Racey Thoughts: A Weekend at Home Watching Formula One
Random thoughts from the U.S. Grand Prix at COTA
I had a rare weekend at home, and so I had the chance to watch qualifying and both the Sprint and full Grand Prix from COTA on TV. That means that in one weekend, I doubled the amount of TV-watching for the year!
It’s obvious that F1 has become way more popular in the U.S., and I’d go so far as to say that it’s becoming an “in” thing to attend a Grand Prix now. On one hand, I like this, and yet there’s a side of me that liked it more when it was only us insiders that knew what Alex Albon looked like, what “deg” meant, and why in the world multi-million-dollar race cars have wooden planks on the bottom of them. Watching Martin Brundle’s grid walk before the race, I spend more time asking, “Who’s that?” than ever before. All in all, this is a good thing.
But wow, a weekend attendance of 432,000 people! I wonder how many are hardcore race fans, and how many are there because they heard it was a good party and it’s good to just to be seen there?
While Max Verstappen has been dominant this year, it’s hard to argue with the fact that the outright speed of the top teams is very close. There were four drivers within two-tenths of a second in qualifying. Try counting to 0.2. It can’t be done! Then think of how many variables there are over the course of twenty turns in 3.4 miles, with car design and setup, track conditions, driving style, and driver technique, not to mention minor errors (yes, F1 drivers make them, almost every corner, every lap — racing is a series of mistakes and corrections), and the fact that four car/driver combinations were within that tiny spec of time; it’s hard to imagine. The top ten were within 0.7 seconds, and the entire field (other than Logan Sargeant, who I’ll talk more about below) within fewer than two seconds. That’s close!
With Verstappen losing his best qualifying lap due to exceeding track limits in Turn 19, and then having to start the race in sixth, we knew that there’d be some good passing early in the race. But what I enjoyed the most is that Max looked like he was really looking forward to having to race his way to the front. He looked like he was going to have fun starting there.
As Martin Brundle mentioned more than once during the broadcast – and has become obvious – Verstappen really has matured, having learned to be patient when patience is advantageous. It’s not surprising that this maturity and patience has improved at the same rate as his self-confidence in his ability to make his way to front.
I know that many (some reading this) will say that’s just because Max is driving the best car, and that anyone in his shoes (or, more accurately, in his cockpit) would feel that way. I disagree. Say what you will about Sergio Perez, but he’s not slow! He’s very good, and has beaten Verstappen at times over the past two seasons. He may not be better than Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, or Lando Norris, or even Carlos Sainz, Oscar Piastri or George Russell, but he’s right there with all of them. I think that if Perez was compared to any of those other drivers, he’d be rated higher than he currently is. And, the gap between Verstappen and Perez, in the same car, over the course of the season is bigger than within any other team. That says more about Verstappen than it does about Perez. So, it’s not all car that makes the Dutchman so dominant.
In fact, at this point in the season, is the Red Bull really the best car? Or is Max just a touch better than everyone else? I know he’s not the most popular, and many would not like to give him that credit. But again, Perez is a fantastic driver, and the gap between him and Max is bigger than in other teams.
When I ask the question, “Would Hamilton, or Leclerc, or Alonso, or Norris, or any other driver on the current F1 grid dominate in the way Verstappen has if they were driving the Red Bull?” it turns into more of a who-do-you-like-the-most contest than it does give-me-an-unbiased-answer. Personally, I don’t like one of those drivers any more than another (okay, I do like Alonso, but just because he’s an “old guy” in F1 terms), and if I look at things in an unbiased way, I do think that Verstappen is simply better than the rest – at the moment. The good thing is that things will change. That’s the nature of F1.
When I’m coaching, I pay a lot of attention to a driver’s belief system. If they truly believe, deep down inside, that they’re going to win, or lose, that often plays a bigger role in the result than anything else. I found it interesting that in one of Lewis Hamilton’s interviews after qualifying, he said that Verstappen was going to work his way to the front. So yes, Verstappen truly believes that he’s the best and will win, but so do some (many, all?) of his competitors. Remember, the difference between pole and fourth or tenth, between winning and losing, is fractions of a percentage point. Do you think that Hamilton’s belief that Verstappen is going to work his way to the front makes a difference? You bet it does.
Back to Sergio Perez for a moment. My feelings haven’t changed since I wrote Is Checo Maxed Out? a while ago, and I still believe that he has the potential to win more races. But I don’t believe that the combination of the pressure that Marko Helmut and the media are putting on him is helping his performance, and I’m not sure he’s going to recover to his peak performance until someone helps manage this for him.
Certainly, the competition to see which team can improve the most and close the gap to the Red Bulls is neck and neck between Mercedes and McLaren, and I think it’s one of the most exciting and fun things to observe in F1 this year. Add in the way Lando Norris is being pushed by Oscar Piastri, and the battle for the “best of the rest” is fascinating.
Sure, Piastri had a bit of an up and down weekend at COTA, but there’s no doubt he’s every bit as good as his “more experienced” teammate, and might even gain advantage in the future. Maybe. That all depends on how Norris is managed, something that a surprising number of F1 teams do a terrible job of. Given the amount of money that is spent by these teams, it shocks me at how many manage young drivers with the same style that was effective decades ago (could it be related to the fact that most of the key management at these teams are at least three decades older than the drivers?).
I, like so many, can’t help but cheer for Daniel Ricciardo. All he has to do is smile and talk, and it’s hard to not love the guy. His comeback this year could not have gone much worse, when he was just getting reacquainted with driving an F1 car again when he had the crash that broke his hand. Given that, and making his second comeback of the year at COTA, I’d have to give him a C+ on his report card. I think we need to see how the rest of the season goes before making any real judgement on whether AlphaTauri’s decision to keep him in the seat for 2024 was the right one or not. Of course, if things don’t go well next year, it’s not like that team hasn’t shown their willingness to screw one lightbulb out and screw another one in (replacing a driver) in the middle of a season.
