#giving the team a clear start to the run. Sergio Perez has got a great launch from Charles Leclerc to hold the first place. In Lap 4

[f1]

Were going to get there Wolff convinced Mercedes' are on now on the right path back to winning ways

Mercedes brought a host of new upgrades for their car to Monaco – and though it’s far from the ideal track to assess their effectiveness, Toto Wolff is convinced his team are now moving in the right direction with the development of the W14. Next weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix will give the Silver Arrows a much better idea of how their new parts are working and, Wolff hopes, see edge them closer to front-running pace. READ MORE: 'I'm kicking myself to be honest' – Russell left frustrated after 'small mistake' costs him Monaco podium “It’s so difficult because we were in the mix with Aston Martin and with Ferrari I would say. But we really need to be careful, we need to go to Barcelona and collect more data. It’s a new baseline. I don’t expect us to be clearing Aston Martin and Ferrari [there]," he said. “It is more about understanding what does this car do now, how to set it up and we are really good at grinding away. Wolf is convinced Mercedes are working their way back to the top "Even with the old package which wasn’t that great, or was terrible at the start of the season, we managed to win a race in Interlagos [in 2022] in a dominant way so we’re going to get there.” Wolff admitted that the late rain “flattered” his team in Monaco, the timing of their pit stops executed to perfection which jumped them ahead of Ferrari on the road. And he conceded that there is plenty more to learn about the performance of their car given it has so many new parts. READ MORE: ‘We’re just too far away’ says downbeat Leclerc after P6 finish in home race "I think we’ve been better in FP1 and FP2 than the rest of the weekend [this season], the more the track grips in, the less performance we have. It’s really a lot of learning at the moment because everything is new. "We’ve just got to collect the data and set the car up in a good way. Over the last two and a half, three years, we’ve had a really good race car and less so a qualifying car. So Sundays look more positive than it looks on qualifying days." The Mercedes floor was on full view in Monaco One of the highlights of the weekend for many fans was when both Hamilton's W14 and later Sergio Perez's Red Bull were hoisted high over the circuit as the marshals removed them from the track, fully revealing the floor design which is a key component to this generation of ground-effect cars - and something fans don't normally get a glimpse of. READ MORE: Alonso says he ‘didn’t have a chance’ to take Monaco GP win as he praises Verstappen for driving ‘super well’ Wolff did see the funny side of the situation, calling it an "art installation" and "unreal" before joking that more people might copy the Mercedes floor than Red Bull's. But he did concede that while the team hasn't had time to analyse the differences just yet, they will be looking closely at the two designs in the coming weeks. "I think they had more to lose by showing their floor than ours," was his final comment. via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

[newssite2525]

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Review: Verstappen beats Leclerc in an Exciting Race

Max Verstapen claimed his first win of the season, winning in front of Charles Leclerc on the Jeddah Cornish circuit on Sunday. How the Race Went With the lights off, Max Verstappen took third place in the first half with Carlos Sanchez, giving the team a clear start to the run. Sergio Perez has got a great launch from Charles Leclerc to hold the first place. In Lap 4, George Russell rose to the…

[wokeinmemphis-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[redroses879-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[arcadeparade-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[asanusta-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[pooki-chu-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[sophistikatedblogger-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[quebrando-promesas-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[crashinthefastlane-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[f1]

It would have been risky Binotto explains why Ferrari opted against Sainz/Leclerc swap in Brazil

Ferrari had two key reasons for not asking Carlos Sainz to let Charles Leclerc past to help the Monegasque's points tally in the closing stages of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, according to team boss Mattia Binotto. Sainz and Leclerc were running third and fourth respectively when a Safety Car was sent out to cover Lando Norris’ stoppage – Leclerc impressively bouncing back from a trip to the barriers after an early-race clash with the McLaren driver. READ MORE: 5 Winners and 5 Losers from the Sao Paulo Grand Prix Leclerc jumped on the radio to ask Ferrari to consider his battle with Red Bull rival Sergio Perez for P2 in the drivers’ standings, but the team brushed the request aside – Binotto later explaining that they were concerned by the lingering Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen, and Sainz being investigated for passing Yuki Tsunoda during the final Safety Car period. It means Leclerc and Perez are now locked on the same tally, each with 290 points going into the season finale in Abu Dhabi – after Perez's team mate Max Verstappen refused to let the Mexican through on the last lap. Speaking after the race, Binotto said: “First, swapping the two cars on the last straight was certainly tricky, because Charles had Fernando and Max just behind, so it would have been tricky and somehow dangerous. Sainz: ‘I had to give it all – I was pushing flat out, no mistakes and in the end we got a well deserved podium’ “But more than that, we knew that we were under investigation for what happened behind the Safety Car with Tsunoda. "We were cleared up by Race Control at the time, so we were quite – let me say – comfortable, but without having a conclusion on that matter... it would have been risky, because a five-second penalty, for example, would mean that then Carlos would have been losing more than one position. So for the constructors’ championship, it was certainly better to stick with the positions and the gaps on track.” While Sainz went on to complete the podium – without picking up a penalty – and Leclerc claimed fourth, Ferrari’s advantage over Mercedes in the constructors’ standings has been cut to 19 points after the Silver Arrows scored an emphatic one-two finish. READ MORE: Sainz pleased with ‘great fightback’ to podium as Leclerc explains team orders request in Brazil Nonetheless, it marked a recovery of sorts for the Scuderia after their inauspicious start to the Interlagos weekend, which saw Leclerc sent out on track in Q3 as the only driver on intermediate tyres – while the rest of his rivals banked a lap on softs before further rain arrived. Leclerc explains his view on Norris collision after fightback to P4 in Brazil Leclerc was audibly unimpressed with the tyre call, making his feelings clear over team radio, but Binotto said: “Obviously, when you’ve got such weather conditions, it’s always a lottery. I think the fact that Kevin [Mangussen] was on the pole, or [Lewis] Hamilton eighth on the grid, and [Sergio] Perez ninth, it’s a lottery, no? “We made it wrong, because certainly we are the only one on intermediate at the time, and not on slicks. Now, those types of mistakes, I think in such a lottery situation, they always happen, and those mistakes can turn into the right decision as well, no? F1 NATION: Does Mercedes’ sensational Sao Paulo 1-2 mean they’re back in business? “It’s only weather changing that, maybe a minute after, was simply happening. But what I’m looking at, together with the team, was the process that brought us to such a decision, which I think is more important rather than the decision itself. Was it right or wrong? Why are we doing that when maybe the others didn’t?” via Formula 1 News https://www.formula1.com

