The reason this sprint was so good was due to the mixed conditions that allowed strategy to have an effect. The main reason sprints have been boring is because it's just a single stint where no one can take any strategic risks. There's usually a bit of action for the first couple of laps then it all just settles in. But the drying conditions here today were perfect for a short race
I have to disagree with this comment and what tommy said. The race was absolutely great even before any pitstops when everyone was on inters. And I don't think the average sprint race has been more boring than the average race since they were introduced. I actually think it's nice to have some racing where strategy doesn't matter and it's just pure pace and overtaking.
Carlos showed again, this weekend so far, that he makes better decisions than his team does. Just look at qualifying where he told them "no" when they wanted him to spend time doing the warm-up before his one and only attempt at a timed lap. He knew his skill alone would make a far bigger impact than a fully charged battery or having tires at the right temperature. He put it on P1 on that lap.
Even in a dominant championship there will be bangers. 2020 had a dominant Mercedes, easily clear and despite the smaller calendar there were a good few bangers that season.
That’s because you go into the race with the expectation of max winning so any bit of action is exciting. In the 2021 season no one gave a shit about in overtake to finish 10th in a race.
@@pawrestlingchampyou're right but not completely IMO. Yes, Max is on another level, that's for sure. But there have been multiple races where the mid field was packed with action. So yes it's a race for only 2nd and 3rd, but still can be action packed and exciting
Yet everyone is going to discredit everything he has done and say he has been luckier than Leclerc. Leclerc is always excused for his problems and mistakes and yet Sainz gets bombarded for every little thing
I got his Jersey shirt, his model car and hat I look at comments out of curiosity but it always makes me mad how Leclerc is always unlucky but Sainz is Bad somehow when he makes a mistake
@@Cxrman Where was sainz last year when the car was good 🤣? Overrated driver who only performs when there is no spotlight on him. He's only a good number 2 driver🤣.
@@darrenjohn8524 mate I literally said I’m impressed by his turnaround from last year. He had a bad year last year. You can say he’s overrated that’s your opinion, I have mine. Keep it respectful man
yep that rebdull its on a league of it own the only way other teams get close to it is when redbull tune down the engine and give them the false sense of hope 😂
@@CarimboHanky in the rain it's always more driver than car...you do remember a Haas in front of Checo for about 10 laps before it finally got dry enough for Perez to enjoy his car advantage...by then Max already had 10s...it's the car AND the driver...
If there was one more lap all teams would switch to dry compounds. That's the issue with the "one more lap" argument. It assumes other teams wouldn't change strategy with more laps to go.
... i just realised max has more points on his own that the Mercedes team has points in the constructors standing... while they stand 2 in the constructors championship that is madness..
I honestly think the TV direction was amazing too. First time I’ve ever said that about an F1 race in recent times, but it felt like they focused on all the good parts. It’s rare you ever hear Crofty take his second breath at the finish line. 😂
Having a wet then semi dry race made the race interesting. Also having NO DRS for most part of the race made battles more interesting since there was no case of the guy behind having speed advantage of DRS
I legit thought hulk had it for the first 15 minutes of the race. Idc if it would have been a sprint podium i would have been yelling for him from home
@@campbelldaniel58 Yeah, that's why Checo was 21 seconds behind Max, that's why Charles was 28 seconds behind Carlos, that's why Kevin was 23 seconds behind Nico, that's why Pierre was 21 seconds behind Esteban.
A broken clock is still right twice a day. So yes sprint races CAN be amazing. But 1 good sprint doesn't mean sprints are good. Lando is spot on with wanting HYPERsoft tires
@@thecompanioncube4211 We've had 2 stop GPs where the majority do 2 stops. It doesn't necessarily result in some drastic change that creates better racing. By also not requiring 2 stops, it allowed teams behind to gamble on 1 stop to try and gain track position and demonstrate tire management and good defending (eg Albon in the last Canadian GP).
@@thecompanioncube4211 And we just had Hungary 2023 GP, basically whole field 2 stopper, was one of the more boring races of the season so far. Its almost like the excitement is not tied to the number of pits... shocker.
R.I.P to another loss in the motorsport world. The conditions were unacceptable to race in. That was one of thee most intense races I think I’ve ever watched, just amazing and will definitely be hoping for more racing like that tomorrow and throughout.
