2020 F1 Challenge R15 & R16 Bahrain/Sakhir discussion thread

I do agree with Ed that Perez should have been faster than Ocon when they were teammates at RP. Ocon came into RP and made an impression, which I thought was impressive against a veteran teammate. What Ocon lacked was race pace against Perez, which comes with experience. Ocon has more experience now, and he used it to good effect last Sunday. The headline was his podium. But that wasn’t the most impressive aspect. Ocon made a one-stop work with judicious tyre management, which doesn’t sound very exciting. But when one considers that Ricciardo made two pitstops, and had more pace towards the end with everyone bunched up on the final restart, Ocon still had pace in his old hard compound tyres. Ocon has become better at giving up positions when needed, not fighting every battle and damaging his own race. Worth keeping in my view.

With Albon, I don’t doubt that Red Bull’s part Thai ownership is a factor in his employment with Red Bull. On the other hand, he is a qualified candidate on-paper considering his relative success in the junior categories. What I would say, he was never that brilliant. F2 has been a lot about tyre management, its dominated proceedings in the championship for years. So if someone manages their tyres well in F2 and wins races, whether they have the raw pace, intelligence and adaptability for F1 is open for debate. My personal view is that Helmut Marko would prefer not to pluck candidates from F2 and get them into F1. He is forced to do this now, because drivers need to rack up enough points to race in F1 to get the super license, and racing in F2 plays a role in that. Today, Verstappen wouldn’t have been able to go from F3 to F1. Albon fitted the bill at the time, because he had been racing in F2 for a few years.

The current super license requirements had good intentions, but it’s now become too restrictive and arguably elitist. Why doesn’t a full season of competing in IndyCar, give the same amount of points as racing in F2 across the finishing positions? It’s a more powerful car (on road courses) with no power steering, and a similar pace to F2 cars. It’s even worse with Super Formula in Japan, which in terms of laptime is the closest thing to F1. I mean if it’s about averting danger, a few drivers in F1 have been competing in the sport for years yet keep getting involved in the same incidents.

Seeing the cars navigate the bumpy turn 7 on the Outer Loop was fantastic. I think it was a brilliant layout across the weekend. I really don’t see the need for the GP layout at all. The Outer Loop has a fantastic flow to it, and I want it to be the permanent Bahrain GP layout. Abu Dhabi is another circuit where they need to cut the number of corners; it can easily be done because of how many configurations they have.