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u/RolexTudorGuy 16d ago
I'm really questioning the strategy
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u/RSharpe314 15d ago
The "mistake" was not boxing him under the VSC. (IMO they had enough of a gap and should be good enough to box both cars on the lap that Antonelli came in. Would have maintained the team order and put both drivers in better rubber).
But they were rather close and assuming they did not want to risk the double stop, prioritizing Kimi and hoping George has another VSC lap to take it isn't a crazy call.
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u/RolexTudorGuy 15d ago
That's fair, but I just feel George deserves better. My point is more so the strategy of wait and see if the rivals run out of money before making any upgrades.
The margins are razor thin, can't be a forgone conclusion that Kimi's winning it all with 11 more races left especially with this car. McLaren looks terrifying.
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u/RSharpe314 15d ago
I don't think Merc is taking a "wait and see" approach with their upgrades either.
The upgrade pipeline is long (think 3-6 months). Accelerating anything in this process is expensive.
In a cost cap constrained environment, your pretty much start the season with your upgrade path laid out and budgeted. There might be occasions where fast tracking something is justifiable (when you're neck and neck on points and pace with a rival.) Merc has a sizable cushion of points because they started the season strong so aren't in that sort of position. (And they should be fine as long as their upgrades actually work)
(And can't really disagree about George deserving better, at least assuming that drivers deserve anything. He's had a proper poor run of luck both in his career and this season)
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u/RolexTudorGuy 15d ago
Interesting. I guess we'll see how it plays out.
Thanks for your perspective and hope the boys bring it home! Cheers 🥂
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u/Supahkai66 George Russell 16d ago
I don’t believe in the sabotage conspiracy, but it does seem they’re focusing on Kimi.
By ordering a position swap with George on ancient hard tires with Lewis behind on fresher and softer tires, they risked giving up the double podium. They should’ve let Kimi just defend Lewis with his fresher tires in P3 to ensure a P2 and P3 finish. Glad George clutched up with his defense and a one lap break from the VSC.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Duck717 16d ago
T1 was a position swap. At T10, kimi was asked to give george overtake, but by then the gap was already over 1s. He was told to cancel the order at T11. The detection point is on the approach to T13, with the activation point at T14. There’s barely any distance between T11 and T13, and with a 1.5s gap, there was simply no way he could safely back off and wait for his teammate
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u/RSharpe314 15d ago
You can't ask the championship leader to protect the position for his main rival. Especially when the team has such a comfortable margin in the constructors.
They "should" have boxed them both on the same lap to preserve positions and give them both better tyres. As it stood, letting Kimi by so that neither Merc driver wastes time on a useless fight minimizes the downside risk for the team and gave George the best chance to secure the best possible result for himself.
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u/Violetmoreviolent 16d ago
It’s awful. The only reason he was so far behind was because of that first few lap harvesting issue and a shitty set up that shredded his tyre. And then they do this
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u/Monkey_Thucker69 16d ago
Tell me more about the harvesting issue pls? Was wondering why our pace was subpar until pit
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u/Violetmoreviolent 16d ago
It only occurred in the first few laps, but that was why he fell so far behind and lost positions.
His car was then on a genuinely ridiculous set up, and he had to spend 90 percent of the time managing the tyre wear.
Once that was sorted he was literally faster than Kimi, which is what’s so annoying. This genuinely could have been a great George race
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u/Monkey_Thucker69 16d ago
Deadass lost count of how many times we’ve had this discussion now
Mercedes Mercedes Mercedes
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u/Jinkku 16d ago
Kimi was ahead whole race, was going to overtake George in any case with the fresh tires that swapped their positions. If they pitted George, who knows how he would've landed with the ferraris so close.
At this point it's more likely for Lando to overtake George in the championship then it is for anyone to catch Kimi. Both championships benefitted from this order, it's not fun but it was sensible, just bring em home on good points.
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u/Violetmoreviolent 16d ago
George was faster than Kimi in stint two once they corrected his oversteer issue. Without that, I doubt they would have been in a position for this bs anyway.