[theeblacksheep-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[ourclassycollectionpainter-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[junker-town]

Full schedule, changes and preview for Formula One 2019

The 2019 Formula One season is almost here and we have all you need to know to get ready for what promises to be an exciting year of racing.

Another season of Formula One racing is here, and the gap continues to close between Mercedes and the rest of the top teams, at least as far as preseason testing indicates. It promises to be an exciting season, with some serious driver changes, including the young Charles Leclerc now driving for Ferrari alongside Sebastian Vettel.

The biggest change, other than the numerous team and engine differences, is the addition of a point being awarded to the driver and constructor who manage to set the fastest lap in each race and finish in the top 10 while doing so.

From Lewis Hamilton all the way on down to the return of Robert Kubica, we have all you need to know going into the 2019 Formula One season, which gets underway on Sunday, March 17 with the Australian Open.

What happened last season?

Mercedes once again had the best car, but there were times when others shined. Ferrari was their top challenger, while Red Bull was occasionally in the mix on the tracks where their cornering-centric aero helped them take it to the top two teams. Mercedes didn’t run away with every race, but, by and large, when they didn’t have a Lap 1 incident and they had pole, they went on to win it.

Lewis Hamilton wasn’t challenged by Valtteri Bottas, his teammate, but by Sebastian Vettel, and at points was trailing Vettel in the Drivers’ Championship. That said, down the stretch, it was clear Hamilton was going to win it, even if Vettel wasn’t mathematically eliminated until the final two races.

Throughout the rest of the grid, it was more a story of incremental improvements and some regressions. Force India, now Racing Point, regressed, as did the Williams team. Renault picked up some steam here and there when the track suited their car, and battled with Red Bull occasionally. McLaren wasn’t a factor, and Fernando Alonso retired from the sport after the team failed to make meaningful improvements to the car.

Mercedes won 11 races in 2018, with Ferrari taking six of them and Red Bull winning four. Only Hamilton, Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Kimi Raikkonen and Max Verstappen won races last season.

Who can challenge Mercedes in 2019?

It might not even be about challenging Mercedes — it might be about challenging Ferrari. Throughout preseason testing, Ferrari has been consistently faster than Mercedes, and Hamilton has admitted already that this season could be Mercedes’ toughest in a long time. Of course, we thought Ferrari was close last season, and Mercedes found enough pace to routinely stay ahead of them. But if the gap is further narrowed, as it seems to be, then Vettel could certainly be pushing for a title.

It will also be interesting to see if Bottas, after a disappointing 2018, can challenge Hamilton, and if Vettel is at all challenged by the young Charles Leclerc. Both of the top drivers may get challenged more than they’re used to.

Red Bull hopes to be in the mix, but the Honda engines have a lot to prove after the company returned to the sport and fell well short of expectations. Toro Rosso performed well with the Honda power units a season ago — or better than expected — which is at least a good sign.

And the rest of the teams?

One of the bigger risers may be Haas, the only American-owned team on the grid. The team was fairly steady as a middle-of-the-pack player last year, and preseason tests have shown them to be gaining on and even surpassing their 2018 competition, namely teams like Racing Point and Williams. Haas finished last season fourth, behind only the big three, and their car looks to be much-improved from last year.

There will be a lot of hope for Renault after they went out and got Daniel Ricciardo, regarded as one of the better drivers currently in the sport. They are making big moves, but the car may not be ready to take it to the big three.

Toro Rosso is looking to build on a better-than-expected 2018 with an improved Honda engine, but their ceiling is still an unknown as Red Bull itself has a lot to prove.

