Formula 1 Pirelli Gran Premio Del Made In Italy E Dell'emilia Romagna 2021 63 laps of the 4.959-kilometre Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, former home of the San Marino GP 16th Apr Practice 1 10:00 - 11:00 16th Apr Practice 2 13:30 - 14:30 17th Apr Practice 3 10:00 - 11:00 17th Apr Qualifying 13:00 - 14:00 18th Apr Race 14:00 - 16:00 All times UK. Poll closes before quali. It would be nice to have more poll choices, sorry.
Looking forward to this one - another interesting insight into the real performance and pecking orders. High power circuit, as I understand another rear limited one, but not the Bahrain heat to contend with. Merc I expect to be more mighty when it’s cooler, but equally there’s some time left in that Red Bull. Both PU manufacturers nursed issues in Bahrain too- Honda turning down slightly for heat management, and Mercedes having derate issues causing some braking problems. Let’s see how it pans out!
According to chat on the sky programme today it is believed merc may have found a few tenths, if it is enough to make the winner unpredictable that would mean great racing. I want to see how Daniel and Lando compare this weekend, Carlos vs Charles, Sergio vs Max.
A surprisingly hectic FP1. The Merc doesn’t seem to be struggling too much. Marzipan has binned it, natch. I’d love to know what happened between Perez and Ocon.
Nakita Hasaspin is living up to his name multiple times a session it seems. Cars do look good around here even if the footage is somewhat missing. Stops them chopping and changing between shots too much I suppose.
Seems like they have technical issues hence the reduced camera angles. No idea if they can fix it soon.
Latifi P9, Russell P11 - so I suspect most of the times mean nothing! At least Williams appear a bit closer to the pack this year, even in FP1 they would rarely trouble anyone other than Alfa and Haas last year.
Not seen any of the footage yet, but I'll likely be happy with this. There are way too many tight shots these days and you just don't get the same sense of speed with those. Take the camera out a bit!
Looks like they missed the Ocon and Perez incident though. So while it's good to have longer shots with fewer cameras working we miss bits. So bit of double edged sword.
So, the minute the Merc tyres didn’t overheat, they managed to find their immense balance and pace again. Gonna be a good ding dong with Red Bull this is. Good day for Ferrari too- their car looks pretty together in all fairness - possibly just lacking that extra grunt to put them in the mix
If the first race is anything to go by Red Bull just can't seem to string everything together. Look at practice - Max has 'gearbox issue' that puts him out of most of second practice. Merc just seem somehow to almost get a perfect weekend every weekend - unless your name is George. We need both Red Bulls and both Mercs to have a clean weekend then we can really see how the teams stack up.
Session is being described as "eventful" - I don't think it's particularly eventful, it's just we actually notice when a driver runs wide.
Red Bull switching it on this morning in FP3- Max was hooking it up very well and has another couple tenths up his sleeve after a twitch in sector 3.
Sat here in astonishment currently trying to fathom the logic behind Ottmar and the Aston Martin team asking for discussions on rule changes and asking for amendments to reduce the negative impact on their car. The rules are the same for everybody!! Isn’t it amazing that their sister and original cloning material- Mercedes Benz- are still racing a monster around and going hammer and nails with Max and Red Bull- whilst Aston Martin scrub around in the lower midfield. They adjusted their car and maximised THEIR concept. This is where the crying can **** off- you’ve borrowed a philosophy from another team and because it wasn’t yours, you didn’t have the understanding of how to maximise it within the new technical regs. Boo ****ing hoo. Mark my words- Lawrence Stroll is NOT a good thing for this sport. Everything I’ve seen about him gives me negative vibes, and forgive me for making this comparison - it’s more the persona than actual behaviour- but he’s like a Canadian Jeffry Epstein. Seems to think money is getting him whatever the heck he wants. Bore off Aston and make your own cars. PS and on a side note- how can Toto Wolff holding AM shares not be a conflict of interest? Perhaps I’m just naive.