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Nearly 8 tenths between Russell and Kubica... I don't know if Russell is just incredible or Kubica is just terrible. I think it is much more likely that Kubica just is very slow.

Top three within 3 hundredths!

TheGiantHogweed wrote:Nearly 8 tenths between Russell and Kubica... I don't know if Russell is just incredible or Kubica is just terrible. I think it is much more likely that Kubica just is very slow.

Kubica was beating Russell in Monaco until he got punted off TBF.

mikeyg123 wrote:

TheGiantHogweed wrote:Nearly 8 tenths between Russell and Kubica... I don't know if Russell is just incredible or Kubica is just terrible. I think it is much more likely that Kubica just is very slow.

Kubica was beating Russell in Monaco until he got punted off TBF.

That was mostly traffic-related. Kubica is a good half a second off the pace that an F1 driver should be expected to have.

Big crash for Magnussen. Tough luck for Verstappen

JN23 wrote:Big crash for Magnussen. Tough luck for Verstappen

Verstappen to me just didn't do enough early on. It wasn't just bad luck.


On another note, Grosjean's luck is about the worst of any driver this season. I know he also didn't do enough early on, but the amount of times he's had things go wrong for him is ridiculous now.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

JN23 wrote:Big crash for Magnussen. Tough luck for Verstappen

Verstappen to me just didn't do enough early on. It wasn't just bad luck.


On another note, Grosjean's luck is about the worst of any driver this season.

I dunno, I think the Red Bull just isn't quick enough to get through to Q3 on the mediums

Yeah Grosjean was unlucky, not sure whether he was on course to get into the top 10

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

JN23 wrote:Big crash for Magnussen. Tough luck for Verstappen

Verstappen to me just didn't do enough early on. It wasn't just bad luck.


On another note, Grosjean's luck is about the worst of any driver this season. I know he also didn't do enough early on, but the amount of times he's had things go wrong for him is ridiculous now.

Same situation as Leclerc in Monaco really. Mixture of under performance and poor luck.

Verstappen starts 11th and has choice of tyre, not the worst scenario to be in. Would have started on the soft's which none of the other big teams wanted to do.

F1_Ernie wrote:Verstappen starts 11th and has choice of tyre, not the worst scenario to be in. Would have started on the soft's which none of the other big teams wanted to do.

Yeah he'll be fine if he goes long (especially if there is a VSC or something).

F1_Ernie wrote:Verstappen starts 11th and has choice of tyre, not the worst scenario to be in. Would have started on the soft's which none of the other big teams wanted to do.

He'll finish 5th either way. It won't really make much of a difference to him.

Bottas either lucky or incredibly skillful to keep that out the wall

This is what I don't understand. Why are Mercedes not sending Bottas right out again. If someone crashes and Bottas is behind, he's had it.

JN23 wrote:Bottas either lucky or incredibly skillful to keep that out the wall

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky then good

That must have been some lap from Ricciardo!

Awesome lap Vettel.

Well, my predictions on Bottas certainly were wrong. I mentioned this earlier. I do not know why Mercedes didn't send Bottas out instantly. He won't have beaten Hamilton, but i think he will have been a fair bit closer than this. His fault for messing up the first run, but why didn't they give him an opportunity in free air since he hadn't done any good lap?

TheGiantHogweed wrote:Well, my predictions on Bottas certainly were wrong. I mentioned this earlier. I do not know why Mercedes didn't send Bottas out instantly. He won't have beaten Hamilton, but i think he will have been a fair bit closer than this. His fault for messing up the first run, but why didn't they give him an opportunity in free air since he hadn't done any good lap?

was wondering the same thing

Excellent lap from Vettel! Best qualifying performance of the year from him. Miles better than Leclerc. The Ferrari seems extremely temperamental, doesn't it? Even in Q3 alone; Vettel made such a massive jump in his time from his first set of tires to his second. I feel like it's a very difficult car to get into the window but what a lap that was.

For Mercedes it was kind of a mixed bag. Hamilton seemed to get quite comfortable by the time he was in Q3 and had two good laps, Valteri struggled a bit in Q3 and seemed to lose his rhythm after the red flag incident. He wasn't competitive in Q3 and it will be a challenging day for him tomorrow; starting from P6.

Hard to predict the race tomorrow. I think Ferrari are clearly very quick here but so are Mercedes. It's back to 2018 status (at least at this track). Looking forward to it!

Superb and consistently blazing quick qualifying from Hamilton. Brilliant ripper under pressure from Vettel. Both get near max marks from me. And then there's Ricciardo - what an effort!!

lucifers wrote:

TheGiantHogweed wrote:Well, my predictions on Bottas certainly were wrong. I mentioned this earlier. I do not know why Mercedes didn't send Bottas out instantly. He won't have beaten Hamilton, but i think he will have been a fair bit closer than this. His fault for messing up the first run, but why didn't they give him an opportunity in free air since he hadn't done any good lap?

was wondering the same thing

Not sure, but did he have time to go out, 1 flying lap, 1 re-charge lap, 1 flying lap...

