Shelton

I agree with this. And didn’t checo just barely come out ahead of Charles after pitting on the following lap? Whatever risk Charles took, it forced RB to take the same one a lap later and then defend. Credit to checo for doing a good job there. Charles had just set back to back fastest laps right before he crashed and was in DRS range. I figured Ferrari were just biding their time until trying to overtake on the final lap. If they did it any sooner RB would have taken it right back.

Yeah with Walt in el Camino it was fine.

I stayed up to watch SNL and then the race, but couldn’t stay alert through the whole thing and seemed to wake up every 15 laps or so when there was a yellow flag. I’ll have to rewatch today, but I really like Leclerc and it’s fun to see him having so much success.

I’m very interested to see how they handle what is basically two long DRS zones with a couple turns in the middle. If you get DRS at the first checkpoint do you keep it through the next two zones? And looking at the second checkpoint before turn 13, it really feels like you want to be in second heading into that turn. Anyone else staying up / waking up for qualifying at 1am? I think this will just be an early morning on-demand watch before breakfast type of thing.

I wonder if they are performing even beyond what they envisioned. It seems like overtaking is almost too easy now. Obviously every race is different, but it didn’t take long for Max to decide to just wait until the second DRS zone. That said, Charles had the same opportunity after that and didn’t get it done, so fair play to both. Definitely exciting. I think it may have been a blessing in disguise for Red Bull when Checo got unlucky on his pit stop decision, allowing max to move ahead and go one on one with Charles.

It would have been interesting if Max picked up on that in the second of those laps and waited until the second straight to overtake. The Ferrari pace would have probably made that a moot strategy overall.