So the changes in general were to make a few of the turns slightly wider, which would favor Merc. But I read that they installed new kerbs in those areas, and apparently this was not communicated to Pirelli, who shipped tires that are too soft for the new brand of kerbs. The only other race with the new kerbs was…

That would be sweet for Alfa. Personally I think Bottas is gonna clip Max because Mercedes has nothing to lose in that, and Bottas’ issues were never in qualifying.

It’s sort of like “why do Federer fans hate Nadal and vice-versa”. Or “why does no one like Bryson DeChambeau fans”. I think it’s a highbrow / lowbrow sort of thing as much as anything. Lewis is Jean Girard, Max is Ricky Bobby. Yeah Rafa still wore $500k watches on-court but he also would *gasp* fist pump and rile up…

That’s basically right. I somewhat question the wisdom of sending him out on the mediums given that their hards were newer than Merc, but I think RBR figured Merc had more pace and preferred the coin flip on more safety cars over the coin flip on whether their tire health could make up for their pace deficit. If there…

I’m glad we can always rely on you for an opinion from the Hamilton peanut gallery. Even if it happens to be mostly correct in this case.

The stewards themselves said they understood why BOTH drivers were braking so they didn’t cross the DRS detection line first, but max was more erratic so he was penalized. Max (and Lewis) hit the brakes to avoid being first over the line. He didn’t do it for the purpose of causing a crash, even if a crash was a likely…

Red Bull had the pace over them coming off the VSC as my memory serves me. Maybe a second of that was “what the fuck” but in the like 10 laps it took to sort the whole thing out Max’s tires were starting to fade

Yeah, the silver lining to all of this is ultimately I don’t think any of it mattered. There’s a legit gripe about max surrendering a 3.5 second lead just to get whacked with another 5 second penalty for the same incident, but ultimately even if it was just one of those punishments I think it would have been the same…

“Deliberately used the brakes” is not the same as “deliberately caused an accident for the sake of causing an accident”

Yeah, like it has to happen at T1 within a number of laps that race control provides based on the gap between the cars, or they disable DRS during these exchanges, or something. They need something codified that’s fair to both drivers instead of the current system which really is fair to no one. The leader shouldn’t…

That would be amazing, but the last two drivers to win in Abu Dhabi are Max and Lewis. I don’t think you risk it knowing you’re the defending champ. If Lewis had won the last 2 it might be a different story

Lewis was warned for running max off the track while max was yielding the position and Lewis knew he was. Lewis was being a huge prick in that moment because it was payback time and the FIA didn’t miss that. 

Yeah, I don’t think the argument is right, just that Lewis would have been the victim to some people regardless of which car he was driving. I said in another post, the person most at fault is the rulemaker for FIA. The only reason an obviously avoidable low-speed crash from both drivers would happen is because the…

I didn’t know that, but in fairness he asked for the reason they gave during the broadcast so I told him

Where did I blame it all on hamilton? Was it where I said Max had a slower car and was being a prick all race? I didn’t blame hamilton for the crash either, I said if the shoe was on the other foot the Lewis fans would still blame max. 

It’s a mix of the newer engine and track configurations that were more favorable to Mercedes. I thought Qatar would be a closer race, and I thought Mercedes would win this week from wire to wire. But I expected them to win them both. I told a friend that Red Bull made a huge strategic boner when they didn’t take a PU…

I’m a max guy but the whole cult of Lewis “blame it all on max” thing like hamilton didn’t do anything wrong this race gets really unbelievably tiring. Hamilton got a very firm warning from the marshalls in lieu of a black and white flag, and the point about max being forced to surrender a 3.5 second lead to give back…

Had to space the cars for a double box

The person most at fault for the crash leading up to the 10 second penalty is the FIA. Why they would tell him to yield in a detection zone is beyond me. Having said that, he easily could have done so after T1, plus trying to gain the advantage with DRS was stupid because that’s not where RBR’s cars were any good the…

I thought the 5 second penalty on Max was pretty questionable, but ultimately Max’s tires were totally cooked so it didn’t make a difference. Thrilling race, but there will be some legitimate questions about Masi, the stewards, and Red Bull race strategy. Max was definitely full send the whole race, sometimes he was…