A recap of any F1 race would not be complete without a comment about Ferrari’s strategy calls. It’s no big secret that both Leclerc and Sainz have to do a good portion of the heavy lifting in this area, as shown during the Singapore Grand Prix where Sainz went against what the team was telling him to do – and he won because of his decisions. I can’t help but wonder, though, if Sainz is just a little bit better and stronger in calling his own shots, because once again the team seemed to screw Leclerc at COTA. And all Charles did was complain about it, rather than actually demanding what he wanted – or just doing it.
During the race, my frustration grew again with how silly the whole track limits thing is. I hate it. So many of the circuits F1 races on now have so much runoff room that qualifying and the races look more like tennis matches, with line judges (electronic and human) calling more service faults than are called in two weeks of matches at Wimbledon. I wrote about this in No Excuses, Please, so I won’t go much further here, but I really wish F1, the FIA, circuit designers, or the teams and drivers could come up with a better solution than we currently have. Or just ask me to solve it for them!
Over the past few months, I’ve been asked more than once why we see F1 drivers missing apexes, specifically on tight hairpin corners. TV cameras picked this up many times in Turns One and Eleven at COTA. I’m going to write an entire post about this in the near future, but here’s the quick answer: F1 drivers focus first on driving their car to the limit, and less on the line; non-F1 drivers (mostly amateur drivers, as many top-level pros in other forms of racing, such as Indy car, IMSA, etc. do the same as F1 drivers) focus on the cornering line first, and then driving at the limit. Most non-elite-level drivers are so concerned about the line that they don’t drive the limit; if it means slowing the car down to get to the apex of a corner, well, darn it all, they will. F1 drivers want to clip past the apex, but they’d rather keep their car rolling momentum, even if that means running a little bit wide of the apex. They won’t slow the car just to get to the apex of a corner. As I often say, drive the car, not the track. That’s what F1 drivers do.
Plus, F1 drivers are very good at sensing where the track has the most grip, and sometimes that’s just slightly wide of the apex. Like I said, more on this in the future.
What F1 drivers are not good at (relative to what they are good at) is racing wheel-to-wheel, and making and defending passes. In other words, racecraft. I counted at least ten times when a driver dove to the inside of another car into a corner, and left enough room between them and the car they were passing to drive two buses through the middle. That tightens the radius of the corner, meaning they don’t get as good an exit as they could if they had kept their car close to the other car. Plus, it puts them in a position where the other driver can’t see them very well. They don’t “present” themselves to the other driver, increasing the chances of there being contact, and being re-passed.
Having said that, if you watch a replay of the race, look for Lando Norris’s pass on Charles Leclerc later in the race. It was perfectly positioned and executed. Yay, Lando!
I said that I’d come back to Logan Sargeant, someone that I’ve not been impressed with this year (as much as I wanted to be). But when a driver steps up, I want to recognize it, and he did perform very well in the race. Any time a driver, in the same car, can come close to Alex Albon, that’s impressive. Yay, Logan!
No driver likes to win or take a position by another driver being disqualified. Well, that’s not entirely true, as real racers will take advantage of any and all situations. But still, they’d rather do that on the track. Of course, if another driver’s car is illegal, and gains a performance advantage because of it, that’s an easy “Thank you, I’ll take it” when they get DQed. The amount of time and effort teams put into finding just the right ride height so they can run the car as low as possible to gain all the performance advantages from doing so, but not so low that the wooden plank on the bottom of the car wears to illegal levels is staggering. It’s surprising that both Mercedes and Ferrari didn’t get the setup on Hamilton and Leclerc’s cars right (and makes one wonder if scrutineering had measured Sainz and Russell’s cars after the race, would they have had the same issue?), but I think it was due to the teams not having as much practice (due to the Sprint race) time as usual. Some might wonder whether a small amount of wear on the plank would have really made a difference, and I can tell you that it definitely would have.
Finally, to the fans who booed Verstappen at the end of the race… you are rude, and certainly didn’t help race fans at a U.S. race look good. It was especially disrespectful to boo during the Dutch national anthem when Verstappen was on the podium. If someone had booed during the Star Spangled Banner before the race, what would you have thought of that? You don’t have to like Verstappen, but show some respect. Just because he’s currently the best, he doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment. I can only hope that the fans at the Las Vegas race turn things around and show him the respect he deserves.
Fortunately, I know that no one reading this column would have done what some small percentage of the crowd at COTA did. Thank you.
Hey, guess what? I’m going to be home again this coming weekend, and I’ll be able to watch another F1 race on TV. Who knows, I might even write some Racey Thoughts again.
So far I haven’t had time to watch the whole race. I was flagging 11B, it was fun to watch the cars coming into corner 11 and down the straight. I didn’t stay for the podium and that’s sad to hear that fans did that during Max’s national anthem. All of those drivers are awesome to watch!
Separated by a few tenths of a second viewed from 5000 feet puts all the cars in the same spot, wow, and yet somehow Max keeps ending up in front, his belief must be strong Master Ross just as you say! And about missing apexes driving the limit of the car, it's not as detrimental (ignoring the car limits thing for a second) running a bit wide of a tangency after a virtual apex, is it? Last, totally agree, people can be rude, I imagine they must have no clue how otherworldly is the talent and skill here, and how for 99.99% of the world, those F1 cars would be impossible to drive, never mind drive fast.