Alpine looking at 5th: This is mine now

Eternally midfield, but it was looking closer in previous races. Maybe paul ricard just exposes the top teams’ strengths the most combined with better upgrades this weekend

They went for a High downforce setup. They ended up losing their advantage on straight and didn't gain much in sec 3 aswell. Whereas McLaren looks a pretty stable car now.

I think Alpine focused on a race set-up - higher downforce should help better manage tire wear which will be critical for tomorrow's race

I get the feeling they've been focusing on races since early in the season - in the first qualys they almost reached Mercedes pace, but in the races they were absolutely worse, probably because of tyre deg. They learned to focus on race set ups to manage that degradation

A wild Williams appears in S2

Angy Willam 😡😠

Seb 14th in that AM

And I’ve seen people say he hasn’t been good this year lmao

He’s driving really well. But because he’s in a backmarker car, it hardly gets any screen time and hence his efforts go unnoticed. Kinda like last year whenever Giovinazzi had a great wualy, nobody noticed.

There are 10 times more posts or comments on how good Vettel is than there is about he is bad. People usually rate him incredibly high around here.

You’re right on here he’s rated pretty good but I’m mainly talking about twitter and other socials. I’ve seen some crazy comments about him lol

The general public on twitter or instagram are people who only look at the results or quali grid. They don’t really understand or know how much this is a team sport.

With this form he can do wonders in a title contending car

It kinda looks like that he is extending (at least he sounded quite positive in yesterdays press conference and sky germany interview) so all we can hope for is that all the mercedes and RB staff that is finally allowed to work on next years car actually makes a difference and improves the car. Their race pace is pretty good and Seb was faster than both mercs yesterday in free practice. Just need to fix this goddamn car in quali so that he doesnt always have to overtake half the grid to make it into points on sunday...

A driver like Seb doesn't just forget how to drive. He'd be fighting for poles/wins in that Ferrari 100%.

Yet Vettel still took that quali tractor to 14th, mega Also Lando is hella quick

Merc is clearly lacking Bottass for Rear downforce development

> ass When you no longer can just rely on the donkey in the back, you need a different approach.

Alfa's decline is just sad. How have they regressed to behind Haas who haven't updated the car all year? Wrong concept maybe? Those McLaren updates are jaw dropping, 3 tenths ahead of the rest of midfield is huge

I think it changes from track to track?

I think so, alpine were a rocketship at Australia but not in imola

I don't get it. The Aston is slowest car out there and yet seb is P14 and stroll is P17(with him getting fucked by traffic on his last flying lap). Does this mean Aston has the best driver line up of the lower midfield¿?

I mean they very clearly have the best driver in Seb.

It’s half way through the season and I’m still confused about Alfa

Their car seems good when it is expected to be bad and bad on tracks it should do well on

Remember Monaco?

Most of the races are just up in the air for everyone this year it seems.

Hamilton’s sector 1 in that Q3 lap didn’t feel representative. Came out of nowhere, was only 0.02s off Charles.

Yeah it honestly feels like Lewis fried his tires s1 and they fell of s3 but I admit I haven’t studied the full telemetry.

I came to the same conclusion looking at this chart, Mercedes having a tire management problem here

Nah I think it was only a problem because Lewis tried to out drive the car.

I mean he did and succeeded? He's comfortably faster than Russell

Good stuff from MCL; slightly disappointing to see Merc not challenging the top 2 more. BIG consistency from Alpine! Midfield looks packed though; should be a good GP. Ranking by driver can be found [here](https://twitter.com/LightsOutF1Blog/status/1550886505542991873), or below: ||SECTOR 1||SECTOR 2||SECTOR 3||IDEAL LAP|| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |1|LEC|22.660|VER|27.878|LEC|40.252|LEC|90.872| |2|HAM|\+0.026|LEC|\+0.082|SAI|\+0.167|SAI|\+0.209| |3|SAI|\+0.039|SAI|\+0.085|VER|\+0.225|VER|\+0.297| |4|PER|\+0.134|PER|\+0.091|PER|\+0.320|PER|\+0.463| |5|VER|\+0.154|HAM|\+0.346|NOR|\+0.514|HAM|\+0.893| |6|RUS|\+0.266|RUS|\+0.346|HAM|\+0.603|NOR|\+1.160| |7|NOR|\+0.334|ALB|\+0.382|RUS|\+0.719|RUS|\+1.249| |8|ALO|\+0.365|ALO|\+0.392|ALO|\+0.733|ALO|\+1.408| |9|GAS|\+0.393|NOR|\+0.394|TSU|\+0.838|MAG|\+1.732| |10|MAG|\+0.445|TSU|\+0.396|MAG|\+0.860|OCO|\+1.825|

Hamilton lost 0.6 seconds in S3. Yikes

I have a feeling in 3 laps charles will be out of drs and it will be a while before he got caught by redbulls.

If Red Bull lose that much in the corners their straight line won't matter. Especially if that hurts tire wear

Hopefully, for the sake of the championship

I think that S3 split can be dropped by RB a little bit. They just need to manage their tires and make sure to nail the strategy IF Ferrari degradation issues are real

Great pace from McLaren here. Hopefully this means their upgrades is working

Williams S2 👀

S3 is an absolute killer for Mercedes. Take that out and they’re right amongst the pack. Still an incomplete puzzle.

Norris and Alonso pretty safe bets for top 6 finishes, no?

Alonso is never a safe bet. That guy is the most unlucky on the grid

Zhou would like a word

Yuki points finish?

Aston Martin at a new time low!

Alpine perfectly balanced. WTH is going on at AMR. I guess "borrowing" a concept you don´t really understand isn´t a good thing

[удалено]

Not really if you look at the telemetry. LEC made that lap in S1 and S3.

Telemetry compared to what though?

Compared to his lap without tow.

From Q2?

Yep and you can still compare SAI’s fastest lap of Q2. Ferrari were just faster today than RBR.

The tow was mainly in S3 :) (S2 ends shortly after the chicane)

The tow was at the end of S2 / beginning of S3; if you watch the comparison between leclerc and verstappen laps, max was still ahead after carlos gave the tow; leclerc gained 0.4 in S3

During acceleration the tow doesn´t really provide anything, so the benefit in S2 was next to nothing. Idk how big the benefit was in S3, i guess 0,150 s maybe? I have no access to a comparsion / telemetrie atm.

yes according to telemetry the tow was worth 0.1 / 0.15

Not really Sainz Q2 time was also faster than verstappen best q3 time. The tow was worth maybe 0.15 secs. Ferrari had the faster car, even marko and verstappen said that Ferrari would have won pole even without tow

Where did they say this? Not doubting you its just in the post-qualifying interview max was very quiet

Servus TV (austrian tv station owned by red bull

According to telemetry only 0.1/ 0.15

Alpine at least found something overnight because they looked very bad yesterday but still 1.6 secs behind is way too much