u/Turboleks

McLaren fans, look away now

It isn't, but social media gives everyone a voice. Everyone.

It's also present here, but the most unhinged comments usually get buried in downvotes or are outright excluded by the mods, which kind of acts as a filter. No such things exist on X and Instagram, though.

Give it 5 mins before the mods nuke it

Yupp....

Remember how Brazil sentenced Bolsonaro after his attempted coup? Well, his fucking son is now rising in the presidential polls. I wish I was joking.

This is a popularity contest mixed with just pure vibes at this point. Nothing against you OP, but I certainly wouldn't mind if the mods here started shutting posts about this bs down. They add nothing of value, nor provide anything good for discussions, imo.

That coupled with the track breaking off beneath his car, no way to prevent that crash. But the narrative that Charles is mediocre at best (read this bs at the Scuderia Ferrari sub of all places) is already raging, and this shit will be brought up time after time as a reason why he's never winning a championship and all that discourse.

You just know the other sub is having a field day lmao

Max is being glazed to death everywhere, but at this point how can you not? This is the most daunting race track on the planet, it's pitch black, he barely has any experience racing in such conditions yet he's still giving one of the best endurance drivers out there absolutel hell.

2018 has a big fucking asterisk next to it, as they made the car actively worse from Hungary onwards. So it might not even have that going for it.

There's unfortunately an asterisk there, as they had no real competition and a vastly superior car between 2018 and 2022. The fact that they didn't win every race in that period is more down to severe blunders and underperformances than their competition stepping up.

That said, 2012-2016, and then from 2023 to today is fair game. 2023 was especially impressive, as even with strong competition from Ferrari, Porsche and Cadillac, they still won every race apart from Le Mans that year (and were only one mistake from Hirakawa in the closing hour of the race away from a clean sweep). So, kudos to them for sticking to it through thick and thin (something Porsche could well learn).

It's exactly as Max said in 2022, 2023. I just heard Russell downshifting while flat-out some 500 meters or so before T9. That's pathetic imo.

I'm genuinely curious as to why seemingly no one is mentioning Ferrari's faultless pre-season - at least not to the same extent as the sheer glazing Mercedes has been getting. This week's test was a reliability evaluation much more than a performance one, and both Ferrari and Haas got A LOT of miles under their belt.

Getting kicked from the Williams Drivers Academy for singing "Scooby-dooby-doo, Latifi is poo" on stream is just about the most on-brand thing to happen to this guy.

Every form of sports needs critics, but you also gotta know when to speak and when to shut up, he hasn't learned that, and those last two lines definitely show.

Looking up on race results, it's scary how often these two would just fuck off in front of everyone else. In COTA, they were like 42 seconds up the road from Checo, and he didn't even stop for the FL point.

Red Bull's junior program has been in shambles ever since they had to re-hire the man they fired TWICE, and then yank Albon (who had already been fired from the program many years back btw) out of his Formula E seat literally days before the pre-season in 2019.

Since then, they shoved Gasly back into the second team for nearly 3 and a half seasons because they just did not have anything better to do with him, kept Tsunoda for an equally long amount of time to appease Honda, when it was clear the main team had almost no interest in him whatsoever, then skipped their entire junior ladder to steal De Vries of all people from Mercedes, and when that failed miserably, they skipped their junior ladder again, but this time in favor of a semi-retired Ricciardo. Then there's the fact that they almost didn't feel like committing to Lawson in any capacity, only giving him two part-time seasons when he arguably should've been in the car full-time since 2023, promoting him in what felt like a desperate move to the main team only to fire him after two miserable races - a switch that got them no results back whatsoever, by the way.

Only just about now that program is starting to look like its going back to normal, with Hadjar coming in for this season and delivering the goods (God have mercy on him at the main team), and Lindblad joining for next season, while Liams serves as a benchmark.

This wasn't a "race". Absolutely useless track, and I got downvoted for saying so.

Sigh...

Hey, at least us Tifosibros can celebrate the 499P and AF Corse just about cruising towards both championships since Le Mans. Ferrari has to be competent somewhere, right?

For real, every year there is some sort of issue with that damn track. Razor curbs in 2021, insufferable heat in 2023, more tire failures last year. The track is incredibly generic, it looks just like Bahrein, but every corner looks the same on TV and the racing is worse. It has absolutely no place in F1 since the latter exists, but alas, something something money is king.

No, it's not there. As soon as Oscar came within striking distance to Lando in Austria and Hungary, McLaren was quick on the radio to enforce pApAyA RuLeZ. They will absolutely ensure we'll never have anything resembling a fight between these two this season.

Not the worst thing to come out of Mansory tbh - their Purosangue and Ford GT mods should be considered war crimes.

But man.....the Revuelto already looks like a fighter jet from the factory, there's no need for, well, any of this. To each their own, I guess.

Nothing short of excellent, really, yet this very sub was heavily criticizing his racecraft earlier this year, stating that Camara "cannot win when he's not at the front". Well, maybe last week's P30 to P5 should put an end to that.

Tell me you hate him without telling me you hate him. And I say this as a big Bortoleto glazer.

Breaking down year-by-year, from what I can remember out of each race.

2024: about as good as it was gonna get. Ferrari was still trying to fix the issues the Barcelona update caused, he wasn't touching any of the McLarens, and Max had a terrible weekend, bumping him up a spot.

2023: The SF23 had terrible tire wear, and it wasn't very good at high-downforce tracks like this one. Mercedes had the measure of them that weekend, Checo was still performing, and McLaren had already bolted to second best car status by that point.

2022: Should have been a win or at the very least a podium, but Ferrari made the most INFURIATING set of decisions that weekend by stopping Leclerc - who started on mediums - at the same time as Russell on the softs. And then they put him on the dreaded hard tire, that Alpine had already tried to no success at all. That race tested my sanity as a Ferrari and Leclerc fan.

2021: Leclerc emerged from the madness of T1 with only Lewis ahead of him and a clear track ahead. It would most surely have been a podium, and perhaps even a win since the SF21 was actually quite decent here - certainly more so than the Alpine or Aston Martin, and Sainz got to the podium, eventually. But no. He got Lance Strolled instead.

2020: The less said about that cursed year, the better. The SF1000 was almost irredeemable. Very unstable and no power at all. Vettel was able to salvage a P6 through clever strategy and his decent record at Hungaroring, but Leclerc had no such luck. If any of his races here so far support his claim, its this one.

2019: As good as it was gonna get, really. The SF90 wasn't good at high-downforce tracks either, they were a mile away from Mercedes and Red Bull and would probably have finished P5-6, if not for Bottas having an off weekend and Gasly, well, struggling. Only lost to Vettel on the last lap as well, if I recall.

2018: Was on the points (P9, I believe) by the time his suspension broke, you can't really ask much more out of a Sauber than this.

Tl:dr His record in this track isn't actually that bad. The one time he had a car capable of a win (2022) his team was playing against him, and every other year he did about as good as he could do.

I want Stroll gone as much as the next person and I will slander him endlessly until my wish is granted, but today was unironically the best race I think he's ever done. Sure, he's had some good strategy calls come his way, but he drove really well in a way I didn't think he could anymore - especially in the rain, after that clown show in Brazil last year.

The amount of delusional Argentinian fans that are already berating Alpine and claiming their cars are different is off the scale.