FORMULA 1 ROLEX TURKISH GRAND PRIX 2021 - Istanbul....RACE....▄▀▄▀▄▀ SPOILERS▄▀▄▀▄▀

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/10-things-we-learned-from-f1s-2021-turkish-grand-prix/6685201/

10 things we learned from F1's 2021 Turkish Grand Prix

1. Bottas reminded F1 of his quality with a dominant drive
One year on from a galling, difficult race in which he spun six times in damp conditions, Bottas atoned himself in emphatic fashion with what he described as the best win of his F1 career to date.

The Finn inherited pole from Hamilton after the latter’s grid penalty, but was then able to control proceedings at the front. He quickly opened up a small margin to Verstappen that he built on through the opening stint, and Mercedes covered Red Bull well in the switch to a second set of intermediates, ensuring Bottas would never be in trouble.

For good measure, he put in the fastest lap on each of the last two laps, proving just how much pace he had in hand. Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said after the race Bottas’s drive “almost went unnoticed” because it was “so accomplished and effortless from him”.

It was an important reminder of the kind of drive that Bottas is capable of, and the quality he will bring to Alfa Romeo next season. It also showed the crucial role he still has to play for Mercedes this year in both championships. Without him, Verstappen would be 11 points clear instead of only six.

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Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, in the pits
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

2. Mercedes made the right call pitting Hamilton when it did
Hamilton may have been frustrated at the time, but Mercedes made entirely the right call to pit him late on instead of running the risk of keeping him out all race.

Toto Wolff conceded after the race that the optimal time to bring Hamilton in would have been 10 laps earlier, around when the other cars came in. But Mercedes was trying to open up options to get Hamilton in the thick of the fight at the front. Had slicks been required late on, saving a stop would have changed his result completely.

Esteban Ocon’s late drop in pace showed just how risking it was to go the whole race without pitting. Ocon himself thought one more lap would have resulted in a puncture on his front-right tyre, which was “quite damaged” by the end.

Hamilton was likely to have lost places to at least Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc - the two positions he gained by staying out and rising to third anyway - and would also have been at risk from Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris behind.

Even more concerning would have been the possibility of a puncture or a DNF that would have been costly in the title fight. Pirelli reckoned it was doubtful that Hamilton could have finished without a change.

All things considered, to have taken the penalty and only lost eight points to Verstappen is a good return, especially as Hamilton could only gain seven when Red Bull took its own power unit hit.



3. Hamilton’s radio calls need reviewing for risk-reward balance
Wolff brushed off Hamilton’s radio frustration surrounding his pit stop on Sunday, saying Mercedes’ pitwall has a “thick enough skin” to understand frustration being vented.

Hamilton took to Instagram on Monday to clarify that he was not “furious” with the call, and that you should not “expect to be all polite” on the radio, which is very true. It is naturally easy for drivers to get worked up in the heat of competition.

The bigger thing for Mercedes to do will be to review the communications and how it weighs up not only the risk and reward, but also the balance of the driver versus the team in terms of making such crucial decisions.

Hamilton said after the race that he is a “risk taker”, so was appreciative of the chance to go for it. And while the ground lost to Verstappen was minimal, all things considered, Mercedes will inevitably go over things to try and smooth out the decision-making process where possible.


“I think we just need to work on the communication to trust each other, and in a way be able to describe what we are aiming for,” said Wolff.

“We have no problem at all with tough conversations on the radio before you have complete information. Obviously we wouldn’t speak like this to Lewis, because he’s driving a car at 320 km/h. But that’s all OK, absolutely.

“We are totally aligned, we’ve been in this together eight years, and we have thick enough skin to understand that a driver in the car is frustrated about the situation, that he will understand afterwards.”

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Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, battles with Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB16B

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

4. Red Bull’s performance offers warning signs for the run-in
Verstappen felt pleased with second place in Turkey, and rightly so. Red Bull lacked Mercedes’ pace throughout the weekend, meaning victory, even in the wet, was never really on the cards.

But that in itself is a big warning sign for Red Bull. After enjoying a pace advantage over Mercedes through the summer months, the peak coming with Verstappen’s sweep of the Austria races, it appears the tables have now turned.

“We’ll have to analyse of course why we were not competitive here,” Verstappen said. “I do think they probably stepped it up a bit more. So yeah, even with the points lead, it’s not going to be easy.”