Alfa Romeo, formerly Sauber, went out and signed stable veteran Kimi Raikkonen, and for that reason, they shouldn’t be written off as contenders in the mid-field.

Racing Point seems to be falling, and falling fast. Formerly Force India, Racing Point looked like they were well on their way to a fourth-place finish in the standings just a couple years ago, but they’ve looked slow and uncertain in testing.

Finally, Williams — one of the more storied teams yet one that has looked downright bad in testing. The Robert Kubica comeback story is a great one, but it’s hard to imagine him or anybody leading the Williams cars to significant points in 2019.

Notable team and engine changes

Sauber, building off an Alfa Romeo sponsorship from last season, has fully removed Sauber from their name and now race as Alfa Romeo Racing, with a Ferrari 064 power unit. Force India is gone, completing their transition to SportPesa Racing Point F1 Team, using a Mercedes power unit.

The most notable change, though, is Red Bull Racing moving on from Renault, ending a 12-year partnership to make the switch to Honda engines, which have been particularly terrible since Honda rejoined Formula One, though not for lack of effort.

Notable driver changes

There was a ton of shuffling near the end of the 2018 season and throughout this past offseason. There are a bunch of new drivers and we’re going to run down the changes. The biggest saw Ricciardo of Red Bull move on to Renault, replacing Carlos Sainz Jr., who will race for McLaren in 2019, taking the spot of former champion Fernando Alonso, who left the sport. He’ll be partnered with Lando Norris, 2017 European Formula 3 champion.

To replace Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly was promoted from Toro Rosso. Daniil Kvyat rejoined Toro Rosso after racing for the team in 2017. Alexander Albon, a former Formula 2 driver, will pair with Kvyat, and in doing so will become only the second Thai driver to race in Formula One, and the first 65 years.

The other big change is Leclerc moving up from Sauber to Ferrari, taking Kimi Raikkonen’s spot. Raikkonen, not yet ready to retire, moved over to Sauber (now Alfa Romeo), where he started his career in 2001. He’ll be partnered with Antonio Giovinazzi, who has made emergency starts in the past. Lance Stroll of Williams moved over to Force India (now Racing Point), where he’ll race alongside Sergio Perez.

Finally, reigning Formula 2 champion George Russell will join Williams, and he’ll be racing alongside Robert Kubica, who is making his return to Formula One after an eight-year absence brought on by a near-fatal rally car crash in 2011.

2019 F1 Entrants, Drivers and Cars

A look at each team’s 2019 car

Here are the sporting and technical changes

Once again, Formula One is changing up how the tires are viewed and presented to the audience. All of the types of compound return for 2019, but instead will simply referred to, on race day, as soft, medium, and hard. So what were called the yellow soft tires in 2018 could be considered the hard compound on race day if last year’s supersoft and hypersoft tires are among the three available compounds that Pirelli designates for each race.

For the first time since 1959, Formula One will give a bonus point in both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships for those who set the fastest race lap, but only if the driver finishes the race in the top 10.

There were some changes to bodywork regulations. A series of aerodynamic changes were agreed upon for the front and rear wings to increase the potential for overtaking. The front wing endplates were reshaped, while the rear wing slot was widened, giving a boost to DRS performance. Some other changes were made to the bargeboards and rear wing to add further space for sponsorships. The maximum fuel levels were also raised from 105 kg to 110 kg, giving the drivers some breathing room when it comes to conserving fuel (and making themselves dangerously skinny to offset the heavier engines of today’s Formula One).

This is a behind-the-scenes change, but the FIA recently introduced a new standard for driver helmets with stricter safety testing, and plan to implement those standards through all of their racing events, not just Formula One.

How can I watch F1 in the United States in 2019?

Starting last season, ESPN acquired the broadcast rights for Formula One. The first broadcast included commercials and was a disaster as it used the Sky Sports F1 feed, which is commercial-free. Fortunately, ESPN chose to broadcast the rest of the season commercial-free, and plans to do the same in 2019, thanks to a sponsorship with Mother’s Polish.

Races will primarily be broadcast by ESPN2, though there are a handful that will appear on ESPN proper and ABC. Last season, races in many European countries were pushed back an hour to make the sport more convenient to watch for those on the other side of the Pacific.

Live streaming of ESPN’s coverage, including practices and qualifying, can be had via WatchESPN.

Remember these calendar changes

The only notable calendar change is the swapping of the United States and Mexico Grands Prix. The Mexican Grand Prix will take place Oct. 27, while the United States Grand Prix will take place Nov. 3.

Here is the 2019 race calendar, including US viewing information.

Note: full broadcast schedule has yet to be announced by ESPN, only confirming channels and times through the Monaco Grand Prix.

We are using the networks from last year’s schedule on the other races, and will update when they’re confirmed, if necessary.

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Premier League Fans’ Verdicts: Bernardo Silva should win Player of the Year

The Premier League continued this weekend with Liverpool beating Cardiff to stay ahead of Manchester City, who were victorious about Tottenham.