Congrats to Seb, he needed this. His stock had been plummeting forever now. Lewis did all he could imho. Leclerd didn't look so good and Bottas 2.0 maybe was downgraded? It was a very good qualifying session. I didn't know who would grab pole until the very end. Good stuff. The race should be exciting as the Mercs will be strong on race day.

Invade wrote:Superb and consistently blazing quick qualifying from Hamilton. Brilliant ripper under pressure from Vettel. Both get near max marks from me. And then there's Ricciardo - what an effort!!

Very impressed by Daniel myself. If yo pay attention; he has out-qualified Hulk in 6 straight rounds! Hulk is really a bit of a qualy specialist so that's very impressive. I think Ricciardo's stock is doing just fine at Renault and the car seems to be moving forward as well.

kleefton wrote:Congrats to Seb, he needed this. His stock had been plummeting forever now. Lewis did all he could imho. Leclerd didn't look so good and Bottas 2.0 maybe was downgraded? It was a very good qualifying session. I didn't know who would grab pole until the very end. Good stuff. The race should be exciting as the Mercs will be strong on race day.

Forgot to download the 2.1 patch before the session.

So how good is Leclerc, actually?

He was a long way behind Vettel here.

Toto says Lewis made a mistake on the hairpin presumably on the second lap. For a moment it looked like Lewis might steal this pole from Ferrari.

sandman1347 wrote:

Invade wrote:Superb and consistently blazing quick qualifying from Hamilton. Brilliant ripper under pressure from Vettel. Both get near max marks from me. And then there's Ricciardo - what an effort!!

Very impressed by Daniel myself. If yo pay attention; he has out-qualified Hulk in 6 straight rounds! Hulk is really a bit of a qualy specialist so that's very impressive. I think Ricciardo's stock is doing just fine at Renault and the car seems to be moving forward as well.

Yep, he continues to prove his calibre and he's starting to groove in over at Renault. Great to see.

Ricciardo unbelievable. What a lap.

sandman1347 wrote:Very impressed by Daniel myself. If yo pay attention; he has out-qualified Hulk in 6 straight rounds! Hulk is really a bit of a qualy specialist so that's very impressive. I think Ricciardo's stock is doing just fine at Renault and the car seems to be moving forward as well.

Now he's not Verstappen's teammate anymore and alongside a more "normal" driver like Hulkenberg (although Hulk is still very good), you can see his class.

Leclerc has not been having a happy time in qualifying for I think 4 race weekends in a row now, and he's made plenty of his own errors. Not that I wanna beat up on the guy, but Vettel is starting to stretch his legs now and is looking the better driver.

Invade wrote:Leclerc has not been having a happy time in qualifying for I think 4 race weekends in a row now, and he's made plenty of his own errors. Not that I wanna beat up on the guy, but Vettel is starting to stretch his legs now and is looking the better driver.

For me; Vettel has him covered. Sebastian has been solid this year overall actually. Other than Bahrain, he hasn't had an objectively bad performance and I think his speed has now become underrated somehow lol. He made a lot of mistakes last year but he wasn't slow. Funny how people seem to confuse those two things.

sandman1347 wrote:

kleefton wrote:Congrats to Seb, he needed this. His stock had been plummeting forever now. Lewis did all he could imho. Leclerd didn't look so good and Bottas 2.0 maybe was downgraded? It was a very good qualifying session. I didn't know who would grab pole until the very end. Good stuff. The race should be exciting as the Mercs will be strong on race day.

Forgot to download the 2.1 patch before the session.

This just shows how lucky Hamilton was in Spain that Mercedes were extremely strong. If he had a poor run like he did there with other teams significantly closer, the position difference would have been like Bottas today. The gap between the 2 in these 2 sessions was only 0.021 different. But Hamilton still got 2nd in Spain and because of how close the other teams were this time, Bottas was 6th. As silly as it sounds, Bottas didn't really do any worse than Hamilton did in Spain, he just messed up at a bad time to do so.


But I really don't understand teams decisions sometimes. Like Leclerc not getting sent back out in Monaco, since Bottas hadn't done a good run, why didn't they send him out instantly. It won't have been as good as getting a good run to start with and they getting another. But why risk 1 run in bad traffic rather than 1 with virtually nobody on track and then maybe 1 more after that. He won't have beaten Hamilton or Vettel, but 3rd would have been pretty easy IMO given Leclerc's gap to Vettel.