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner made particular note of Mercedes’ straight-line speed advantage in Turkey, an area his team appeared to have the upper-hand on earlier this season.

“Their straightline speed has taken a significant step recently,” Horner said. “I think that whereas we could match them with smaller wings previously, now we can't get near.”

But Mercedes also has its own concerns. Wolff explained that the team was working on containing an issue on its ICE that forced Hamilton’s change in Turkey until the end of the season, coming as a result of pushing the performance boundaries so much.

It leaves both teams with niggles to resolve in the run-in. Austin has typically been a happy hunting ground for Mercedes through the years, while Mexico may swing more towards Red Bull. But the picture does look very different to a couple of months ago.



5. Perez’s solid charge came at just the wrong time
The relief was clear in Perez’s voice after taking the chequered flag in Turkey and securing only his third podium finish of the season.

It was a well-earned result, having fended off Hamilton brilliantly just before the pit stops before coming in at the right time and getting his tyres into a good window, allowing him to catch and then pass Leclerc.

It made good on the Mexican's claim he was feeling good with the Red Bull RB16B car in Turkey, seemingly more upbeat than he’d been on more recent weekends. He may have only been seventh in qualifying, and got some help early on with the Gasly/Fernando Alonso clash, but it was still a well-executed drive.

The downside for Red Bull and Perez is that one of his better weekends also coincided with Bottas’s best of the season. A double-podium wasn’t enough for Red Bull to make up any ground in the constructors’ championship.

Nevertheless, it was a good confidence builder for Perez after a fairly barren run of form. He scored one point less in Turkey than he had in the six rounds prior, but to have gone wheel-to-wheel with Hamilton - and won - will be a particular boost.

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Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari SF21, Esteban Ocon, Alpine A521

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

6. Sainz’s charge shows the good shape Ferrari is in
To have watched McLaren claim a 1-2 in Monza and come close to winning in Russia, and to only trail by 7.5 points in the championship is testament to Ferrari’s recent good work.

Carlos Sainz Jr admitted after practice on Friday that he was a bit sad to see team-mate Leclerc finish so highly on the timesheets - not for any rivalry reason, but because it was clearly a good weekend for the team while he’d be starting last due to an engine penalty.

Sainz put in a foot-perfect weekend display, the only slight blot on his copybook being his bump on Sebastian Vettel as he passed during his charge through the field. He knocked Daniel Ricciardo out in Q1, inadvertently helping Ferrari, and then gave Leclerc a mega tow in Q2 to help him clamber up the order.

The fashion with which Sainz scythed through the field showed just how hooked up Ferrari was in Turkey, grabbing some hard-fought points despite the slow pit stop due to a signalling issue.

Equally impressive was Leclerc’s ability to keep pace with Bottas and Verstappen through the majority of the opening stint. Leclerc admitted he was surprised to have done so, particularly after running a lower downforce set-up than expected.

Again, it speaks to the strength of Ferrari right now - and contrasts with McLaren...

7. McLaren’s form looks increasingly track-specific
Ricciardo remarked on Thursday that he doubted McLaren would be taking the fight to Mercedes and Red Bull on a regular basis, and that its form would be more track-specific.

His prediction proved bang-on in Turkey, which was a difficult weekend for McLaren. Norris came home a respectable seventh, but never really looked like hassling Gasly ahead - explaining that the MCL35M was struggling in the circuit's long corners.

Ricciardo’s own struggles after dropping out in Q1 and taking a new power unit contrasted greatly with Sainz’s charge.

“I saw Carlos cut through the traffic and I just couldn’t,” he said after the race. “As soon as I got behind someone, I just lost the front and then it started to get dead.”

In the fight for third, McLaren will need to maximise the opportunities that come its way in the final six races, much as it did at Monza and so nearly did in Russia. It looks set to enjoy higher highs than Ferrari in the final stages, but consistency may be what settles the fight to be best of the rest.

8. Penalty consistency is in the spotlight once again
Alonso’s recent comments about F1’s penalties and stewarding caused a bit of a stir, particularly on Thursday when the double world champion said reaction to his move in Russia proved there were “different rules for different drivers”.

It was therefore somewhat ironic that Alonso himself was then caught up in two in-race incidents on the first two laps: at Turn 1, when he was spun in contact with Gasly; and on the second lap when he ran into Mick Schumacher.

