KleinBlue

🩵🩵

[ari 🐝 @laurogeitabat]

"george's power unit selected reverse"

he will take every chance he gets to shit on the ai power units 😭😭

[Racing Balls F1 @RacingBallsF1]

Toto Wolff BLASTED Zak Brown for swapping his cars at Monza 25’, and one year later he’s made that moment look insignificant by comparison.

It’s honestly baffling how this driver swap is being underplayed. Kimi couldn’t fight for the win, and they weren’t trying to maximize constructor points. Not to mention that letting Kimi through fed George straight into both Ferraris. You could maybe justify it if Kimi had kept George within his 1s window. But not the case here, and I bet if you play that over 10x, George finishes off the podium 9x.

[셀버트 @uruptosmth]

Oscar Piastri about the overtake:

"I think George's power unit selected reverse down the straight to Turn 7, and I picked up one more [position]"

Piastri is informing the public MUCH more about George's PU issues than Mercedes (they lie to hide them so bad)

[셀버트 @uruptosmth]

multiple car issues for George this weekend, including a critical deployment issue AGAIN, and you STILL don't address it

inexplicable lack of speed for George for MONTHS, and u tell the driver it's his driving style -

but Kimi struggles with pace ONCE, and you immediately plan to "deep dive into the data" because "it's important to solve them"

really, Shov?

[Holy_Moly @Holy_Molygr1]

Even though HAM was on tyres five laps older than ANT’s, he was already clearly faster before the swap, so at that rate, catching ANT was only a matter of time. Mercedes may have wanted to avoid the risk of ANT being caught, attacked or even passed by HAM, so they chose to swap the cars immediately instead of waiting for ANT to close to within one second of GR first.

But GR was the one who paid the price for that decision. He had to slow down and wait for ANT to complete the swap, losing around 1.5 seconds in a single sector. That reduced his gap to HAM from 1.77s to just 0.43s, bringing their battle forward unnecessarily and putting HAM straight into OT range.

So from the way it played out, Mercedes seemed unwilling to let ANT take even that level of positional risk, while being perfectly willing to make GR lose time and transfer that risk and pressure onto him instead.

[⁶³ @ dante ᶻ 𝘇 𐰁 @demol1tionlov3r]

Can you remember the rain?

[𓊆ྀིbunny𓊇ྀི⁶³ GEORGE WIN🏆 @sunoopompom]

"It's great to see George back at that level" tbh he never left. it's the team that has been failing him and continues to do so shamelessly

[Holy_Moly @Holy_Molygr1]

About saving George’s race ❌
About saving ANT’s position ✅

🔻If GR could defend HAM on older hard tyres, he could defend ANT too. Unless Mercedes believed ANT could simply pass him on the straight — which raises another question: has Mercedes still not fixed GR’s straight-line speed?

🔻Maybe you can call the swap “for the team,” but saying it was about “saving GR’s race” makes no sense.

Without the swap, there were basically four possibilities:

① ANT couldn’t hold off HAM.
ANT had fresher tyres, so he could at least fight HAM and cost him time and tyres before HAM reached GR. Even a P2/P4 would have been better for GR’s championship.

② ANT held HAM off.
Mercedes still gets P2/P3, exactly the same team result, while GR keeps P2 — better for his championship.

③ Neither ANT nor GR could hold HAM off.
Then Mercedes could end up P3/P4 or worse. But this argument only works if Mercedes believed ANT, despite having fresher tyres, had little chance of defending HAM. If so, “protecting the team result” at least makes some sense.

④ GR and ANT fought for the position and it ended in contact.
After Canada — where ANT repeatedly ended up in the gravel while fighting GR and kept asking the team over the radio to report his own teammate — maybe Mercedes thought avoiding another heated intra-team fight was safer. That would be understandable, but it still wouldn’t be about “saving GR’s race.”

What actually happened? Mercedes swapped them, then cancelled the instruction for ANT to give GR a tow, leaving GR on older hard tyres to deal with HAM. Afterwards, they admitted they hadn’t expected GR to keep the podium anyway.

So “for GR” simply doesn’t add up. And “for the team” only works if Mercedes believed ANT couldn’t defend HAM or that letting the two race was too risky.

What Mercedes clearly prioritised was securing P2 for ANT.

🔻Some people say “ANT was P2 anyway, GR was just giving the position back.”

But the first VSC had already benefited ANT. He was slow on his third stint on hards. GR had also struggled on his second set, but after using his own feedback to ask Marcus for a front-wing adjustment on the third set, he became around 0.4s faster than ANT.

