2023 Formula 1 Season: Official Discussion Thread

I think Lance actually had a shot at P2 there but he bottled sector 2. And that tells me Alonso had some more in there too with a better first sector. Charles finally shows his hand there a bit and hooks up a good lap too. Will be interesting to see how far up both Charles and Max can get tomorrow. Max can still win I think, but he will need to stay clean in a very chaotic track. There will be safety cars to bunch everyone up a few times I imagine.

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would theoretically be an easy win for perez if there were no safety cars, because although max is much faster, by time he works his way through the pack perez SHOULD be up 10-15 seconds on P2 at least. but one safety car while max is in 2-6th and perez is not winning that race. as much as i would love to see alonso win this race, it would take a red bull power failure or incident to stop max or sergio. and the ferrari as seen all last year does not have the top speed to make it through a field.

100% there will be at least 1 SC. There always is. I predict 3

yeah the drivers just donā€™t look comfortable with the track yet. but who can blame them. i would be shitting my drawers driving the track in my f150

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image

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Dang safety car! Really surprised they called a full SC with where stroll was positioned.

i did call it. 20 chars

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Is anyone elseā€™s audio messed up when the camera switches to onboard? The shifts and acceleration are completely off from where they are on track. Watching on ESPN.

nevermind, very impressed with sergioā€™s pace. going to need a safety car for max to get by.

Iā€™m watching f1tv and have the same sound sync problem.

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Nice pass by Kmag! 20char

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Good drive by Checo to put in the laps to keep Max gapped.

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Kind of a snoozer surprisingly. No real surprises except for McLaren being garbage, Bottas completely being off the pace, KMag sending it for the final point, and Perez actually matching and keeping Max at a safe distance. Excellent drive by Checo.

Alonso was a beaut on the start and did great to stick with Perez and negate the penalty. I hope Aston uses its wind tunnel advantage to close down the gap to Red Bull at the end of the year and make it a bit more interesting. Alonso needs big Red Bull issues to sniff out a win currently.

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Just saw they tagged a 10s penalty to Alonso. Not a huge Alonso fan myself, but seems crazy for the race director to take so long to issue that one.

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Yeah doesnā€™t seem right to issue after the podiums are done. Didnā€™t give them a chance to mitigate the penalty in the race. The process for these penalties needs to change because now we have two races in a row where teams mess up serving the penalty. The FIA needs to make this more foolproof or just add the time on at the end.

But taking over 30 min to investigate and issue the penalty isnā€™t fair.

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Whose to say he couldnā€™t have pulled that 10s gap if theyā€™d known during the race? That on top of the absurd safety car when a VSC would have been sufficient.

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Exactly. It sounds like Mercedes noticed they may have touched the car before the 5 seconds was up, but didnā€™t say anything until the end to keep AM from trying to mitigate it. Smart play by Merc but the issue is, why did the stewards not notice this for 30 laps?

You canā€™t apply a 10 yard penalty post-game in football.

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If I were AM Iā€™d definitely be having a sit down with the race director. Iā€™m not sure of all the ins and outs of the rules but if they can challenge the penalty they should.

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There should be a window of say, 5 laps, where a review can happen and a penalty can be called. If you get away with something outside that window itā€™s too late. Otherwise we have these instances with results changing post podium and team not able to work around a penalty.

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Just finished watching itā€¦ in regards to Alonso, thatā€™s completely screwed up. Shame on F1, shame on the FIA!

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