The five-second time penalty handed to Gasly was harsh. The stewards argued that he was wholly to blame (albeit after updating their document) as he was not in a sandwich of cars at Turn 1 - yet with Perez lurking behind him on the inside, it is hard to know where else Gasly could have gone.

Alonso had little to say about that clash, and was apologetic for running into Schumacher. But the Gasly incident does again raise the topic of inconsistency when it comes to penalties. Alonso’s race may have been ruined, but the outcome of an incident is not something that should really be accounted for in defining the sanction.

9. Istanbul Park was back to its best this year
As exciting as last year’s cold, slippery Turkish Grand Prix may have been as drivers struggled on the resurfaced asphalt, we did not get to see this tremendous track at its very best.

Drivers were left tip-toeing around corners, and the challenge of Turn 8 was somewhat nullified as these wonderful cars - the fastest ever in F1, that have just six races now remaining - struggled around.

Thankfully the issues with the track were resolved for this year. Drivers actually noted there was perhaps too much grip, far more than they had simulated, after the water-blasting treatment had worked perfectly ahead of this year’s race.

The race might have been damp and qualifying always faced the threat of rain, but it was great to see the cars properly tackling one of Hermann Tilke’s best circuit designs. Juan Pablo Montoya’s lap record from 2005 was beaten in FP1, showing just how much conditions had improved.

It may be unclear when, if ever, F1 will return to Istanbul Park - having once again stepped into the breach to fill gaps left in the calendar by cancelled season regulars. But we'll always have the memory of watching this generation of cars properly going for it here.

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Red Bull mechanics prepare the car of Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, on the grid

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

10. The 23-race calendar is going to push F1 to its limit
The World Motor Sport Council will this week give its approval to the provisional calendar for the 2022 season, which is set to feature a record-breaking 23 races.

The calendar was a regular topic of debate through the weekend in Turkey as teams considered the human cost of staging so many events - a salient point of discussion with Sunday being World Mental Health Day.

AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost said that staff “should go” if they cannot handle the pressures of such a schedule, but Wolff offered a totally different view. He told Autosport in an interview that F1 should consider putting something in the regulations to encourage rotation, helping make working life more sustainable.

Insight: How F1 teams manage their mental health

Triple-headers and packed runs of races have been a necessity in recent times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And while the riches of a bumper calendar may be attractive for F1, there does need to be some balance. We cannot continue to ask more of everyone in the paddock year on year, as there will come a tipping point.

 

Hamilton's hypocrisy showed again in spades during the post-race interviews...

"I should've followed to my gut. Frustrated in myself for not following my gut."

This was followed by a long, dragged out pause (catching himself being a pos liar and quickly realizing his gut had told him to stay out in Sochi too) then comes...

"I work as a team. I did the best I could with the advice I was getting."

No one else in the paddock is as full of himself as Hamilton is. Anyone who argues that everybody else does this, is as much full of horsesh!t as Hamilton is or in plain denial...

 

100% on the money. Done with the constant excuses from the Hamilton camp. He does this far too often. I don't care for his words after his PR agent got to him (and hell, as you just demonstrated, even that he's **** on!).

 

Tunnel vision. Looks like the extended graining period caught most teams off guard.

Lots of probably's. It was already too late when they told LH to pit initially, and Merc wasn't sure either. Max pitted earlier.
Great result for Max.

 

As I noted elsewhere, RBR I think have the sharpest pit wall and Max knows this and trusts them to do the thinking while he’s driving.

The Merc guys, including HAM, have had such a dominant car for so long that they were used to trying anything and they’d still win because the car was so fast. Note they don’t have the huge advantage they used to have and not everything comes as easy so strategy needs to be spot on.

 

Come On! Info, Info, Info - YouTube

Leclerc pit radio. I feel we've been a little harsh on the Ferrari radio. Seems a decision between the two. I do think that the pitwall should've seen it coming, but they tried a win...so be it.

 

Good communication. So the pit knew Ric took 12 laps to go through graining.

LH radio:

 

Whew, the damp-track-that-never-dried! What a race! Bottom line, HAM only moved up about 6 spots, BOT and VER and PER do a solid race, Ferrari overall OK, and Max is back on top for the championship. I guess I wish I spoke Spanish or German or Dutch well enough to just listen to their broadcasters during the race. Actually, I think the solution to the focus on HAM on the TV is to just turn the sound off.

