George Russell, Williams, Monaco, 2021

Russell encouraged by pace despite Williams’ point-less run continuing

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: George Russell says he was stuck behind Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso during his first stint in the Monaco Grand Prix, while they struggled for pace.

In brief

Russell: Ricciardo and Alonso “struggling” in Monaco

George Russell has said that, although he finished the Monaco Grand Prix roughly where Williams would have predicted, his race was affected by Ricciardo and Alonso’s early stint struggles.

“It was pretty tough, to be honest. I mean, we finished where we expected to, so it was nothing too interesting in there. The first stint was really difficult for us, stuck behind Ricciardo and Alonso – they were really, really struggling for pace, for whatever reason.

“As a consequence I damaged the tyres a lot, which made me pit early and I came back out into traffic, so that that was sort of the knock on effects. We showed signs of a strong pace when we came out the pits on the hard tyres but as soon as we got the blue flags, we were losing tyre temperature and not much more we can do.”

Sainz “would have loved” to share debut Ferrari podium with Leclerc

Despite scoring his maiden podium since moving to Ferrari, Carlos Sainz Jnr said that the Monaco Grand Prix was “bittersweet” for him due to team mate Charles Leclerc’s retirement.

“I obviously felt very sorry for for Charles. I felt very sorry for the team because I knew that the team this weekend could have potentially won the race and it would have been a massive boost for everyone.

“At least we got a P2, a podium, which I’m sure it will help everyone’s motivation and aspirations. But yeah, the bittersweet feeling is coming from knowing that maybe a potential win went out of our hands. And I would have loved to share that podium with with Charles today.”

Petecof may be forced to withdraw from F2

Gianluca Petecof has said he may be unable to continue his Formula 2 campaign this season due to a lack of funding. He told Brazilian journalist Lito Cavalcanti that a lack of sponsors meant he would be unlikely to make the grid for F2’s next round, in Baku.

Petecof, the current Formula Regional European champion, had issues on his Campos car during the Monaco race weekend that limited his running. A fire on the car during practice went on to compromise his qualifying, before retiring twice in the sprint rounds and finishing 16th in the feature race.

He would be the second F2 driver to withdraw from the series on financial grounds this year, after Matteo Nannini, originally set to run a joint F2-F3 campaign, said his sponsors would no longer back him in F2 after the first round.

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Comment of the day

MaddMe says a better resolution to red-flagged Q3 sessions would be to extend time for drivers to set a fastest lap, rather than penalise a driver who had crashed.

The easy and sensible option would be to allow an additional 5 minutes to the session, to allow for teams to get there cars out again for a final push, rather than the resorting to deleting the fastest time for the misfortune of having an accident!

The stewards should also be able to review the relevant incident and make a decision whether they believe it to be done purposefully or not. Ultimately, what will happen is that teams will not risk a 2nd lap in any of the sessions.

Formula 1 is Formula 1 and not Indy Car!
@maddme

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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28 comments on “Russell encouraged by pace despite Williams’ point-less run continuing”

  1. There are many problems I see with COTD solution for red flagged Q3
    -What if the red flag period is so long it eats into other races timeslot
    -What if there is another red flag
    -Will teams need to save another set of tyres in case of another Q3+ run
    -TV companies buy satellite time/slots for broadcasting, when that runs out there feed will just end
    This just seems like a knee jerk reaction for a problem that really just isnt there.

    1. @f1-plossl
      I think the tyres are the biggest question mark—if they don’t get a new set of tyres, the whole thing could be anticlimactic if no one improves. But if Pirelli are willing to bring extra sets, I don’t see why not to try it.

      I do think though that the best-lap-deletion rule is not flawed as COTD argues.

      Ultimately, what will happen is that teams will not risk a 2nd lap in any of the sessions.

      With track evolution, this is almost never going to be true. The teams that are outside the cutoff for the next session have nothing to lose, so of course they’ll go out, and the teams just inside the cutoff have to go to defend against those teams. The teams that are safely through won’t go out, just as they don’t now.

      1. @f1-plossl I couldn’t agree more with you, although some of your points are the same as mine below.
        @markzastrow More tyres would be unnecessary as the risk of sets ending up unused would be higher. Even last than 13 would be enough most of the time.

    2. fixes like in programming only cause more bugs.

  2. In relation to COTD, Why should other drivers who also may have made mistakes or simply been slower on the run before they encountered red/yellow flags get to have another go because somebody else made a mistake that caused the red/yellow flags?

    For example let’s say that at Monaco Carlos Sainz was purple in sector 1 but then made a mistake (Or was simply a bit slower) in sector 2 & was therefore out of contention for the pole on that lap before Leclerc crashed. Why should he then be able to have another go simply because another driver crashed?

    The whole debate over deleting drivers laps, Extending sessions etc.. is simply completely unnecessary & all of potential solutions to the problem that isn’t even really a problem to begin with only end up introducing more potential problems which are worse in some cases than how it is now.

    F1 has a habit of bringing in knee-jerk rules like this & they virtually always end up introducing far worse unintended consequences & end up having to be reversed. This would be no different. Just leave it as it is & accept that sometimes when pushing on the absolute limit in qualifying the risk of mistakes can be higher & at times as unfortunate as it may be one drivers unintentional mistake may affect others. It’s just the way it is & you can’t simply start introducing rules to do away with everything the vocal minority of fans deem as been unfair. This is just the way the sport is, Accept it just as all the affected drivers did this past weekend!

    1. The whole debate over deleting drivers laps, Extending sessions etc.. is simply completely unnecessary & all of potential solutions to the problem that isn’t even really a problem to begin with only end up introducing more potential problems which are worse in some cases than how it is now

      Well said. No need to make the rule book even longer!

