Poll: British Grand Prix 2019, Silverstone - Race 10/21

Rate the 2019 British Grand Prix out of ten

  • Total voters
    131
  • Poll closed .
steve45 said:
Theres not a lot more to be said about Vettel, he's stealing a seat and a wage, Charles has proven himself to be a worthy successor, time to get some more new talent in.
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I have to agree, if you take this season so far and his second half of 2018 I don’t really know how they can justify keeping him, they would have been better off keeping Kimi alongside Leclerc this season.
 
Silverstone as she’s been so many times before, filled to the rafters, Union Jacks and Hamilton flags fluttering in a strong overcast breeze.
Hamilton had a plan. The Mercedes team had a plan. But they weren’t the same plan.

Mercedes – just like everyone else – was convinced this was going to be a two-stop race based on the wear of the left-front seen on the Friday long-runs, on both softs and mediums. At the race morning meeting it had been decided that the two drivers could choose an offset strategy. Or rather, whoever was in second place would get the option of running longer if he’d managed to keep his tyres in better shape – and thereby get the benefit of newer tyres in the second and third stints.

After a medium-tyred long-run simulation on Friday that was devastatingly better than anyone else’s (including Bottas’), Hamilton reckoned he had better race pace and way better tyre management. He was not at all as convinced as his team that this was a two-stop race.

He was pretty sure he could make it into a one-stop. But didn’t make a big thing of it. In the full knowledge that Bottas had bought into the two-stop plan and that the fastest way to run a two-stop was medium/medium/soft. Therefore Bottas would be committed to that two-stop as soon as his first set of mediums were replaced by another (as at least two different compounds must be used). All Hamilton had to do was stay in touch, keep his tyres in good enough shape to run longer – and then ask for the hard. Giving him the opportunity to one-stop, with Bottas trapped into a two. It was audacious, but he was backing his own ability.

But Hamilton’s plan wasn’t just to try to do one stop less than Bottas. Bottas. He’d decided he was going to run fast right from the start. “We were supposed to save the tyres at the start,” he related. “But I went flat out. Because I had the best long run on Friday. So risked it all, took them by surprise." And forced Bottas into using his tyres even harder.
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Source

I think with or without the SC Hamilton would've still won. He was blisteringly quick yesterday - without the blisters.
 
Interesting. Hamilton is pretty consistently better with race pace and car management. We would see it often in the rosberg days that he was easier on both fuel and tyres.
 
JunglistE said:
Source

I think with or without the SC Hamilton would've still won. He was blisteringly quick yesterday - without the blisters.
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I only managed to catch the re-run of the race on All4, but thoroughly enjoyed the duels going on. Bottas vs Hamilton at the start, then Leclerc vs Verstappen afterwards.

Interesting article there. I like the analysis on the reason for the close racing (although not sure if the explanations have been corroborated):
"Why were the cars able to follow closely and race wheel-to-wheel through such fast corners? The answer was that the tyres were slightly under-temperature with a track temperature of just 28-deg C. Which meant they were not overheating when you sat behind the car in front. But where was the aerodynamic forcefield that normally loses you 50% of your downforce once you’re within couple of car lengths? In this, the massive downforce of this generation of car dovetailed fantastically well with the track’s layout. Corners such as Copse, Maggotts, Chapel and Abbey are so easily flat you can afford to lose some downforce and still be right there. Especially with your tyres not overheating. It was a happy confluence that together with some relaxed race stewarding that allowed the drivers to take full advantage of this, was to make for some fantastic racing."
 
mushtafa said:
Best race of the season so far, awesome racing! Silverstone should always remain on the calendar.
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Silverstone, spa, Monza - the truly historic tracks with incredible racing and crowd support should never have their place under threat on the calendar. It really makes a joke of the newer tracks.
 
JunglistE said:
I think with or without the SC Hamilton would've still won. He was blisteringly quick yesterday - without the blisters.
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Indeed, it's a shame that Bottas cannot accept that, he's still adamant he would have won and it was only Mercs two stop strategy that lost him the race. What part of he was slower on better rubber does he not understand?
 
justbeats said:
Indeed, it's a shame that Bottas cannot accept that, he's still adamant he would have won and it was only Mercs two stop strategy that lost him the race. What part of he was slower on better rubber does he not understand?
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I think it must be Bottas' way of trying to not be demoralised. Like in the 2019 Spanish GP he blamed a poor start on the clutch, but Mercedes then later stated there was no problem with the clutch.

Hamilton's fastest lap on ~32 lap old tyres was also pretty impressive considering Bottas was on the softs for his last stint.
 
justbeats said:
Indeed, it's a shame that Bottas cannot accept that, he's still adamant he would have won and it was only Mercs two stop strategy that lost him the race. What part of he was slower on better rubber does he not understand?
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F1 drivers always have absurd levels of self-belief, and nothing that ever goes wrong is their fault. Very few of them manage to back up that self-belief with wins and world championships.

You've got to feel sorry for the other drivers that they are racing in an era when they are running against a dominant Mercedes team, with a dominant car, and a dominant driver. Everyone is racing against the perfect storm of Hamilton in a Mercedes. Bottas doesn't even have the excuse of "the other guy has a better car" that most of the other drivers can use. Bottas is good, but he's not Hamilton good, and very few are.
 
Steampunk said:
F1 drivers always have absurd levels of self-belief, and nothing that ever goes wrong is their fault. Very few of them manage to back up that self-belief with wins and world championships.

You've got to feel sorry for the other drivers that they are racing in an era when they are running against a dominant Mercedes team, with a dominant car, and a dominant driver. Everyone is racing against the perfect storm of Hamilton in a Mercedes. Bottas doesn't even have the excuse of "the other guy has a better car" that most of the other drivers can use. Bottas is good, but he's not Hamilton good, and very few are.
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That is all racing drivers, in all race series, not just F1.

They all think they are the best and it is never their fault it is always the engine, gearbox, tyres etc.

Many many years ago I was one of the founding mechanics in the Formula Palmer Audi Series, all the cars were identical, all blueprinted identical power output Audi 1.8 lt Turbo engines, all identical Avon tyres etc.

By about half way through the first season, we had got the cars so identical, there was a race at Brands on the Indy circuit and after qualifying the time spread from first to last on the grid of 24 cars was less than a second.

But that was the downfall of the series, as drivers had nothing to blame if they were constantly at the back of the field, they could not say, but he has a better engine or better tyres.

They just had to admit the guys at the front were better drivers, and the guys at the back were not.

As I say Drivers do not like that, they cannot ever accept they are bad drivers, so drivers just stopped entering the series, and went to other race series where the cars were different run by different teams, with different setups, so they had something to blame.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
https://www.planetf1.com/news/mercedes-still-baffled-by-hamiltons-fastest-lap/

He is on another level.
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Yeah haha, James Vowles' reaction was quite funny:
We truthfully have no idea at all how Lewis did the fastest lap of the race on 32-lap old, hard tyres. Hardest tyre available, completely used up and yet he does a fantastic lap at the end. Well done to him, no idea.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJgo1ba5u8&t=4m43s

I've been quite negative about the point for fastest lap on most occasions, but this was one example of it being really interesting and surprising. Don't think we've had a driver from outside one of the top 3 teams manage to claim the fastest lap yet this season though.
 
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