2022 Emilia Romagna GP: Post Race Analysis

i like Nico’s commentary. very real, very natual himan reactions. like just shootin the bull w him in a bar.
i hate the sanitized commentary to protect everyones fragile egos.

 

I bet his engineering skills could help Merc debug/develop the car. He is an engineer driver. The team engineers need to know more than, "the car is undrivable" to make improvements.

What a great race. Lots of good passing without DRS. I say get rid of fake DRS.

Albon finish ahead of Hammy and gasly! I'm surprised Albon did not go to hard tires after the inters and go for 1 stop. Where could he have finished?

Is there anyone harder to pass then Kmag?

TSU did awesome as did Bottas and Russell. Bottas could have been ahead if the pit snafu did not happen. Too bad! It just goes to show you need a driver "and" a team to maximize points.

LeClerc is excellent and I hope he wins the WDC. His problem is he chokes under pressure. Pressure is only going to get more intense as the season progresses.

Hammy should be up there with Russell. Unfortunately LH just seems to be crying in his beer. He is showing up on grid but he is not racing. Gasly held off Hammy the whole race. I think Hammy could have passed gasly several times but Hammy was not taking any risk to himself. At P14...what's the point? He has had it too easy these past years and he has lost the hunger. With Hammy I see Vettel 2.0.

Norris is punching above his weight. Luck helps!

Perez and Sainz are just trying not to embarrass themselves. Perez is doing a better job than Sainz. I don't think those are skills problems. I think the mental game are causing their failures.

Verstapen! I see glimers of hammy in there. If the car can stay under him Max will deliver.

 

Hammy with a dominant car for ast 7 yrs didnt develop his passing skills. that muscle got weak.

 

It's obvious he didn't have any speed advantage to overtake.

 

Mostly agree with your post but not that Leclerc chokes under pressure. He’s ice-cold in wheel-to-wheel battles with excellent spatial awareness and rarely makes mistakes.

If anything, his problem is that he’s pushing the limits almost always—today was another example: he wasn’t under pressure as he was chasing Perez, he just saw an opportunity and at the Variante Alta—where he was fastest all weekend—he tried to close in on Perez to make the most of the upcoming DRS opportunity.

In the terms of character, I liken him to Gilles Villeneuve and you can already see he’s creating that same sort of following with the tifosi that Villeneuve had.

 

Ferrari messed the setup for the wet, plus Red Bull brought updates that stabilized their car and improved the handling.

My guess is Ferrari will be bringing the new floor to reduce proposing in Miami or Barcelona, as well as some other aero updates, and then of course the the updates to the PU. It was probably wise for the team to wait to bring the updates for a non-sprint and dry weekend.

 

Lots of pontificating. Carlos, its called racing. He took a hit. Crappy, but is what it is. Lec, for the most part the guy is ICE. This weekend he pushed it. I'm not in the car. A third place would really have been great, but they went another way and it bit them. But in the end did you see how he can drive from the back? They just need to keep moving it forward.

 

I’m in your mythical 15% then. The sprints are what F1 should be. It all happens on the track, not in the pits.

 

+1. The TV director needs to be shown the door. I mean, we get it if they are showing the battle for some time and when it was getting stale, they should move to the next battle. But that consistent broadcast lap after lap got toxic, with Crofty's commentary got me to change over to other channel. Nevertheless, enjoyed Nico's no-nonsense take on Ham with his commentary, while Crofty fumbling with words for his diva.

 

You have a point here!

I wish the races were run like the sprints, or like the races were run before pit stops started.

One tankfull, one set of tyres, and you go racing for 90 minutes without interruption.

No refuelling, no tyre change, no strategy and no messing about: a sprint from start to finish.

And if 90 minutes is too much, they may consider 2 heats of 45 minutes each with time added, but real sprints!

 

The car was at least a second a lap quicker than the AT. Combined with the supposed superiority of Lewis....well.