Elsewhere Manchester United and Arsenal's hopes of finishing in the top four were hit by defeats.

Here, Sportsmail gets the fans' verdicts following the latest round of action …

Liverpool fans were informed as their team beat Cardiff to return to the top of the table

MANCHESTER CITY

Steven Allweis (View From A Blue)

All the talk has been around Sterling competing with Van Dijk to be named Player Of The Year.

In my eyes at least, Bernardo Silva should win the award. Against Spurs, he was as sensational as has been all season. He worked tirelessly, twisted Spurs' defense all over the place, ran with the ball as if it were attached to his foot and created the winning goal with a delightful jinx inside and cross in the box.

He is simply a joy to watch and has defined matches consistently for us this campaign. It's about time he receives the praise he so richly deserves.

Star man: Bernardo Silva

TOTTENHAM

Barnaby Slater (barnabyslater.com)

To be fair, Spurs put up a lot more or a fight than I fear we may be able to after our historic Champions League victory.

We could easily have had three in the first half, but equally it never felt like we deserved to get a result from the game.

Star man: Juan Foyth

[Idon'tcareforthatmuchthoughasamstillbasinginthefeelingfromWednesdayandecstaticaboutourupcomingsemi-final Bernardo Silva put in another fine display as Manchester City got the better of Tottenham

BOURNEMOUTH

Peter Bell (Cherry Chimes)

Bournemouth might have been confident. They expected the goal to come and found themselves in a real contest for possession. Chances went early on and Fulham took full advantage. Even with three strikers on the pitch, Bournemouth couldn't unlock the door.

Fulham fans were happy singing "1-0 to the Championship". Eddie Howe is still looking for consistency.

Star man: Jefferson Lerma

FULHAM

Russ Goldman (Cottage Talk)

Scott Parker wanted the team to play with pride and reconnect with supporters. Now hey is getting results, too. It is unfortunate that this has come too late to keep us in the Premier League but we are seeing building blocks for next season. The way Fulham played suggested a new beginning.

Star man: Sergio Rico

HUDDERSFIELD

Harry Greenwood (Better Than Klopp)

Another defeat along our embarrassing relegation road. Siewert switched things up yet again as he assesses the squad ahead of a huge summer. Although we had chances in this one we were toothless yet again.

Watford capitalized with a second before Karlan Grant – one of our very few shining lights – score a consolation. With Liverpool and Manchester United to come, things look bleak.

Star man: Juninho Bacuna

WATFORD

David Anderson (Golden Pages Fanzine)

What a season this is turning out to be! FA Cup dreams aside, it was nice to get back to winning ways in the league and take the lead in the race for seventh place and potentially Europe.

It was reassuring to see us manage without Troy Deeney and we did so capably thanks to the magic of Gerard Deulofeu. He was quick off the mark to give us an early lead and it meant the rest of the afternoon could be enjoyed rather than endured.

Star man: Gerard Deulofeu

Watford fans celebrate during their side's victory over Huddersfield on Saturday

WEST HAM

Graeme Howlett (KUMB.com)

For the second successive week, West Ham were denied a goal and two points by a mystifyingly bad call from the match officials. These things just yourself out over the course of a season, it has been said. Which may be true for some clubs, but certainly not West Ham United, for whom such things are becoming something of a regular occurrence.

Star man: Lucas Perez

LEICESTER

Phil Simms (LCFC World)

A lively end to a match, for long periods, bore all the hallmarks or an end-of-season run-out in the sunshine. The players were on the beach. Harvey Barnes' injury time goal at least sent the Foxes faithful home with a smile.

Star man: Jamie Vardy

WOLVES

Ben Husband (Wolves Fancast)

The sun was out and it felt very much like pre-season fare as a pedestrian Wolev's struggled to break down Brighton. The Seagulls came to the Black Country without any ambition but left with a point. Antoerh example of Wolves failing to get the job done against the lowly sides. Nuno's men now have four games to ensure the season doesn't fizzle out.

Star man: Ruben Vinagre

BRIGHTON

Simon Cox (Brighton Fans)

Not often does a 0-0 feel so satisfying! I wanted to be last on MOTD! After our recent farces this mundane, but disciplined, bore-draw was a breath of fresh air! Team selection was Chris showing fans the dressing-room divide, and that at least £ 50million has clearly been wasted.

We red our luck, but we certainly earned our point. Kayal was a patient, professional and should start at Spurs.

Star man: Beram Kayal

Brighton fans watch on their sides with Wolves at Molineux on Saturday

NEWCASTLE

Tom Bore (Read Newcastle)

What a day for Ayoze Perez. Silencing his critics in the most emphatic way – a hat trick at St James’s Park to all-but-confirm survival. His movement and build-up play has been superb in recent weeks and he was rewarded in full against Southampton.

It feels unlikely with three games to go that Newcastle will make the necessary steps required to equal last season's 10th place finish, but with 41 points already on the board, the feeling among the fans is positive nonetheless.

Star man: Ayoze Perez

SOUTHAMPTON

Jack West (Fresh Saints)

Newcastle capitalized on a dismal first half that proved pivotal in dictating the result. The second half was the complete opposite and we arguably deserved to take something from the game. Hassenhuttl's tactical changes were spot on.

