sofiamae1994
VIP Member
It's nothing to do with his dad.
To have a chance to get pole, Lando has to put in a perfect lap while driving the car right on the edge. Contrast that to Max, who has the luxury to have a less than perfect qualifying like today and still be the one to beat for pole. That's down to the car. (Checo has never been great in quaifying so his performance in that RB is kind of a moot point). We've heard a lot this season about how the Merc drives on a knife edge (and it's true, it does and has cost both Lewis & George in quali this year at times when they're pushing flat out when the car isn't quite there) but the McLaren still does as well. It's much faster now but the handling is not better - both McLaren drivers have said so and people keep ignoring that. Lando is making quali errors when he's pushing for pole because he is having to hang it right out on the edge and the car characteristics mean the margin for error he has is minute. He's also dealing with an understeery car when, like Max & Charles, his preference is for oversteer.
It's the same reason we've seen Charles make errors at times - he was doing it earlier this year when the Ferrari didn't have it's usual one lap pace and the car had too much understeer, even going out in Q1 & Q2 a few times when he should have been easy top 10 because of errors from pushing too hard to wring the absolute most out of it. Now since the floor upgrade he's able to set up the car more to his liking again with more of an oversteery set-up, so Charles is able to make the most of Ferrari's one lap pace again - it's a more comfortable qualifying car again and it's showing in his quali results.
Max used to ride that fine line when the RB wasn't quite there on one lap pace a few years ago - he'd also make quali mistakes trying too push hard to get pole. The margins for hero to zero are very very fine in those circumstances. And as I said above, both Lewis and George have had the same issue at times this season too, trying to wring a lap out of a car that isn't quite there and runs on a knife edge and they've slipped off that knife edge several times too. The fact people don't seem to understand this is so infuriating to me.
Personally, I'd rather see the top drivers push 100% for pole than dialling it back slightly and settling for less. Especially at this stage of the season when there's not a championship fight on the line. And before anyone says "well Oscar didn't make a mistake" - he actually did, it just didn't cost him as much time as Lando's cost him and unlike Lando, Oscar wasn't on a lap that would have got pole anyway so it's gone under the radar. But Oscar on brand new tyres only ended up 0.034 ahead of Lando's used tyre time from the first run when he should have finished ahead of Charles.
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love it when he gets like this
