2019 USGP Race thread

[tifosi1993]

2021 will be Ferrari year with Leclerc and Schumacher (Mick)

Mick is not even good enough to drive for Haas, let alone Ferrari.

[Rookie]

I really find the double standards sickening. When Mercedes had those "illegal" Wheel Rims its not quite a bug ruckus. Only Ferrari was complaining. Now everyone is up and arms about our engine.

[tifosi1993]

Verstappen quoted by Dutch TV "that's what happens when you stop cheating" when asked what do u think about Ferrari's pace. Oh man can't stand this ****

Can't wait for all the usual crying and moaning about 'Ferrari's straightline speed' after Brazil qualifying.

[paolo lalli]

Charles brands versappen an idiot who does not know anything and that his idiotic response has no foundation.Basicly tells verstapen to stay out of Ferrari business and that he is not even at Ferrari. I would say max has upset the big wigs at Ferrari and has signed his death certificate where Ferrari is concerned.He better stay close with totto wolf.

[Ferrarichamp]

Is there confirmation that Ferrari is doing something different? Any proof we were fought cheating?

Or is it speculation based on Charles being 52 seconds behind?

Honestly, not stirring the pot. Looking for a real answer.

how do you define 'cheating' in F1?
aren't engineers constantly looking for an extra edge, a clever solution?
they exploit the 'loopholes' when they find them. Look at Renault's mass damper that eventually got banned in 2006, there are so many examples like this. Red Bull probably have something 'illegal' on their car right now, you get away with it when you can.

[Ferrarichamp]

It's pretty simple really, red bull's target was to finish 2nd in WCC this year, looks like they'll be 3rd instead, so naturally they're bitter towards Ferrari.

[Rob]

Charles Leclerc #16

“It was a really tough race, especially during the first stint where the front tyres did not feel right. It was difficult to find the grip and we have to look into how exactly that happened. The other two stints were a bit better, but not good enough. Our competitors were just too quick, so it was a rather lonely race for me today. It’s a shame for the team that we didn’t finish the race with both cars.

Congratulations to Lewis for the title. He is a great champion and deserves it.”

Sebastian Vettel #5
“I am very disappointed that I had to retire, because I was hoping for a good race.

I had very poor grip on the first lap and had to let a lot of cars by. I struggled to get the car to work, especially in right hand corners, maybe something was already broken on the car. Then, after seven laps the suspension failed over the bump in turn 8.

At that time, I hadn’t done anything different to the previous laps over the whole weekend. I think today we had the potential for a podium, so it’s a shame. Finally, I want to congratulate Lewis for his wonderful achievement.”

Mattia Binotto Team Principal
“First of all I’d like to congratulate Lewis for clinching yet another World Championship title. It is well deserved and was achieved in style.

As for our race, we were expecting much more from today.
Seb had a problem with the right rear suspension, when the upper arm broke at a very early stage of the race. We think this issue was probably there from the first lap, but we need to look into it to understand exactly what happened.

Charles’ race was compromised by his first set of tyres, on which he had no grip at all. We could not understand why he was so slow and off the pace. In the second and third stint he had good pace, but it’s difficult to compare it to that of the others, as everyone was in a different tyre situation at that point.
In the final stint, he then found the car much more to his liking on soft tyres and set the fastest lap

We now have a lot to analyse and to understand. We are deeply disappointed as we don’t believe this result mirrors our current performance level. There’s something to learn from any bad result and this is what we plan to do now.”

[wisepie]

I vowed to switch off after the race so as not to have to endure the Ham-fest on Sky, but I stayed watching just to see what Charles had to say, after an hour of HAM indulgence I gave up. Credit to HAM and Merc is due, of course, so congrats to them for showing everyone else how it should be done, consistency and the arguably best driver in F1. It was a painful and embarrassing race for a tifoso and disregarding the 'cheating' accusations, Charles did all he could but another pit-stop mess completely ruined his race, Seb appeared to have a dodgy car and tyre combo from the outset, it was one of those races where everything went wrong. I also can't understand that if our engine is so good, why the hell are Alfa and Haas so slow, there were even 4 Renault engines in the top 10 and 3 Hondas, next year we are going to find it even harder, I fear.

