, you want to q.e.d me? You obviously still haven't read my post, as it is explicitly NOT what you've suggested. I certainly didn't claim that Hamilton is the BEST - I stated that Hamilton used to be hard on tires, but said that no longer applies and that he learned to manage degradation to the point where he was no harder on tires than Rosberg was over the last two years.

That's not at all what you accuse one of his worshippers of (note, I'm not one of his worshippers). Further - if you want examples of evidence to support a contention, then YOU have to start with examples or evidence of YOUR initial statement that Hamilton remains very hard on tires. AFTER you provide your examples or evidence, THEN I will bother to rebut. That's how a discussion or debate works - you back up your initial statement, then I'll back up my challenge. Until you go, I'm not going to waste my time. I suggest you start last year, look at tire stint lengths and lap times per lap through a stint duration, comparing Hamilton vs Rosberg initially, then throw in a Vettel or Ricciardo for some validation. After you do that, then you can prove to us that Hamilton remains to be very hard on tires compared to anyone else and I will gladly accept your proof (if it exists... which it doesn't )

ALL the drivers are whiny babies on the radio for the last few years, including Hamilton, Vettel, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Kimi, Verstappen, Alonso... right down to Stroll at the back. Pretty sad, really.

Couldn't be that it's the car that is hard on tires so far this year, and the team that has yet to understand how to get the best out of the tires? To your same point, it was Bottas who had tire problems on his second and third sets of tires in the race (initial set too, but had pressure problems to excuse that set's problem), to the point where Hamilton was seconds per lap faster than Bottas for the last 20 laps of the race. I'm not claiming anything legendary, I'm saying that the Mercedes car and team, including both drivers, have yet to figure out the new tires, and making conclusions about either driver's ability to manage tires based on this year to date's results are premature.

 

Lewis lost 2 tenths because his drs failed to engage on one of the straights on his last qualy lap. Mechanical error cost him pole

Gordon has explained the rest well. Lewis is no longer hard on his tyres as per the last few years. Cannot remember the exact race but some of his victories were with one stoppers with crazy stint length

 

Let's be honest here, even if Lewis joined Ferrari and won the WDC with one hand tied behind his back with a blindfold on and his dog on his lap,there will still exist folks who just cannot stand him.

It's nothing to do with his driving ,they just do not like him,and will never change..fair enough they are welcome to their opinion but please don't expect the rest of Fchat to agree.

 

Is the my dad can beat up your dad crap really back again???!!....Every damn year

 

That's sport unfortunately. Brings out the most basic and backward tribal instincts in some folk. Polarises views to an extreme - both for and against. Fair enough, it's their right and their loss. Highly entertaining for the rest of us.

Back on topic - this season is shaping up just great. I hope ferrarinand Merc match other on tech developments so that drivers and strategy decide the championship.

 

Elton's tyre strategy hasn't ever been any different to anyone else, number of stops wise, the tyres lastest far too long in the last few years. Allied with the best car on the grid by a matter of a minimum second per lap, elton and rosberg dominated without either of them having to be 'Schumacher-esque'.

What we can see from the first few races, since you don't want to judge them apparently despite Gordon suggesting that was exactly what to do (as the tyres are different this year, so why analyse previous data but not the most recent), is that the Mercedes is only a match for the ferrari, and only better over a lap due to the oil injection system most likely, and elton has failed to demonstrate any god-like driving in any of them .

I made a point neither of you have dared to acknowledge specific to the first race this year, when Elton couldn't make his tyres last the first stint and it cost him the race. Everyone else seemed to make their tyres last way longer, his first moan about them was lap 12, 10 before Seb had to change his, and six before his own team gave in and let him change them. Kimi made them last a lot longer than most, although ferrari themselves screwed Kimi.