It’s time to quit!
It’s already 6:00 am in Las Vegas and that means we’re closing our ticker for today. Finally, a reference to the great video analysis by Kevin Scheuren and Christian Nimmervoll with the following topics:
– Summary
– World Cup result and classification
– Controversial curve 1
– Three-way battle for victory.
-Mercedes
-Norris Crash
– Hulkenberg
– Vegas Conclusion
Have fun, have a good rest of your Sunday and see you later!
Ferrari suddenly having the best tire management?
At least in the first stint, Leclerc was better than Verstappen today with the media, an atypical image. But team boss Frederic Vasseur warns against jumping to conclusions.
“Look Mercedes, last week. [in Brasilien] “We haven’t made any progress at all with tire management and we had a decent race this weekend,” he gives an example.
“It’s a different story from track to track and mix to mix,” he clarifies. In Las Vegas, for example, it was “pretty cold,” much colder than anywhere else on the calendar.
That’s why today it is not necessarily representative.
Exciting battle for P4
The bad news: After Max Verstappen was declared world champion for a long time, Sergio Pérez can no longer be denied the title of runner-up. And Lewis Hamilton will surely also be third in the World Championship after today’s race.
The good news: in Abu Dhabi there is still a four-way battle for fourth place! Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso (200 points each), Lando Norris (195) and Charles Leclerc (188) continue to fight over it.
And then there is also the fight for P2 in the constructors’ championship between Mercedes (392) and Ferrari (388) and the fight for P4 between McLaren (284) and Aston Martin (273).
And especially in the constructors’ championship, several million dollars in prize money are at stake!
Alonso: Cars not made for Las Vegas
The Spaniard also confirms that today’s race has been entertaining. But he also makes it clear that a “balance” must be found between courses like Las Vegas and classic racing circuits.
“I know the show may look good from the outside, but these cars are not made to take corners at 80 km/h,” he insists, explaining: “These cars are made for Suzuka, Barcelona and Silverstone.”
Classic routes should therefore not be neglected in the future either. Only there could Formula 1 cars develop their full potential.
Vasseur: The red flag should have come faster
And Ferrari again, but let’s go back to Friday and Sainz’s accident in FT1. Team boss Frederic Vasseur emphasizes that in the future the red flag will have to be shown earlier when something like this happens.
“A minute passed between the yellow flag and the red flag,” he criticizes and explains: “It means that when the yellow flag was shown they saw something on the track.”
“And they needed a minute before showing the red flag. I think it’s too much,” he emphasizes, making it clear that this would not work if the cars were traveling at 340 km/h at that time.
Because later there could have been more accidents.
Sainz: “The safety car was too slow”
Formula 1 drivers repeatedly complain that the safety car is going too slow. This is the case again today. “When the safety car started, it was like driving on ice in Turn 1,” reports Sainz.
“We have to find a solution so that the safety car is a little faster in certain situations,” he demands, adding: “I can’t explain to you what it feels like to drive at 340 km/h and know that “the car won’t stop. if you step on the brake.”
The truth is that it doesn’t sound very good…
Piastri: That’s why the race was so entertaining
The race was much more entertaining than many had previously feared. Piastri explains that Las Vegas won’t be his new favorite track, but that the races were “pretty good.”
However, it wasn’t just because of the route. He explains: “Many were on different tyres, many had grain, some didn’t, so there was a natural difference in pace between many cars.”
In this case, good races are held “on all the circuits,” he explains and remembers: “Before the race we thought it would be quite difficult to overtake.” Therefore it was “a pleasant surprise.”
Las Vegas 2024 as the start of the tripleheader
Las Vegas will be back on the racing calendar in 2024, then as the start of a tripleheader. Because immediately afterwards it will be driven in Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Daniel Ricciardo obviously didn’t have that in mind.
“What? There’s no chance,” the Australian reacts when asked about it. He points out that he doesn’t think that’s a good thing. “You have to prefer it,” he demands, because otherwise it would be too exhausting.
