Holy shit. Haven't seen anything like that in a while.

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Think that gives them the constructors championship lead too.

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That was a crazy race. Nice to see Colapinto and Bearman in the points. McLaren now has the lead in the constructors. Piastri is the real deal.
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Leclerc duffed that win so badly.

You can't let Piastri get you from three car lengths back for the lead. He had to defend that pass better than he did.

And had he done so, he wouldn't have been in the shit with Sainz and Perez.

Leclerc has to be better than that if they're gonna win a Constructors. And they certainly won't win a Drivers that way.

Just cannot let that move happen.
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It was a great move by Piastri but Leclerc didn't defend much at all. I don't think he was expecting it. He should have been anticipating that move. It reminded me of that Leclerc overtake of Perez at Las Vegas last season.
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Reminded me of Piastri on Norris the week before at Monza.

He keeps doing these dive-bombs that nobody even tries to defend. And after last week, I just don't understand how LeClerc didn't expect it.

No question it was a great move from Piastri but Leclerc has to defend that. He has to expect it and with only one real option for Piastri after coming from that far back, he can't be surprised by it.

Be better Charles. You're my boy but you messed that race up.
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So much more fun to watch than it was when the only suspense was whether Verstappen’s margin of victory would be o/u 10 seconds. Second half of the season has been great.
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Nice race by Lando today, but the commentary was atrocious. They confused the Ferrari cars more than once, Kravitz said that Piastri was on 33-year-old tires, and Crofty praised Piastri for undercutting the Mercedes as we watched him pull out behind them. Somebody praised Franco for scoring a point from P11. And when one of the drivers said the car was a sauna, Kravitz [?] said "Actually, it's more of a steam room." The fuck you think a sauna is?
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Yeah they were pretty bad today. Race was fairly boring.

Now there's almost a month off until COTA.
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I spent the whole race just annoyed at how badly Ferrari duffed Q3.

Sainz crashing out trying to...start. LeClerc going off in the first turn and having his lap deleted. Hell, Ferrari having to wait for a single lap to begin with because they burned an unnecessary set of softs in Q1 (which they ALWAYS do for some strange reason).

Guys - you need to beat 5 cars in Q1. You could probably do that in friggen reverse - could you please try to save a set of Softs so don't have to go out there with that much pressure on a single lap?

It's at least the 2nd time you've blown that in Q3 this year.

Ferrari should've had 2 cars in the top 5 today and at least one of 'em on the podium. They duffed an easy chance to pull closer to Red Bull in the Constructors.

Additionally, I'm pretty sure we established that McLaren didn't do enough when they had an opening. Verstappen getting 2nd ahead of a hiatus says they've probably found enough form to hold Norris off just long enough to keep 1st in the Driver's.

1 DNF could change that but man, nobody breaks anymore. And nobody so much as bumps into each other either - 9 straight races without a safety car? The odds of a DNF from Max are pretty damn long.
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This was the race LeClerc should've had last week. I don't understand why they didn't have him push in the first segment and push that gap out to 10-12 seconds of Piastri.

Instead they played the tire game, left the gap around 6-7 seconds before they got undercut (which pulled it down to 4ish) and then LeClerc had a miserable out lap that put Piastri in position to try that pass.

All of that came from them being too passive in the 1st segment. We know these tires are showing better deg rates than teams are expecting. And today Norris just said "Fine - I'm gonna drive the damn things hard and build my gap..."

Teams should've been doing that the last 8-10 races since we really learned these Pirellis are durable as hell.
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Oh to be in Marranello tonight listening to the Church Bells ringing
Hats off to STR.
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So we can pretty categorically state that Norris just hasn't driven well enough to win the title, right?

Verstappen annoys the shit out of me, but he's absolutely driven better than Norris this year.

Norris did the same stupid thing he did against Piastri several weeks back - he tries to close the door but only kiiiiiiinda. He kinda dive down but not all the way. Close the door, Lando. So he leaves the door open for Max to push him wide and Charles just waltzes right through (hurray!).

And then over the last several laps he was just pussy footing around into T1 and wouldn't try to pass Max on the inside under braking. Max was leaving the door open to the outside (when EVERYONE knew he'd close it exactly the way he did at 12) and Norris kept trying to convince himself that he'd make the pass around the outside.

Why, I do not know. Verstappen isn't going to let you stay on track there. It's a bullshit rule but it IS the rule. He's going to drive straight to keep the apex then close the door on you, force you outside track limits and then kinda leak back on.

And if he IS going to try that pass around the outside, make Max commit harder to the inside. Jink inside to get him to close that off before moving back outside. And Norris just wasn't doing it.

It reminded me of Sainz getting stuck behind, I think, Ricciardo, in a sprint back in May. He just kept doing the same thing over and over and over again. And he just never completed the pass against a clearly inferior car. He never mixed things up and eventually it looked like he just bitched out.

Norris just kept doing the same thing and it wasn't a think that was ever going to work because Max was going to push him wide every single time. He was going to have to back out or crash out.

He had a delta but not the delta he thought he had. So the only thing he could do was force Max to commit and then pivot. He just never did. He kept acting like he had a 1 second delta on Max and at that point in the race (and in Max's dirty air) he just didn't.

And it seems like Norris does that every week. He just hasn't raced well enough to win the championship.

Put Leclerc in that McLaren and he wins the title. Norris, OTOH, ain't that guy. Or certainly hasn't been to this point.
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Well it was a race late, but at least the Stewards decided they'd have enough of Max's shit this week.

That said, he'll do the same thing next race. He's gonna keep driving like that because there's no downside to it. All he has to do is stay within 10 of Norris each race and if that means wrecking his own race to wreck Lando's, he'll do EXACTLY that.

And Checo, you suck real bad man.

But the worst thing that could happen for the racing the rest of the year is Red Bull not being in the Constructor's hunt anymore. Because now the leash is truly off Max Verstappen - there's ZERO risk for him being a menace out there.

He's gonna be a real piece of shit the rest of the way.

Oh, and go Ferrari! Go get that Constructors, lads! Hell of a raise by Sainz and one of the best saves you'll ever see from LeClerc to hold onto that 3rd podium spot. Good lord, how did he keep that thing out of the wall on the final turn. Yiiiiiikes. He didn't box for new softs and the fastest lap, he boxed for a change of drawers. That was a poopy pants moment for sure.
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Ferrari going 2 races in row with a 1-2 finish is almost a miracle. They almost always find a way to submarine that type of thing from happening once let alone two times.
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