F1: 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix

Man, Vettel is having a rough weekend. I don't get it with him. He wins four championships, and comes close a few times with Ferrari, but now he can't even hold off Stroll (who admittedly might be better than we thought). At this point I wonder if Aston are better off putting Hulkenberg in the car. It would be sad, but Vettel isn't getting it done. It's still early, but combined with last year's form it's not a pretty picture.

Right now Sainz is fourth, and remember what a good run he had here last year leading the opening laps. Of course the conditions were slippery, so he's got to be hoping for rain. It's just practice, and he's only about a tenth ahead of LeClerc. but it's still a good sign he's fitting in with the team well and has good speed.

I'm going to be delighted when Carlos wins his first race, and Lando too. Just Imagine what a Carlos/Lando podium would look like.

Checo had a good weekend going and then muffed FP2, but let's hope he can put it on the front row again and this time get a result. Then again, Max is running an improved floor, so some of the gap between them might be coming from that. There's no word yet on if Red Bull has another floor available.

It also looks like Merc is now fully in the fight instead of on their back foot. Hamilton won against a better combination in Bahrain, but let's not put too much importance on Imola where Hamilton got shoved off and damaged the car on the first lap. I'm guessing if he had a healthy car it wouldn't have been so easy for Max.

Sunday is going to be a different story, unless, that is, max shoves him off again. Then whatever feud Lewis had with Nico is going to look tame. Remember, Lewis had to play nice with his teammate, and still got the better of him in every one of their shoving matches shoving matches. Hamilton doesn't play that game unless he's forced to, and then he's as good as anybody. If max wants to play rough, no one at Mercedes is going to tell him to back down. It's not how you want to race, but if the other guy wants to play like that it cuts both ways.

This is a great track and the TV hides how much elevation change there is, and that goes for other tracks too. A lot of these corners have a blind entry, and come are even decreasing radius and blind. It's an extremely tricky track and I am glad F1 is there. Now I hope they keep coming back after the pandemic is history.
 
Another race weekend, another tight one, looks like.

Man I'm loving this year. Vettel is getting absolutely destroyed by Stroll. What the...
 
Danny Ric is out in 16th, slow start for him in the McLaren.

His race pace seemed good, so hopefully he can recover.
 
Red Bull doesn't look that speedy this weekend. Mercedes has got the pace on the mediums and then some.

Bottas on Pole, Lewis second and then Max.
 
Vettel has always been one of my favorites and I'm reminded of the old saying " the guy didn't suddenly forget how to drive a race car" but in his case it seems that way anymore. Feel bad for him and wonder what the issue is.
 
Pretty good showing relative to their teammates from Sainz, Norris, Vettel, and Ocon today.

Sounds like a number of the drivers don’t like it but between the track surface and wind conditions the cars look pretty gnarly out there. A whole lot of getting out of shape.
 
F1 races on so many perfectly groomed billiard table smooth circuits that when they get to a real track that isn't perfect they freak out and bitch all weekend. This place has got some teeth and the slick asphalt is separating the men from the boys. Too bad we don't have more really challenging places like this, and I hope we get to keep this one.
 
The teammate battle has provided a few surprises.

Sainz 5th, Leclerc 8th. Only a small surprise since Carlos ran well here and seems to excel in slick conditions

Ocon 6th putting a beatdown on Alonso in 13th. Solid run for Ocon and maybe he finally has the right environment to emerge as a front runner, and the car isn't bad either.

Russel 11th in a Williams, making it harder every weekend for Mercedes to not give him a drive next year.

Vettel 10th, which is a great result compared to his first two races. Stroll 17th, so something didn't do to plan.

Lando 7th and Riccardo 16th, and my guess is Dani must have had a problem to be that far back. I was hoping McLaren would get further p the grid this year, but they are still not bad.

In the race for the last row, Mick about 1/2 second ahead of the much loved Mazepin.

First 13 cars covered by a second, and let's hope that carries over into tomorrow.

I like it when we get to a track that baffles everyone. The order kind of got shook up a bit and maybe (especially if it rains) we could have a bizarre race, and those are always fun.
 
I get the love of racing but Kimi has stuck around a bit too long, imo.

Safety car out already.
 
Both Max previously and Lewis now are losing ground to Valtteri in the high-speed sweeper leading onto the straight. At that point DRS doesn't help much, especially after they shortened it from last year.
 
AWS said 7% chance of overtake lol

Granted, 3.3 stop didn't really help but still shows how goofy that stuff is when Max had been within a second of Valtteri almost the whole race up until then.
 
