2019 Azerbaijan Grand Prix Race Thread

[Exediron]

He also yielded for T3 when he could have again gone side by side if he wanted. It was nice fair driving but maybe a little too fair.

Or maybe it wasn't too fair, since he was racing his teammate on lap one? If he'd been a bit less 'fair' and they'd hit, we'd be looking at a Ferrari victory and Mercedes would have thrown away a stolen 1-2. There's a good reason to be more fair with your teammate, particularly early in the season.

[Mort Canard]

Whose view seems strange to you? Hamilton's or Lt. Drebin's?

Hamilton left the absolute minimum room allowed within the rules. If memory serves he also oversteered i to turn 1 slightly, had he pushed any harder and not been 'as nice' it could've been game over for both him and Bottas.

My impression is that Lewis eventually backed out of it and let Valtteri go. I think he could have stayed side by side with Bottas for a ways longer and maybe forced Valtteri to concede. Would have been risky and could have meant the two team mates engaged in a shunt.

To be fair I think Bottas was equally "nice." On one of the corners he left Lewis much more room than he needed to. I think they were both playing it fair

Yes very clean racing, but in a sense I think they were both ultimately a bit egoistic as well as they wouldn't want a Ferrari splitting them. Race too hard and your teammate gets passed by Vettel, who at the time was thought to be the faster package around Baku.

I would have to agree. Both were keeping it clean partly to make sure Sebastian didn't find an opening and partly to keep Toto happy.

I was hoping that Lewis would be able to mount more of a charge later on in the race. Still as people have pointed out, Lewis warms up slowly each year. By the time he is full on Valterri will need much more than a 1 point margin in hand.

[VDV23]

Did anyone run the hard white-walled tyres throughout the whole weekend - I know nobody ran them in Q or R but how about FP2/3?

The Leclerc strategy was always going to fail without SC, the softs were such a poor race tyre. I wonder if 20-something laps on the meds and the rest on the hards would haven't been better. Or were they so much slower compared to the meds?

I've asked that a couple of times myself.

I actually think he would have been better making 2 pit stops and doing 2 x 21 laps on mediums and 1 x 9 laps on softs. His lead over Bottas at lap 21 was somewhere around 5 or 6 seconds so I reckon he would have come out only ~10 seconds behind Vettel but on much fresher rubber (albeit with the challenge of having to make up the time for a pitstop). I can only think that Ferrari were hoping Leclerc would hold up the Mercs and back them into Vettel.

But Ferrari DOES NOT HIRE BUTLERS! Except Rubens, Massa and Kimi.

[UnlikeUday]

He also yielded for T3 when he could have again gone side by side if he wanted. It was nice fair driving but maybe a little too fair.

Or maybe it wasn't too fair, since he was racing his teammate on lap one? If he'd been a bit less 'fair' and they'd hit, we'd be looking at a Ferrari victory and Mercedes would have thrown away a stolen 1-2. There's a good reason to be more fair with your teammate, particularly early in the season.

Probably Hamilton thought if the safety car would come out later in the race, he could do an undercut or get close enough for a god slipstream. Hamilton's mature enough to not take any risks on the 1st lap.

[pokerman]

He also yielded for T3 when he could have again gone side by side if he wanted. It was nice fair driving but maybe a little too fair.

Or maybe it wasn't too fair, since he was racing his teammate on lap one? If he'd been a bit less 'fair' and they'd hit, we'd be looking at a Ferrari victory and Mercedes would have thrown away a stolen 1-2. There's a good reason to be more fair with your teammate, particularly early in the season.

Probably Hamilton thought if the safety car would come out later in the race, he could do an undercut or get close enough for a god slipstream. Hamilton's mature enough to not take any risks on the 1st lap.

I'm tipping you meant to type good?

[Mod Titanium]

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