Very ironic, I'm sure it was Komatsu that Steiner was chastising when he threatened to "make changes" during one of the earlier DTS episodes.
The back tracking after all that righteous indignation was hilarious.
If they're just using a bland placeholder name until they find a new title sponsor, they should have just changed it back to Toro Rosso, surely. Reminds me of AM's Racing Point phase.
He didn't phone it in, he never does. He went into this weekend knowing two things:
- the Ferrari was likely to be faster over one lap due to the circuit's mixture of long straights, big braking zones and slow corners suiting their car (see Monza).
- the Red Bull usually has the best pace on race day regardless of its qualifying performance.
Gone are the days where Max has had to regularly risk crashing his car in quali to start as high up the grid as possible - he knows that as long as he has a strong qualifying and a clean start, he can almost always move forward in the race. His banker lap in Q3 was excellent and proved good enough to keep hold of P3 even as other drivers improved.
The only weekend this year where Max has really treated qualifying like life or death was at Monaco where your qualifying position is crucial because overtaking is almost impossible.
Eh, the difference is that Verstappen showed more than enough moments of genuine brilliance (Brazil 2016 springs to mind) to suggest that Red Bull had a rough diamond worth refining and building a team around. We've never really seen anything from Yuki to suggest that he's worthy of that type of faith or investment. Were it not for his Honda sponsorship I'm doubtful he would still have a seat.
The salt against Max is bizarre to me, but it is what it is. He seems like one of the least political drivers to me because most of his talking is done on track. If he is able to extract the maximum from the car consistently, no matter how tricky the conditions are, at a certain point you have to hold your hands up and respect it.
He's on course to break a couple of records that will withstand cynicism much easier than this one.
As Max alluded to in his post race interview, the enforced pitstops nullified the RB19's usual advantage of being kind on tyres.
He won't get strategy priority until he displays strong title-challenging form on a wide range of circuits, which he hasn't managed do the entire time he's been there. Beating Max on a couple circuits with lots of sharp 90 degree corners isn't enough for RB to change their approach to races.
Been watching since 2014. The last race I attended in person was Silverstone in 2021 and what I will say is that a sprint weekend makes every day interesting when you're actually at the circuit and spending all day there.
Watching it on TV feels very different though - it feels rushed, repetitive and it slightly dilutes the actual GP. During a standard weekend it feels like you're steadily building to a massive event. I think having three sprint races in a season is fine but six of these things is annoying. I like that F1 is willing to trial new ideas but they're throwing a bit too much shit at the wall to see what sticks at the moment. The calendar is too bloated as well, but that's a whole 'nother issue.
I'm convinced that at least some of this is from all the hours he puts into competitive sim racing - he reckons he's learned a lot from watching the best sim racers and that some of it translates to F1.
I always found his slightly dour nature quite endearing but I have to say he was not very inspiring in his recent Beyond the Grid interview when asked to explain Alpine's present and future ambitions.
Before the race started, every driver/pundit said the inside is usually quite dirty and it statistically puts you at a distinct disadvantage down to turn one. This year's race start runs contrary to previous years where the pole sitter has comfortably held the lead.
Ferrari's drop off in progress from the first half of last year is almost criminal.