OV9

That's more than a little bit embarrassing for Ferrari.

Made me think back to Mercedes last year, Russell with an underweight car after single stopping and Hamilton with excessive plank wear, albeit at 2 different tracks.
The common link is a bunch of the Mercedes chassis engineers moving with Hamilton to Ferrari. I am pointing my finger at Loic Serra

GG. wrote: Sat Mar 22, 2025 8:38 pm

duncs500 wrote: Sat Mar 22, 2025 8:17 pm

integrale_evo wrote: Sat Mar 22, 2025 7:15 pm How long are we giving it before Lawson gets the boot?

Pressure on him must be intense, not long at all (surely only Checo's backing earned him the time he got), they've generally been brutal. Winning WDC and being nowhere in WCC seems quite probable based on current form.

Changeover will occur after this race I would expect.

This seems to be looking likely with rumours of Tsunoda being swapped in for Suzuka...

Looks like I got too excited after the sprint race - what a shambles at Ferrari...

Probably realised the plank was going to be under after the gp from seeing the wear after the sprint race. Raised the car, spoilt the balance, still wore it too much.

I think everyone was surprised how quick the Ferrari was with a knackered wing!

Looks like a repeat of previous years. Ferrari very peaky. Great when it’s working well, distinctly average when it’s not.

Nice to see Albon making Williams a decent mid field contender.

There was a good translated analysis on Twitter from an Italian engineer/f1 journo.
The Ferrari is very fast but extremely sensitive to ride height. This is why in Australia they raised the ride height for the race and the car was terrible.
In the shorter China sprint plank wear obviously not an issue.
Same problem for the race though.
Leclerc breaking his front wing actually helped with the aero balance making the car more drivable but contributed to increased tyre wear.
Hamilton opted to keep the low ride height but I believe went for less rake - still didn’t work though.

Looks like Ferrari were aware of this before this weekend too as they kept their main engineers back in Italy to work on an update as the next 3 races are all back to back.

I saw somewhere that it was actually Hamiltons idea to swap positions, but we didn’t hear that on tv. Then Ferrari kept telling him to do it at stupid places, which he ignored, and made the swap at a more sensible point.

That's what a team player does!

integrale_evo wrote: Sat Mar 22, 2025 7:15 pm How long are we giving it before Lawson gets the boot?

Erm

The second Red Bull seat is the last desirable seat on the whole grid!

Lawson was dire though. There’s no coming back from that.

Yes you can't come dead last in quali in competitive machinery without expecting imminent replacement.

Mito Man wrote: Wed Mar 26, 2025 9:13 am

Lawson was dire though. There’s no coming back from that.

Looking at the meme- in fairness max was quoted as saying the car was stupidly difficult to drive, and didn’t want yuki put in the car as he thinks it’ll be harmful to his career long term.

However yuki seemed to like last years redbull in the post season test so hopefully he’ll do ok. Even a solid mid grid position would be an improvement over recent results

I think that whilst the car is difficult to drive there seems to be one trait which all great drivers have recently. Handling that's 'on the nose' with a very pointy front end and a loose rear. The cars just lend themselves to being fastest when you smash the brakes, throw them into the corner and control oversteer with the throttle. And if you can't get on top of that you'll never be better than a mid tier driver, which is fine if you just want to be a solid points scorer for a mid tier team but not good enough for the top 4 teams.

Rookie error.

Remember back when DRS was first brought in and it could be used at any time during qualifying - they should bring that madness back!

That was quite a shunt.

Is it time for Hadjar to redbull?

Where the fuck did max pull that from

Yeah, Max is a joke.

Lawson out qualifying the Red Bull, bet there's some smug going on there...