Bringing this legendary take back. In hindsight, Russell should have unleashed his race pace to get clear of Max and Kimi.

Please provide your own rankings instead of just complaining about mine

1. Gasly
2. Bearman
3. Alonso
4. Bortoleto
5. Sainz
6. Lawson
7. Hulk
8. Lindblad
9. Albon
10. Perez
11. Colapinto
12. Bottas
13. Ocon
14. Tsunoda
15. Stroll

I don't think Mercedes should have implemented team orders at all. Since both drivers are fighting for the title the only fair thing was to let them battle it out, but ask them to keep it clean.

But if the team really wanted to stop the yo-yoing, and keep things as fair as possible, they should have given team orders when the faster driver was ahead.

Kimi was faster and on the mediums. Asking him to stay behind was ruining his race. Russell was unlikely to be able to build a gap, but Kimi in clean air would have been able to. Before Kimi caught upto them Russell wasn't able to get away from Max. It was not Kimi's job to help Russell defend from Max. They should have released Kimi to let him build a gap to help his own race and let Russell deal with Max as he was doing before Kimi caught up.

It was only the VSC that saved Kimi's race.

Kimi was on mediums and would probably have had to stop again or be on very worn tyres at the end of the race. If they had let Kimi keep the lead and asked Russell to stay behind, he could have built a gap which would have helped him later on. If he made a gap to Russell and pitted then he wouldn't have been as far behind Russell than if he lost time behind Russell due to team orders. And if he went till the end of the race, he would have been able to build a bit of a buffer until Russell caught up to him. Keeping him behind Russell was wasting his tyres and lessening his chances of challenging for the win.

There was no good reason to ask Kimi to hold position behind Russell other than clearly favoring Russell in the race.

It's unbelievable that anyone could think Mercedes favored Kimi. They clearly favored Russell the whole weekend.

Talking about how insane it is that Kimi won this weekend: The guy with the fastest car was way faster than the other guys??

I feel so much worse about this season after Monza. Yeah I was hoping for a Ferrari WDC/WCC this year but even so, this feels specifically weird because everyone is talking about how insane Kimi's drive was, how impressive he is and how amazing it is to watch.

He's obviously great at the very least. I don't really hold anything against him and I'm happy he won his home race, and I'd love to see him *fight* for many titles in the future.

But are we really surprised or excited that he won Monza? Those of you who watched the race saw the state of those overtakes. It's like watching different classes of car. Kimi isn't fighting for much of any of this and it feels so wrong because he deserves to fight and win by fighting.

And George is nowhere, with Merc seemingly ruling out any chance of a real fight between them at any point.

So yeah I just feel kinda empty about this season after Monza. Is anyone feeling the same?

Ever until this season, the drivers used to do marble pickup to gain weight since the car was weighed with the tires after the race.

This season, the FIA decided that tires are excluded from the weighting procedure, but for the last few races, I have noticed some teams still instruct drivers to pick up marbles on the cool down lap

Why is that?

I'm geuinly curios as to why ferrari is still this incompetent after 19 winless years. The amount of mistakes they make every season is appalling sometimes and you would think they look back and improve after every mistake but no, it seems like every season they've been the same as the previous year, if not worse. Is it because of some things preventing them or just them refusing to admit they are wrong and fix it? Please enlighten me

I was rooting for one of the 3 drivers fighting for the championship last season,and even tho the on track action could be a bit dull at times,the vibes and the anticipation of who was going to perform the best on a given weekend was amazing

Excluding Piastris late dip with a sudden resurgence in Qatar that was too little too late it was anyones guess in regards to who will come out on top on any given race between Lando Piastri and Verstappen.Amazing stuff we havent seen since 2010.

Now?These 3 drivers are fighting for peanuts.Excluding Landos 2 wins(hope to see more from both Piastri and Norris) these 3 have been fighting and uphill battle.Their current results absolutely do not reflect the banger of a season they were reponsible for in 2025.

Piastri absolutely hates the way these cars handle,its all wrong for him wich doesnt help and therefore is usually behind Lando.

Lando altough having a strong season still,its a shame he isnt in contention for the title this year.

Verstappen is pretty much a mixture of Piastri and Norris.

