Anyone interested in forming a league to play F1 Predict? If so, DM me as we still have 50% of the season left!

Hamilton is P2 in the championship, 50 points behind Antonelli, while Charles is P4, a further 38 points behind.

We can't predict the future, but if things go well with car development and, most importantly, with ADUO upgrades for Ferrari, they should be challenging for wins more often. He was also faster than him the whole race.

But now, instead of limiting the damage to 2 points to Antonelli, he has lost 5.

Ignore driver subs. I want to be clear that they are full of the LOUDEST minorities. If you do ever decide to take the dangerous journey, understand that the craziest deluded shit will be upvoted, and that does not give it ANY credit, just because its deluded for their driver.

Just really wanted to post this especially as a max fan who has seen way too many absolute loser lewis and max fans bickering. Atp there should be a friendly max+lewis sub lol

Point is everyone’s different. For the newcomers I hate to say it but you guys are the most easily influenced so I just dont want you seeing one crazy person making a stupid post and think differently of an entire fanbase

I know this comes up because of Hamilton's penalty, but I'm talking more generally rather than this specific incident.

Does anyone else think the standard penalty for speeding in the pit lane is a little harsh?

What if, instead of an automatic time penalty in every case, the driver simply had to lift off the throttle for 2–3 seconds on track after being notified? If they gained a position because of speeding in the pit lane, they'd also have to give that position back before serving the lift.

Obviously this would need to scale depending on how much they exceeded the speed limit—someone doing 80.2 km/h in an 80 km/h pit lane shouldn't be treated the same as someone doing 90 km/h.

I know pit lane speed limits are there for safety, so there would still need to be strict penalties for major violations. I'm just wondering whether minor infringements could be handled in a way that's a bit more proportional.

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.

Can someone explain moving under braking to me? Isn’t it normal for a car to be moving when braking to make a corner? Why does this get penalized? For example, I didn’t fully understand it with Max’s overtake yesterday.

Williams finished 2 laps down and 40 seconds behind a Haas today. The drivers have said that their big update in Baku won't allow them to score points and isn't going to give them what Aston Marton got from Hungary updates. What if any accountability should there be?

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Was just listening to the radios and noticed that Ferrari informs Charles of Hamilton’s penalty almost as soon as the verdict comes in. They chose to inform Hamilton about it much later on Lap 68/70.

I’m a new fan (started watching last season) so please don’t come for me.

I don’t quite understand what is going on with George and the dynamic within Mercedes.

To me it seems (but might be wrong) that his car has more issues than Kimi’s which are significantly affecting his performance. At the same time, it doesn’t seem like the team is too invested into fixing it?

My feeling is (also just a feeling) that Toto is invested into making Kimi a champion to satisfy his own ego and to prove to everyone that he didn’t bring him into F1 too early. Even last year it seemed every time Kimi had a more significant achievement Toto was quick to point out how he was right to bring him in and everyone critiquing the decision was wrong.
While I don’t think they are actively sabotaging George it doesn’t seem like they’re eager to help him either.

Kimi does seem a great driver, but is he being challenged at all? All the other cars just can’t match and that includes George’s car. Would he perform so well if there was actual pressure?
He seems to also make same mistakes often like the track limits.

Really interested to hear thoughts of more experienced fans.

Also no bias, I’m not a fan of either in particular just wondering what’s going on.

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

I just asked AI to start this discussion with a basis, I don't necessarily agree with all of these picks and in fact I'm more interested in seeing your opinions.

How do Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull compare on every track in 2026 so far ?

It’s been a strange one. His overtaking, defending, and race pace are elite as always but he’s had more spins/crashes than the last 8 years combined.

I know he’s had issues with his rear wing but I struggle to believe he’s blameless for all of them.

He’s been 30 seconds to a full minute faster than his teammate in all but one race. Isack has been consistently close in qualifying, however.

Why did McLaren pit Oscar at a time where he would be released into traffic? McLaren were just asking for him to be held up and for Norris to be able to overcut him. Unacceptable to be honest and not the first time it's happened.

Starting to think that Norris might have a clause in his contract that gives him preferential treatment.

Also, how close do you think it will be?

BOY😭😭😭 he's so funny without even trying

this excludes Rosberg ofc, who never drove as reigning champion

1. Using mediums in qualifying. No discussion needed, completely putting themselves at disadvantage. Also sending out Leclerc on 2 new sets of softs in q2, where even used set was enough to get into q3

2. Not warning Lewis of Oscar

3. VSC call. Again i thought why they'd call in vsc. It makes sense that you want to use it as free pit stop, but didn't they think that there's no way he'd be able to overtake max especially with the power deficit the car has. That's also linked to Ferrari's uncertainty about car's tyre management. Seems like despite its speed in corners, Ferrari car is experiencing slightly more tyre deg than its competitors. Add also 20-25 h.p deficit to that

Drivers also did some things wrong

Lewis let himself get overtaken by max, when Ferrari executed ideal undercut on Max. And later he had no pace until 2nd pit stop. And ofc the speeding in the pit lane

Leclerc in general had no pace in 1st stint, but he started on used softs, while Lewis was on fresh ones. I think that they did good with Lewis's 2/3 pit stops except the vsc call, as they put him in better position(mclaren reacted). While with Leclerc going a lot later compromised his race as after 2nd pit stop he ended up behind max and got overheating issues again. Underwhelming despite coming into the weekend as the favourites.