2018 Japanese GP

TC

aka TomCat
Joined
Dec 11, 2005
Messages
11,432
It really is quite impressive just how thoroughly this driver's championship has fallen apart...
 
Yep.
 
Ferrari would be better at F1 even with me at the strategy desk. Bone dry track, few drops => BOTH CARS ON INTERS
Why not try one car (use Kimi since he's the guinea pig for everything and he's gone next year anyways) and have Vettel (who is still, by a long way, a title contender) wait the results. At the same time he can see what Hamilton can do on slicks so he has ALL the info to make a good decision (and no time lost)

Granted, he did screw up a couple of times himself (Germany being the worst, crashing out of the lead) but strategy wise the Scuderia are a joke...
 
The season ended on Lap 8 when Vettel did a Verstappen on Verstappen and plummeted from fourth to eighteenth. He eventually worked his way back to sixth, but Ferrari knows it's over so they did not bother to swap positions with Kimi in fifth. Honestly, a lot of ugly driving at the start with Magnussen blocking LeClerc to cause a collision (should have been a penalty on Kevin) and then Ericsson ramming him a couple of laps later. I would not call Verstappen on Räikkönen ugly, but the penalty was deserved because Max should have taken the longer way around and not cut back on track.

With Lewis now WDC Elect, it will be interesting to see if Vettel now just goes full attack for poles and wins for from this point onward it does not matter if he finishes, so he might as well only finish first or not at all.
 
I still blame the FIA for this and the last 8 seasons of trash we've had.
 
vettel should stop wanting it so much and just relax a bit

ferrari made a strategy error, but they had time
it's only when vettel went off during his only dry Q3 run and when he later torpedoed verstappen that his race was completely ruined, and neither of those were ferrari's fault

here's one hoping for Leclerc to trash him around next year!


btw, strategy wise MB isn't much better, they made sooooo many mistakes even this year
i just happens to turn out ok for them each time
 
Hamilton seems to have incredible luck on his side. If you think back to Silverstone he'd have been in the same position Seb was this race. People seem to have forgotten that the safety car bunched up the pack with laps to go giving him the chance to get his car into 2nd. And this seems to happen quite a bit when it comes to Lewis, something will transpire to help him get into a better finishing position. Sebastian just has to slog it out until he gets into 4th or 5th and then cruise home from there. I mean look at Bahrain, he looked to come 4th in that race until Kimi ran over his engineer by accident. In Azerbaijan Sebastian locked up and then Bottas is out of the race with a puncture.
I hope Ferrari get it together next year, I want to see Vettel take a championship for Ferrari, Ferrari seem to have been strong at the start of the season so they need to learn how to capitalise on that rather than throw away valuable points that they'll need later on when Mercedes finds their stride and they're floundering in the wind.
 
Top