the Bar rain GP chat and predictions thread

He’s been quietly and understatingly impressive. He’s a work in progress but there have been a couple of moments that he’s really caught my eye.
A super quali lap in Aus, and a great race drive yesterday. Kid has a bright future indeed.


He and Sainz might end up making a really good pairing- Sainz very harshly overlooked by Red Bull because of their steaming erection for all things Verstappen, but so far the two McLaren boys have done a good job. Sainz a little unlucky but equally he probably could have chosen a better moment to pass Verstappen.

 

looking at what happened over the last 2 races, with Ferrari being 'accused' of sandbagging in Aus by using a lower power setting, anyone else think its possible Ferrari had a 'split strategy' and put LeClerc on a risky full power to see what happened, but kept Vettel on a safer, slightly lower, power setting.

yeah, it's worth noting that when they were at STR Verstappen 'won' 10 - 9, but one of those 'wins' was because Sainz was ordered to let Max, pass who then, unsurprisingly, refused to give the place back. He didn't really outperform Sainz by that much, he just got big points, usually from overtaking on blue flags, which shouldnt really be allowed imo.

 

I think you not far wrong, Vettel’s pace was either that bad or he was nursing or preventing a problem. I did wonder if Leclere had maybe gone a bit hard to prove a point, but it’s hard to tell because of the pace advantage he had all weekend.

 

So Russell will test for Mercedes. Interesting...

I guess he is not allowed to report back to Williams how much better the car is

 

I'm chuffed to bits. Lando is doing an excellent job. I think sainz might be faster than him so far but has had the bad luck.

I think the results are more McLaren stepping up. Still a long way to go but the biggest worry is what's happening to engines especially at the works team.

 

Still don't get how Vettel front wing broke so easy, loads of people have spun and not had a front wing failure straight after, wonder if it was already damaged, bit like Hamiltons floor from the last race.

 

I believe the thinking is that as he spun, he badly flat-spotted his tyres. When he returned to racing speeds, the vibrations were so significantly they basically shook the front wing to pieces.

 

It's something that really needs looking at. The supports that hold the front wings to the main chassis are very thin these days, if a few flat spots can cause a wing to separate from its mountings then surely a strength test needs to be brought in to stop this?

Never mind it being a potential accident for Vettel, the guys behind him could have had an entire front wing in their face. Halo or not, that would be a scary proposition.

 

If you think about it the front wing provides something like 30% of the downforce. So that equals about 250kg of force the supports should hold with no safety margin.
I am guessing it's more like the vibrations hitting some sort of harmonic in the front wing that caused the failure.
That said it is very dangerous failing in the way it did. vettel was lucky it didn't go under braking and him losing brakes and steering!!! Needs a better failure mechanism so maybe brakes into multiple pieces.

I think Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi had a dual front suspension failure in 2010 due to flat spotted tyres but I might be mis remembering that one? So flat spotted tyres can produce some bad vibrations....

 

Charles Leclerc ignored an order from Ferrari to stay behind his team mate when he overtook Sebastian Vettel for the lead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Leclerc told his race engineer “I’m quicker, guys” as he approached turn four after closing on his team mate at the start of lap five. The radio message was played on the world television feed, but the subsequent reply from his team was not.
Approaching turn 10, Leclerc was told “stay there for two laps, stay there for two laps”. However on the next lap Leclerc overtook Vettel around the outside of turn one.

Afterwards Leclerc said he was “just letting them know” with his original radio message. “Then I think I had an answer, saying to me ‘OK, stay like this for two laps’ but then on the next straight I had the opportunity to go for it, so I went for it and it was a successful pass.”

Ferrari did not communicate to Vettel that his team mate had been told to temporarily hold position. Leclerc was also told during the Australian Grand Prix to stay behind his team mate at the end of the race, an instruction he complied with.

Leclerc said the team had warned the drivers before the race to take extra care when fighting with each other.

“It’s always a tricky situation when you get to fight your team mate because the risks are very high. As in every team, I think, they warn you before the race: OK, you can try things on different people, but with your team-mate, please be careful. Which is something normal.

“But I had the opportunity on lap five and I didn’t hesitate, I just [went] for it. I was happy it was successful the first time I tried, especially after the bad start. So, yeah, happy with how it ended up.”

https://www.racefans.net/2019/04/01/leclerc-ignored-order-from-ferrari-to-stay-behind-vettel/


Well that's a bit awkward, wonder if they'll think that is a reasonable request in future?

 

Ferrari did say before Aus that they would prioritise Vettel. So they were just doing what they said they would. The interesting bit is if they let LeClerc pass Vettel in future. i.e. it could have cost them lots of points had LeClercs PU lasted till the end and LeClerc had followed orders!! Then again Seb probably didn't expect LeClerc to pass without being told by the team so he may have been caught off guard.

OK so it's only 2 races in but Ferrari's bosses must be asking themselves why they are paying Vettel so much!!!

It must be very difficult to have a driver paid $45million being beaten by one paid $3.5million!!!!!