      Had his error been deliberate and intentional under the current rules, he would have been penalised and that would have been the right thing to do. If his error was inadvertent, he still legitimately held pole for the first 9 minutes and 40 seconds. Why change rules to penalise him and complicate things for teams / audiences.

    2. The whole debate over deleting drivers laps, Extending sessions etc.. is simply completely unnecessary & all of potential solutions to the problem that isn’t even really a problem to begin with only end up introducing more potential problems

      I’ll repeat it again for it to sink in.

    3. 100% Agree….COTD Right there!

  3. rather than the resorting to deleting the fastest time for the misfortune of having an accident

    It’s not misfortune, it’s a mistake. Why shouldn’t you be penalised for crashing in qually? Especially if it hinders everyone else on track.

    As others have pointed out the idea of extending a session is silly, but I’m all for making the crasher start at the back of that sessions runners.

    1. That’s exagerated, I’m with the cotd with adding some time to give them another chance, it’s not often that a red or yellow flag ruins a driver’s qualifying session.

    2. @skipgamer. Really? Picking me up on the choice of a word!

      Misfortune covers all aspects of something going wrong from having a tyre dramatically fail to making a mistake.

  4. A curse on these wretched tyres and their narrow working temperature range.
    A more functional tyre would close up the racing providing a better “show” and not exaggerate the performance difference between the frontrunners and tailenders as these rubbish tyres do.

  5. Wonder how F1 would have reacted to the events surrounding George Floyd’s death if it had happened now and not one year ago. Last year, the season still had more than one month to go before the the racing started. There was a void that Hamilton was able to fill.
    This year we are five rounds in, witnessing an inter-team battle for both the WDC and the WCC and we have legal battles brewing over flexible wings. McLaren and Ferrari are making gains, there is a hope that Alpine and Aston Martin can do the same and we are counting down to 2022 and the new regulations. The longer the championship fight goes on the longer the focus will remain on the sport rather than external politics.

    1. Congratulations on writing the stupidest comment of the day.

      1. I wonder why when one wonders it becomes what you claim it is.

        And simply calling it “stupid” without elaborating isn’t very ‘smart’.

        1. Agree with this, 2nd comment is worse than the first.

    2. It would probably have been how Hamilton intended it to be. He would protest (knee?) alongside his car, and would not disrupt the national anthem or any other official ceremony.
      I would have been more interested in what Lando and George said or did. Both were more vocal than Hamilton on their social media and both were vilified by a large proportion of their fanbase. But on the other hand, both were relative juniors in their respective teams and they may been persuaded not to ‘protest’.
      The two guy who impressed me the most on the matter was Seb and Daniel. Both were very vocal and very articulate on the subject. (As they still are.) So the issue would not have died a death.
      Not forgetting that the body pushing this to the fore in F1 is Skysports. Take them out of the equation and it would be just something that’s tagged on to the national anthem that most people miss because they are sorting out drinks and snacks before settling down to watch the race.

    3. You know that everyday there’re a lot of bad things happening to certain peoples and group of peoples worse than George Floyd death? There’re people still dieing starving. People living under dictatorships and dieing for no reason. There’re women being arrested and thrashed in many countries. I understand that when something bad happens in an “ocidental country” it calls more attention from the media and people in general (mainly europe and USA nobody cares about Venezuela). But ocidental countries are in the vanguard of the world when we talk about freedom and human rights, and people just close their eyes and follow an agenda that doesn’t really care about human beings in general, they just try to gain political power intensifying some old problems that our modern society are still solving. It’s not like there’re major support for racists or wrong behaviors in ocidental countries, it still happens? Yes, but I trust our society to keep improving in that point.

  6. Extending the running time for the sake of it has unintended consequences too. A QLF session has to end sooner or later anyway, so while giving extra 3-5 minutes mightn’t seem bad at first, but what if someone crashes within those additional minutes. A given session would seem everlasting, so better to have a fixed amount of overall time. People also have to note a support category (F2, F3) race that often follows F1 QLF. Another minus would be an unusually delayed session for weather conditions (Hungaroring 2016, Monza 2017, etc.), so a red or yellow at the end of Q3 would only delay the session even further and, in some cases, risk getting unnecessarily tight with sunset time.
    Any change would be a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that doesn’t exist in the first place. If we started penalizing a driver for (unintentionally) preventing time improvements in Q3, the same should also apply to Q1 (Mazepin in Bahrain) and Q2.

  7. You can’t just extend a qualifying session, much like you can’t just extend the race because of a late safety car or to restart from a red flag with 2 laps to go. It’s just tough luck.

  8. Re Petecof: Could’ve been in F3, but he moved way too up.

  9. Not sure if Carlos really would have shared a podium with leclerc. If leclerc would have started Bottas could have had a normal pitstop.
    So lec, Ver, bot and no place for Carlos.

    1. someone or something
      27th May 2021, 14:16

      That’s a big “if”, especially since Bottas wasn’t interacting with anyone. It just happened. So, no need to go all butterfly’s wings because of one hypothetical statement regarding the past.

  10. I love that picture of Alonso and Schumacher in the post quali press conference – it completely illustrates both of their feelings on the matter.

  11. A big dose of woke this time to set the party line straight after having been forced to give one to the deplorables following post-Monaco driver ratings blowback.

  12. Sainz said, Hamilton said..

    If it has to be thus, at least make it interesting with what was said in the continued spat with Verstappen https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/57222793 This one handily omitted for some reason.

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