Star man: Mario Lemina

EVERTON

Joel Parker (Toffee Analysis)

Everton absolutely dominated a dreadful Man United team, and for one of the first times this season were clinical. Silva's system is always better against teams that want to retain possession, but we struggle to create great chances.

Today was different, we started off quickly and had total control for long periods of the game. The goals were absolutely incredible and Everton thoroughly deserved the victory.

Star man: Gylfi Sigurdsson

MANCHESTER UNITED

Sam Peoples (The Peoples Person)

When will United rebuild the club properly? We're a shambles from top to bottom. So many of those players should be sold. There is no way this can all be done in one summer. Sir Alex retired.

Star man: The Away End

Manchester United's players look after a conceding fourth goal to Everton

ARSENAL

Peter Wood (Le Grove)

Unai Emery spluttered at a critical part of the season, arrogantly underestimating Palace. Mustafi in defense, Jenkinson anywhere near the team, Guendouzi and Elneny in midfield … it was always going to fail and it did.

Arsenal have blown a huge opportunity and it looks like the manager has it all on the Europa League. A very dangerous gamble.

Star man: The Final Whistle

CRYSTAL PALACE

Jay Crame (The Eagles Beak)

Roy got this one spot on and the players pulled off a big result against the Gunners, and fully deserved it with the hosts finding the pace and speed on the break hard to deal with.

Benteke has had his critics but we play so much better with him as the lone striker, he just hasn't been able to match that with goals. Today was a very good all round performance from the Belgian. Big call from Roy to drop by Aanholt but it worked.

Star man: Christian Benteke

CARDIFF

Callum Ellis (Inside Wales Sport)

Competed well in the first half but it was always going to be difficult once they took the lead. It looked like a penalty on Salah for me – and one of our fans would have been furious with that child or decision did not go our way. If we keep playing like this, we'll stay up.

Star man: Bruno Ecuele Manga

LIVERPOOL

Chances were wasted and Cardiff survived until half-time, but the Reds eventually become them down in the South Wales sunshine. Wijnaldum's strike was a thing of beauty and Milner has balls of steel.

No doubt the Salah diving agenda will rear it's head once again, but it's all nonsense that was a clear a foul as you'll ever see . Many Kopites are hoping for a favor from arch rivals United this week. Not me.

United don't even have a snowball chance in hell or stopping City. My fading hopes are with Sean Dyche and the Burnley bash brothers, Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood. Or Brendan. Imagine that.

Star man: Georginio Wijnaldum

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Who said what after qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix

2:23 PM ET

ESPN staff

ESPN rounds up all the reaction from up and down the Marina Bay paddock following qualifying for the 2017 Singapore Grand Prix.

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton (5th): “Every year it has been relatively difficult for us in Singapore, so we knew that we would come here and it would be tricky. I thought Red Bull would be as quick as they were, but I didn’t anticipate Ferrari to be that strong. I gave it everything today but I could not get any more out of the car, I squeezed it until it was dry.

“There are no points for today, so we will focus on doing the best job we can tomorrow and remain hopeful. But this is a horrible track for overtaking; it will be a long race. I will have to try and see if I can get a good start to pick off at least one car. Sebastian has Verstappen next to him, so anything can happen at the start.”

Valtteri Bottas (6th): “So far, it’s been a difficult weekend for us. We’re clearly third quickest around here, that’s just not enough. We’ve been chasing the setup of the car and made big changes yesterday and today, but we still haven’t found the optimal setup. You can see it in the lap times that I can’t really drive the car with the setup that we’ve got. We were a bit surprised by how big the gaps to Red Bull and Ferrari are.

“Two weeks ago, we had a great weekend in Monza and now we are really struggling. The result today highlights that we still have issues producing enough downforce and mechanical grip on a track like this; it’s an area we clearly need to work on. We know our pace alone isn’t enough to score a podium tomorrow, so we need a clean race, a good strategy and bit of luck as well.”

Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport: “Days like this are the tough ones. We know that our car is not at its best on these tight circuits and Lewis extracted the maximum today from the package we had. It looked close at certain stages of the session, and we kept hoping for a little bit more, but it’s never nice to see a gap like that in black and white on the timing screens.

“The end result, with three cars between Sebastian and Lewis, obviously makes the situation even more difficult; likewise, Valtteri has been some way off Lewis this weekend, never really feeling confident with the car, and we need to dig down into why that is. The challenge now is simple: to extract the maximum possible from tomorrow’s race, grabbing every opportunity that comes our way. It will be a long, tough race for everybody.”

James Allison, Technical Director: “That was a very disappointing qualifying session with both cars. We knew this would be a tough weekend for us but we had nevertheless hoped for better. It was clear that we didn’t have the pace to compete for pole today. Now, we have to put this result behind us and start to think about how we can limit the damage tomorrow, or perhaps better still make the most of the opportunities this track routinely creates on race day.”