Conditions were acceptable, racing drivers accept the risk whenever they decide to get behind the wheel. If with every accident we decide that the conditions in which they happened were at fault and are now unacceptable, we will soon have no racing left whatsoever.
I think Verstappen said it perfectly: The race-director and FIA 'forcing' a restart, for one f'n lap, in these conditions is asking for these crashes in Spa.. There are 10 guys with common sense; 6 guys who are scared and 4 idiots - who have nothing to lose - trying to play hero-ball in Eau Rouge.
Hulk is driver of the day...yesterday. Man, Ocon, Norris, Leclerc battle was epic....And that Ocon, Russell photo finish was good. I love sprint races. Drivers automatically have the sense of urgency at the get go because it's a short race. I think the sprint races are made for drivers that aren't noticed in the main races. In the sprints they're the highlights. But I don't think all tracks are made for sprint races, but the Red Bull ring definitely is.
@@pradetor4845 Any chance to undermine George, they take it. Lewis did well but the people between him and George at the start aren’t legendary drivers or anything 😂
Surprised that no one else has picked this up, but I like how throwing out the mandatory tyre rule actually made the race more interesting because you had midfield teams that didn't qualify Q2, Q3 having more tyre options than the drivers who did qualify higher up the grid. This is the main reason why the grid was more mixed than usual.
I got to see the race live today at T3 and let me just say…when Nico got into p3 the whole grandstand freaked out. I’m only able to make it for Saturday but I definitely lucked out even tho I’m missing the full race.
Pretty sure it was Lecler, Ocon, and Piastri battling together. Lando and Charles did earlier after Lando got screwed, but at the end it was Oscar, not Lando, battling with the Alpine.
You'd think after how many years Crofty could differntiate between black and yellow... or if it were the case set his bias for the british drivers aside.
The best thing was seeing all these incredible drivers absolutely going for it. They drove so well. On the edge from start to finish. Rain or not, a great track. A proper race track. I’ve said it before but finish the season in Brazil or at Spa. No, let’s finish it on shitty tracks in the dusty Middle East. (Where the money is)
Checo and Max going at it was brilliant. Such a shame both fanbases are so toxic. I am a Max fan, but I genuinly love Perez as well. Sometimes I feel ashames as Dutchie seeing our side of the fanbase behave. Same goes for Checo's fanbase. It was hard racing, enjoy it!
I really don't like the excuses and implication of Red Bull favoring Max whenever things go wrong on Checo's side of the garage, whether it's from Checo himself or the Mexican media. But hating on Checo is too much. I liked how they immediately talked it out afterwards, water under the bridge and how they took on the clickbait journalism during the presscon.
For sprints, if you declare youre going to pit you get DRS. if you dont declare it you cant, then theres tactics involved, they dont need to make a new tyre, and then the gamble can equal out as drs will give you some extra tenths and can be super important, there would have to be rules that overide this if it rains but thats a sollution
Checking out that Spa crash, the FIA should improve technology systems in all series to know the positions of other cars and have a collision detection system that will alert drivers and potentially automatically take neutralizing (throttle cut, maybe auto brakes) action to avoid a disaster of a collision. Disconcertingly similar to Hubert's incident except due to weather visibility this time.
Still seems like Max was just getting a lot more out of hit RB than Checo. It seemed like for ten laps in a row he was setting fastest laps, not sure how he did that and still made the inters work so well towards the end. 20+ seconds in the lead! Was he a full pitstop ahead?
@@asareirene Yes, I suppose you are correct. He had to wait for the Haas to overuse it's tires before he could get past. I thought the gap at the point when he went to second was not that large, but I don't remember exactly now.
Give the choice between soft and hard tires, if you choose soft tires you have to pit. If you choose hard tires you don't. Oh, and one final wrinkle is that these tires are still taken from the weekend allotment, this would encourage the top teams to save the soft tires for Sunday and the bigger point opportunity.
This was by far the best sprint race EVER! I think with this format you’ll struggle to get a better sprint than that. Most enjoyable half an hour all season and I’m a Mercedes fan! Incredible stuff!
Sainz is the most underrated driver on the grid. He beat Charles 2020, smacking him this year. And yes Charles probably has more raw pace. But Carlos is close and most importantly more consistent!
So we're going to pretend last year didn't happen? First time Sainz got competitive machinery, he got obliterated by Leclerc and made way too many stupid mistakes. He's rated properly - high midfield driver, nothing more, nothing less.