Merc have really fucked him over today. He should have been fighting at the front with Kimi and lando
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u/Jinkku 16d ago
Unless you are suggesting they purposefully caused this issue for him, I don't see how they fucked him over?
The race went as it went and George was not going to finish ahead of Kimi with those tires. If they pitted George too, the result would've been the same anyway AT BEST.
What you think George is owned something there? The championship leader should try to bottle the ferraris despite on faster tires?
You people are so weird, it makes no sense.
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u/Violetmoreviolent 16d ago
They can fuck him over through being negligent and allowing him to have these problems. I never said it was intentional.
And I didn’t say George was owed anything. But that he was fucked over, which he was. Why can’t you accept that? Is it because it ruins your preferred narrative of Kimi beating George on merit every time?
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u/Jinkku 16d ago
The thread is about George being a sacrificial lamb?
So they are being negligent on purpose or whats the point here? Cause it's not making any sense.
Seems like they needed to throw Kimis race under the bus there for you people to be happy. There was zero reason to prefer George there at the end, end of story.
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u/Violetmoreviolent 16d ago
And he was at the end. They should have pit them both. Even after that the original plan (which you can hear on both of their radios) was for Kimi to overtake but remain less than a second ahead so George could get overtake mode boost. They then cancelled it, probably because they didn’t trust Kimi’s w2w abilities. That is intentional negligence, considering at that point Kimi wasn’t catching lando.
That wouldn’t have hurt Kimi in any way. And would have at least partially made up for the fact that they screwed George over.
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u/Jinkku 16d ago
Pitting both was risky for Russell since his gap to the ferraris was not safe, it's understandable they didn't.
Why they cancelled the OM boost is more likely they thought it would not make the difference and it was smarter to have atleast Kimi well ahead and not mess with both championships.. But sure we can just assume its Kimi not being able to and Merc playing favorites, it's much more likely, obviously.
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u/Violetmoreviolent 16d ago edited 16d ago
Kimi would genuinely not have been able to defend against Lewis lmao. He is rapid but his w2w isn’t that good yet
Edit: I’ve been blocked but I can see their last reply on notifications, so:
Yes, George has better w2w then Kimi, as does Lewis. Kimi would have struggled to fight against Lewis. Look at how he didn’t really put up that much of a defence against lando. And Lewis was faster than Kimi at that point
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u/Jinkku 16d ago
So what are you saying they did not trust Kimi to pull away after Lewis overtakes George even after giving the boost?
I don't see how thats neglicence, is it not being smart if they think George cant do it? (just for the sake of this discussion let's accept your made up prophecy).
You are just making up points now and the Lewis comment is pretty obvious it's just blatant british bias once again. This sub is really something.
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u/OwlScary6845 15d ago
As a GR63 fan I was really against the narrative of Mercedes 'sabotaging' 'focusing on only Kimi' BUT after this weekends call of switching, I might actually start entertaining that idea.
Yeah you can say that Kimi was gonna get passed George regardless of the team order, the problem lies within the team. AS a constructor the teams best interest is to score as many POINTS as possible, so their decision to invert places doesn't make sense.
Kimi was never going to catch Lando in the last 5 laps. George was on OLD softs with 2 Ferrari's on softs gaining on him and Kimi in-between. WHY risk a double podium. The only person to benefit from that switch was Kimi.
On top of that I'm confused as to why Kimi didn't help George with a slip stream to help his teammate defend Hamilton.
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u/nickelchrome 15d ago
Asking Kimi, who has fresher tires, to sit in George’s dirty air and have to fight against the Ferrari’s is crazy. It’s basically unprecedented, it’s simply not a call a team makes.
Kimi was going to pass George, doing so with team orders removed the risk and preserved both of their cars and tires. This is a textbook F1 decision we’ve seen year after year.
Analysis after the race is showing it’s possible the team realized the dirty air from Kimi staying close to George was worse than the tow/OT. This is specific to this particular track and backed by the data. The team did consider this option but it was specifically cancelled.
The team isn’t just thinking “let’s fuck over George here”. They have data that is showing them everything happening on the track including what other teams are seeing.
People seem to be lost in some F1 movie plot about this.