[RicRac]

I think Merc, RBR and the rest of the guys complaining need a double dose of fish oil and check the qualifying times of the Mercedes in 2015 to see what it actually means to have an engine that is so powerful that no one is able to keep up with them. They beat the field by over a second a lap back then, with their "party modes" and they complaining Ferrari are abit quicker on the straights now. The teams in 2015 didn’t complain nearly half as much as ,Horner, Verstappen, Wolf and Ham is doing now.
https://www.formula1.com/en/results....ualifying.html

[evo_spook]

how do you define 'cheating' in F1?
aren't engineers constantly looking for an extra edge, a clever solution?
they exploit the 'loopholes' when they find them. Look at Renault's mass damper that eventually got banned in 2006, there are so many examples like this. Red Bull probably have something 'illegal' on their car right now, you get away with it when you can.

I don't think the Red Bull investigation will be what has being giving the engine a boost and the slowness here was either other issues or Ferrari playing games with the opposition.

But...

If it is true, this wasn't a loop hole or grey area that Ferrari was exploiting, it would be out and out cheating and maybe should be thown out of this years WDC.

[Rob]

[Rob]

[Ferrarichamp]

I don't think the Red Bull investigation will be what has being giving the engine a boost and the slowness here was either other issues or Ferrari playing games with the opposition.

But...

If it is true, this wasn't a loop hole or grey area that Ferrari was exploiting, it would be out and out cheating and maybe should be thown out of this years WDC.

In the past Mercedes were caught cheating with illegal tyre testing, didn't see them get thrown out of any championship.

[Vettel165]

Agreed.

Wouldnt agree with that totally, Sebs season up until Germany was near perfection, he was leading the championship or could keep up Hamilton. Cant compare the season with Kimi as Seb was much better and nearly 100 point ahead at the end. After Germany everything went into downhill, it was the combination, but I say that Seb drove better in 2017 as in 2018. Shame that after Monza 2017 the car was just not quick enough and wasnt reliable.

Forza Seb! He has done all he could this year, and Charles also. With Mercedes being so fast, our drivers have to push more. The car has flaws nearly every race, isnt reliable. This weekend we had incredible a lot of issues, look at Mercedes they are bulletproff, and has good strategy team, we have nothing of this. We need to improve for 2020. Cmon.

[evo_spook]

Wouldnt agree with that totally, Sebs season up until Germany was near perfection, he was leading the championship or could keep up Hamilton. Cant compare the season with Kimi as Seb was much better and nearly 100 point ahead at the end. After Germany everything went into downhill, it was the combination, but I say that Seb drove better in 2017 as in 2018. Shame that after Monza 2017 the car was just not quick enough and wasnt reliable.

Forza Seb! He has done all he could this year, and Charles also. With Mercedes being so fast, our drivers have to push more. The car has flaws nearly every race, isnt reliable. This weekend we had incredible a lot of issues, look at Mercedes they are bulletproff, and has good strategy team, we have nothing of this. We need to improve for 2020. Cmon.

Mercedes strategy is good? A lot of times they fall apart when under any type of pressure

[Vettel165]

Mercedes strategy is good? A lot of times they fall apart when under any type of pressure

Well they have, but are still better than us.

[evo_spook]

Well they have, but are still better than us.

well, yes. But I wouldn't aim for Merc strategy, Red Bull is the target.

[Tifoso Svedese]

sign him up.

I shall hope Leclerc wrecks him 21-0 if that happens. I won't support him after these years too much water under this bridge. He and Toto are not welcome under any circumstances after the bent 2017 and 2018 seasons + Canada. Never.

He knows he can't win without the best car and a weak team mate either, his best days are long gone. Both Max and Charles would've driven circles around him in that car this year, since unlike Bottas, they don't automatically combust whenever adversity hits.

I won't congratulate him since he's a fraud. Alonso had a worse car than him 2010-2013 and beat him four years on a trot. Nico Rosberg won the title in the same car as him. Jenson Button finished 40 points ahead of him in 2011. He's well above-average, but not even the best driver on the grid and just like Vettel has had several outright poor seasons during his career. It's just proving what a joke this sport is that drivers are still deified when they stopped playing the main role somewhere during the 00's when cars started driving on rails already. Put either Alonso or Vettel in the grey menace from 2014 onward and they'd have swept it just the same. That he, the media and Toto are insufferable jokes about it doesn't make it better either. The one role drivers play nowadays is that they can lose you titles (Bottas), not win them. Until the cars get 5-7 seconds slower/lap, less reliable and a right handful that won't change. Long gone are the days where a Senna could go two seconds faster than his team mate in qualifying. You just qualify where your car is and if your car generates more downforce in race trim after you've messed qualifying up, you just open a wing and breeze past. It's an utter joke and that's why MotoGP is seriously rivalling F1 nowadays.