 

Graining yes?

 

{With no disrespect to Carlos::}

A completely flawed (and thereby meaningless) system.

Lewis has not been DoD since 2017 and yet has won 4 WDCs in that time.

As the system is, Lewis could lap the entire field twice and still not get DoD !!

 

So, my question about this::
a) it happened this year
b) it happened last year
c) but in both years it did not happen at the start through the first pit stop.

What makes graining worse after ½ tanks than on full tanks ?

 

Well, for starters with a half tank, less energy/mass is being put through the tires thereby getting those work temps within the critical window of time more problematic...

 

Quite a poor race from Hamilton and didn't get out of it what he expected with the car he was in.

Once again he showed poor race craft where it mattered, his years of running off in to the distance have left him soft & rusty.

Why on earth didn't he defend the inside against Perez once he'd pulled a car length in front down the pit straight?

Instead he left himself open to a lunge and Perez obliged, very similar to the battle with Bottas in Silverstone.

Just not good enough from a 7x champion.

 

No worries. Im certain training is needed to understand this tyre state

 

Training is also needed by the drivers, who have to think differently about a tire that works well on lap 1 and 2, then turns into a "Koosh ball" for 10 laps before returning to form.

 

Thanks for posting that, it does indeed show the thought process shared between driver and pit wall. I guess when we hear the edited clips on the TV we tend to jump to conclusions without appreciating the whole picture.

 

Perfectly illuminated here by Autosport - Kimi was far worse earlier in the weekend. Such an idiot he is. They offer that below in the article the Kimi calls in practice.

Formula 1 Turkish GP Opinion- https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/the-danger-of-reading-too-much-into-f1s-clickbait-radio-messages/6686213/

The danger of reading too much into F1's clickbait radio messages
By: Jonathan Noble
Oct 14, 2021, 4:24 AM
OPINION: After Lewis Hamilton responded to reports labelling him 'furious' with Mercedes following his heated exchanges over team radio during the Russian Grand Prix, it provided a snapshot on how Formula 1 broadcasting radio snippets can both illuminate and misrepresent the true situation

"F***, man, why did you give up that place? We shouldn't have come in".

Lewis Hamilton’s radio rant to his Mercedes pitwall in the Turkish Grand Prix prompted a fair bit of controversy last weekend, as it once again opened up interpretation on his relationship with the team.

On the one hand were those who suggested that he was rude, and that it exposed anger within the camp for the way that Hamilton felt let down by the strategy calls made, as he failed to grab a podium place that had been within touching distance. The other side of the debate was simply that Hamilton’s messages were all just part and parcel of the intensity of racing to the limit.

In F1, just as in other major sports, competitors often let off steam in the heat of the moment with emotions that don’t linger for long once the adrenaline has died down. For Mercedes and Hamilton, once the dust had settled on Sunday night, the radio outbursts were pretty much water under the bridge by the time they packed up at the Istanbul Park paddock and headed for home.

Insight: 10 things we learned from F1's 2021 Turkish Grand Prix

Hamilton himself took to social media on Monday and expressed some frustration that a host of publications had labelled him as being ‘furious’ with the team.

“Don't ever expect me to be all polite and calm on the radio when I'm racing,” he wrote. “We are all very passionate and in the heat of the moment that passion can come out, as it does for all drivers.

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Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12 with Peter Bonnington, Race Engineer, Mercedes AMG

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

"My heart and spirit are out there on the track, it's the fire in me that's got me this far but any angst is quickly forgotten and we talked it through, already looking ahead to the next race. Today's another day to rise and as a team. Still we rise."

Radio messages between car and pitwall have become an ever-present part of F1’s modern narrative. They set the tone for a race as it’s unfolding when they are broadcast on television, but can also add or change context when they are played out later on.

It’s important to state that, by most fans not having access to the full radio traffic that is going on between the car and the pits through the entire race, any messages they get on the international feed are selective. The words broadcast are only a small snapshot of all that is said throughout a race.

