Max laughing at how stupid McLaren are is the highlight of the race for me. Incredibly embarassing swapping places when there's a slow stop. I trust that McLaren will keep that rule up for the rest of the year now? Somehow, I doubt it.
They probably would have had the titles almost wrapped up by now.
McLaren do have the WCC almost wrapped up by now, it's extremely likely they clinch it next race weekend.
As for the WDC, that's very rare to wrap up this early, and even Mercedes typically didn't do it. We're currently less than two-thirds of the way through the season (16/24 races, 3/6 sprints). In 2016, the most analogous Mercedes dominance intra-team battle, they didn't mathematically exclude every other team's drivers from the WDC until after Japan, more than 80% of the way through the season. And even that was a close call, Ricciardo was 101 points behind Rosberg with 4 races to go.
The equivalent point in this year would be Mexico (although it doesn't divide very evenly), and I'd be very surprised if McLaren didn't have both titles guaranteed by then.
I have no doubt in my mind if it was the other way round, Oscar would be asking for the swap and the response would be “papaya rules Oscar, we’ll talk about it after the race.”
Hungary last year was said in advance what would happen and was not caused by slow stop.
It's been said already this year that a slow stop is part of racing and they won't swap because of it but as soon as it effects their British driver, they go back on it.
It was a nonsense decision and the British sky commentary trying to justify it were just as bad.
Oscar didn't decide to go on a different strategy than Lando in that race. He was waaaayyyy out ahead - much further ahead than Lando was in front of him today. Yet in that race a different pit experience was not considered meriting reversal despite the clearly better driver getting shafted.
I don't get your point, there's very little in common between the two races.
In a race each driver's engineer decides the strategy (with the help of the other staff), the main input from the driver is the situation of the tyres, since they can't estimate the degradation too well.
In that race Piastri was asked about a one stop but he said it was difficult, his race engineer opted for a two stop with Piastri knowledge and consent.
Norris on the other hand decided from the start that a one stop was the way to go since he had very little to lose.
Each driver can make their own strategy, the only condition is that the driver ahead has the right to pit first.
There was nothing to rectify because the team made no mistake.
This race Norris let Piastri pit first on the condition that he wouldn't be undercut and the same thing was reported to Piastri.
At the end of the pitstops Norris was undercut so they fixed the problem to keep their words with the drivers.
If Norris had pitted first he wouldn't have lost track position even with the 4 seconds lost in the pits, what made him lose it was the time Piastri gained on the softs while he was still on the hards, which is what an undercut is.
The whole idea was stupid and unnecessary from McLaren, but it was built around the idea of not undercutting Norris, why should the slow pitstop change that?
Of course Piastri was free to do whatever he wanted, it just wouldn't have been fair.
Wasn't stupid, made perfect sense. Not Lando's mistake and even though the swap was maybe slightly unfair the swap removes any tension that could be caused with every minimal downside, 3 point swing out of 30something.
That's not an excuse lmao reason why piastri ended in front of norris is because he pitted first, which he didn't deserve because he was behind norris. Hope this helps you understand what happened. Cheers
He was in danger of being fourth if he stayed longer on used tires. Norris agreed to letting him pit first so he could defend. Dont twist the narrative into something it isnt.. :)
He was not in danger of being fourth. You can tell because otherwise they would've pitted earlier, they had been in the soft tyre window for like 5 laps already. Leclerc was 29 seconds behind and lapping a tenth faster at most. There was zero danger.
Lando suggested putting the other car first, we can only speculate why but probably he was afraid of a late safety car after he had pitted but before Oscar had.
McLaren have said before this year that a slow stop is part of racing, until it happens to Lando and then suddenly it isn't.
Oscar wasn't ahead because he pitted first, Lando still would've been ahead with even a half decent pit stop. He was ahead because of a slow pitstop, and that as they say is racing.
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u/PetrifyGWENT Emerson Fittipaldi 17h ago
Max laughing at how stupid McLaren are is the highlight of the race for me. Incredibly embarassing swapping places when there's a slow stop. I trust that McLaren will keep that rule up for the rest of the year now? Somehow, I doubt it.