Aston genuinely does look quick
3 way title fight verstappen leclerc and alonso would make for a GOAT season
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Alonso, Verstappen, and Leclerc all on race simsā¦
Alonso consistent 37.5s, Verstappen on 37.2s, Leclerc on 37.5s.
Aston can make the soft tire last really well. I agree @tankyx , seems like that car is easy on the tires.
Mercedes-Patriots connection is dead on.
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Merc long run pace looks even with Alpine. Hamilton not happy, says they are further from the front than they were last year.
Bottas race pace looks good!
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Yeah they noted the radio call as well between his engineer and him. They asked him to compromise turn 1 a bit more to get a better run through turn 2, and he said he couldnāt do it because he canāt hold his hand correctly to turn the wheel that much.
I gotta imagine heās going to be in some real pain during the race. From experience, driving injured, sometimes you can get away with it and feel fine pounding out laps by yourself, but once you get into the zone and start dicing in a race and you have to make evasive moves or drive outside your comfort, itās pretty easy to start to hurt yourself and fall back.
So after FP3. I have questions for what we might see of the true pace of the mercs. I think they are still 3rd/4th row. But wondering if their race pace might put them up higher.
Additionally this is thought to be one of their slower tracks due to rear limitation
McLaren should have been trying to poach engineers from other teams instead of driversā¦.
Also could we legitimately see a Haas car better than McLaren?!
I think Hulk botched his Q3 lap a bit because it got deleted and it was fairly slow. But Haas was faster than McLaren for parts of last year as well, especially at the beginning.
Great effort by Hulk! Shame KMag didnāt put together his last effort.
Wouldāve liked to see Alonso get another effort too. The Aston is legit! Merc closer than they thought too.
The field is TIGHT. Interesting to see how everyone races tomorrow.
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It is great to see the field much closer and hopefully thatāll contribute to good racing front to back. That also means that strategy and race day execution are much more important, so letās hope Ferrari filled some of those gaps over the winter.
Tomorrow is going to be great. Fun to watch.
I think that was an illusion. Q1 and Q2 last year had top 10 covered by 6 tenths. This year RBR took a bigger leap in Q3 so were keeping powder dry in Q1 and Q2, so it appeared a little tighter, but it wasnāt. Rumors are that RBR have raised their car to make sure not to fall foul of plank wear. At a smoother track they could be a few more clicks ahead.
The only real difference year on year is we have an extra team with Aston (which really is due to RBRās Dan Fallows jumping ship). The field spread etcā¦ isnāt hugely different.
Q1 was 2.2 sec overall spread last year and 1.3 this year, so itās tightened up considerably overall.
Remove Latifi, and I think thatās a reasonable proposition and that 2.2 goes to 1.6.
RedBull held back their performance in Q1/Q2 relative to Q3 far more than Ferrari did last year. 1.5 vs .9. RBRās leap in Q3 was massive. This means Q1 was a false representation of field spread, and itās amplified by Latifiās particularly slow lap time.
If we take the difference between slowest Q1 time and fastest Q3 time in 2022, that was 3 seconds, this year itās 2.4. If we remove Latifi from 2022, then itās 2.4. Same as 2023. So I donāt think the field has really closed up that much. I donāt think the stats back it up under analysis.
Again, I think Aston have entered the equation definitely, but other than that I think Q1 was an illusion.
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F2 sprint race before F1 Q1 was great action in the last 8 laps.
Aston is supposed to be good for long runs, so Iām interested to see what Alonso can do tomorrow.
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Interesting thing on the McLaren
These things one each side of the cockpit are digital advertising panels. Essentially they can change sponsor logos throughout the race and from race to race.
They weigh 199g each, x2 = 398g. Almost half a kilo. In an era where teams are actively looking to not paint as much of the car as they can get away with to shave grams off the weight I struggle to see the benefit other than revenue of adding almost half a kilo.
Maybe thatās just where Mclarens head is right now. Revenue over performance 
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