Fast cars = fun
Joined June 2020
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I somewhat sympathise.
Every top driver I can remember has had a teammate at some point who was willing to sacrifice themselves as a number 2 driver (aside from Lando, but the NOR-PIA performance gap is that of a N1-N2 pairing so it doesn’t even matter atp😭)
F1 is a lot more fun when you don’t have to worry about your teammate.
Like we had in the Bottas years, Max fans had in the Perez years etc.
At some point Leclerc will get that, but he might have to actively chase it rather than trusting Ferrari to give it to him.
Woke up from my F1 Engineering coma after 3 years
The reaction to this post has given me perspective of what content I want to put out.
So I appreciate everyone who’s been so positive about it.
Here’s the full explanation:
All year, HAM has done a phenomenal job with the early turn in and his tight lines.
With these cars, and these tyres, it’s the way forward. On traction, the cars have far less power at lower speeds out of corners, that minimising distance seems to pay off.
This weekend in COTA, it was a recipe for that to continue but for some reason HAM is doing the complete opposite of what he did on tracks like China and Hungary - as well as his peak years at Mercedes.
Images show - his lap in Q3 today at Turn 8 and Turn 15 vs his mighty pole lap from 2018. Shows exactly what I noticed from lap 1 this weekend.
He’s driving half a car width wider than he usually should, and it’s killing the fronts through the lap.
Requires a lot more steering lock to get it to the apex, and by the last corner the fronts are screaming for dear life and he’s struggled there a lot.
China, conversely, he was phenomenal at protecting the left front at turn 1 so it’s a surprise to see the inverse happening now.
Leclerc is following the lines HAM took in 2018 to a greater degree, especially through turn 15 and he seeks more comfortable in hooking up the last sector (I believe he had the outright purple S3 from his Q3 first run).
Images below
Here’s the full explanation:
All year, HAM has done a phenomenal job with the early turn in and his tight lines.
With these cars, and these tyres, it’s the way forward. On traction, the cars have far less power at lower speeds out of corners, that minimising distance seems to pay off.
This weekend in COTA, it was a recipe for that to continue but for some reason HAM is doing the complete opposite of what he did on tracks like China and Hungary - as well as his peak years at Mercedes.
Images show - his lap in Q3 today at Turn 8 and Turn 15 vs his mighty pole lap from 2018. Shows exactly what I noticed from lap 1 this weekend.
He’s driving half a car width wider than he usually should, and it’s killing the fronts through the lap.
Requires a lot more steering lock to get it to the apex, and by the last corner the fronts are screaming for dear life and he’s struggled there a lot.
China, conversely, he was phenomenal at protecting the left front at turn 1 so it’s a surprise to see the inverse happening now.
Leclerc is following the lines HAM took in 2018 to a greater degree, especially through turn 15 and he seeks more comfortable in hooking up the last sector (I believe he had the outright purple S3 from his Q3 first run).
Images below
So it has nothing to do with the balance, or the setup as such.
From a pure technical driving standpoint, there are definitely things that I’ve noticed which may cost him in the race if not careful.
A little surprised to hear his performance team not suggest migrating towards differing lines - something McLaren do exceptionally well with their drivers.
As a performance engineer, it’s the first thing I look at so hopefully there’s time to find for the race today.
Leclerc’s driving here itself is not overhyped. Perfect car positioning, doesn’t give Norris an option to even go for a feint, let alone a full send.
However, defensive driving in general from 2017-2025 was massively overhyped as a skill compared to what it was before 2017, when the cars were a meter narrower.
90% of the tracks, there were zero fathomable places to make an overtake unless you were on much fresher tyres or drove a car much faster.
A lot of the tracks, even those factors didn’t help overtaking at all (Monaco, Hungary, Singapore etc).
2026 Bottas Race Pace
Values from Singapore:
VER -1.067% HAD*
ANT -0.778% RUS*
LEC -0.136% HAM
NOR -0.173% PIA
ALO -0.457% STR
SAI -0.442% ALB
BEA -0.250% OCO
LAW -0.872% LIN
GAS -0.355% COL
PER -1.180% BOT*
Note - These values indicate the pace I’ve calculated following my criteria which is for the laps on the same tyre strategy only. This does NOT necessarily represent the pace over the full race distance, but rather to build a representative sample over the season.
*Hadjar & Russell spent entire race in traffic due to engine penalties. Bottas had brake overheating issue costing 1s per lap. All of which are not included in season averages.
Hamilton has this weird trait in qualifying where if he misses an apex or makes an error, he’ll come on the radio and change a bunch of settings to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It’s as if he can’t make a genuine driving error from time to time, which is super annoying to watch 🤣🤣
Turn 3 of run 1, there was a pretty obvious driving error but instead he decided to change a bunch of things between runs and it backfired rather than just throw another set of tyres on it and go again.
Happened countless times in the GE era.
Looking back at what could have been our 105th pole position 💔
S1: 🟢
S2: 🟡
S3: 🟡
Completely missed the apex in T13, and the car balance between T16-17..
For the love of god, no more wing adjustments before Q3 @LewisHamilton
Christ man this is nonsense.
All you need to do to debunk this is go rental karting for 1 lap.
I don’t care much for the reason, but when you have a 10/10 weekend in the grasp of your hand, ending up with a P6 at the end of it all is disappointing.
After the Sprint performance and his pace throughout qualifying, this final result is hard to digest.
Hamilton is a fast driver, but having that kind of pace throughout Saturday doesn’t come so often, so not to capitalise on it is frustrating no matter who is to blame.
To come away with nothing at all - a pole position or a podium - just massively annoys me. Can’t let it happen again, but it inevitably will.
Good thing is, the run of tracks should be somewhat more promising.
COTA is quite a neutral track and Mexico will be a gigantic opportunity once more.
Can’t say I’m a paddock expert, but I’ve been lucky enough to be in the paddock twice and what Max says is exactly how it feels looking from afar.
My experiences there were probably the last time it felt old school.
Packed full of team personnel, minimal space for influencers and guests in general.
It still felt like you were at a race meeting.
Teams and Sponsors heavily regulated not only the number of guests, but everything in the paddock was a lot more secret.
Hospitality areas and teams/drivers in general were harder to access.
At the big races - such as Monaco, Singapore etc - there would be a handful of headline guests but that was it. Now it seems like there hundreds of micro-celebrities we are meant to care about alongside the on-track action.
I am convinced there is very little age-related decline in modern F1, but one thing that does go is this.
I remember at the same age, Alonso was doing the same thing with Ocon in qualifying. I have no clue how it is now, but the last time he had a decent teammate I noticed the same thing.
Maybe it’s just harder to get into that flow-state consistently. Can’t be any other explanation.