Bottas has fallen off nearly 4 seconds off Max on slightly fresher tires. Dios mio!
 
Kind of sad when you need the whole team to cheer lead for you for pace. Lol
 
Odds that Max and Lewis will finish 1st and 2nd in all 23 races?
Bottas is usually good for a win or two a year and I'm sure there will be craziness along the way with failures/crashes

Kind of sad when you need the whole team to cheer lead for you for pace. Lol
Toto sounded more frustrated than motivational tbh
 
For a minute I thought there was a slight chance Perez could back Hamilton up into Verstappen, but the DRS zones make passing relatively easy here (which is good).
 
Probably a smart decision by RedBull to pit Max again. That fastest lap point could be decisive at the end of the year.

Deleted. Reverts back to Bottas.

2 big mistakes by Max this weekend. I think he's close to challenging but the pressure he must feel under Hamilton must be crazy.
 
Well, there's Hamilton.... and then everyone else. The unnoticed thing is with the Mercedes supposedly handicapped with the new rules, now Hamilton has to fight like hell and he still decimates everyone.

Mazepin is making no friends, but I don't care. When you can block your teammate on the straight (Giovinazzi), put him out of the race on the second lap, and only get five seconds, pretty much everything has to be fair game. You can block the leader, or you can take someone out in a straight line with a bunch of stupid swerving, and the penalties are the same, so what's the point of even having those rules to begin with? This is all going to change once someone launches a car into the stands.
 
Well, there's Hamilton.... and then everyone else. The unnoticed thing is with the Mercedes supposedly handicapped with the new rules, now Hamilton has to fight like hell and he still decimates everyone.

Mazepin is making no friends, but I don't care. When you can block your teammate on the straight (Giovinazzi), put him out of the race on the second lap, and only get five seconds, pretty much everything has to be fair game. You can block the leader, or you can take someone out in a straight line with a bunch of stupid swerving, and the penalties are the same, so what's the point of even having those rules to begin with? This is all going to change once someone launches a car into the stands.
 
I was really hoping for a better race than this. Really like this track but another disappointing F1 "race".

Hopefully they can do something about the surface and lack of grip before F1 (if ever) goes there again.

However, the lack of grip on a wet track usually makes for a good race, so what happened here?
 

I think that's irrelevant. Kimmi wouldn't have hit him if Giovinazzi didn't move over in front of him. Kimi had a clear path in front of him, right up until Giovinazzi moved over on him. Kimi's mistake was thinking he could trust his own teammate long enough to check his dash, and now probably just taking one for the team.

After another look at the video, it appears Giovanazzi moved to the right, and then moved to the left. How is that the one allowed "defensive move?" It's not. It's two moves, which is blocking. When this kind of thing causes an accident that's worse than people will accept, you are going to hear a lot of I-told-you-so. If they want to kill each other just let them keep it up.

Crashing on the straight...........absolute utter stupidity of the first magnitude, that is, from the best drivers in the world.
 
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Now, moving on to excusing dirty driving, because "all the time you have to leave a space," right? When Verstappen ran Hamilton over the sausage curbs at Imola, without penalty, that just opened the door for that sort of thing to be ok. I have to give Max props for not complaining when Hamilton returned the favor in this race. I kind of prefer clean racing, and it's funny how F1 cars have evolved to be what they are and the driving has devolved into motorized chicken.
 
Hopefully they can do something about the surface and lack of grip before F1 (if ever) goes there again.

However, the lack of grip on a wet track usually makes for a good race, so what happened here?
They brought the hardest tires and it was a pretty cool weekend so there wasn’t much grip or degradation to be had, that’s why pretty much everyone one-stopped unless they went for the fastest lap point.
 
They brought the hardest tires and it was a pretty cool weekend so there wasn’t much grip or degradation to be had, that’s why pretty much everyone one-stopped unless they went for the fastest lap point.
The surface is still fairly new, its going to take time, but I really like Portimao. I hope it stays on the schedule in the future.

A fairly meh race, but watching the cars go around Portimao is seriously exciting.
 
They brought the hardest tires and it was a pretty cool weekend so there wasn’t much grip or degradation to be had, that’s why pretty much everyone one-stopped unless they went for the fastest lap point.
These are the "best drivers in the world," so they just have to deal with it. I can only recall a couple of spins all weekend, so it couldn't have been that bad......nothing line the black ice at Texas for sure.
 
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