[fz_rider]

Stonker of a lap from Max. Game on for Lewis !
Winners of the session for me have to be Max, Charles and Fernando.
Losers have to be Sebastian and Sergio. One lost out due to yellow flags. Other due to strategy.
Fernando, gets on, and just delivers ! Amazing

[click]

Part of me wanted Alonso to finish 6-7th, but the pragmatic side of the brain acknowledges how difficult and good performance 9th itself is.

Charles surprised me as I though Sienz got the better of him. Glad to see Ferrari up there. Max finally seems to have got the pace to equal Hamilton. Gasly once again shows his talent, but I still feel the fight for 3rd and 4th will be between mclaren and ferrari.

Good start to the season.

[Hatari]

What a refreshing start to see a non Mercedes take Pole! Superb from Max.
Perez trying to be a little to smart in his first Quali by opting for the Mediums in Q2.

Nice also to see a tight mid field with so many intra team battles to look forward to.

Tough luck for Vettel and Ocon, Mazepin's spin through them off their hot laps.
But Alonso on it as usual!

And how quick if that Alpha Tauri!! Yuki was flying. Gasly has a tough battle ahead.

Bit surprised to see Daniel pip Lando in the 1st Quali of the season.. imagined it would have taken him a couple of races to get on top of things.

Ferrari up there in the mix. Im sure we will see some exciting wheel to wheel racing right down the grid.

Now we can stop praying to the rain gods at every race this season!

[shibujp]

What a start! If qualifying is an indication we are in for a fantastic season. 8 manufacturers in the top ten.

Qualification Report

For a change the most consistent car on the grid looks to be the Red Bull of Max Verstappen. He was doing all weekend what the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton was doing druing the weekends of the past seasons. Busy clinically nailing the top of the leaderboard. Excellent lap to nail pole especially after the damage to his floor riding the kerbs on Q1.

It would have been easier for Red Bull to have Sergio Perez somewhere at the front to the grid to counter the two Mercedes but it is now a familiar situation for Red Bull of not having their number two driver in a strong position for the race. But we have seen Perez fight from the back no later than the 2020 season finale at Abu Dhabi and he manages his tyres extremely well. Race pace in practice was good too so he should be able to take the fight to the Mercs in the race.

Looking at the starting grid we have Leclerc, Riccardo, Gasly and Sainz in the top ten. These are all fast starters so we may see a few muggings at the start I hope which is going to really put pressure on the leaders at the start. Let's not forget old man Alonso who dragged the Alpine into Q3. He never left it seems.

Riccardo though outshined by his teammate in Q1 and Q2 nailed it where it mattered and out qualified his teammate with both McLaren's in the top ten.

Ferrari can heave a cautious sigh of relief as it seems that they are off to a good start after the nightmare of a season last year. Leclerc even topped the leaderboard in Q2 in between before getting knowcked off. But with Leclerc at P4 and Sainz in P8 they seem to be in a strong position.

Vettel was unlucky to have yellow trouble having his laps spoilt by double yellow flags. Hopefully that is the issue because the last thing he would want is to be outqualified by his younger teammate let alone being so far out of position. Hopefully he can make up grounds during the race itself.

Tyre strategy during the races itself seems to call for a two stop strategy running mediums in the first stint followed by hards if last years Bahrain results are to go by.

There are many two-stop strategies that are similar in terms of overall time, but the quickest one in theory goes as follows: two stints on the P Zero Yellow medium tyre of 18 laps each, plus one central stint on the P Zero White hard of 21 laps: set to be the strategy for all those who set their best Q2 times on this tyre.
The second-quickest two-stopper instead uses all three compounds: the soft for 14 laps, the hard for 24 laps. and the medium for the final 19-lap stint.

A soft-medium-medium strategy is slightly slower: this would use the soft for 15 laps and then two sets of mediums for 21 laps each.

Another two-stopper uses two 16-lap soft tyre stints and one 25-lap hard stint (probably as the middle stint). This last strategy can be a favourable one with cooler conditions. In terms of overall time, that's similar to the above – and, as always, all permutations are possible.

Link

High rake v/s low rake
It seems that the aero regulations especially at the back of the car has negatively affected the low rake cars which are primarily the Mercedes powered cars while the high rake cars of the likes on Red Bull and Ferrari have it better. Both Mercedes and Aston martin have openly commented on this. As we have seen McLaren have stole a march over the others with their rear diffuser concept that I am sure will be quickly copied all over the field.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/h...ction/5940840/

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/n...artin/5941007/

Whatever said it seems to be taking F1 in the right direction so it must be the right move.
Drive on,
Shibu.

[akash_v12]

Qualifying in one word was EXCITING.

Max really was superbly comfortable with the car, it seems! His final quali lap was 1:28:997 (I assume very low fuel). Checo was unlucky, having been kicked out of Q2 itself. However, I really hope he performs today and shows that he was the driver that RedBull need.

Mercedes made it clear that they were sandbagging, although they're not as quick as the RedBull, the car seemed much better balanced than what we saw 2 weeks ago in Pre-season testing.