Lars Baron/Getty ImagesRed Bull

Max Verstappen (2nd): “All weekend has been a good build up, getting faster and faster and finding a smooth rhythm so to come away with second is a really good result. I took a little bit of risk to put down a good lap as we had predicted the others would improve from yesterday and this morning’s sessions. Perhaps there was a bit of time in the last sector to find but in general I am very pleased with how the car and I performed.

“That was the best balance in terms of set-up I have had with the car in Qualifying all year and that is a big positive. My quickest time was more or less the maximum I could do, Sebastian just had an even better lap. Race pace is good so we have a chance tomorrow but it looks like Ferrari have found quite a lot. The start will be important and maybe if there are a couple of safety cars that could impact the result too.”

Daniel Ricciardo (3rd): “I really thought I could get on pole position today so I’m a bit disappointed to be honest. Seb’s last lap was strong and we couldn’t run with that. That pace was good for us in Q3 and it seems like he did most of his time in the first sector. I didn’t really know what else we could do. If we get the start right tomorrow then we can put some pressure on him through our strategy.

“I still believe we have a good chance to win this race. I do enjoy a street circuit and the challenges that come with it, brushing up against the walls and all that. I feel I can do this lap after lap for two hours tomorrow and still hold my concentration. I really want this one so hopefully that hunger prevails tomorrow.”

Christian Horner, Team Principal: “A very strong qualifying performance from both of our drivers. Max and Daniel have been showing great speed around the streets of Singapore all weekend, and indeed we’ve topped every session apart from the final one that counts in Q3, where Sebastian put in a great lap. Starting second and third on the grid gives us strategic options for tomorrow in what will be one of the hardest grands prix of the year. It’s great to have both cars right up there and we are looking forward to a hot and humid race tomorrow night.”

Sutton ImagesFerrari

Sebastian Vettel (1st): “Yesterday I wasn’t smiling, today I am. When you belong to a team, you need to believe in each other and this is the perfect proof. Our Friday was messy, but our team has worked all night long and I am grateful for that. Here the guys worked all night and got to sleep around breakfast time, I believe. Meanwhile, back at the factory, Charles Leclerc worked at the simulator and other people analysed the data. Yesterday it seemed that we were not competitive enough and a lot of answers were missing. At the beginning of qualifying I was just thinking about doing my job. Then in Q3 I attacked, and I am very happy it worked.

“For us it’s important to turn up the day. If it’s a bad day, we want to change it making it a good one because we always try to have good days. I think yesterday was very important for us because we learnt from it. It was a hard lesson but we improved our understanding of the car and the track evolution came to us. Now we probably have a better idea what the car needs. There are always lessons that need to be learnt and I am quite happy that we had a bad day yesterday. We are happy we got the pole today because it always helps. But the race is tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.”

Kimi Raikkonen (4th): “It has been difficult since yesterday and even today it was not easy. The whole track felt very tricky to drive, it was hard to be quick and put the car where we wanted; in some sectors we were more competitive than in others. In qualifying it was a bit better compared to yesterday and this afternoon’s P3 practice, but I was still far from feeling comfortable to push. I was still fighting trying to do a good lap and it was easy to make mistakes and lose lap time.

“To finish fourth is not ideal but I’ll take it considering all the struggles that we have had so far ; it could easily have been worse. At least we gave ourselves a chance for tomorrow and hopefully with a bit of luck we can gain some positions. We’ll tackle it as a new day. Lately our starts have been quite decent, so we’ll try to make good progress and see where we end up”.

Getty ImagesForce India

Sergio Perez (12th): “It was a difficult qualifying session. All the way up to my final run in Q2 I was struggling with the front end of the car. We made some changes which helped the front, but I lost rear grip instead. I’m not really sure what went wrong so we need to look into the data to really understand why we didn’t deliver tonight. It’s going to be a long and tough race tomorrow, and we need to be patient. We are only a couple of positions away from the top ten so we will fight for as many points as possible.”

Esteban Ocon (14th): “It’s been a disappointing day for the team – the first bad qualifying session in quite a long time, actually. It’s not something we want to see, obviously, but sometimes that’s the way it goes. I felt comfortable with the car until qualifying, but the track evolution went away from us. I struggled under braking and it was very easy for me to lock the fronts. We now need to focus on trying to recover in the race. Points are still very much possible, even starting in P14, so we will just go for it. There has been a 100% record of Safety Cars here over the years so there may be opportunities. Our car is better in the race than in qualifying and it’s my birthday tomorrow so I really want to get a good result for me and the team.”

Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal: “We certainly didn’t deliver on our potential today and, as a result, we have missed out on the top ten. Sergio struggled with rear grip, while Esteban didn’t manage to deliver a clean lap in Q2. It’s a shame because grid position is very important on this circuit and we face a big task tomorrow to bring the cars back up into the points. However, like any street circuit, there are likely to be incidents and opportunities that we need to use to our advantage. The race pace is strong and both drivers are determined to make up for the disappointment of today’s qualifying session.”