@@whyareyoureadingmynickname8158I'm not pretending last year didn't happen but last year was one of his worse seasons. Are you gonna forget all 6 seasons that came before that? I never said he's more than a high midfield driver. But he's better than Perez and the gap between him and Charles isn't as big as people pretend it is, especially on race day
The reason why the sprint day was overall good was because: a) of changeable conditions from sprint shoot out to the race, and b) of the circuit and how it’s conducive to excellent racing This is mostly a one-off
I'm not really sure if I believe Checo didn't see Max and even if he didn't see him, he should expect Max to be alongside him after he got a horrible exit off of turn 1. Not sure how he's expecting Max to not be on his ass.
@@suckieduckie But it is a sign they will battle. Max could avoid that, they are teammates. Then the other two moves are ridicculous. FIA should have given 10 secs to each and make they look dumb. Max would have won either way, but it would make them look dumb. Another thing is Norris being Max friend. He avoided the overtake and screwed his race and almost caused a colision.
Good call Tommy. Unless you _saw/heard_ Lando's interview right after the race and are pretending you didn't. That's when he said the car went into anti-stall and would only go _vroom vroom_ when he pressed the accelerator because anti-stall puts the car into neutral when it's been activated. And yes, he really did make the vroom vroom sound 😂 7:50 That's a nice bit of advertising for *_sparco's_* fire proof race suits.
Big suggestion, what if its different tyres from the normal race but the tires are not marked, so the softness of the tyre is unknown before the outlap or the sprint and the teams get 3 sets of different hardness so they can get a hard or a softer compound and if they pit they have no idea to what
Like wrestlers, it’s all an act but when someone put too much weight in an elbow the other guy will do the same as a warning. This is good entertainment from Max and Checo!
As a Sprint Race is c100km in length, maybe create a 'Sprint Tyre' that lasts 100km if you drive carefully but falls off after c60-70km if you push it, meaning you have to pit for 'Race Tyres'.
Hulkenberg could have finished P4. I watched the entire race from his onboard, he was trying to get them to switch to slicks a lap earlier, but they were too worried about him losing the position he currently had (despite the fact that he was clearly falling back already). By the last couple laps, he was gaining 3 seconds per lap on Ocon and 5 seconds per lap on Norris. The engineer even said after the checked flag, "if this race were one lap longer, you would have caught them." No, if you had listened to your driver and switched to slicks as soon as he was ready for them, he would have caught them. These kinds of weather conditions are amazing for midfield teams. If I'm the team principle of a team like Haas, going into a race in these conditions, I'm watching the track surface closely and trying to gauge how fast the track is drying out. Then I'm just waiting for my driver to let me know when he thinks slicks are appropriate, and I'm putting them on the car the second he gives the okay. The vast majority of the time, the driver is going to know better than the engineer. It was a no-brainer for Nico to switch to slicks because his inters were wearing significantly and he was dropping back quite abruptly. Thus, you want to get onto the slicks as early as possible, so that you can get the tires working as soon as possible and have more laps left to try to make up time. I was initially afraid that George was pitting too early because the track still looked pretty wet, but it was clear from Nico's onboard that conditions were actually better than they seemed from the broadcast angle, so that hesitation just wasted them valuable time. He had nearly caught up to Alonso and Stroll at the end of the race, too. So he definitely could have finished P4 with 1 more lap on the slicks.
@@MasterSandman MAYBE... but -Alonso was over 2 seconds ahead of Stroll so Hulkenberg would have had to have made up more than 4 full seconds on Alonso on the last lap in order to catch him.- Whoops, see edit #2 below. Stroll finished ahead of Alonso in the Sprint. But you know what? At least he might have had a chance! And who knows, had he pitted a lap earlier, his tires would have been up to temperature a lap earlier, so he may have been able to chip away a bit more than he already was. Edit: Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think you might be right! He was losing a lot of pace at the time he pitted, so assuming he didn't get stuck in traffic or something, he would have SAVED the time he was losing per lap by pitting a lap early. I went back and checked the footage again: at the very start of the 15th lap (the one in which Hulkenberg started talking about slicks), he was just over 2 seconds behind Sainz. By the time he crossed the finish line to start lap 16, he was already 3.3 seconds behind Sainz. At the start of lap 17, the lap where his engineer tried to talk him out of slicks, he was already over 4.5 seconds behind Sainz. By the time he was told to pit, he had been passed by Stroll and was about 6.5 seconds behind Sainz. Edit #2: Crap, I was looking at the full race (not Sprint) results when comparing times. Sainz was about 5.3 seconds ahead of Stroll. So I don't know if he would have caught him in time with only pitting one lap earlier, but it's definitely possible!