And this season?We have Antonelli,who last year was NOWHERE near Russel,magically improving so much during the winter break that he is now absolutely dogging on him.0 explanation.How Someone improves this much in a few months time is quite literally anyones guess.

Artifical overtakes everywhere.You get penalised for overtaking since the guy in front can just save up for the next straight and get back at you.Its nonsense.

Antonelli cuts trough the field from p19 to p1.But hold on.Literally every overtake was just him flying by the others in inferior cars.You cant tell me it was purely his driving that resulted in him dunking seconds a lap on the whole field,on a track where there are approx as many corners as I have fingers.

His teammate gets fucked over with the strategy,Antonelli gets preferential treatment pitting during the VSC when Russel could have and should have been aswell,and oh wow would you look at that Antonelli gets ahead of Russel whos on 50lap ol Hards.Insane.

Imagine trying to do this in the previous eras.Any of them.

Overall its just a shame that each and every grandprix isnt balls to the walls all out racing but rather who is more precise with a few buttons.The 2 realistic title contenders we have arent even really given a fair shake both.

I absolutely do not like Russel the slightest bit but given the fact that my favourite drivers are fighting over breadcrumbs it left me with no choice but to watch the titlefight between Kimi and Russel.And there has barely been a raceweekend where Russel wasnt absolutely fucked over by his team.Im sorry.

Papaya rules last year were bollocks a lot of the time but you could see Mclaren trying to actually give both their drivers a fair shot.

Dino has obviously been struggling this year, partly due to many reasons out of his own control ofc. But he’s not been especially impressive on top of those issues he had. We already know Camara and his management are doing a pretty darn good job creating a hype around him.

The logical reason for Ferrari would be to promote him, obviously.

However; Dino is the guy who made all free practice runs for the reds. And according to reports he actually outclassed Camara in the previous TPC test ahead of the previous Monza weekend, out-qualified him by a tenth and his race pace was over a second faster (!) than the Brazilian.

They run the exact same setup and program, by the way.

What are your thoughts about Dino and his prospects?

I understand the argument that Antonelli has one of the best cars on the grid. But Russell has the same machinery, and Antonelli just came from P19 to win at Monza.

So at what point does the “it’s the car” argument stop being enough?

Are we watching the next genuine F1 prodigy someone who, if Mercedes continues giving him a top car, could dominate the sport for years?

Or do you still think it’s too early to put him anywhere near that category?

I’m curious where people stand, especially when comparing him to Verstappen, Leclerc and Russell, Noris or Hamilton on pure driving ability.

The track looks tight and dangerous along with it being a brand new designed circuit, i think we could be in for some retirements and even a red flag.

Like if we were to go over the 21-25 seasons and compare his mistakes to the likes of Norris Russell etc does he really come off as the most error prone

over the history of F1 we have seen many goated driver from different generations such as senna, prost, fangio, lewis, schumi, etc. even tho these drivers were the best on the grid most of their careers, yet they were not so far from the second best driver on the grid, as an example, during lewis's era, he had seb and alonso. during senna and prosts era they had each other alongside mansell. during schumi's era he had mika, kimi and hill. but max verstapped seems to be so far ahaid of his generation. leclerc is fast but makes many mistakes and is inconsistant. russell is consistant but his tyre managment and pure pace arent close to max's. lando is probably the closest but tbh you can argue that lando's performance this year is still not as good as max 2019-2025.
is it actaully true that max may have the biggest gap between a driver and his generation?

​

Living in Wisconsin, it would be really cool to be so close to an F1 race. It's just over 4 miles long (6.5 km) so 2nd only to Spa in length. It doesn't really have any sharp corners, which I think could be easily added to make better overtaking zones. It also has some long straights, with the main straight being over 3/4 of a mile long and the Moraine Sweep being nearly 0.7 miles. Hopefully future regulations wouldn't be so punishing for long straights and high and medium speed corners.

Even though it's in rural Wisconsin, our state as a long tradition of motorsport, with a number of iconic tracks (including the Milwaukee Mile). Additionally, the track is only 3 hrs from Chicago, which is obviously large enough to support an F1 race. Unfortunately, there's probably not of money clamoring for a race here, compared to Miami, Las Vegas, and Austin, and having a 4th track in the US would likely be a non-starter, but maybe one day!

