2023 US GP: Post Race Analysis

Hamilton drove a great race today. I do think the Mercedes tire strategy was a bit off, early ... they held on to the one-stop plan for too long, it seemed, and kept Hamilton out a few too many laps during the first stint. But Hamilton adapted well.

Given Verstappen's brake problem, another couple laps would have allowed Hamilton a long-absent win

ALSO: I'm with you on the damn rules Do you have to leave room, on-track, for an alongside driver, or no? Does the answer depend on what lap you're on? Does the answer depend on who's driving? Does the answer include turn one at COTA (which every driver still early-apexes)? Inquiring minds wanna know ...

 

Hold that thought as we may have just avoided the servers burning down level event.

 

Mercedes strategy messed up Hamilton from winning by keeping him out too long while Max did the undercut.

 

Ferrari starts on pole, gets tire strategy wrong, fails to podium. Sad.


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exactly what you describe, seems to be written in the Ferrari playbook now

 

They also lack race pace. They qualify great but they can't race given the track layout.

 

Love Danny ric but he is past his sell by date. He and vettle stayed in the sport too long and damaged their brand. I'm sure rossberg still had plenty of race in him but he knew the optimum time to step away and years later still the only driver to beat 7x champ Lewis to a WDC in the same car.

Albon! Love him too but when he was a kid didn't he learn to color inside the lines???

 

Ric’s brand is a cheesy smile. he’s never been a top level driver IMO

 

And now we learn: Hamilton & LeClerc were both disqualified for excessive plank wear

https://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a45608686/why-lewis-hamilton-and-charles-leclerc-were-dqd-from-f1-us-grand-prix/

 

and here i tried sooooo hard to be complimentary to Hamilton

 

So in essence it's POSSIBLE Mercedes lowered Hamiltons car instead of Russell's car just to make Hamilton look good?

 

Yes it's possible that only one car got lowered but doubtful they would only do it to one car. Since Russell's car wasn't checked we'll probably never know.

 

How about Russell's pace compared to Hamilton's pace in the race? Is that evidence enough? Or not really?

 

OMG!

There are memes denigrating Charles LeClerc's poles to wins ratio. There is no clearer example of what a great driver LeCelrc is than to get pole position, finish 6th, and then get disqualified!!! The car performance sucked! The tire analysis sucked! The strategy sucked! The car sucked! TOTAL disarray! A driver showed up, put a piece of **** on pole and then what did the team do??? Why does he do so well on sprint weekends? It's because he is an amazing driver! The less time there is to optimize emphasizes driver skill!

I don't think we'll ever get to find out if Charles can be a good or great racer at Ferrari... How is this not embarrassing??

The most denigrated driver in all of F1 - Lance Stroll. I am not a professional F1 driver, but in the grand scheme of things, IF I could be behind Fernando Alonso and only .5sec behind in qually, I would be pretty freaking happy!!!!
On the other hand, his lack of race performance is really costing his team positions in the championship. Lawrence (father) needs to decide if this is about providing his son an F1 drive or being a successful racing team. Its his choice... They were actually the most bang for the buck team in F1. I don't know what they are now.

 

Max’s start where he drove another car off the track was unsportsman like conduct and deserved disqualification.
agree with penalties for all drivers that drive cars off track.

 

Would be interesting to see a summary of total time in pits by team for each race. Seems that RB (and Mclaren, and other teams) is typically in the low to mid 2s, while Merc is about a second slower.
Hard to fathom how a 3 second pit stop is slow but considering how difficult it is to make up a second on track, especially on Max, it makes Lewis and George's job that much harder.

 

From the BBC F1 website:

“Russell's car was not checked by the scrutineers, incidentally, and nor was that of Leclerc's team-mate Carlos Sainz. The way FIA scrutineering works is that cars are checked at random. If a transgression is found, that does not mean that the other car in the team is then checked as well.”

 

Leclerc said he would have done the same move Max did at the start.

 

Watch from Leclerc's onboard. Leclerc was behind Max the whole time.

 

looked as if CL had to enter pit exit lane?

 

but he did that on his own regard in an attempt to overtake. He wasn't forced there.

 

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Hummmm, 6 of one and half a dozen of the other on that move.
Verstappen drifted left to prevent an overtaking attempt from Leclerc.
Still behind, Leclerc had to brake or go off track. That's what we saw on the footage.
Borderline dirty, I would say, but Leclerc don't seem to hold grudges.