Autosport is so biased against Max but I especially canāt stand Kalinauckas.
This is being massively blown out of proportion.
Sainz squeezes Max more aggressively last year and Max avoids it and squares him up for the next corner. No one cries that Sainz is immature and dirty.
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I can only apoligise for the state of british motorsport media
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So aside from the Max/Lando shenanigans I quite enjoyed the Ocon/Gasly battle! Nice to see Hulkenburg up there in the top ten one place higher than Perez no less:)
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I tend to agree with youāre take.
Lando did the same thing braking on the normal line (the outside) a lap or two before and Max managed not to hit him.
Max was constantly looking in his mirrors, moving under braking and making it very difficult. All those dives that had lando off then max off wouldnāt have happened if Max wasnāt squeezing Landon to the inside after heād already started the move.
I did find it hilarious that Max was saying on the radio that it was ānot how you go racingā. Maybe Lando can say āthats what happens when you donāt leave the spaceā.
Watched the race highlights and the move Max made that caused the contact was made at least a dozen other times by other drivers in the race and no contact happened. It was two drivers who didnāt want to concede. They were racing for a win at the highest level, sh*t happens.
Everyone saying Max was doing something unique should watch this video and count how many times another car is squeezed āoff the trackā during an overtake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0yb1zH2m7c
On the start (0:14) I count two Mercs and a McLaren being squeezed outside the white line into turn 1. At 1:14 Hamilton squeezes George over the white line in the same corner, no contact, no issue. Landoās first attempt, Max does move under braking a bit. Landoās second attempt (4:53), Max doesnāt move under braking, and Lando flies off, locked up on his own. Lando didnāt lock up until almost apex when heās already ahead of Max, you canāt blame that on Max moving around. Attempt three (5:18), Lando sends it again and locks up again but keeps it on the road. Max didnāt move under braking and gave plenty of space at the apex but is forced wide by Lando using all the road on exit. Final attempt, Lando is squeezed wide and minor contact is made. Lando was worried about track limits Iām guessing because he already got warnings for them, but he had space on the left to avoid the accident:
They both misjudged it by about an inch, but the media is acting like Max torpedoād Lando maliciously.
Hereās Piastri being squeezed āoff the trackā by Sainz just laps later:
No penalty, no accident.
Squeezing back up to the racing line to compromise the overtaker is done with nearly every overtake in F1.
Both drivers were escalating things, though I feel Max was moving too much under braking. I think it is a good thing, some old school F1 is happening
I have always held some disdain for how F1 judges what and what is not a clean overtake. Drivers routinely squeeze one another off-track when making overtakes. If you are the guy on the outside, it does not seem to matter how far along you are, if you are the overtaker, or being overtaken, you will get squeezed off-track by the inside car. To me this isnāt what racing should be, particularly with an open wheel vehicle. If your front wheels are up at the guyās cockpit, you have right to the track. If you arenāt clearly alongside, you need to yield.
In this event, both guys were driving over the limit. I have zero issue with Max squeezing Lando wide, there was more track to give and Lando did not. I do see issue with the moves under braking and double moves which were an ongoing theme in the fight between the two. Lando was struggling with a clean overtake due to the late moves from Verstappen and from his own previous lock-up mistakes. Lando made 2 previous mistakes that could have easily resulted in contact, Max avoided both.
The contact didnāt warrant a penalty. The double moves and moving under braking did warrant a penalty.
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Are we watching the same video lol.
Apart from the penultimate overtake attempt (where Max uses the tarmac run off) you can clearly see Max jerk to the middle (not the ideal line into that corner) of the track when he sees Lando coming. I only say not on the penultimate attempt because the camera cuts to a different angle at a crucial moment.
Edit: I found an onboard and Max doesnāt block in the 2nd dive (the one where Max goes off track). And the two times Lando went to the outside, the first time he goes to the outside of Max who is already there, the second time (with the contact) heās there and Max just drives into him.
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What I see is on the approach to the turn, Lando moves right and Max follows, itās very subtle but both move right. Then Lando moves left to try the outside pass. Verstappen counters by moving right and of course that is when it all goes wrong. Max made two blocking moves, my understanding is that a defender can make only one blocking move.
I think that if Verstappen didnāt right block Lando, Lando would have out braked Verstappen on the inside and passed effortlessly. Lando had more grip, as he started on new tires and Verstappen on used tires. It was Verstappen job to block until Landoās tires lost their freshness.
That was heck of a race too bad it ended prematurely, at least there is lot of discussion.
Make the cars manual and remove power steering. Thatāll solve 90% of the problems presented here. The easier the cars are to navigate in combat situations the more rise of āincidentsā like this, and the slow march of regulatory accretion will suffocates us all. Self-regulation is the best regulation in motorsport.
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Oh boy. Ollie signs multi-year contract with haas.
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I hope they renew KMag and donāt take Ocon like rumors suggest. Ocon wouldnāt be a great teammate for a rookieā¦
@Alan_Dove opines:
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Ocon wasnāt a great teammate for a 2 time world champion eitherā¦
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You donāt have to apologize, but some of the race publications Iād expect to have an impartial view of the racing action have become shamelessly partisan lately.
I can understand tabloids like The Sun, or the many hack web and social media sites pretending to be racing news being prejudiced for a particular driver, but Autosport ?
Sure, theyāre a British publication, so theyāll naturally have focus on their nationās drivers, as theyāve done before, but Iām old enough to remember when Autosportās former Grand Prix Editor, Nigel Roebuck, would skewer the more ferverent flag-waivers in the crowd back when āMansell Maniaā was at itās peak (British G.P. 1992).
The downside of being in the clickbait era I guess. Or, itās because they just hired a new editor.
Autosport have rowed back a little, but this isnāt penned by their Editor.
The heat they got on the original article was quite big, and I think the drivers themselves coming out and saying it was pretty much a nothingburger has forced them to get something out there.
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Ocon is a cancer with team mates. Has been no matter who he is paired with. Races his own teammate harder than anyone else. 
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ITāS HAPPENING GUYSā¦
Iām going to go full design nerd and note the F1 logo they used is a retrace and isnāt the native F1 logo file. You can tell the dividing line in the F isnāt a consistent width.
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