FORMULA 1 EYETIME GROSSER PREIS VON ÖSTERREICH 2018

I won't be long now until we find out how they'll do on pace. Half of the circuit is DRS zone, this can turn out to be some lunatic fringe type racing this weekend.

Q1:

- Force India struggling, car is sliding a lot and looks really quite bad to drive.
- Williams looks like it's improved a fair bit, they looked better this weekend so far and Stroll managed to get through
- McLaren still rather slow. The weird thing is they are the 4th fastest car through 7 and 8 which is all aerodynamics which makes it look like they're struggling to excessive drag.
- Hass look impressivley fast this weekend.
- Leclerc again so much faster than Erricson, when will Sauber get rid of Erricson... it's time for him to go home.
- Very mixed across the field with the exception of 1st and 2nd, controlled by Mercedes.

Q2:

- Hamilton on a slightly harder compound 0.2 clear of Vettel, Bottas only 0.020 clear of Vettel but still in Q3 they will all run the ultras. On the second laps Vettel matched Hamilton.
- Hass (Grosjean) matching Verstappen again, the Hass still look strong!
- Renault taking the last two spots in the top 10.
- Ferrari ran ultrasofts where as Mercedes & Red Bull both ran the supersofts, I still think the supersofts are the tyres to be on especially with such a short run to turn 1.

After Practice 3 I said that Mercedes would beat Ferrari by 3 tenths because that's roughly what Hamilton lost on his lap in practice due to mistakes made in turns 1, 2 and 3 and lots of people disagreed with me, I was also pretty confident that Bottas would get pole because he's decent around here like you said WB and because he wasn't having any of these mistakes.

Great work by Bottas though, he set a healthy banker lap and then on his second lap he went all out and improved by a nice chunk and as for Hamilton, that was a fantastic recovery managing to match Bottas.

Sector 3 here is is very much fast corner aerodynamics more than anything else and that's where Mercedes were 2 tenths faster than Ferrari, interesting to note that Grosjean was the 4th fastest car in sector 3 and Magnussen was the 8th fastest in sector 3.

Vettel was fastest in sector 2 by a tenth and based on the onboard this looked like it was under braking down the hill of turn 3 but then again Vettel was also a tenth down (even on Raikkonen) in sector 1. Raikkonen somehow was 2 tenths slower slower than Vettel in sector 3 (There's a potential that Vettel is running more downforce than Raikkonen)

Wow Vettel actually got a penalty this time for impeding Sainz.

That's.....shocking.

Kimi is almost sure to lose a place tomorrow....I predict Verstappen is 3rd after the 2nd corner. 

He's been racing very conservatively, he could have easily have finished 30+ seconds ahead in the French GP but just turned everything down and drove home. If he is clear and comfortable out front he'll just drive safely all the way home again.

Speaking of lapping... I just did a race on Project Cars 2. Some kid was shittalking me in qualifying even though I qualified P2 and he qualified P13 (out of 20). His buddy tried to crash me out in the race 3 times and failed each time (waited until I was coming up to lap him) and as for the kid who was shittalking, after 14 out of the 20 laps I lapped him and he was clearly unhappy he attempted to divebomb me into a corner and I just let him drive off into the grass/gravel and just drove off xD. I went 0.9 of a second faster in the race than I did in qualifying and had the fastest lap in the race by over 2 seconds




It's because of Verstappens douchebag dad, giving him a twatty attitude however the tow around here isn't that big or easy to pull off and it was Ricciardo's turn to go out first so he shouldn't really be making a fuss. Just do a good job in the race and let Verstappen crash.



I was surprised but he clearly did block Perez and imeded his lap, sure it's the teams fault but the driver has mirrors too so he is just as much to blame. Lots of people are saying it's inconsistant because of the impeding that happened against Vettel in Canada and no one got a penalty.

The big difference is in Canada is that in Canada Vettel had already set a 1:11.524 and was comfortably through into Q3 where as in this case Perez was fighting for his position to stay/get into Q3.

Hmm, that was my first thought after hearing the guys speak. ( only caught the second half of Ricciardo’s)
Danny  said, “I gave him  tows , I was punching a hole   I just needed a little help”
Vestappen said, “ it was his turn, I went first at Paul Ricard, I towed then, it was his turn today” 

After that I thought, fair enough. If it’s taken in turns ( same as the Merc boys do) then Ricciardo really has no arguement. 

Then I read a few other views on it. Danny was on a different setting, lower downforce which helped him in corners but he needed a tow on the straights. He just wanted one run like that. The team knew this and asked Verstappen to let Ricciardo through. Verstappen refused. So he disobeyed a team order. 

Verstappen is a huge talent but he’s selfish. His attitude will help his personal crusade to win  and will get him through criticism by others unscathed, but it’s not the attitude of a team player. 

Yes I agree with that. It should have been made absolutely clear. Ricciardo was under the assumption that it would be the case, but he himself says he should have insisted it was there in black and white before quali. I suspect Verstappen knew exactly what he was supposed to do in the circumstance, but  because it wasn’t stated as an absolute before hand, he pretended not to and fell back on the. “ it was his turn to lead”