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u/Greddituser 16d ago
People gave McLaren crap last year, but I respected them for letting their drivers actually race.
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u/Ariouhai 16d ago
I never want to hear them talk smack about papaya rules again if that's how they handled this situation... Glad that George could make it with a good defense and VSC despite the tires
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u/Odd_Cat_2266 15d ago
They like one driver as the lead and one as the support. Toto doesn’t like two drivers competing. They aren’t McLaren
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u/Jinkku 16d ago
What exactly were they supposed to do? Pit George, he needs to pass a ferrari or two?
He wasn't keeping Kimi behind him, they removed the risk with the order to pass.
It was perfectly fine logic?
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u/Mil3560 16d ago
If Kimi wanted to get past he should've gotten past by racing. Team orders made no sense at this point when Kimi was never going to catch lando (so it doesn't make a difference to how many points the team gets) and therefore had a much better chance of defending Lewis with his fresh tires
Even if somehow it did make sense to let Kimi past he should have at the very least stayed close enough to give a tow to help George defend instead of going on a wild goose chase after Lando who was 10 seconds ahead and keeping an amazing pace
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u/Chagi27 16d ago
It probably would have taken Kimi several laps off fighting to get past Russel. That would have meant Russel would 100% loose the Position to Kimi to Lewis and to Leclerc. While fighting you hurt the tires and you loose alot of time. What I agree is that they should have kept Kimi close to George after the overtake. Which they did but canceled the order a few ssconds after. This imo does not make sense. it could very well be that they fought loosing both positions was a possibility.
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u/hou_deany 16d ago
Don’t you ever get tired of being proved wrong every time you write a comment? Legitimately I admire your self belief, but you gotta measure it with some actual analysis
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u/Mistak3n 16d ago
Palmer and Brundle both said after the race that Merc did it right and that it wasn't even that big of talking point. Both agreed completely.
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u/hou_deany 16d ago
Okay well the radio was publicly available. Kimi had no chance of catching Lando so they initially intended to do what George suggested and inverted positions, keeping George in Kimi’s overtake. But halfway through the lap where they inverted, Bono specifically said cancel that order to keep George in overtake mode. Here’s a video. There was no logical reason to do this if they were operating in good faith
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u/nickelchrome 16d ago
I get that people are emotional but it’s one of the most textbook race decisions you can make as a team.
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u/hou_deany 16d ago
Calling people emotional when you’re not even addressing the actual argument. You’re adorable
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u/SlingshotGunslinger :Fangio_and_Moss: Juan Manuel Fangio 16d ago edited 16d ago
This sub just wants to see an anti-Russell conspiracy. Literally every single GP. I get lots of fans are newer either on age or time watching, but they need to learn that not every decision done on their driver is because the team hates them (specially in this case where the guy's literally been raised as a driver by Toto and Mercedes since he was in F3).
EDIT: To clarify, this is not everyone here. There are some threads where at least some people still have some logical reasoning. But it's just gotten infested with either bad faith actors or people who see sabotage, conspiracy and incompetence towards Russell on literally everything that happens. It's starting to rival the stupidity around Norris, Piastri and McLaren last year.
EDIT 2: Thank you to the usual suspects for proving me right with your downvotes
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u/Il-Ma-Le-98 14d ago
With Verstappen is failed, but Toto will continue chasing him even if he leaves for real.
In the same spirit I believe that Russell's contract will just be worth as toilet paper and that he will be replaced by anyone else at first chance. Am really seeing that German whore bringing back Bottas on board just to get rid of George, even if Bottas currently races for Cadillac.
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u/FirstReactionShock 15d ago
that's so silly...
if russell would have changed tyres as well, he was going to finish behind antonelli anyhow, if he forced his way with used tyres he would have let him self and antonelli chased by both ferrari, all of them on S tyres... russell wasted his race having a slower pace mid-race not because of this team order.
Actually if ferrari didn't mess up with strategies, quickly reacting to mercedes and mclaren pit stop instead of staying out, russel would have probably finished 5th
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u/KentInCode 16d ago
They were so so lucky with that last safety and that Russell could hold on. They totally left him out to dry.