Formula 1 round 19: Brazil GP

Hamilton was miles away from the apex in Silverstone, his car was about the same as Max's above. Max probably knew that and braked as late as he could. He keeps the angel as it is but he was already off the racing line, so the apex was never on. At this rate as well, his tires were all done from what i have read, he was out of position and braking late.

Nothing really in it. Max onboard shows he breaks late to try and keep ahead of Hamilton which causes him to miss the turn, I don’t see any attempt to run Hamilton off the road. It could have been a penalty in the race but considering the stewards relatively quickly came to a decision then and the new footage shows nothing damning I can’t see them giving him a retroactive 5 second penalty. At best to keep Mercedes happy he’ll get a 3 place grid penalty for this weekend.

Its only comparable to Silverstone in that it was a desperate manoeuvre by one driver to keep up with another - however this time Max’ late breaking and the low speed of the corner gave Lewis time and full visibility to the other car which allowed him to react. Max had neither of those at Silverstone.

It was an aggressive racing incident at best, that's exactly what I want to see from two lads going for the championship. Hard,aggressive and wheel to wheel racing from Max and Lewis. When the two of them battle each other on track, neither of them will back out and to be honest I wouldn't expect them too

My understand is that at the corner the car with the front wheel ahead has choice of line and that’s generally what the stewards look at! In this case Lewis was ahead approaching the corner, but by virtue of braking late, Max was a wheel length ahead at the point of turning.

I can see the line Max was trying to take, just go wide and hope the switcharoo doesn’t happen but he missed it by a cars length, which I’d imagine is easy to do with a rocketship like that Merc up your ass trying but get by!

I don’t think he ran him off the road on purpose and do think he was trying to take the corner as wide as possible (which if he was ahead at the turn he’s entitled to do) which comes back to why I’m wondering whens the “corner”

Can't they change their engine over a weekend before they go into parc ferme? So they could do practice on the older engine and qualify and race on the newer engine.

In other words, they can manage their engines to suit themselves.

Yeah your right actually, parc ferme begins once the car leaves the garage for Q1 so they can manage that way. But practice is only a small % of laps over a weekend so even by doing that, is there a huge saving?

They’ll crunch the numbers and if the savings translate to X% of performance they’ll do it! That’s not a Merc thing tho, they all would! Dolla billz speak!

Yeah absolutely. Just checked Hamilton in Mexico as an example. He did 64 laps in practice and the race is 71 laps. Add 15 laps for quali and practice is 43% of the weekend. Granted practice can be done at lower engine modes.

I’ll need to look at a still again but was Max even a cars width off track?

EDIT: Just watched the video, yes he was way off!

how far off the track, never mind the 'racing line' does he have to have been in your opinion for him not to have come anywhere close to making that corner? FFS.

'Very close' in your view.... unbelievable. Hamilton was going to make that corner til Max pushed him off - they would have crashed if hamiton hadn't bailed out - either outcome is what Max was aiming for with that 'move'

And went on the lead the next 10 laps and win? Or put him in a wall at 51G?

Amazing how Lewis knows when another driver won't make make corner but doesn't know when he can't make the corner like Silverstone.

They didn't hit because Max kept turning left with Lewis on the outside unlike like Lewis turning left with Max on the inside in Italy.

Like I said before, it was a stupid risk to take by Lewis. The pressure might be getting to him and clouding his judgement.

Wait, you expect a driver who is defending to use the same line as he would when not defending?

Whatever about the various POV here (I'm on record as saying I think it was over the edge) but your pictures prove absolutely nothing here.

It's very clear in the video that Verstappen had only about half lock on the steering entering the turn. He was always going wide and didn't even attempt to tighten the lock until he was off track. Hamilton was always on the outside. At best, he deliberately didn't try to avoid a collision. That's not acceptable.

I think lap 1 incidents tend to be ignored unless it's serious, like not going around bollards