Clive Mason/Getty ImagesWilliams

Felipe Massa (17th): “It’s been a very frustrating day to be honest. On my first run I had big oversteer, I hit the wall and got a puncture. I was lucky enough to have the problem at the last corner, before the pit entrance, so I changed tyres and went out again. Unfortunately, I had big oversteer in the last corner on my next run and lost half a second, and the chance to go into Q2. I am very disappointed because today Q2 was possible. These mistakes are frustrating and every day of this weekend has not gone well. We will try everything tomorrow and hopefully it can be a different day.”

Lance Stroll (18th): “I didn’t get everything out of myself, and so I am not happy with the session and myself. Coming into it I predicted more grip, so I locked up and touched the wall. It was a scruffy session, I needed to risk a lot to try and get into Q2, but instead I just went backwards. The track was changing so much and it was very different to all the other sessions this weekend. We just really got it wrong, but for sure the car is not as good here. It is frustrating going from the front row to the back. We had some hopes to get into Q2, but the pace was really not there. We are just missing a lot and that is going to cost us until we fix it.”

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: “The circuit evolution in Singapore is normally very high but today was particularly extreme because of oil put down from one of the earlier support races. That certainly caught Lance out. He’s already on a learning curve at the circuit so despite three attempts on three new sets of tyres, he didn’t manage to set a good enough time to get out of Q1. In Felipe’s case, unfortunately he hit the wall on the exit of Turn 21. This was probably promoted by the oil that had been put down at the entry to Turn 20, so that lost his first-timed lap.

“Luckily, the damage wasn’t too extreme, although it was a very big hit. The car had survived with minor damage which we repaired. Felipe went out for the second run and that would have been good enough for P13 at that stage of qualifying, but he had a big oversteer moment in the final corner sequence, which lost him about half a second. With an evolving track, I’m sure Felipe would have been in a position to improve in the later sessions, as did everyone else, so it is unfortunate that we missed the cut for Q2. I think the car had better pace than we showed today. We will see what we can do tomorrow. We can still race well, it’s a long race that is usually filled with incidents. Cars and drivers suffer a lot in the final half hour so if we can hang on until the end, and be in a good state, there’s still potential to score points.”

Mark Thompson/Getty ImagesMcLaren

Fernando Alonso (8th): “The first target of having both cars in Q3 has been achieved, so 50 per cent of the job is done. Now our second target is to get both cars in the points tomorrow, which I think is possible from these starting positions. Race pace here is always a bit of a question mark; it’s difficult to read. Yesterday’s long runs were not long enough and, added to the difficulty of overtaking on this track, positions will be more or less set after the first lap.

“That means we need to concentrate on making a good start and having a clean first corner. After that. I’ll keep focussed and not make any mistakes. It is a very demanding race but hopefully we can bring some points home. The first six cars are too far away in terms of race pace, so our aim will be to defend our positions and possibly climb up to seventh. I hope we can complete the job tomorrow.”

Stoffel Vandoorne (9th): “We came into the weekend more or less expecting to get both cars into Q3, and we achieved that today. We were always on the pace throughout Q1 and Q2, but perhaps we lacked that little bit extra in Q3 compared to our rivals. But nonetheless it’s been a smooth and solid effort from the whole team. While today is a good starting point, tomorrow is where it really matters. I might be hoping for quite a few Safety Cars in the race, but I still think we can conclude the weekend on a high.”

Eric Boullier, McLaren-Honda Racing Director: “This is a track that we knew would play to the strengths of our package, so it was pleasing to see our drivers pushing the limits right up at the sharp end of the field. Getting two cars into the top 10 today sets us up well for what is always a difficult, demanding and unpredictable race. We hope to come away from it tomorrow with more valuable world championship points.

“Fernando and Stoffel have both driven outstandingly well all weekend, and it was a joy to watch them attacking this difficult and uncompromising street circuit. Likewise, the whole team has performed at an extremely high level throughout this busy Singapore GP week — whether that’s been in the sweltering pit garage, the hospitality suite or back at the factory. When these things come together, it’s worth emphasising that, as a race team, we operate as a singular unit, and it’s days like today that remind us what we can achieve together when we have the merest sniff of a competitive package.”

Yusuke Hasegawa, Honda R&D Co. Ltd Head of F1 Project & Executive Chief Engineer: “Both drivers started the day well with a solid performance in FP3, leaving us feeling positive about our car heading into qualifying this afternoon. Fernando and Stoffel then maintained their momentum, and were both able to successfully go through into Q3.

“Although we knew this was a circuit more suited to our package, it is still good that we were able to show some competitiveness and secure top 10 grid slots for the race. Despite this, we can still see a gap to the frontrunners so we will continue to make further improvements. We think we have decent race pace, but it’s very difficult to overtake at this track, so if we can get away well at the start we can hopefully be in the fight for points.”

Lars Baron/Getty ImagesToro Rosso

Carlos Sainz (10th): “I’m very happy with making into Q3 today! If I say the truth, after yesterday’s FP2 and today’s FP3 we didn’t look that competitive and I thought that Q3 was a bit out of hand for us today, but in the end we managed to put a very good lap together — the pace came back in qualifying and I’m very satisfied! We now need to think about the race because it’s not going to be easy. Unfortunately for us, a few of our closest competitors are quite a big step ahead of us here so it will be a race more on the defending side tomorrow, looking in the mirrors, but I’m up for it and will try my best to keep this point-position!”

