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ESPN staff
The Bahrain Grand Prix created several talking points. Laurence Edmondson (F1 editor), Nate Saunders (F1 deputy editor) and ESPN columnists Kate Walker and Maurice Hamilton have weighed in on several of them below.
Were Max Verstappen’s errors at the opening races proof he’s not yet championship-winning material?
Laurence Edmondson: The mistakes Vestappen made at the last two races would have been enough to send many a title campaign off the rails later in a season. There’s little doubt that in the right car he can win the championship, but perhaps the frustration of starting another season off the pace of Mercedes and Ferrari has led him to overcompensate. The move on Hamilton in Bahrain was ambitious, but it was probably the only chance he would get to pass the Mercedes all race. It didn’t pay off this time, but that aggressiveness will serve him well more often than not.
Nate Saunders: No, he’s definitely ready, but they are proof he’s still not the finished article and a reminder of the fact he’s not the same polished product of teammate Daniel Ricciardo. But let’s not forget, he’s still only 20. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel both won their first titles — in 2008 and 2010 respectively — despite showing these same traits of youth and making mistakes in those seasons. If Red Bull can revive its flagging season he’ll be in the hunt.
Maurice Hamilton: Indeed. But no big deal. It’s maybe taking longer than expected to have the rough edges knocked off and learn that incredible pace and a refusal to be intimidated are not everything if you want to win a title. He remains a welcome free spirit. We just have to hope that Max doesn’t do too much damage (to either himself or someone else) before he eventually gets the message.
Kate Walker: There is no doubting that Max is a special talent. He has the talent of a future champion, no question. But championships are not simply about being a top tier driver. As Keke Rosberg and Alain Prost (and, more recently, Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg) can attest, sometimes championships are won through the careful harvesting of safe high-points finishes combined with the necessary wins. Max is a win-or-wall kind of guy, which makes him compelling to watch. But compelling and successful don’t always go hand in hand. Max will be champion when he (a) has the right car, and (b) realises that sometimes winning the war means sacrificing the odd battle.
Have F1 pit stops become too fast?
LE: With all the effort put into head protection in the last few years, it seems odd that more research hasn’t gone into the safety of pit stops. The Halo is designed to protect against loose wheels and we have seen three cars released in an unsafe condition in just two races. Trying to coordinate a crew of around 20 mechanics to change four tyres in under two seconds is mightily impressive, but it is also prone to errors. F1 should at least consider the model used in other racing series where the number of mechanics per tyre are limited. It might not be as impressive but it should reduce the margin for error.
NS: Yes, but this is as much an issue of technology as it is outright speed. Although every team has different procedures, the human element has been watered down greatly by most teams in modern pit stops. That’s not to discredit the job done by the crews, but the two issues we’ve seen this year — Haas in Australia and Ferrari in Bahrain — were at least partly down to failures in technology releasing a car when it was not safe to do so.
MH: Absolutely. With all due respect to the enormous amount of training and practice put in by the crew, what is the point of a two-second stop where spectators can’t possibly appreciate the detail and skill involved? It’s ridiculous. By all means, keep the mechanics involved in determining the outcome of the race; that’s very important. But cut the crew number by half and have them work on one side of the car and then the other.
KW: No. What happened to the Ferrari mechanic was obviously tragic, but it wasn’t simply down to speed. From the outside, that stop looked like a litany of errors — were the right tyre compounds brought out? Why did the green light go when (in slow-mo replays at least) it was clear that the wheel wasn’t ready to go? A slower pit stop might have helped prevent injury, but we have to accept — as those working in the sport already do — that motorsport is dangerous, and despite the best efforts of all concerned things still go wrong. That Jos Verstappen pit fire happened when stops were far slower than they are today. Same with Felipe Massa and the Singapore fuel hose In 2008.
Would Hamilton have won in Bahrain without the grid penalty?
LE: If Lewis Hamilton had started from fourth place [where he qualified] he would have won the race. At the end of lap 11 he was 15 seconds off Sebastian Vettel on a slower set of tyres having spent the first ten laps in traffic and by the end of the race he was less than six seconds off the Ferrari. If he’d been in Valtteri Bottas’ position it looked like he had the extra pace that would likely have made the difference for a passing move at the end. All hypothetical of course, but the Mercedes definitely had the pace to win in the right hands on Sunday.
NS: I’m not sure about hypotheticals but all I will say is this: had it been Hamilton, not Bottas, in the Mercedes chasing down Vettel at the end, I have no doubt he (or a number of other drivers) would have gone for it at the start of the final lap when there appeared to be a chance to pass. It was win-it-or-bin-it and Bottas did neither.