Even McLaren made it pretty clear that they were a force to be reckoned with this year. Superb pace from both Lando and Daniel.

It's also good to see both Ferrari's back in Q3 after a while. Loved how Sainz outqualified Charles by just 0.001s! They were quick in Q2 and seemed to have recovered a lot of support with the new PU.

Although Alonso returned with a bang, the Alpine and Aston's might not rank as high as I thought they would. Poor Vettel had to continue his streak of Q1 exits, this time due to Mazepin spinning after breaking the assumed agreement to not overtake drivers lining up for the final run. (DC & Social media ended up calling him Mazespin!).

Special Mention to Tsunoda! My god, is he quick. Super control over the car and if he continues to drive like this, he might be on a Top-10 Finish this year!

[speedmiester]

Brilliant Race and what a season opener!!!

Lewis drove a Champion's race and this is as close as it can get.
Max and Lewis' on track racing will be this season's cherry on the cake.

Great drive by Perez to start from the pit to finish 5th. Another great drive by Norris to get to 4th.

Max must be gutted but he will come back strong for sure

[akash_v12]

OH MY GOD! What a fantastic drive by both Verstappen & Hamilton. Max was pretty-much literally ‘on it’ and what sportmanship from him. Could’ve easily taken the win and gained an advantage but to return the position, Superb, just Superb! It was the first time that it didn’t bother me that the broadcast was only showing those two.

Feel sorry for Vettel, his entire weekend had been a riot. Good improvements from both Ferraris as well as the Mclarens. Bad luck for Alonso, but again, was driving very well. Perez and Tsunoda too, super-super drive by Checo. Pitlane to 5th! Tsunoda also ended up with the a World Championship Point.

[Shiftlock]

This is my first time watching the F1 championship live and it has been exhilarating to say the least. The battle between Hamilton and Max was absolutely brilliant to watch, truly skillful racing from both of them!!

Great job from Mike Tsunoda as well, to get a point for AlphaTauri on debut and Perez did well to finish inside the top 10 after that start.

Really looking forward to the rest of the season and the many battles to come .

[shibujp]

Verstappen was tested and found wanting. But if this is the sign of things to come it's going to be a mega season. However I found the mid-field battles to be quite less action packed than last year.

Drive on,
Shibu

[fz_rider]

Round 1 goes to the reigning champion. Max must be pretty upset, but needs to take these into stride and get on!
Two more mentions, Norris and Perez, absolutely beautiful drive by these two.

[mayankk]

Well, that was stomach churning!!
Surprisingly sporting of Max to concede the place back. It was just so close, but when there was just 2 laps left, I was sure this was Hamilton's race. What a drive by the champion!!
The midfield is, though, so open and much more exciting. I'm just glad mclaren are doing some things right.

[Cyborg]

Max was not being sporting, merely sensible in acceding to his team request/order. If he did not give the place back he would have got a 5 or 10 second penalty depending upon the Stewards for gaining an advantage while overtaking as all four wheels of his Red Bull were outside the white line of the track when he managed to go by Hamilton.

Great racing by the pair and Hamilton proved why he is a seven times World Champion by his defence on worn out tires.

Cheers

[GTO]

An awesome race! I hope this is setting the tone for the rest of the season, and am so glad it wasn't a boring parade. There was action at the front, in the midfield and at the bottom.

Loved how Hamilton saved that little bit of his car / tyres for the final laps of the race. The duel with him & Max was beautiful. Both drove well. I also like how Max / Red Bull had the maturity to immediately let Hamilton through after that overtaking move. But strategy & skill ensured that Mercedes beat them, despite Red Bull Honda being faster yesterday.

Quite sad to see ex-champs like Kimi, Alonso & Vettel being where they are. They should retire, man. Kimi & Fonso have been around so long that they raced with both the M Schumachers, father & son

[vb-saan]

Brilliant race indeed! The way Hamilton and Mercedes team worked through the laps was just awesome. This nicely set the stage for the upcoming races.

[motorworks]

A brilliant start to 2021, it looks like Redbull would offer some stiff competition to Mercedes this year! However I think there is still more to come from Mercedes. In terms of race pace they seem quite evenly matched, and pole position may depend on how well each track suits them.

And just see that massive difference of performance between Bottas and Hamilton, over and over again! Bottas is not even in that league of Rosberg who gave Hamilton serious competition. Perez was a bit unlucky, with the qualifying and the race start. But the way he came thru the pack, it says a lot about the car as well as his consistency. He did not put a foot wrong. I expect him to really take the fight to Bottas and perhaps even the top two.

McLaren and Ferrari seem very close. Probably mclaren has better race pace, and todays undercut probably helped them better. However I think Alpha tauri are also in this battle, so will see these three teams bunched up together in most races.

And no, the midfield hasnt caught up to the top 2. There was at least 20 seconds between Bottas and the next bunch of Norris, Leclerc and Ricciardo.

So the pecking order seems to be Redbull, Mercedes, Mclaren, Ferrari, Alpha tauri, Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, Alpine, Williams and Haas. I dont see this changing significantly since most teams are focusing more on 2022 with the new regulations.