I quite like Max stance on what’s happening in Redbull. He has been backing up Liam through this ordeal, and it is very nice to see. He has matured a lot, and I feel like he is more likable.
I always though Yuki was the one that was the most able to support Max, and it seems promising. Not necessarily talent-wise, but I always thought he had the mental capacity to cope with max domination.
From an American perspective, yes. Americans love to brag about how big their numbers are. Whether that’s the number in your bank account or the number of hours you work or the number of homes or cars you have.
It’s a shame how 2 completely avoidable crashes will overshadow his performance. He was quite fast in Australia, got unlucky in qualifying but still had good speed throughout the weekend. He also outpaced Gasly in sprint qualifying in China (although his performance in the sprint and race was not as good and he had another avoidable incident). However as we also saw with Lawson, you have to deliver results no matter the circumstances.
That said I don’t think he was going to make it to the second half of the season even without these crashes. He wasn’t even given a proper contract, it’s clear what Briatore’s intentions are. Not that Colapinto will be any better.
Of course Max made it work much better, but at least Yuki can somewhat handle the difficult car better although he didn’t put it all together in qualifying.
Disappointed for Yuki, after qualy he said he just fell out of the window in Q2. I don’t recall Liam ever being within a tenth of Max in any session, so Yuki is showing flashes early on and without much running around a difficult circuit.
I think it’s a bit embarrassing for the field that Ollie got 10th. He’s probably running a more qualifying biased setup than some of those behind him, but that car has no business beating the likes of Alpine and Aston.
It’s not really a problem with the tracks, those cars are bigger than ever and they are clearly too large for narrower tracks like Suzuka or Imola. I agree though, these “boring” tracks definitely belong in the calendar.
If the tracks were open and wide McLaren would be down the road. You need ‘boring’ tracks so drivers like Max can pull something out the bag in quali.
The modern fanbase has a weird habit of moaning about boring races, yet they watch them. that’s all that matters. Never listen to fans, just observe behaviors.
if it wasn’t for Suzuka we’d be going into the next race with Norris 20 points down the road.
Sorry, but this seems like a biased take. Your favourite driver took pole and was able to stay unchallenged, but would you say the same if Norris/Piastri took pole and ran away with the win while a faster driver behind was stuck in dirty air? Or would you say that these narrow tracks don’t allow drivers like Max to fight for the win?
Take Singapore in 2023 for example. Sainz was holding up the pack and 3 faster drivers behind could not make a single move because of dirty air and very few overtaking opportunities. It wasn’t much different than this race.
It’s not weird to complain about boring races. Of course we will watch them but everyone prefers races like Australia to races like today’s. It doesn’t make someone more of a real fan if they pretend that boring races where you need an invitation to make an overtake are in fact enjoyable.
Plus as I already said, the tracks aren’t the problem, the cars are. Suzuka was much more enjoyable when you could actually see overtakes instead of trains of cars unable to pass because of dirty air. You can’t always rely on weather to make things interesting.
While I appreciate races like Monaco and how the drivers have to push to the limit to find time, I don’t think races where a good qualifying performance can all but seal the race win are good for the sport. Overtaking in some tracks is ridiculously easy because of DRS, but both situations are extremes and not ideal IMO.