Daniil Kvyat (13th): “The start to my qualifying wasn’t that bad — I had one run in Q1 which was particularly good, but then in Q2 the track evolved and the car just got worse. I felt it sliding everywhere, had a lot of understeer and I just didn’t manage to warm up the front tyres, which is all quite disappointing. This is something we have to analyse, because it’s very frustrating for me. Regarding tomorrow, it’s hard to say what we can do as we haven’t had much pace this weekend. We just need to do our race, follow a good strategy and see where we end up.”

Jonathan Eddolls, Chief Race Engineer: “This is a track where it’s all about giving the driver a consistent car, lap after lap, because there’s an awful lot you can gain from the driver at a street circuit like this one. The main focus of FP3 was to build on what we learnt on Friday, fine tune the balance of the car and really focus on and understand the tyres. Track conditions here change significantly from session to session — they start in daylight and then you qualify when it’s dark, so it’s a lot about data gathering and analysis and the guys have done a really good job in getting their heads around the tyres.

“FP3 was therefore spent trying to understand what was going to be best going into Qualifying, which pretty much went to plan. It was great to get one of the cars into Q3. Carlos did a great job and managed to build it up throughout the session. We were a little bit tight on the timing on the very last run — I think we crossed the line with only five seconds to go — so it was a little bit nerve-wracking at one point, but he kept his head down and put in a good lap.

“Unfortunately, with Daniil, he didn’t quite feel the grip on his very last set in Q2, so we’ll spend this evening trying to understand the reasons for that. We also had a small issue in Quali where a small amount of oil found its way into the exhaust system and ignited, causing the plume of smoke you saw as the car entered the pit box. These conditions were quite specific so we have no concerns with reliability for tomorrow. Starting from P10 and P13, there’s definitely the potential for a good result here tomorrow.”

Clive Mason/Getty ImagesHaas

Romain Grosjean (15th): “As long as you do your best in qualifying, that’s the most important thing. I think from both of us it was the maximum we could’ve hoped for. We pushed pretty hard but, unfortunately, we don’t have much balance here. I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot from this weekend for the future but, of course, when you’re deeply into it, it’s a bit painful. From yesterday we’ve made some improvements. I’m proud of the work. It’s a long race, a tough race. Hopefully, the car will work better tomorrow. We’ll aim for the best strategy, maybe we can get lucky with a safety car, and try to get to the front somehow.”

Kevin Magnussen (16th): “I don’t think Q2 was out of reach. I caught a Renault in the last corner of my last lap, which cost me the margin I needed to get through to Q2. It’s been a tough weekend. We’ve not been strong enough, but we’ll fight anyway. It’s hard to say how the race will go. We’ll wait and see tomorrow.”

Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: “I think that was the most we could get for us this weekend. The midfield is so tight. We know a lot of things can happen here on a street circuit. Let’s see what happens. For sure, we will try our best to get into the points.”

Sutton ImagesRenault

Nico Hulkenberg (7th): “We have a strong package here this weekend. I had a nice battle with McLaren in qualifying today. They had the upper hand until the last lap where I managed to squeeze a really good lap out. I’m very happy to start seventh, it was a good effort from the team. Everyone gave us the best possible chance to have a good race. We know the Singapore Grand Prix is unpredictable, anything can happen, you just have to be ready and stay on your toes for the entire race.”

Jolyon Palmer (11th): “We found a lot of pace in the car, especially in Q1 where it felt like the car came alive. Q2 was also looking good but we overheated the rear tyres in the last run and I ended up losing a lot of time there and wasn’t able to improve. I am eleventh but I’m not too dissatisfied with that, we get a fresh set of tyres and we are in a good position to score some points tomorrow.”

Clive Mason/Getty ImagesSauber

Pascal Wehrlein (19th): “I did the best job I could during today’s qualifying. My laptime is quite alright considering that I lost some time by slightly touching the wall. As a team, we are all working hard to make progress.”

Marcus Ericsson (20th): “It was a difficult qualifying for me. I had to abort my first stint, and return to the garage early-on to pick up a fresh set of tyres. That made for a tricky start to Q1. In the end I only managed to complete one decent flying lap. It was a disappointing qualifying. Let’s see what is possible in tomorrow’s race.”

Sutton ImagesPirelli

Mario Isola, Head of Car Racing: “The track got progressively faster quite quickly, once the oil on the track had cleared. This allowed an incredibly fast and closely-fought qualifying session, with plenty of drivers beating the previous all-time record at Singapore. On a circuit which favours the mechanical grip like this one, the wider 2017 tyres offered an important contribution to this result. As tyre wear and degradation is low on all three compounds, one-stop should be the favoured strategy; however, with a 100% safety car record in Singapore and unpredictable track conditions, teams will need to remain versatile and adapt their strategies to the circumstances of the race.”

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