If Ferrari get things right this race, I think Vettel will win this. I don't see it being easy for Bottas to get past Leclerc (unless he messes up or underperforms), but I think Bottas will quite easily get past Gasly and Ricciardo. I feel 3rd is the best he can hope for now. What may make Bottas feel a bit better is that it is going to be harder for Hamilton to win. So that will mean he will still be closer to Hamilton in the championship if he finishes 4th and Hamilton 2nd compared to 1st and 2nd. Even if they finish with either of these results, Bottas will still be within a race win amount of points of Hamilton which still isn't bad. If reliability goes against Hamilton at a race Mercedes are strongest like it did in Spain 2017 for Bottas, then maybe Bottas does have a chance to remain close to Hamilton for a while longer.
But this is the first time this season it looked like he struggled a bit under pressure. Hopefully that won't continue.

A great session for Vettel, amd Hamilton will be secretly delighted that his current main championship rival Bottas is back there.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:This just shows how lucky Hamilton was in Spain that Mercedes were extremely strong. If he had a poor run like he did there with other teams significantly closer, the position difference would have been like Bottas today. The gap between the 2 in these 2 sessions was only 0.021 different. But Hamilton still got 2nd in Spain and because of how close the other teams were this time, Bottas was 6th. As silly as it sounds, Bottas didn't really do any worse than Hamilton did in Spain, he just messed up at a bad time to do so.


But I really don't understand teams decisions sometimes. Like Leclerc not getting sent back out in Monaco, since Bottas hadn't done a good run, why didn't they send him out instantly. It won't have been as good as getting a good run to start with and they getting another. But why risk 1 run in bad traffic rather than 1 with virtually nobody on track and then maybe 1 more after that. He won't have beaten Hamilton or Vettel, but 3rd would have been pretty easy IMO given Leclerc's gap to Vettel.

If Ferrari get things right this race, I think Vettel will win this. I don't see it being easy for Bottas to get past Leclerc (unless he messes up or underperforms), but I think Bottas will quite easily get past Gasly and Ricciardo. I feel 3rd is the best he can hope for now. What may make Bottas feel a bit better is that it is going to be harder for Hamilton to win. So that will mean he will still be closer to Hamilton in the championship if he finishes 4th and Hamilton 2nd compared to 1st and 2nd. Even if they finish with either of these results, Bottas will still be within a race win amount of points of Hamilton which still isn't bad. If reliability goes against Hamilton at a race Mercedes are strongest like it did in Spain 2017 for Bottas, then maybe Bottas does have a chance to remain close to Hamilton for a while longer.
But this is the first time this season it looked like he struggled a bit under pressure. Hopefully that won't continue.

I kinda see some points but it's far too simplistic. The drivers went into Spanish qualifying knowing of the advantage they hold, and into the Canadian qualifying knowing of the advantage they DON'T hold. The stakes were higher (or margin of error lower) here and Bottas dealt with it badly. Timing isn't merely a matter of luck.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:This just shows how lucky Hamilton was in Spain that Mercedes were extremely strong. If he had a poor run like he did there with other teams significantly closer, the position difference would have been like Bottas today. The gap between the 2 in these 2 sessions was only 0.021 different. But Hamilton still got 2nd in Spain and because of how close the other teams were this time, Bottas was 6th. As silly as it sounds, Bottas didn't really do any worse than Hamilton did in Spain, he just messed up at a bad time to do so.


But I really don't understand teams decisions sometimes. Like Leclerc not getting sent back out in Monaco, since Bottas hadn't done a good run, why didn't they send him out instantly. It won't have been as good as getting a good run to start with and they getting another. But why risk 1 run in bad traffic rather than 1 with virtually nobody on track and then maybe 1 more after that. He won't have beaten Hamilton or Vettel, but 3rd would have been pretty easy IMO given Leclerc's gap to Vettel.

If Ferrari get things right this race, I think Vettel will win this. I don't see it being easy for Bottas to get past Leclerc (unless he messes up or underperforms), but I think Bottas will quite easily get past Gasly and Ricciardo. I feel 3rd is the best he can hope for now. What may make Bottas feel a bit better is that it is going to be harder for Hamilton to win. So that will mean he will still be closer to Hamilton in the championship if he finishes 4th and Hamilton 2nd compared to 1st and 2nd. Even if they finish with either of these results, Bottas will still be within a race win amount of points of Hamilton which still isn't bad. If reliability goes against Hamilton at a race Mercedes are strongest like it did in Spain 2017 for Bottas, then maybe Bottas does have a chance to remain close to Hamilton for a while longer.
But this is the first time this season it looked like he struggled a bit under pressure. Hopefully that won't continue.

I think you might want to re-think that actually. If they sent him right back out he would have run into traffic on his hot lap and not his warm up lap. Byt he time he started his hot lap there would be cars coming out of the pits on their out laps so that wouldn't have worked. Remember Q3 is very short!

