[Cyborg]

Both Red Bulls to start the race tomorrow on soft tyres. Hamilton will start on mediums. The Red Bulls should have better traction at the start and will be aiming to either overtake the Mercedes of Hamilton if he qualifies ahead or put some space between themselves if they qualify ahead.

Christian Horner at the end of qualifying 2 said Max’s lockup on the mediums forced their hand to go to the soft tyres and it was not planned. Could be gamesmanship also, actual fun begins 1830 hours Mumbai time tomorrow.

[Chetan_Rao]

Red Bull, with a slightly slower car, gambling again. Committing to softs for the first stint, then giving Max a tow to put in a stonker of a banker for Q3, and Checo carries on and puts it in provisional P3. They need to try something different, they lose if they replicate what Merc do.

Edit 1: Merc not thinking of a tow, or Hamilton just prefers clear track to do his thing? Looks the latter.

Edit 2: P1 & P4 for Red Bull, so they can try and cover both inside and outside lines down to turn 1 if they get the expected better launch on the soft tires, but Hamilton has more margin to manage the first stint with medium tires. Merc will be hoping Bottas can make up some places so they have strategy options.

Setup nicely for tomorrow.

Norris P3, what an effort!

[speedmiester]

Wow, what a great setting for the grand finale for the championship.
Two contenders on the first row with differing strategies.

I would say Lewis has an edge as he has the best starting strategy with medium tyres, but max will be quick off the line on the softs.
It's everything to play for tomorrow.

[adwaith]

That was really unexpected. Lewis looked quicker all through until Q2. Tomorrow will be a lot of fun.

It's a shame that Bottas is in P6, especially considering this is his last race. Hopefully Mercedes win the Constructors.

[gauravkaushik]

What an amazing qualifying, despite the tow, Max's lap was colossal!

With different tyres, the strategy calls shall be paramount. Never saw such exciting finale since turbo hybrid era. Hope to see a cracker of race tomorrow.

PS. Missing the F1 action in India

[aim120]

Redbull rocket ship was 6km/h faster on the straights without a tow and with the tow they made up all the time in the straights.

[mp417]

Interesting qualifying.
Perez giving tow to Verstappen resulting into 0.5 sec faster lap It was planned well and they sent both cars early in Q1 when the track was empty.

Ham prefers a clear track to just focus on his driving.

Verstappen's medium tyre lockup has forced them to take a different strategy. So two title contenders on different strategy.

Bottas in sixth? That's not much of help. However the start line dash might change lots of things with Norris/Sainz in the mix of things.

It going to be an interesting finale for sure. Hoping to see a clean racing (and not the "I wont let you pass" tactics) tomorrow with winner taking the WDC.

[Ik.Singh]

What an interesting qualifying session. Full of traffic. But what an amazing strategy Red bull has pulled out of their hat!

With Max going on softs tomorrow, it will be interesting to see how things pan out in the race. They will certainly be looking for the undercut on lewis. And with Perez up in P4, I think the strategy for him will be that he goes long on those tyres to cover for Max when he pits early.

We have an absolute belter of a race tomorrow in terms of strategy and hopefully we can see some amazing driving.
May the best man win 🤘

[sravankrishnan]

Interestingly, on the second run Max was just as fast in the first two sectors as his first run. The impact of the tow is a bit overestimated I think.

[dpat17]

Monster lap by Max.. let's see how he holds up at start tomorrow.
This is going to be Kimi's last F1 race hope he finishes it off in style. Check out funny livery put up by Alfa Romeo.

[shibujp]

Some inspired thinking by Red Bull to get the pole. Verstappen had asked the team for a tow in Saudi too. But great strategy and the execution was spot on.

I feel Norris may be a wild card there. He was none to pleased with Perez apparently blocking him. Perez will be cruicial to either get to P3 as soon as possible and pressure Hamilton or given the softs, beat Hamilton and proceed to control the pace to allow Max to build up a comfortable margin.

Drive on,
Shibu

[adwaith]

Originally Posted by Ashishkel

Or it could be RB Sandbagging ?

Turns out, that's exactly what it was.

Originally Posted by aim120

Redbull rocket ship was 6km/h faster on the straights without a tow and with the tow they made up all the time in the straights.

Apparently, for both the Friday sessions RBR ran the engine from Bahrain. That's how reliable the engines have been. There's good probability that the engine in the car now has been turned all the way up for one last race.

I just can't wait for the race to get underway. I've been itching to watch since Lewis's win last Sunday.

[SJM1214]

It's been incredible, it's been unpredictable and it's been controversial. It might sound clichéd, but if you were to make a checklist of all the things you need to make a truly great championship fight, this really has had them all.

The stakes are clear. They are level on points, so winner takes all. In the case of a tie, Verstappen wins the title as he has one more victory over the season.

Today Evening is goibg to be fun. See you all at Abu Dhabi.

[akash_v12]

OT: BHPians, out of all the 39 F1 threads that I’ve created or have been a part of, this is the first one to reach the 2nd page even before the race started. Just shows how much interest and popularity today’s race will have. Absolutely insane!

Good strategy by Redbull yesterday. Returned the favour to Checo as well. I still don’t get why Mercedes didn’t use the same strategy. Either way, there will be different strategies all around and it will be fun to watch. Just hoping for clean, fair racing from both drivers and teams today.

[adwaith]

Originally Posted by akash_v12

Good strategy by Redbull yesterday. Returned the favour to Checo as well. I still don’t get why Mercedes didn’t use the same strategy. Either way, there will be different strategies all around and it will be fun to watch. Just hoping for clean, fair racing from both drivers and teams today.

Considering Bottas's engine troubles, the two would've made sense but apparently Lewis likes to be left to himself.

Interestingly about the tyre choices, he went ahead and said that no one locks up in turn 1 and and if you do it's not a big one. He also said that he's 'conspiracist.' He's implying that RBR was trying to mislead Mercedes.