tire compound is the starting tire
Overall, the weekend was pretty exciting. It was a sprint race weekend, so the format was a little different: just one practice session followed by qualifying on Friday afternoon, then the sprint shootout and the sprint race later that day, and finally the race on Sunday. So let's go over the whole weekend and how each team did in the main race, and then let's dive into Lando and his weekend.
I doubt anyone will be able to beat Max and the Red Bull machine. Max has won the last 5 races in a row. He would have finished over 25 seconds ahead of Charles Leclerc if he did not pit on the last lap to go for the fastest lap. It goes to show how confident they feel in their car to go ahead and make a pit stop only 23-ish seconds ahead of their nearest competitor, because if anything had gone wrong, they would have only had a three-second buffer. Moving on from Max because there is not much to say there, Perez had a rough qualifying, only starting P15. Perez has struggled in the last couple of races, not being able to make it out of Q2. However, he did make up for it in the sprint shootout, where he took P2 and finished P2. Hopefully, this helped him gain some confidence. He did a good job battling his way from P15 to P3 in the main race, which was a good recovery from qualifying. Red Bull definitely does not want him to continue with this bad qualifying streak.
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It's been a full year since the last time Ferrari won a race, and it was the Austrian Grand Prix. It's been all pain ever since. However, they did show some good speed throughout the weekend. Starting off with qualifying, we saw both Charles and Carlos take 2nd and 3rd, which is about as good as you could hope for at this point. That was not bad to see going into the sprint shootout. Carlos came out with about 2 minutes left and set a blistering time of 1:06.187, which is not that fast overall, but coming out with only two minutes left and setting that time on your first run is pretty impressive. It put him in first place for the first part of the sprint shootout. Charles almost didn't make it out of Q1 with a time of 1:07.061. In the end, though he would, Carlos would end up starting 5th, and Charles would start 9th after receiving a 3-place grid penalty for impeding Oscar during sprint qualifying. They were still far off from where they qualified during the regular qualifying. The sprint race was very eventful, but it brought a lot of pain once again for Ferrari. Charles fell to 12th place, while Carlos finished 3rd, which was a pretty solid result for him. The main race was a better showing for Charles, as he finished P2, but it wasn't great for Carlos, who finished 6th after receiving a 10-second grid penalty.
It was a rough weekend for Mercedes. Despite looking like they had made up some ground by adding the side pods back to the car, it seems they are struggling to find their groove. In the sprint shootout, Lewis placed 18th, not even making it out of Q1, and the same with George, who only qualified 15th. I'm not sure what was off with them this weekend, but the only way to go is up from there. However, they both fought their way back up through the order during the sprint race. George gained 7 positions and finished 8th, while Lewis gained 8 positions and ended up 10th.
Unfortunately, their struggles continued in the second qualifying session. George didn't make it out of Q2, finishing in 11th place, while Lewis fared a little better, ending up 5th during qualifying. That would be the only positive to come out of this weekend. In the main race, Lewis finished 8th after picking up 10 seconds in time penalties for track limit violations (similar to about half of the grid). George made up some positions during the race and finished 7th.
Throughout the race, there were many instances where Lewis could be heard over the radio complaining about the car and how it was handling. Lewis and Toto are expected to sit down soon, if they haven't already, to discuss Lewis's upcoming contract. I highly doubt Lewis is going anywhere, and those radio messages are just expressions of frustration over a poor weekend for the team. We all know Lewis wants to be competing at the front of the pack for points and championships.