[Vettel165]

Imagine if Seb after 2012 left for Mercedes, before Lewis did. He would been probably at least eight time world champion by now. With probably more than 90 wins, imagine this alternate scenarios. But I would say a 4 world titles completed in a dominant Mercedes are worth less than 1 achived in Ferrari as a team. Ferrari has the passion, Mercedes dont, and its the most historic team in the world. Yes it could be better, but I am happy that Seb drives for Ferrari instead of arogant team as Mercedes. Who cares about them. FIA is just playing with the rules, and always helping Mercedes.

[Tifoso Svedese]

Imagine if Seb after 2012 left for Mercedes, before Lewis did. He would been probably at least eight time world champion by now. With probably more than 90 wins, imagine this alternate scenarios. But I would say a 4 world titles completed in a dominant Mercedes are worth less than 1 achived in Ferrari as a team. Ferrari has the passion, Mercedes dont, and its the team historic team in the world. Yes it could be better, but I am happy that Seb drives for Ferrari instead of arogant team as Mercedes. Who cares about them. FIA is just playing with the rules, and always helping Mercedes.

The big difference between Schumacher and the joke is that Michael won four of his seven titles in cars that weren't the fastest on the grid.

1994 Benetton was inferior to the Williams.
1995 Benetton was inferior to the Williams again.
2000 Ferrari was at best equal to the McLaren.
2003 Michelin tyres were better than Bridgestone, enabling Williams to be the fastest, even though on equal tyres, we'd had the best car.

Although the 2008 Ferrari/McLaren situation was ultimately lost by Crashgate, those cars were rather even, but everything from 2014 onwards it's not even a question. Every time we were on pole in 2017 and 2018 we were sitting ducks in the race. No contest.

During the 1996-1999 seasons, Michael proved time and time again that he could outpunch his car even when he wasn't winning, during 2010-2013 Hammy spent most his time spinning, crashing with Massa and Maldonado and getting beat by Mark Webber, just showing up a few times per season. It's like Schumacher finishing behind Coulthard or Frentzen in those corresponding years. Of course, he didn't, unless his legs were broken. Alonso got three runners-up those years, whereas Hammy got nothing, except the indignity of Rosberg winning Monaco in the same car.

[Vettel165]

The big difference between Schumacher and the joke is that Michael won four of his seven titles in cars that weren't the fastest on the grid.

1994 Benetton was inferior to the Williams.
1995 Benetton was inferior to the Williams again.
2000 Ferrari was at best equal to the McLaren.
2003 Michelin tyres were better than Bridgestone, enabling Williams to be the fastest, even though on equal tyres, we'd had the best car.

Although the 2008 Ferrari/McLaren situation was ultimately lost by Crashgate, those cars were rather even, but everything from 2014 onwards it's not even a question. Every time we were on pole in 2017 and 2018 we were sitting ducks in the race. No contest.

During the 1996-1999 seasons, Michael proved time and time again that he could outpunch his car even when he wasn't winning, during 2010-2013 Hammy spent most his time spinning, crashing with Massa and Maldonado and getting beat by Mark Webber, just showing up a few times per season. It's like Schumacher finishing behind Coulthard or Frentzen in those corresponding years. Of course, he didn't, unless his legs were broken.

True story!

[Tifoso Svedese]

True story!

Also, I tend to regard F1 as two separate sports from 2007 onwards, since that's when the FIA directive of teams having to run sub-optimal tyres at one point in the race began, ending the free tyre choice that had been operating for 57 years. One F1 therefore ended at 2006 when tyre wars and the fastest possible tyres became illegal and got replaced by a spec tyre formula and two-compound races.

It's a bit like the Premier League split in 1992 or the MotoGP four-stroke switch, only not clearly defined in history books. Since 2007, it has essentially been a spec-formula in disguise because of the tyre regulations and the cars being disallowed to run compounds most suitable to their cars. F1 has not been the same since and won't recover until drivers get free tyre choices and stop getting backbound. If you want to run the whole race on one compound it should be completely legal, so long as drivers make one tyre change. Having that rule in place though, has benefitted dominant cars even more, since they lose much less time on sub-optimal compounds, thus further exaggerating the Red Bull and then Mercedes advantage. It's just the nature of that rule, that rather than encouraging driver skill, it has futher been degrading that importance and made it more about the car. Even when there was a sole supplier before, each top team could ask them for a specific compound suitable to their car and run those all race long.

