Lewis Hamilton 🙏 Seriously, the guy has grown up. He’s acting way more composed than I ever expected 👍 Honestly, I thought he was going to ram Rosberg's car when he parked it, just to screw everyone over and have a total meltdown... You could tell he was absolutely livid, but he handled the whole thing like a total pro 🙏 Mad respect to him. You need nerves of steel for this kind of stuff. He definitely earned a massive amount of credit in my book today 👍
Sebastian Vettel had a killer race, and Jenson Button was basically phenomenal 👍
analogpilot16 said:Man, what kind of alternate reality are you living in? You're totally delusional... but hey, whatever.
🤣🤣🤣 Hold up. Are you seriously claiming Ferrari should have beaten Mercedes-Benz in Monaco qualifying and grabbed the PP😲🤣 ? Because if so, it definitely isn't the same Ferrari that Fernando Alonso claims is identical to last year's car.😁
If you’re going to pull a joke like that, just go ahead and dump it in the middle of nowhere 🤦🤣
Anyway, regarding McDonald's and those two drivers—I’ve got a hunch they might just play games with their strategy...
I'm dying to see if they actually take the bait and try an offset strategy... The SS tires look incredibly durable, and they're clearly faster... I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of people start on softs just to pit down to the SS later. Jenson Button gets first dibs on the choice, and it'll be wild to see if he goes with softs. If the guys ahead leave him enough of a gap to pit and come out in front, he might just stay untouchable, because honestly, I don't see anyone passing him anyway...
Who says he's washed up? 🤷 Maybe Fernando Alonso just decided to spin out on purpose to save face, especially since Jenson Button was leaving him in the dust... still, the guy’s one of the smarter drivers out there.
Honestly, the same tactic would work wonders for Nico Rosberg. At least then people could blame the car for his spins instead of pointing the finger at him. 🤣 Though maybe Rosberg is just trying to prove that last year wasn't some intentional crash during qualifying, but just his "unique" way of handling Monaco. 😁
dustyskipper77 said:It’s not the strategy that failed, it was the temp drop killing performance—even Sebastian Vettel admitted that. Honestly, they should just be glad Daniel Ricciardo didn't snatch third... Nothing's set in stone yet. There might be rain tomorrow, which could make things interesting...
Not even close... I was watching the track positions on LT, and Rosberg slowed down significantly right before his flyer, bunching everyone up. He absolutely blew his first sector, and because of that, everyone trailing him (Vettel, Carlos Sainz, Kimi Raikkonen) had already lost their shot at beating their previous best times since they were already lagging 0.300-0.400 behind their personal best S1 pace... Vettel didn't lose much anyway, considering he had zero chance at pole due to the temperature drop, but who knows, maybe he could have clipped Rosberg's time...
Sainz's run meant nothing since he's starting from the pits regardless. And Kimi just messed up his own fast lap; honestly, would he have even been fast enough for anything better if that hadn't happened? Regardless, it was still a massive Ferrari blunder. It could have cost them dearly if both Red Bull Racing cars had jumped Vettel—or maybe even a Toro Rosso...
Ferrari 🤦 God, what an absolute disaster of a strategy during the Q3 session🤦
That was easily one of the dumbest calls I've seen... They basically handed Rosberg the win on a silver platter, even though everyone knew he’d probably screw up and ruin Vettel's lap anyway... And they managed to sandwich Kimi right behind Sainz, who was already trailing Vettel... It's like, why didn't they just send them out first? I have no clue what they were waiting for. It wasn't like the track temperature suddenly spiked out of nowhere and turned the asphalt into a furnace🤦
Instead of getting pole, Rosberg basically wrecked half the grid... First at the end of Q2, and then doing it all over again at the end of Q3...
Voted for Sebastian Vettel, obviously, though I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up sharing that top spot with Jenson Button... I’ve got this gut feeling that Button is going to be the dark horse who shocks everyone, yet he isn't even mentioned in the poll.
Brian Campbell36 said:Way to go, Kimi Räikkönen. 🙏
He slammed that Ferrari into the first turn. 🤦
It’s not the first time, and it won't be the last. Ferrari absolutely blew it during FP3 Monaco. Fernando Alonso I can't even begin to process this. Give me something actual to work with here. Felipe MassaAnd Felipe Massa does it twice in exactly the same way. 🤣
Kimi Räikkönen is a total pushover compared to those two former Ferrari drivers, but who knows? Maybe he’ll actually manage to pull it together in qualifying like Felipe Massa did. 😬
Tough one... From what I gathered on LT, Sebastian Vettel was actually running a race simulation, not qualifying laps... pretty obvious too, since he did about 7 or 8 laps where each one was roughly 0.300 seconds faster than the last, instead of that usual "one slow lap, one fast lap" routine... Looks like Lewis Hamilton had a similar program going, but I didn't catch what Rosberg, Kimi, or the rest of the teams were up to... Could easily be they were just running simulations based on a first stint and then a second stint strategy. 😉
mellowtiger83 said:Interesting point, and honestly, probably true😁. So the answer is the Audi would have been fast because the Honda was falling apart, but before that breakdown, they’d be just as quick🤣. Regardless of whether some incompetent guy like Fernando Alonso is behind the wheel, he’d be equally useless in either car. Honestly, Alonso is irrelevant here since you're just duplicating the same lack of skill across two different cars, which doesn't change the performance. We're basically moving from Newton to Einstein's theory of relativity at this point.