MH: Given such a dramatic race — particularly when school was out during the first few laps — you never know what might have happened. All I’d say is that if Hamilton had been P2 during the closing stages, Vettel might have been more worried than he already was. Rightly or wrongly, worn tyres or not, Lewis would have sent one down the inside at the start of the final lap.
KW: It’s impossible to say with any certainty — Lewis could have had a bad start, he could have been involved in contact that didn’t happen in his absence, whatever. But had Hamilton not had a grid penalty, it is highly likely that he would have been in a much better position than Bottas to take advantage of Vettel’s worn rubber at the end of the race. That being said, if Hamilton had better track position, he might also have been on a different strategy — part of his excellent performance in the closing stages of the race came from his much fresher rubber.
Has Pierre Gasly got the potential to outshine fellow Red Bull junior Carlos Sainz by the end of the year?
LE: It’s still early days, but Gasly’s performance throughout the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend bodes well for the rest of the season. Part of the reason it was so impressive was because no-one expected the Toro Rosso to perform so well, but that should take nothing away from his drive. Sainz is up against a tougher teammate in Nico Hulkenberg and that may make him look average compared to Gasly if the young Frenchman can consistently outperform Brendon Hartley. But despite outside appearances, Red Bull will still have knowledge of both drivers’ true performances and I’d be surprised if Gasly leapfrogs Sainz in the Red Bull’s driver hierarchy.
NS: Let’s not get carried away. It was one very impressive weekend, but Sainz built his current reputation from three brilliant, consistent seasons at Toro Rosso — he usually performend on the car’s good and bad weekends. It was a good starting point for Gasly, now he needs to show it wasn’t a flash in the pan. Even if he does, I think it’s going to take a lot to dislodge Sainz as the heir apparent to the next available vacancy at Red Bull.
MH: That’s an interesting question that I never expected to be asked, such is esteem in which Sainz is held. But Gasly was super-impressive right through last weekend and Sainz has the additional problem of Nico Hulkenberg doing the business at Renault. This will be a big test of Sainz’s resolve but, even allowing for the ruthless policy espoused my Dr. Marko at Red Bull, I’d like to think he’ll come out of it okay.
KW: On the face of the Bahrain Grand Prix? Absolutely. But it takes a lot more than a single race to make or break a career. In the afterglow of a stunning result for both Toro Rosso as a team and Gasly as an individual it’s easy to forget that the Frenchman was nearly on the RBR young driver scrapheap not so long ago. Despite winning GP2 in 2016 he was one of that series’ champions who didn’t earn an automatic F1 seat, and had he not delivered a stunning Super Formula season the following year, Gasly could well have gone the way of Giorgio Pantano or Davide Valsecchi.
What’s gone wrong at Williams?
LE: Lance Stroll’s qualifying lap at the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix was slower than his lap at the same circuit last year. Even allowing for different track conditions and other variables from year to year, that sort of backwards step simply isn’t acceptable in F1. Having two inexperienced drivers in a car that clearly isn’t easy to understand doesn’t help, but Williams shouldn’t have found itself in this situation. In 2014 and 2015 it finished third in the constructors’, but it didn’t make the right decisions to build on that success and now it appears to have one of the slowest cars on the grid.
NS: It’s been hard to understand the philosophy of this great racing team in recent seasons; the early success enjoyed in the V6 turbo era has been allowed to fester and rot. Employing the grid’s most inexperienced line-up for this season was like shooting itself in the foot despite already nursing a broken leg. This situation hasn’t come out of the blue, it’s been unravelling for a while now and that sad fact means Williams must face the fact that a change of leadership is required to help save this team.
MH: What’s gone right? As a fan of Williams’ proud history, this is proving difficult to watch. There seems to be many long-standing fundamental problems, not yet eradicated to the point where the 2018 car seems slower than last year. The trouble is that the driver line-up is not best equipped to help sort out difficulties with a car that is in danger of being made to look second-rate by everyone else raising their game in that fantastically intense midfield.
KW: If I knew the answer to that one I’d be selling my consultancy services to the team for as much money as they could afford to pay. The chassis doesn’t look great, given they can hardly complain about their Mercedes power unit. The driver line-up is relatively inexperienced, but then so is Toro Rosso’s, and look at their result. There might be problems in the wind tunnel, there might be design dead-ends, it might simply be a misallocation of the team’s limited resources early on in the development cycle. Whatever the answer, the Grove racers have a tough year ahead, and both Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin face a sharp learning curve.
http://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/23100280/is-max-verstappen-too-rash-win-f1-title
