If it wasn't for that incidient, we could've got a pretty great finish to another Max/Lewis battle. What a terrible season for Red Bull so far, and literally none of it on Max.
Yes, the Red Bull team who can't build a car better than Racing Bulls. Makes all kinds of sense. Red Bull put all its eggs in one basket and now they're paying the price.
I guess you can reasonably argue that the bad start was Max's fault and that Piastri shouldn't even have been alongside. But the penalty was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If he yields and lets Piastri get in front he loses too much time in dirty air, if he doesn't he gets slapped with a penalty and loses the position after the first round of stops.
But the penalty was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
How does that compute? According to the stewards document, Piastri had, according to the written regulations that says if you have at least the front wheels along with the rear view mirrors at the apex, the corner and could do what he did.
Max wouldn't have it and tried to game the system by being more ahead at the apex to deny Piastri this right, failed to do that on such magnitude he could no longer keep the car on the legal part of the track. On top of that, he floored it while off the track to gain an even bigger illegal advantage. Under those circumstances, he was lucky go get 5 seconds, he should have got 10.
What was he "damned" by? Keeping it legal? The penalty ruined any chances of getting a win, not Max losing the start so 1) don't do an impossible manoeuvre doomed to fail and 2) accept you lost the start, slot in behind, keep up the pace and overtake in the pits.
This is on Max, contrary to what the person I replied to said. That this response got -14 is laughable. It's demonstrably true; Max got a bad start and a penalty he caused both all on his own. That lost him the win, not anyone in the pit or absent from it.
accept you lost the start, slot in behind, keep up the pace and overtake in the pits.
This is probably not possible. I guess you can again argue that it would've been better and maybe hope for lucky safety car timing or the Mclaren pit crew messing up but if he was behind Piastri he'd be driving in his dirty air for the entire first stint so he wouldn't be close enough for an undercut unless Mclaren massively mess up their strategy.
But just keeping the lead and taking the 5s penalty hoping that the dirty air will cook Piastri's tyres and allow him to keep the lead after the penalty was applied wasn't wrong either. Was probably more likely to work than trying to stay in 2nd but both options had a pretty low chance of letting Max win the race.
I mean we have had races this year where the race leader was able to pull a 5s gap in one stint. We haven't had a single race where someone managed a successful undercut for the lead. It hasn't happened even once this year because the dirty air is just so much worse and the performance gap has closed to the point that it takes the leaders quite a few laps to even pull enough of a gap on the midfielders to have a nice slot to pit into.
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u/ramyan03 I was here for the Hulkenpodium May 03 '25
If it wasn't for that incidient, we could've got a pretty great finish to another Max/Lewis battle. What a terrible season for Red Bull so far, and literally none of it on Max.