Most radio messages can be pretty dull. Listening to Hamilton’s radio for the 2019 Monaco GP, as he worked hard to keep Max Verstappen behind him, almost all of his conversation with the pitwall involved him repeatedly shouting ‘Blue Flag’
They are the TV equivalent of clickbait: selectively pulling out the most dramatic moment from two hours of conversation, and triggering something big from it to make it more spectacular. It’s not quite: “The top five strategy options we have today Lewis, and you won’t believe number two.” But the aim is still the same: make the show as it is played out on television the most captivating it can possibly be.

Often the radio messages are slightly delayed, and sometimes that can lead to them being played at a time when the interpretation of them has completely changed through events. That is why there is a duty of care from F1’s official broadcasters to ensure there is an element of fairness in what is shown.

As has been shown when Netflix embellishes the truth with some dramatic overplaying of radio conversations that were not actually said when the images the words are playing over are shown, so too F1 has to tread a careful line in not playing radio messages too much out of context.

At its extreme, for example, it would be wrong for a live feed to be showing off footage of one driver in action and a radio message coming out saying: "The guy’s an idiot", when his rival is actually referring to someone completely different.



The truth is actually that most radio messages can be pretty dull. This writer recalls at the 2019 Monaco Grand Prix listening to Hamilton’s radio for the entire race as he worked hard to keep Max Verstappen behind. Almost all of his conversation with the pitwall involved him repeatedly shouting ‘Blue Flag’ in a bid to get the message through to race control that they needed to start warning backmarkers to get out of their way. It would not have made good television.

Occasionally, though, the most golden moments on the radio come as the emotions do overflow. What often isn’t appreciated is the stress and intensity that drivers are going through during a race; especially in those moments when a whole race’s effort can be won or lost by how a conversation with the team is panning out.

Don’t forget that, cocooned away in their car, drivers are not especially aware of much that is going on beyond what they can see and feel. They sometimes don’t have a gauge for the bigger picture of a race or what other drivers out of sight are up to.

In Hamilton’s case at the weekend, he would not have known that Charles Leclerc had gone for the same tactic as him in sticking it out with the used inters, and that it had failed: forcing the Ferrari driver to come into the pits for a later than ideal stop.

What Hamilton did on Sunday with his radio complaint was no different to Lando Norris telling his race engineer to "shut up" over the radio in the closing stages of the Russian Grand Prix when they were debating about whether or not to stop for intermediate tyres.

Just as footballers scream and shout at their team-mates when passes go wrong or shots are fired off targets, so too it is fully understandable that drivers let rip when they feel that things are not going their way. In fact, such excessive emotions during moments of intensity like that are much more comprehensible than what Kimi Raikkonen unleashed on his team for a leaky water bottle in Turkish Grand Prix practice.

“I have water running in my f****** boots,” he moaned over the radio. “Because your drinking system is leaking like f***.”

He later messaged: “How is it so f****** difficult to do simple things? The most f****** simple part in the whole car and we cannot f****** fix it.”

If I were an Alfa Romeo mechanic, I’d be pretty annoyed at such needless criticism that could have been put in a much better way.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what the outside world thinks of the tone and nature of radio messages. Their purpose is not to entertain us, nor act as a portal of direction communication between the drivers and fans.

Instead, they are a simple tool that allows the race driver and the pitwall to speak to each other to try to deliver the best performance. Everything above and beyond that is just pure noise.

 

F1 did a recap on MB tire strategy and it looks actually like it sounded, this opinion article sounds like the hammy pr spin (which they are horrible at)

 

There is no rocket science involved. They wanted to stop earlier and did not. They wanted to stop and he disagreed. They asked / directed again and he stopped and the timing was not good. Norris was as blunt if not worse in Sochi. World turns. Zero issues with this. Its F1. OMG a driver disagree's lol

 

How does Kimi factor in? Do you know how often his crew has forgotten has either forgotten to connect his drinks bottle so that it leaks or that he can't drink from it? What an idiotic article.

I'll say it again: Lewis spend the last 8 seasons winning everything under the sun. A bad weekend more often than not results in him still being on the podium. Yet he's berated the team time and time again when his claims are without a shred of evidence (see this race, for example). He once again spend the majority of the race moaning about the state of his tyres. The very previous race the same strategy team that insisted he came in, actually won him the race that he was finishing P2. No I in team, is there lewis?

At Alfa they can't even make sure Kimi has a functioning drinks bottle ffs. Noble is a ****ing idiot.

 

Yep, Hambone blew it, plain and simple.