I personally feel, ferrari team is not entirely behind vettel just like Alonso or mercs team behind ham. Few are backing kimi & rest vettel, Given kimi quali performances. Team is not finding right balance, because car is strong & both drivers are delivering quali performances apart from strategic errors.
At a certain point, team should focus on one driver & give the best to him so that he can deliver more. If he doesn’t then it’s his mistake & will have less support interms of contract renewal & for the next year. But this year it’s been mistakes from both ends,
1) baku Strategy error by the team ( I still believe vettel didn’t make any mistake by going into turn1 n lock up. He had the opportunity, went for it)
2) China strategy error by the team, also mad max.
3) Germany its vettel mistake, didn’t judge braking point clearly.
4) vettel penalty of incident between him n Sainz is very silly. I rate it as team error. I still don’t understand, when the same instance happened with mercs drivers they didn’t get any penalty.
5) Monza, yes vettel should have waited for the moment when he saw Lewis got ahead of him.
6) Singapore GP, i say it’s totally team fault. Not only 1mistake, in q2 they sent drivers on US. Even thought vettel was saying I can do target time, they didn’t allow him. N in the race it’s another error.
It’s ferrari & drivers who let down this year with a strong car.
I still believe coming tracks are strong for us. Vettel should find his rhythm back & be ruthless.
It's normal he is upset. He will be fine come next race. We really lost some valuable points here, Vettel was favorite going in this race. It certainly is an uphill battle, but we have our chances. If someone asked me at the start of the season, i would have taken our current situation. Remember most people had us behind RBR too.
Good thing we have taken step with Leclerc. Ill write bigger post later, but from our race operations, driver treatmant to pit stops, we have been open book. For this I place my blame firmly on Arrivabene. Things started to seriously go downhill the moment Toto called Bottas perfect wingman. You just know how, every race, every lap, you can expect un expected from them. They would hold Bottas for 50 laps on hypers if that meant taking 1-2s needed from Vettel. That is hard burden for a driver and team who is playing it fair.
Other is pit stops...Again, open book. Pitting 3.5s behind Hamilton, 45 laps till the end, taking USs? Why? How? Lost 2nd position with that decision. You had pitwall telling Vettel to push to undercut Lewis and Seb is told them flat out "Lewis will be 2s ahead". And lo and behold...He was. All that planning, complex calculations yadda yadda and ypu driver calls you wrong (as he did when they put him on hypers in Q2).
Seb, too many faults. Not even gonna go there. Yes, he has speed, but this way, with that many mistakes, Lewis is unbeatable.
For Kimi, its good that he is gone. Leclerc in points yesterday first time on track. Says it all, boy will be machine and Seb knows it. With Kimi you get our strat team. Third time - open book. If he doesnt lose place at start its great start for him, that is shocking. For Merc, he is not even an afterthought and Arrivabene is going about buttlers in another team. All around, complete cluster...We were so daring with design team with Marchionne and when our reliabilty was called into question, literally very next yeat we are on whole another level.
Im really afraid of times after Marchionne...
Bottas is usually fast in Sochi, it might even be his first win this year.
I have never believed that Mercedes could out develop Ferrari when it comes to upgrades. I guess they have built a strong team after so many years of dominion. Ferrari yesterday was nowhere. I knew this year since the cars have similar wheelbase (longer Ferrari = Mercedes) it would all come down to PU power and Aero. Being out classed in those sectors hurts. 0.6 in qualifying is astonishing. A 0.2 would have been ok but gaining over half a second in 2 weeks is scary from Mercedes end. They know this title means a lot to Lewis as he always hated Vettel's guts and wanted to beat him to a 5th title. Toto remarked many times he would leave no stone unturned to beat Ferrari this year and they have shown it one time too many, FIA alerts from ex Ferrari team members re: MGU-K etc, Bottas ordered to slow down Ferrari, multiple fake pit stop calls, Fake radio chats yesterday between Lewis and his engineers claiming the tires were done for and surprisingly Ferrari swallowed that in one go... Arrivabene is turning out to be another toothless Domenicali.
