Poll: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 2021, Yas Island - Race 22

Rate the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix out of ten. If you want. I can’t be arsed.

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bayo000 said:
I'd love that.
4 years of RB and 8 years of Merc is enough. Though I settle just for the Merc not to be as dominant as they've been for last 8 years. Having 4 teams fighting would be amazing.
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I'd love to see Ferrari vs McLaren purely on the fact that all 4 drivers are WDC material, whereas currently it's mostly Max vs Lewis.
 
Mesai said:
I'd love to see Ferrari vs McLaren purely on the fact that all 4 drivers are WDC material, whereas currently it's mostly Max vs Lewis.
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Next season, Russell will be in the Merc: surely more WDC material than either Norris or Ricciardo. I'm hoping we'll just see much closer racing overall between the top teams, rather than domination by only one or two teams as we've seen. I guess we don't have to wait that long to find out.
 
Yaayuh! said:
Relevant :p

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That's a little disingenuous though to defend Verstappen's action in this one season to accidents/incidents over Hamilton's whole career.

I think the the thing that annoys others, as it does myself, is Verstappen pulls moves like that but doesn't think there's anything wrong and the accident is only avoided as other driver, typically Hamilton, gets out of the way. I'm not saying Hamilton is perfect, he isn't but at least he puts his hands up when he makes a mistake like hitting Albon.
 
Mesai said:
I'd love to see Ferrari vs McLaren purely on the fact that all 4 drivers are WDC material, whereas currently it's mostly Max vs Lewis.
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Yeah both Ferrari and McLaren have decent drivers and would be interesting to see them in completive cars against Lewis and Max.

Mr Jack said:
Next season, Russell will be in the Merc: surely more WDC material than either Norris or Ricciardo. I'm hoping we'll just see much closer racing overall between the top teams, rather than domination by only one or two teams as we've seen. I guess we don't have to wait that long to find out.
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I think Lando and Russell are pretty similar. Ricciardo does seems to be the weakest of them, especially based on this season anyway. He's still my favourite though. :)
 
Slam62 said:
I don't make predictions, but Merc will still be at the front, the pecking order will go back to form. Why, because the people who create the best car will be those that do the work and have the required knowledge. The Merc technical organisation is a machine and they won't get it wrong. If the driver by some miracle makes the difference then Lewis and George will wipe the floor.
Don't forget the hybrid era has been all merc.
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I largely agree. It's not a given (McLaren went from winning the drivers championship in 2008 to starting 2009 at the back), but as you say, the wind tunnel time restraints will be cancelled out by having the best talent in the top teams.

New regulations don't mean you just forget everything you know.

There's scope for upsets and teams nailing regulations (particularly Renault, McLaren and Ferrari having the best chance of making a leap), but the best designers and engineers will still likely come out on top.

Then you've got tyre life. McLaren, Ferrari and even Alpha Tauri could qualify near the front two on a good weekend, but when it came to race pace they were, generally, nowhere near. The suspension knowledge the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull have and how to get extra life from tyres across a race will still be the case next year. So while a team might make a jump to mix it up on raw pace, that will almost certainly not translate into race pace - still, the new 18" rims next year will mean all teams will have to adapt their suspension too, so again, it's not a given, but it's still advantage Mercedes and Red Bull.

The engine freeze is good for customer teams in the next few years though. It means there won't be any surprises in terms of layout and weight distribution, so until 2026 the PU customers won't have any disadvantage.
 
Greboth said:
That's a little disingenuous though to defend Verstappen's action in this one season to accidents/incidents over Hamilton's whole career.

I think the the thing that annoys others, as it does myself, is Verstappen pulls moves like that but doesn't think there's anything wrong and the accident is only avoided as other driver, typically Hamilton, gets out of the way. I'm not saying Hamilton is perfect, he isn't but at least he puts his hands up when he makes a mistake like hitting Albon.
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Not only that, but a lot of those clips are from when Hamilton was much younger and less mature — plenty of us said at the time that he needed to work on that side of his driving and, guess what? He has! He's now a much more mature driver and (with the exception of the Albon incident that you highlighted) tends not to do that kind of thing any more.

How many times this season have we seen him take the sensible option (usually getting out of Torpeedo Max's way)?