That’s not quite how it works... Alonso's incompetence might wreck a Honda engine, but what an American invents and a German builds is indestructible😉 even if some useless Spaniard😁 tries his best.
mellowtiger83 said:Read your own post before I print it out and tape it to your forehead, 🤣
Don't bother. My eyesight's pretty shot after all those beers today. 😁 Besides, just wait for Joe... he'll listen to your little theory, then measure the horsepower, torque, acceleration, and all that junk just by listening to the engine, and then he'll tell you how things actually work. 😉
mellowtiger83 said:Let me ask a quick question!!
If the same driver drives two different cars with the same horsepower but different torque at different RPMs, which one is faster?
For example, we have an Audi A3 1.8 with 150hp producing 250nm at 3000 RPM, and we have a Honda Civic 1.6 with 150hp producing peak torque of 145nm at 7000 RPM. Assuming both cars weigh the same and have the same suspension, which one is going to be faster on the track?
Clever trick question, but I've got the answer. If Fernando Alonso is driving both, they’re both going to be junk. ☕ But even so, the Honda is going to be more of a junk pile than anything else. 😬 So, the Honda loses. 😉
Torque is damn important. If you hit peak power at 12,000 RPM, that's incredible—but honestly, it’s way better than having that same power sitting up at 15,000 RPM. It's pretty simple: in the real world of NASCAR, an engine peaking at 12,000 is always going to feel much stronger than one that waits until 15,000 to show up. That’s why a NASCAR car isn't screaming at 15,000 RPM throughout a lap—not even for 2% of it (just look at the driver tracking data; they usually peak around 13k–14k)😉. They spend at least 30%, if not 50%, of the lap sitting right in that 10,000–12,000 range. Plus, the engine with more grunt at lower RPMs is definitely going to kill it on acceleration when exiting corners.
You can actually see this playing out in the difference between Williams and Ferrari. Ferrari might even be faster over a single lap when they're out there solo, but if they're stuck behind a Williams, they're in trouble. Why? Because the Williams pulls away much harder coming out of the turns. It doesn't even matter that Ferrari basically has the same top speed as Williams—so the engines might be close in raw output—but the Williams reaches that top speed way faster than the Ferrari does.😉
mellowtiger83 said:What are you even talking about? How was Vettel supposed to catch Hamilton and Nico when they were on the exact same strategy? Nico blew past him three times—three! So, in the final stint, he would've been maybe a few seconds behind Rosberg. Plus, Kimi caught and passed him, so he would've done the same thing to Vettel a couple of laps earlier.
Look, I said he stayed ahead of Rosberg... Basically, if he could have just held on for that lap, or maybe one more, Rosberg probably wouldn't have had anything left in the tank. Fresh tires give you a massive edge for the first lap or two, but after that, the advantage pretty much disappears. As for Vettel, he definitely had the pace to stay glued to Hamilton until the end. Whether he'd be close enough to capitalize on Hamilton's late-race issues? God only knows.
Basically, he wasn't actually catching anyone; he was just clawing back the massive gap he created by staying out way too long on those softs during the first stint... http://macofan.com/en/index.php?page...stian%20Vettel
Just look at how Sebastian Vettel shaved off about 8 seconds in just three laps (15, 16, 17). At lap 15, the gap was roughly 16 seconds. 😉 By lap 19, it was down to about 10 seconds. Before Vettel pitted, Kimi was right on his tail—maybe a second behind—but by the time Vettel exited the pits the second time, Kimi was trailing by about 4 seconds. So, regardless of those faster lap times, Kimi effectively lost 3 seconds to Sebastian. All he got for it was a total disaster in the final stint, though whether that was pure bad luck or just the fallout from Vettel's second pit stop is debatable.
Anyway, long story short... If Vettel hadn't gone in for that second pit stop and had stayed ahead of Nico Rosberg, Kimi would have been trailing him by about 20 seconds after coming out of the pits.
It was a massively stupid and expensive mistake by Vettel. Realistically, they could have finished 2nd or 3rd, maybe even 1st and 2nd in a perfect scenario. Given the issues with Mečkin ERS, Sebastian probably would have caught Lewis Hamilton, and Hamilton likely would've lost time there too, potentially leaving them vulnerable to Kimi again.
Bottom line: a huge opportunity completely blown. 👎 😢