Baffling that I keep hearing an argument from people that Hulk has been matching Ricciardo. On pure pace it's been a walk over.

mikeyg123 wrote:Baffling that I keep hearing an argument from people that Hulk has been matching Ricciardo. On pure pace it's been a walk over.

Ricciardo making himself look good against Hulk.

Max sitting pretty by proxy.

sandman1347 wrote:

TheGiantHogweed wrote:This just shows how lucky Hamilton was in Spain that Mercedes were extremely strong. If he had a poor run like he did there with other teams significantly closer, the position difference would have been like Bottas today. The gap between the 2 in these 2 sessions was only 0.021 different. But Hamilton still got 2nd in Spain and because of how close the other teams were this time, Bottas was 6th. As silly as it sounds, Bottas didn't really do any worse than Hamilton did in Spain, he just messed up at a bad time to do so.


But I really don't understand teams decisions sometimes. Like Leclerc not getting sent back out in Monaco, since Bottas hadn't done a good run, why didn't they send him out instantly. It won't have been as good as getting a good run to start with and they getting another. But why risk 1 run in bad traffic rather than 1 with virtually nobody on track and then maybe 1 more after that. He won't have beaten Hamilton or Vettel, but 3rd would have been pretty easy IMO given Leclerc's gap to Vettel.

If Ferrari get things right this race, I think Vettel will win this. I don't see it being easy for Bottas to get past Leclerc (unless he messes up or underperforms), but I think Bottas will quite easily get past Gasly and Ricciardo. I feel 3rd is the best he can hope for now. What may make Bottas feel a bit better is that it is going to be harder for Hamilton to win. So that will mean he will still be closer to Hamilton in the championship if he finishes 4th and Hamilton 2nd compared to 1st and 2nd. Even if they finish with either of these results, Bottas will still be within a race win amount of points of Hamilton which still isn't bad. If reliability goes against Hamilton at a race Mercedes are strongest like it did in Spain 2017 for Bottas, then maybe Bottas does have a chance to remain close to Hamilton for a while longer.
But this is the first time this season it looked like he struggled a bit under pressure. Hopefully that won't continue.

I think you might want to re-think that actually. If they sent him right back out he would have run into traffic on his hot lap and not his warm up lap. Byt he time he started his hot lap there would be cars coming out of the pits on their out laps so that wouldn't have worked. Remember Q3 is very short!

Could they not have managed to get him out at the front of the queue though?

Grande Vettel, the champion is back. The start and the first curve will be crucial in the race.
Special congrats to Ricciardo as well as Gasly who is up there. Yes, also to Norris for beating Sainz.

TheGiantHogweed wrote:

sandman1347 wrote:

TheGiantHogweed wrote:This just shows how lucky Hamilton was in Spain that Mercedes were extremely strong. If he had a poor run like he did there with other teams significantly closer, the position difference would have been like Bottas today. The gap between the 2 in these 2 sessions was only 0.021 different. But Hamilton still got 2nd in Spain and because of how close the other teams were this time, Bottas was 6th. As silly as it sounds, Bottas didn't really do any worse than Hamilton did in Spain, he just messed up at a bad time to do so.


But I really don't understand teams decisions sometimes. Like Leclerc not getting sent back out in Monaco, since Bottas hadn't done a good run, why didn't they send him out instantly. It won't have been as good as getting a good run to start with and they getting another. But why risk 1 run in bad traffic rather than 1 with virtually nobody on track and then maybe 1 more after that. He won't have beaten Hamilton or Vettel, but 3rd would have been pretty easy IMO given Leclerc's gap to Vettel.

If Ferrari get things right this race, I think Vettel will win this. I don't see it being easy for Bottas to get past Leclerc (unless he messes up or underperforms), but I think Bottas will quite easily get past Gasly and Ricciardo. I feel 3rd is the best he can hope for now. What may make Bottas feel a bit better is that it is going to be harder for Hamilton to win. So that will mean he will still be closer to Hamilton in the championship if he finishes 4th and Hamilton 2nd compared to 1st and 2nd. Even if they finish with either of these results, Bottas will still be within a race win amount of points of Hamilton which still isn't bad. If reliability goes against Hamilton at a race Mercedes are strongest like it did in Spain 2017 for Bottas, then maybe Bottas does have a chance to remain close to Hamilton for a while longer.
But this is the first time this season it looked like he struggled a bit under pressure. Hopefully that won't continue.

I think you might want to re-think that actually. If they sent him right back out he would have run into traffic on his hot lap and not his warm up lap. Byt he time he started his hot lap there would be cars coming out of the pits on their out laps so that wouldn't have worked. Remember Q3 is very short!

Could they not have managed to get him out at the front of the queue though?

Funny thing is had that been Ferrari we wont have heard the last of the one car team nonsense and Ferrari trying to favour Vettel by ignoring Leclerc.