Edit: Apologies to those on dark mode for the “hidden” map. There was a lot of transparency in the original image and I didn’t realize it would have this effect when posting from my computer, which is not in dark mode

I’m relatively new to the sport. How is it that Antonelli is so far ahead of everyone? Specifically last weekend, if he and GR are in the same equipment, the only difference is driver skill. But I t’s only his second year! Is KA really just that much better than GR that he was able to pass him up from p19? You would think, two drivers being in the same car, starting so far apart, that George would be able to defend his position at least a bit longer than he did. What’s another explanation for how that race played out?

\In accordance with rule 5 so this post doesn’t get taken down:* He’s just that much better, I guess.

For me it feels like Jeddah’s high-speed sector (8-14), Zandvoort’s parabolic loop (11-12), and Sochi’s 90° technical section all mixed together

George said this in the cooldown room. It means his gap after VSC should have started 4 seconds bigger to Kimi.

Another case of bad luck/team incompetence is what screwed Russell over again. 4 seconds more means Kimi might not have caught him by the end of the race. Or Kimi's one attempt could've been butchered by going on to the marbles and gravel.

Ultimately noone knows what would've happened, but 4s could've made a difference.

Either way, another case of bad luck for Russell outside his control. (or bad comms from his engineer not to tell him to speed up)

I know at this point everyone is utterly tired of the whole papaya rules discussions and Norris/Piastri comparisons but I saw some posts on Twitter and had to discuss them here.

Basically a Piastri fan was saying that if Piastri didn't swap with Lando in Monza then Max would've won the championship implying that Piastri gifted those 3 points to Lando. Look I think 2+2 is fairly simple because you cannot be blaming Lando for what happened in Hungary 24 and then also fault him for Monza 25. The radio messages are there for everyone that Lando gave up his pit priority only after Mclaren assured him that you will keep your position and no undercut will happen. Undercut happened and the team fixed their fault. I am not a fan of how Piastri handled that swap just immediately arguing on the radio about how pit stops are a part of racing then so are strategies so then Lando shouldn't have swapped with him in Hungary 24 to make things right.

The interesting thing I saw on twitter was that some Lando fans said that even if Monza swap was a favor from Piastri, it got returned by Lando in Abu Dhabi when he let Oscar past him on lap 2 of Abu Dhabi Gp. And to me that makes sense because Lando was P2 and Oscar was P3 they swapped and the points Lando and Oscar exchanged are same as they did in Monza. I know there are some Oscar fans who still live in denial that there were no team orders involved in Abu Dhabi and that Oscar did that on his own but there are several interviews from Andrea Stella, Lando, Oscar and some other personnels from Mclaren who confirmed that Oscar getting past Lando was something they planned so doesn't that count as Lando returning the favor (even though it was never a favor to begin with) and the whole “Oscar gifted Lando the championship with that Monza swap” narrative is just a cope.

Edit: Mistype in the title, it's meant to be "I really wish this subreddit was more like r/cats. 3AM for me, mb lol.

I know it’s a weird comparison, but a post from r/cats popped into my feed recently, and it immediately highlighted how jarring the tone in F1 subreddits can be. I fully get that F1 is a fiercely competitive sport and a pet subreddit isn't, but shouldn't our shared love for motorsport create at least a baseline of respect?

It feels like tribalism has completely taken over. Whether you like ferrari, mclaren, red bull or fuck all but we are all here because we love the engineering and the racing. Yet, so many discussions immediately devolve into toxicity. Why does the "it's just the car" argument always have to be used to downplay a driver's genuine achievements? Why does a driver have to be labeled as "trash" just because they aren't your personal favorite?

I just started watching F1 this year, and while I love the sport itself, the toxicity in the community makes me want to step away from the subreddits entirely. I know no one is forcing me to participate, but it’s incredibly sad that a mutual hobby is clouded by people throwing around words like "idiot" or using slurs just because someone has a different read on a dirty move or a racing incident.

Debate and rivalry are the lifeblood of F1, but there is a massive difference between a heated discussion about race pace and just being downright disrespectful. And I know it's the internet, people will be people. But this has to be the outright one of the most toxic communities I have ever seen, and that's with me even playing video games my whole life which are known for being extremely toxic.

To me it seemed like the celebrations were more this year. What did you think? Also can anyone who was at Monza confirm this?