“We will be exhausted, especially at the end of the season,” he clarifies. He’s already feeling the fatigue this year and has only returned from Austin because of his injury.
Putting Las Vegas at the start of a tripleheader is definitely not a good idea.
Sainz: Oil on the track is “unacceptable”
Do you still remember the oil that was dripped on the track before the start of the race? Sainz said: “I saw a lot of oil on the cars we did the drivers’ parade with. That’s another thing the FIA should look at.”
He clarifies: “It is not fair that all the oil was on the inside track. Apart from the fact that the track was already dirty, an hour before the race we used cars that spilled oil on the track.”
“This is unacceptable,” he emphasizes, explaining that the situation could have contributed to the accidents during takeoff. This must not happen again in the future.
Wolff: Both cars could have been on the podium
The team boss has already explained that Mercedes lost a podium today. At his press conference, he even went a step further and stated: “We could have had two cars on the podium.”
“We looked at the pace when the road was clear and we had the pace of the leaders. When Lewis didn’t have traffic, that was pretty much what he set in terms of lap times,” Wolff emphasizes.
But the theory doesn’t matter and in the end it pretty much sums up the season that we didn’t take advantage of this opportunity today.
Leclerc: The safety car cost us a certain victory
Would Leclerc have won the Las Vegas opener without the mid-race safety car phase? At least he himself is convinced of this and says: “I really believe that without the safety car phase we would have won.”
Because Leclerc was in a good starting position at this point in the race, had completed a “really good first stint on medium” and switched tires from medium to hard shortly before the yellow phase.
However, after the stop he was still in second position behind Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez and ahead of his teammate Max Verstappen. And Leclerc says he still had a lot up his sleeve!
Their full statements can be found here.
Weak weekend for AlphaTauri
After scoring points in the last three races in a row, Ricciardo was no better than 14th today and his teammate Tsunoda didn’t even see the checkered flag. “I came to the race optimistic,” reveals the Australian.
In the end, this weekend there was simply something missing to make the tires work “on the slippery asphalt.” “And I think the restarts didn’t help us,” Ricciardo said.
“But that’s no excuse. We were just missing something this weekend,” he admits. In the end everything was a little better, “but we were still not in the top 10,” she emphasizes.
In the World Cup, they are still seven points behind Williams in the fight for seventh position, which also failed to score.
Verstappen equals Vettel
Something else from the statistics corner: Max Verstappen achieved his 53rd victory in Formula 1 today. He has now reached the level of Sebastian Vettel! Only Lewis Hamilton (103) and Michael Schumacher (91) now have more victories.
And Verstappen is only 26 years old! To put this in perspective: Lewis Hamilton didn’t win his second world title until he was 29, and Michael Schumacher didn’t win his third until he was 31.
You can roughly calculate what is still possible for Verstappen in Formula 1!
Mercedes: completely different race from Brazil
The final result wasn’t much better, but Andrew Shovlin makes it clear: “Our list of positives is not long, but at least it was encouraging that the car had good pace.”
“We didn’t have the graining under control on the medium tire as well as at Ferrari, so we have to look at it more closely. But the pace on the hard tire was strong,” he emphasises.
“And as bad as this race was, it wasn’t as painful as in Brazil, where we were slow,” he explains. In Las Vegas, other circumstances led to the bad result.
Horner: The damage did not have a great impact
After contact with Russell, Verstappen’s front wing was slightly damaged. Christian Horner explains: “Something like this is never ideal, but fortunately nothing has changed dramatically.”
“We’ve already seen several times this year that a loose end plate doesn’t dramatically affect vehicle performance,” says Horner. By the way, the incident can be seen again in the video here:
norris statement
In today’s press release, McLaren issued a brief statement from Lando Norris following his accident. He says: “An unfortunate end to our Las Vegas GP weekend.”
“On the restart I hit rock bottom, lost my tail and crashed into the wall. It wasn’t the way we wanted to end the weekend, especially considering the pace looked promising from Oscar.”
“Many thanks to the medical team who examined me and to the team for the work they will now do on the car. We have a week to get together for the season finale in Abu Dhabi.”