Vettel is more sensitive than a pregnant woman, Kimi got axed while he was finally performing on a par with Vettel (and sometimes even better), Sergio passed away, The weather has been pissing all over the tracks this year (I have never seen so much rainy GP's in one season) and now a deficit 40 points to catch up.
The situation is bad, VERY bad. My mind says the season is over but my supporter opinion says keep pushing.
I don't know you guys but having each Sunday messed up after every GP gets a bit tedious and this coming from a Valentino Rossi fan and an Inter Milan (sort of supporter) says a lot lol. All the ones mentioned haven't won anything in ages.
Does anyone still believe we have the tools to beat Lewis on track this year?
I think WDC is gone, wcc still slim chance.
Well I am speechless... way way too many crucial mistakes from the team... Ok Domenicali was unqualified for the job but this Arrivabene guy... turned into Mercedes private butler overnight literally handling them the championships on a plate.
The team is in difficuly. We haven't heard a word from our new president. Does he learned the rules already?!
Well. That sucked.
Beat from within and without.
On to the next.
We may have a great car and a great driver but out strategy department is subpar. Time and time again Ferrari's pitwall have proven they are not up to the task.
Even if we lock out the front row in all the remaining six races there's no gurantee we'll finish where we started from.
All of this begs the fundamental question: what the hell happened?
These are a few of the things that come to my mind in the aftermath of yesterday's monumental blunder in Singapore, and the season thus far generally:
1. Ferrari has a frankly pathetic strategy set-up. It's way overdue to get that sorted out - once and for all.
2. Maurizio Arrivabene is no Ross Brawn - he is sounding more and more like Stefano Domenicali - and that is not a good thing.
3. Sebastian Vettel is no Michael Schumacher, neither in mental strength or ultimate race craft - and Hamilton is showing him up this year.
4. It's clear that Sergio Marchionne's strength of character and steely determination is already being missed - who knew it would be that quick?
5. The Scuderia looks and feels lost, out at sea. We look like Mercedes appeared a few months ago - bewildered and on the back foot.
A few dramatic measures are needed, including an immediate and complete overhaul of our strategy team and the way strategy calls are made, a revamp of drivers' inputs, etc. Other teams make strategy gaffes, of course, but we seem to be masters at it. Enough.
And, yes, if I was the Board I would sack Arrivabene. The guy seems better than Domenicali, but that isn't saying much. Arrivabene just doesn't have it - he might be an affable guy and all that but that doesn't make him ideal F1 team principal material for a team like Ferrari. We need someone tough and shrewd as hell.
Ferrari have been caught out on one foot. The car was very gentle on the tires at the start of the season so they opted for an insane quantity of Hypers for yesterdays race. Turns out things have changed and they had no other option bar making the most of what they had. The Hypers were never going to last long enough and their pace on the Ultra was miserable to say the least. Daniel was seriously quicker than Kimi/Vettel on the same compound.
Being too optimistic maybe?
Let's hope for the remaining races we have better results. Having Lewis in front of Vettel in any of the remaining ones is a definite conclusion and end of season for both championships.
Vettel's probably driving for his seat next year I know it sounds silly but Seb's getting frustrated with the poor strategy's and Ferrari are getting frustrated with his mistakes if Leclerc beats him next year then I can see Seb leaving a year early especially if Max becomes available because I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that if RedBull don't make any progress towards winning the championship then Max can leave a year early
Maybe the tires radio you're right but I'm sorry I have been following long enough to remember both Lewis and Alonso dismissing Vettel when he used to be dominant at RedBull. Lewis dislikes Vettel as he is the only one in the modern era past Schumacher to win so many consecutive titles. Now Lewis is in the same position and he easily forgets the comments of "boring F1" he used to sing after each race weekend, the "Vettel is only quick with a RedBull that anyone can win with" etc.
Conveniently now Mercedes is no longer boring as long as it is not a Red car. Winning with a PU that gives 2 second per a lap on avg quicker is not something any driver could do too. Vettel/Lewis dislike each other a lot, it's only after the Baku event that Vettel toned down a bit on aggressiveness. Even the podium body language was always clearly visible.
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