The net result: it's way easier to win if you have the best car nowadays, because your opponents are having their hands tied. The further from the optimal level of performance, the greater benefit to the car that generates the most downforce. Another of those genius Bernie/FIA ideas that backfired, hard. TV figures don't lie. Tyre war era and flat-out races = massive interest. Nowadays = zzzzz. This also has resulted in no driver winning the title in the second-best car since 2005 and only two finales between drivers from different teams in eleven seasons, namely 2010 and 2012. What a massive flop.

[Estoril]

Mick is not even good enough to drive for Haas, let alone Ferrari.

I agree. I don't see the hype. He is absolutely nowhere near his father's talent. He is yet to show he is good enough for F1, yet alone Ferrari. But maybe with time he can improve.

In 2018, Ferrari had 3 pole positions out of the last 17 races, and you still believe Ferrari had a car to easily take the titles? Even with Merc having superior tire preservation as always? It does not add up.

Overall we took 6 poles against Mercedes taking 13. But this doesn't say the whole story. Also, our tyre preservation was not worse at all. There were plenty of races where Mercedes was struggling a lot with it. For example - Russia, Austria, Suzuka, USA, Mexico, even Brazil to a degree. But we never put them under pressure, because our leading driver was managing to find ways to crash. I apologize for sounding so harsh on our drivers, but it really was extremely dissapointing for me the last couple of seasons when I thought we can finally do this again, but yet our drivers lost and Hamilton "stole" it from us.

Wouldnt agree with that totally, Sebs season up until Germany was near perfection.

Did we watch the same season? Vettel lucked into the win at Australia, where he was slower than Kimi, he went for a silly move in Baku and lost the race win there. He got a blocking penalty in Austria and crashed into Bottas at Paul Ricard. It was mistake after mistake even in the early season. Otherwise, in the first half of last year, we should have taken win after win after win, because Mercedes was not on our level at all. After Silverstone last year I actually was incredibly sure that we are going to take both titles. Yet we all saw what happened.

Mercedes strategy is good? A lot of times they fall apart when under any type of pressure

Absolutely. Mercedes has made so many mistakes this year under pressure. Merc is not good at all in strategy point and this is an area where Ferrari can hurt them. But absolutely, for us it has been a problem too.

Imagine if Seb after 2012 left for Mercedes, before Lewis did. He would been probably at least eight time world champion by now. With probably more than 90 wins, imagine this alternate scenarios.

Imagine if Alonso joined Red Bull for 2008, as Red Bull offered him a contract. Vettel would probably still be on zero titles.
But I would rather imagine the scenario where Alonso stays with Ferrari and he is a 4 time world champ by now.

[Vettel165]

Alonso was playing dirty in Ferrari. Nobody want a driver ego is saying things against the team. I prefer Massa and Kimi in every day of the week. Massa should have been a world champion in 2008.

[Estoril]

Alonso was playing dirty in Ferrari. Nobody want a driver ego is saying things against the team. I prefer Massa and Kimi in every day of the week. Massa should have been a world champion in 2008.

How was he dirty?
I liked both Massa and Kimi, they were both nice guys and sadly only one of them ended a world champion, but neither of them was anywhere near Alonso's level. As for 2008, it was probably the sickest loss I have ever been a part of in F1, because I actually remember celebrating the title win for a moment.

[nani_s23]

all these if & b** now. Move on n watch next race/season.

[Ferrarichamp]

Mick is not even good enough to drive for Haas, let alone Ferrari.

he can't be any worse than Crashjean surely.

[Giallo 550]

Alonso was playing dirty in Ferrari. Nobody want a driver ego is saying things against the team. I prefer Massa and Kimi in every day of the week. Massa should have been a world champion in 2008.

I was a big Massa supporter, but he was totally outclassed by Alonso, who was hands down, the best driver on the grid during his time with Ferrari.

[Brembo]

Ferrari must wake up and realize Charles is their future great . Besides his talent behind the wheel; he is young enough to hold on to the #1 spot for a long time. He ain't going no where ! Let him know he their man and he will do even better. They need only to worry about putting out a #1 top car , they already have the driver. Merc and R Bull have theirs, Ferrari has one just as good. Get the car right !!!

[wappad]

Ferrari must wake up and realize Charles is their future great . Besides his talent behind the wheel; he is young enough to hold on to the #1 spot for a long time. He ain't going no where ! Let him know he their man and he will do even better. They need only to worry about putting out a #1 top car , they already have the driver. Merc and R Bull have theirs, Ferrari has one just as good. Get the car right !!!

Spot on

Charles for years to come in a very strong Ferrari..

And that will certainly avoid the complete 'orange army' changing their caps into red ones

Bring it on