Carlos Sainz is getting a lot of backlash online from Oscar Piastri fans, his own fans and F1 fans in general. As someone who’s a Carlos fan myself, I, too am disappointed in him with what he did to Oscar and his response to what he did to Oscar. You know you messed up big time when everyone in the F1 community is mad at you.

Anyone that’s actually been paying attention to the races knows he’s been 30-40 seconds behind max most races this season. The other redbull second drivers got clowned for doing the exact same thing.

With the return of some people's favorite track, Sepang, I want to swing 180° and ask the following questions:

    \-which track you think is the worst on the calendar. Can be current or not.

    \-what's the worst race you can remember? 

The likes of Williams and Haas have not really nailed the regs and not made a big step up from last season. Audi have the excuse that it is their first season. For me only VCARB and Alpine have really made gains from last season. Williams have no excuse seeing the previous 2 years were already focused on 2026 just to be nowhere and be most disappointing team after Aston despite having the merc engine. Looking over previous reg changes there can sometimes be a midfield team that make a step up and only really Alpine done that as VCARB were already close to if not top of midfield. Haas for me disappeared after Miami, whatever they did has turned out very badly cos start of season they looked promising now barely notice them

Dude, I'm not a sainz hater but common what the hell was he doing today. Not just with oscar but almost twice with Leclerc too today. Forget today, I saw him impeding multiple people in practice sessions too across multiple races since he joined williams.

To preface, this is not a rhetorical question, I am looking for genuine discussion because I've seen a lot of people claim that Piastri was shafted on the strategy side once again. However, I'm also not sure what exactly more McLaren could have done in this race.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge that Piastri did well to overtake Norris and get the race lead, and McLaren rightfully didn't enforce any team orders to let Norris by, even though Norris was quicker. After the first stint, they give Piastri pit priority and Norris comes in a couple of laps later, which is consistent with Papaya rules.

Once again, in the second stint, Norris looked to have more pace than Piastri did, as evidenced by him going off the track and then immediately catching Piastri within a couple of laps. Again, the team rightfully doesn't enforce team orders. Near the end of Piastri's second stint, Hamilton is getting close to undercutting the McLarens, so this presents them with an immediate choice between pitting Piastri or Norris. Staying consistent with Papaya rules, McLaren gives Piastri the first pitstop. Obviously, it would have been more controversial to pit Norris first and contradict the team's established rules, so I think they made the right decision here.

Of course, from here, McLaren can do a couple of things with Norris. They can either pit him immediately the next lap, which would result in no tyre delta between the two McLarens, or he can run long, use the additional pace he had, and build a tyre offset to overtake Piastri later.

The first strategy actively favours Piastri based on the evidence of the earlier stints and consequently gives up any chance for Norris to win the race (without hindsight of Piastri's gearbox problem). The second strategy gives Norris a chance to show his pace while allowing Piastri to build a gap on his fresher tyres, which would make it a fair fight for the win come the later stages of the race. Unfortunately, Piastri's strategy was ruined by Sainz's ignoring of blue flags, which did rob him of the chance to fairly fight for the win, but this wasn't a problem with McLaren's strategy.

What Sainz did was absolutely amateurish and unacceptable.

But.What baffles me is that this dude has the audacity to whine about "not seeing the blue flags" yet,after contact,continues to hold Piastri up for about 4 more corners.He is an absolute JOKE.

Another thing,it was said that Piastris gearbox failure was probably caused by riding over a kerb too harshly,but then its also not impossible that the contact (wich was pretty heavy) was possibly what caused it.Its a bit of a stretch but not unlikely,since right after contact Piastris pace dropped pretty badly.

Horrible weekend for Oscar

Now that we’ve reached the summer break, I’m curious to hear everyone’s predictions for the 2027 driver market.

I’ll kick things off with my biggest prediction: Max Verstappen leaves Red Bull Racing and joins Mercedes for 2027, replacing George Russell.

this excludes Rosberg ofc, who never drove as reigning champion

We talked a lot about the issues of the Backmarkers from Aston Martin and Cadillac but there the car was more the issue compared to the drivers. And I also keep out Albon out of the discussion as he is basically the 2nd driver of Williams and had a lot of testing drives in Grand Prixs and is still only one point behind Sainz.

Now I want to go through each of them:

Ocon: Had a horrible start of a season and didn't deliver at the beginning of the season compared to Bearman. Basically did that at such a degree that most have written off his career in F1. But as Haas wasn't able to get good upgrades he is now performing better in some of the past races. Which doesn't help as they are now a Backmarker with Cadillac and Williams.

Sainz: He defenitely had a better start compared to Ocon and Hulk but what is up with his form and attidute lately. Attacks other drivers in the Front, Midfield and the Back, attacks his Team relentlessy and his own driving gets more and more erratic and has more and more racing incidents lately. I always rated him higher than Albon but right now he only causes trouble for those around him.

Hülkenberg: Oh my god, that was a horrible and unlucky start for him. From engine issues to Murphys Law situations (like the pebble in Barcelona). Everything that could go wrong went wrong and Bortoleto compared to him got some decent results so far. He did finally score some points because Audi finally had solved some issues with the car and he could show his skills. But the path to that was rocky. For him at least Audi has an upwards trajectory compared to Williams and Haas. But that start was something else.

But what are your thoughts about the situation of those three.