 

Do you think that Hamilton would have deliberately held back if that was the case?

From what I saw, Hamilton came close to Gasly at times, but never enough to launch a safe overtake.

 

not IF that was the case, that WAS the case.

Lewis didn't come close enough AT times. He was close enough the whole time.

In Brazil Hamilton fans have been trying to sell us the story that it was all LEWIS, and not the car. Now they're trying to sell us to the story it's all the car, and not Lewis. The difference? Now Lewis is doing ****. Russell finished 4th. Clearly the car is capable.

 

Brazil was easy for Hamilton .He had an engine (and probably illegal rear wing) that gave him an absurd straight line advantage. He could just drive by people on the straights, and there wasn't really anything the other cars could really do about it.

Hamilton is probably regretting not retiring as the "victim" last year, and the secret of how much the Mercedes cars have been carrying him to easy titles in 18'-20' remaining a secret. He's going to get beaten by Russel this year. Hell, Bottas, Ocon, and Norris are all on his heels, and odds are good he might slip to 7th in the championship. Shades of Vettel 14', who's image was never the same.

 

Well, we know that for you Hamilton can never do anything right, so you comment don't come as a surprise.

 

He clearly was holding back. The car was drivable. Russel was able to overtake many cars on what was likely a very similar setup. We've seen all year that Russel is faster than him in these new cars.

Hamilton doesn't care anymore. He hates the car and doesn't feel safe trying to overtake in it, especially on a wet track. And let's face it, Hamilton has a habit of running into people when he tries to overtake in a car that isn't to his liking, much like Vettel and Kimi.

 

And we know for you Hamilton is the supreme victim of the racing world, despite how good that world has been to him since childhood.

 

Anyways, Red Bull did a good job. Their updates helped close the gap and together with a good setup, Max was just way faster than Ferrari out there. It can't be denied that the team just didn't have it **** together, and felt the pressure of it being a home race.

Red Bull's new floor and weight updates clearly helped them in Imola. Ferrari are going to have to step up soon and bring the new PU and aero/floor updates soon.

 

I said so at the end of last year. He had the best excuse to call it quits.

I've given him plenty of credit, you just prefer to ignore it.

 

Possible, but I can understand that. After 7 WDCs, does he still have something to prove by sticking his neck out in the wet with a bad car?
I don't think he does, mostly when already out of the points. But Russell has everything to prove, and that's the difference. Hamilton should have retired end of last year, and I don't know why he carries on. There is no way one can keep the same focus for so long, and the stars aren't aligned any more at Mercedes. Finding this year's car so bad must be very demotivating as the end of his career, mostly when he has been dominating the field for so long.

 

Certainly the Red Bull proved superior to the Ferrari at Imola. They seem to have cure their teething troubles too.
That must be a wake up call at Maranello, maybe prone to euphoria after a couple of wins.
Leclerc still making juvenile mistakes is worrying though.

 

I don't think it was a mistake as such. He saw an opportunity to get as close to Perez and went for it. I am pretty sure if this incident wouldn't have taken place, Lec would have caught Perez in 2-3 laps given there were 13 laps remaining. That the car just snapped, it just showed the problems plaguing the car for both of our drivers. Sainz also had this issue in Qualifying.

If you ain't pushing, you ain't racing!! Risks shall always be there.

 

That's on him. If he can't handle not having the killer car, he should've retired. Don't take the teams money and resources, if you're not going to give it 100%.

Hamilton stopped being the Hamilton capable of great drives after 18'. He no longer went for the big overtakes, and just sort of cruised. He could afford to do that because of where Ferrari and Red Bull were at the time PU wise, and I suspect his decline began even that far back. 19' was easy and 20' was the easiest championship since Vettel 13'. But Russel's substitution in Bahrain 20' and Hamilton's mistakes in Baku, Monaco, Turkey, and his run ins with Max at Silverstone and Monza showed he had declined more than had previously met the eye.