Most of us are just saying about Max now what we said about Lewis back in 08/09 — he needs to grow up a bit to become a truly great driver. Lewis did grow up and now he's one of the best F1 drivers of all time.
 
Mr Jack said:
Next season, Russell will be in the Merc: surely more WDC material than either Norris or Ricciardo. I'm hoping we'll just see much closer racing overall between the top teams, rather than domination by only one or two teams as we've seen. I guess we don't have to wait that long to find out.
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I actually think Norris is a better driver than Russell. If Mclaren up their game slightly they could be fighting for podiums regularly. Hopefully, besides Zach 'looks-like-a-sex-pest' Brown they're a really likeable team.

I agree with the general sentiment though. If things stay as they are then Lewis will be angry as hell next year. All year. We've seen in Brazil what he can do when he drives angry. Him and Merc won't be taking any crap from Masi or Red Bull, right from the get-go. Add to that Russell hopefully with some pace and a point to prove, they could make it really ugly for Verstappen and quite right too. Add to that potential midfielders competing then it could get really tasty.

All the above would be great but I'd also love to see Max and Horner's face if Lewis runs off with say 6 wins out of the first 6 races. Perhaps we'd finally stop having to hear about the messiah, I mean Max as 'the best ever' :rolleyes:
 
bayo000 said:
I think Lando and Russell are pretty similar. Ricciardo does seems to be the weakest of them, especially based on this season anyway. He's still my favourite though. :)
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Scam said:
I actually think Norris is a better driver than Russell. If Mclaren up their game slightly they could be fighting for podiums regularly.
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I think Norris is currently the most overrated driver on the grid. It's not that I think he's bad, but more that I think people are reading far too much into Norris have a good season and Dani Ric having an absolute howler. I think we'll see Ricciardo best Norris next year. Russell has a much better pre-F1 career than Norris, including beating him in F2, and Norris was beaten by Sainz in his first two seasons of F1, don't forget. Lando might win a WDC but I don't see him being one of the big names in the sport in the years to come. Mind you, with so many promising young drivers out there it's simply not possible for all of them to be the "generational" talent that gets talked about: Verstappen, Norris, Leclerc, Russell, and Piastri can't all go on to be lasting legends, and there's surely more drivers coming up who will also impress. And that's without considering the likes of Mick Schumacher or Sainz.

I guess we'll get a decent measure of Russell next year when he goes head-to-head with the greatest of all time.
 
Irish_Tom said:
So? They were all running illegal wings and were given multiple races to fix it. All the while, gaining an advantage.
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Just like Mercedes had with their bendy front wing, just to highlight one teams interpretation of the rules, when they all do it, then to accuse them of cheating unfortunately is far from reality.
Go back to 2009 and the brawn's double diffuser, not illegal at the start of the season but was, I believe, outlawed for the next. Same as the 2020 Mercedes DAS system was in the following year..
 
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Scam said:
I actually think Norris is a better driver than Russell. If Mclaren up their game slightly they could be fighting for podiums regularly. Hopefully, besides Zach 'looks-like-a-sex-pest' Brown they're a really likeable team.

I agree with the general sentiment though. If things stay as they are then Lewis will be angry as hell next year. All year. We've seen in Brazil what he can do when he drives angry. Him and Merc won't be taking any crap from Masi or Red Bull, right from the get-go. Add to that Russell hopefully with some pace and a point to prove, they could make it really ugly for Verstappen and quite right too. Add to that potential midfielders competing then it could get really tasty.

All the above would be great but I'd also love to see Max and Horner's face if Lewis runs off with say 6 wins out of the first 6 races. Perhaps we'd finally stop having to hear about the messiah, I mean Max as 'the best ever' :rolleyes:
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RB will then come out with ‘they’re cheating’
 
Jono8 said:
You can just tell what Danny really wants to say.
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He said it more succinctly on the radio immediately after the chequered flag; https://youtu.be/K469WuoDJTw?t=717
Locky said:
ALL the drivers know Lewis was robbed and can't really say what they wanna..

If it happened to them I doubt they would be taking as well as Lewis has...
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Yeah 100%. Max would have punched somebody after getting out the car no doubt :rolleyes:

Probably lost in the mist here but all the drivers radio after the flag is here; https://youtu.be/K469WuoDJTw Quite interesting for a lot of them, especially Ricciardo and Sainz.
 
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