LeeF1Talk

Utterly useless how do you build the worst chassis on the grid with all the resources available to him The engine is the ONLY reason we are scoring points look how close RB is vs RBR

Max Verstappen: "I'm not enjoying Formula 1 as a whole. That's what I'm saying. I'm thinking about everything within this paddock." "Privately I'm very happy. You also wait for 24 races. This time it's 22. But normally 24. And then you just think about is it worth it? Or do I enjoy being more at home with my family? Seeing my friends more when you're not enjoying your sport?" 'I want to be here to have fun' "I can easily accept to be in P7 or P8 where I am. Because I also know that you can't be dominating or be first or second or whatever, fighting for a podium every time. I'm very realistic in that and I've been there before. I've not only been winning in F1. "But at the same time when you are in P7 or P8 and you are not enjoying the whole formula behind it, it doesn't feel natural to a racing driver. "Of course I try to adapt to it, but it's not nice the way you have to race. It's really anti-driving. Then at one point, yeah, it's just not what I want to do. "And of course you can look at it and make a lot of money. Great. But at the end of the day it's not about money any more because this has always been my passion." "As a kid this is what I wanted to do and back then I had no idea what I was going to achieve and how much money you make. You never think about that as a kid. And it's also not about that." "I want to be here to have fun and have a great time and enjoy myself. At the moment that's not really the case. "Of course I do enjoy certain aspects. I enjoy working with my team. It's like a second family. But once I sit in the car it's not the most enjoyable unfortunately. "I'm trying. I keep telling myself every day to try and enjoy it. It's just very hard." "I see it like this: You hear it from a lot of sports people when you speak to them about how are you successful. It all starts with actually enjoying what you're doing before you can actually commit to it 100%. "Now I think I'm committing 100% and I'm still trying, but the way that I am telling myself to give it 100% I think is not very healthy at the moment because I am not enjoying what I'm doing. "And now people can easily say, 'Yeah, well, you've won so many championships and races and now just because the car is not good you are complaining.' Maybe you can see it like that, but I see it different." He added that one option would be to go and race in sports cars — he is already planning to take part in the Nurburgring 24 Hours this year. "I have a lot of other projects anyway that I have a lot of passion about. The GT3 racing. Not only racing it myself but also the team. It's really nice and fun to build that. And I really want to build that out further in the coming years." "It's not like if I would stop here that I'm not going to do anything. I'm always going to have fun. And also I will have fun in a lot of other things in my life." "But it's a bit sad to be honest that we're even talking about this. It is what it is. You don't need to feel sorry for me. I'll be fine." He implied that a change of the rules would make a difference to his decision- "They know what to do"

Paul Monaghan (Chief Engineer at RBR): “You can see from our speed that the car is not performing to the usual standards we set for ourselves and our lap time is not good. It was quite challenging, but we have identified a number of issues with the car and we need to work particularly on improving the balance and grip. Now it is about confirming all the problems and understanding them well enough to make effective adjustments for tomorrow.” “The upgrades we brought are quite substantial, so thanks to everyone at the factory for getting them here, as that was a huge effort. The upgrades work, but now we need to sort out the other aspects of the car. As always, we will try to figure out what went wrong and work on understanding the issues, fixing them, and sending the car out on the track tomorrow.”

Our race runs are not very representative due to traffic. Looking at the spreadsheet, the Mercedes is a long way clear. Waiting for the telemetry app to update, then I'll confirm. Lots of variability in Oscars race runs, so I'll hazard were perhaps a tad bit ahead of them in that respect, but hard to interpret with the traffic. Lewis is struggling, as per his radio message, confirmed by the times. Qualifying pace appears to be lacking a fair bit compared to the Mercedes-powered cars, and unsurprisingly so. Some work on the low fuel pace required ahead of tomorrrow, not just the on the egine but also on the balance.

But it doesn't necessarily address the power-demand quirks that are the main limiter in the driver pushing to the absolute max. So it's half a solution really. I'd rather watch the cars run on combustion power for 80% of the lap, be 10s off the pace if it means the driver can push flat out.