Carlos Sainz has commented on it and reading between the lines, he clearly thinks it was on purpose. Verstappen, who has much more data than you and I do, believes it was on purpose. The data available to us (posted above, and there’s curves for every lap of Checo’s qualy, none of which show the way-too-early throttle…

Alonso didn’t take two years off; he only took two years off from F1. He won the WEC in 18/19, added another Le Mans victory and competed in the Indy500 and Dakar.

What we’ve seen is, and always has been, Mick’s potential. He’s never been considered a top-level talent, and going up against Mazepin in 2021 covered up a lot of the basic issues. He was a solid junior who relied more on consistency (and incredible race starts) than actual speed to be competitive in quite mediocre…

It’s a boring, safe and unspectacular move by Haas, but I think it’s the right one. As a team fighting in a tight midfield, they simply can’t have two incredibly erratic drivers out there. Both Haas drivers have thrown away significant points this season with their inability to stay out of trouble. Magnussen is signed…

1) by gunning the throttle mid corner (see below)

1) not ‘assuming’. There’s telemetry out there that pretty much confirms it.

It also stupidly fails to acknowledge that the teams with the best cars for some reason have a tendency to sign the best drivers.

Max had a front wing change and a five second penalty at his second stop. Maybe take that into account as a at least a partial reason why he was behind?

While I don’t support Red Bull I do really like their place in F1 as the ‘rogue’ team that gives no fucks. It’s sort of the perfect situation for them to sit between the clinical perfectionists at Mercedes and the loveable losers at Ferrari.

Montréal.

It’s a cooling vest.

The level at which both Perez and Leclerc seem to care about second place is downright embarrassing.

So you’re just choosing to ignore that Perez cheated in Monaco qualifying for the sole purpose of screwing Verstappen?

Apparently, having his eyes closed in Monaco was a lot trickier for Perez.

100%. People are focusing on the minor part of this story and completely disregarding the major one. Perez effectively fixed Monaco qualifying for the sole purpose of screwing his teammate (who was the only one who could beat him on that last run) in what was then a close title fight. It’s a bigger ‘dick move’ than…

Agreed. He’s a dick. He doesn’t try in any way, shape or form to hide that. He kind of embraces it. In a weird way I can respect that.

If Verstappen were to make this a him-or-me thing (which he won’t), you better believe Perez is off to an early retirement. Red Bull Racing are not this good because they’re idiots. They’re not going to let the fastest driver on the grid go because he’s a bit difficult sometimes.

Maximizing performance when it counts?

The late-nineties were a bit of a black hole for F1 talent. Losing three legends in quick succession (Mansell ‘92, Prost ‘93, Senna ‘94) along with a lack of young talent coming in really hurt the grid. This didn’t really change until Alonso, Räikkonen and Montoya came along.

Magnussen and Grosjean are both subpar drivers, by F1's lofty standards. I don’t think they made a mistake letting them go.