@@rars0n 😂 lol, it happens my man! Check Hülkenberg's laptimes, he was over 5 seconds per lap faster! Not only that, he was falling back in laptimes just before he pitted, had he come in a lap earlier, he might have come back in front of both Aston's! I'm telling you, if he'd had 1 lap more on those fresh tyres, with Sainz in his sights...
2nd corner was EPIC. Max divebombing, shoving Perez out left AND somehow also blocking all the rest of the track, so everyone behind him bascially had to do an emergency stop, which left Lando in the wrong gear and 7 guys overtaking him. Hülkenberg slipping through into 2nd place. Best moment since the last lap of 2021.
@@Nasherwood And how many times has Max squeezed other drivers off the track in his career? He's not exactly in the position to complain if I'm honest.
Solution to the tyre thing: Only softs allowed for the sprint. That would basically give you the strategy choice you want, make the sprints just long enough that you can make it on 1 set of softs, if you are careful, but stopping for new soft boots might be quicker.
It doesn't help that there's a ton of new fans that get manipulated into thinking the exact same too. Crofty the biased loudmouth is almost criminal in this regard.
@@d.katzroy3313 Indeed. Most people underestimate how English or British if you will, Formula 1 is. It’s like The Grand National 🏇 and The Masters 🎱 combined, but with more biased talking heads.
Charles has a confidence problem and not just with himself. Carlos has a confidence problem with his team, but not himself. That's why Carlos is the better driver.
2:09 I love how Matt explains the theory behind new generation's ability to consume media, all by splurting out words next to each other like he's speaking alien language
“Ability to consume media” lol So having no attention span, needing/wanting things right now and needing constant drama/action all the time or you move on to something else is now an ‘ability’?? Seems more like a disability to me.
Better Sprint Format Q1 - 20 minutes, 20 drivers, top 10 advance Q2 - 10 minutes, 10 drivers, top 2 locked into their positions (they dont have to participate in sprint) SR1 - 30 kilometers, drivers who qualified in *even* numbered positions (4, 6, 8, etc.), rolling start, finishing order sets in *inside* grid positions SR2 - 30 kilometers, drivers who qualified in *odd* numbered positions (3, 5, 7, etc.), rolling start, finishing order sets the *outside* grid positions Points - P1 = 3, P2 = 2, P3 = 1 (in sprints) Have all these session within like 90 minutes of eachother
Great video as always. Have to say that, for me, the point of a sprint is that it is not about strategy but about pure racing because you have to make it happen on track. That is the only value the format has. If you want to mix it up more, maybe there could be some kind of thing like, the compound of tyre you use in the Sprint then cannot be used in the Grand Prix, thus forcing stronger competitors to risk using slower compounds? Any thoughts? I'm sure that's a bad idea but can't think why lol
After the last podcast you talked about how it would be awful if Alonso got first in the sprint race. Being that it is just a sprint race. How bad would it have been then for Nico Hulkenberg if he had gotten even a podium?
It would be the same I guess. Sprint races don't have podiums though so it wouldn't count as a podium. Sprint race wins don't count as race wins either.
The tention is not getting higher at red bull, things just became clearer. The worst enemy of perez is perez. He will go to great; lengths to prove he is equal to verstappen. That means as soon as he sees an opportunity, he will make mistakes to try to outpace verstappen, including run verstappen of the track to try to stay in front of him. Max is warned and paid him back. I wonder what marko will think of this move. In hindsight i am sure perez also will see nobody was impressed, so maybe that gives him a reality check.
Yes, another big mistake was during qualifying. Instead of putting down a banker lap in Q2 he had to better Max's time come hell and high water. Horner really wasn't impressed.
The race was better up to lap 17 when they put DRS on and then the top teams got the advantage back . There was overtaking without DRS by good driving.
When I saw checo squeezed his teammate onto the grass in rain, I was shocked. This is not acceptable even when it is dry. And max show checo his elbow to reclaim the place, which is understandable. I want checo to battle max, but not in this nasty way. I really though it will be like how Ocon took out max situation.
Just make all slick tires hidden like the test tires so they don't know what they have on. That will make it more interesting and make it so they have to figure out as they go through the race.