Had ANT stayed out, he could have faced pressure from a faster GR and the Ferraris. Instead, he pitted for softs under the VSC — what Toto called a “free pit stop.”

So ANT got the benefit of a free stop and didn’t have to fight GR on track to regain P2, because Mercedes simply had GR give the position back.

The pit stop may have been “free” for ANT, but the whole thing wasn’t.

Someone still paid the price. That someone was George.

[Danny ⚡️I STILL BELIEVE IN GR1 🩵 @alons_hoe]

Bro all these mfs who keep talking about “Kimi was faster on fresh tyres he was always going to overtake George” as if it wasn’t Merc’s CHOICE to only pit Kimi during the safety car 💀💀 like well WHO set that system up????

[KleinBlue @KleinBlue1129]

Mercedes really thinks we’re all clowns, huh? If it was actually about saving Constructors’ points, you’d send the car on fresh tyres to fight Ferrari—not throw George under the bus on old hards. But sure, call it “saving race time” and hope nobody notices the bias. 🤡

[Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team @MercedesAMGF1]

Looking back on the final Dutch GP with Shov, in our @akkodis_global Race Debrief 🗣️

[KleinBlue @KleinBlue1129]

How does Mercedes have the audacity to call this “saving race time”? You inverted the cars and put George on old hards to defend against Ferrari. You sacrificed his race just to protect the other car. Don’t dress that up as strategy.

[Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team @MercedesAMGF1]

Looking back on the final Dutch GP with Shov, in our @akkodis_global Race Debrief 🗣️

[rumi @graceruszell]

good morning

[SparkColonel @sparkcolonel1]

I can't believe everybody is allowing him to just bullshit like that, you either pit and get better tyres or not and keep the position, but I guess at Mercedes you get better tyres and you keep position because your teammate has to give it up for you?

[F. @icelady8704]

Antonelli didn't need to pit... but Mercedes boxed him because he was struggling on the hards, while George was faster on the exact same tyres. It’s not George's fault that Mercedes chose to pit Kimi, and by staying out, he earned that position fair and square.

[bruhlette | f1a’s pr manager @bruh_lette]

• built gaps again and again after safety car restarts
• scammed a position
• pulled off an incredible defense with ancient tyres

divas there’s a fraud between you

[nad⁶³ @leoncelo_]

remember 🥺🥺

[demi ⁶³ @demirussells]

mercedes doesn’t have the backbone to do this again because unlike lewis, kimi needs to be handed points and unlike bottas, george is the stronger driver of the two.

[셀버트 @uruptosmth]

wished so bad to be proven wrong here, but of course:

Wolff has confirmed a full PU upgrade at Monza for Antonelli because "that's the best track to take it [the grid penalties]".

but for Russell, "discussions are ongoing about where to take it" - because apparently, the best track to take it isn't quite the right answer for him. How peculiar.

the ADUO upgrade has not been officially confirmed yet in English articles, but Italian media has confirmed it,
and Mercedes won't risk grid penalties if not for the ADUO.

Russell has used up 1 more PU component than Antonelli this season. MORE, not less.
Sure, he does have less mileage on his ICE and TC - ONLY because Mercedes had waited for his ICE to crack open instead of switching it out for precautionary purposes like they did for Antonelli - but counterintuitively, he is STILL the one getting disproportionately disadvantaged by his PU.
They had stabbed him in Hungary immediately after the new parts were fitted, and they had attacked him in the Dutch GP as well:

because after a flawless Sprint Quali and Sprint, Russell suddenly had ANOTHER deployment issue in early laps that let Piastri fly past with a breeze - up to Lap 7. (Suzuka flashbacks, anyone?)

So, on top of the >Software< problems that's affecting Russell every single race weekend,
he will now also have the inferior PU >Hardware< for a minimum of 2 GPs.

& perhaps MORE IMPORTANTLY:
He'll have a PU deficit not only to his teammate,
but also to the two Ferraris, confirmed to bring their 2nd ADUO update to Monza as well,
and possibly also the McLarens (depending on where they take the upgraded Mercedes PU).

Mercedes is yet AGAIN throwing Russell to the Ferrari lion den in favor of protecting Antonelli - despite after seeing this weekend: Russell dominates his teammate when given a functioning car and software.

In both Race strategies and Season updates strategies, the @MercedesAMGF1 team are making incomprehensible decisions that indicate they are willing to RISK their Constructors' Championship for something else -
And the only gain from these decisions seem to be protection for a certain Driver's championship points.

Is that the "championship" Wolff says he's "fight[ing] for"?
It had felt unthinkable, but now - there doesn't seem to be any other logical explanation.

[Mexico Grand Prix 🇲🇽 @mexicogp]

En Zandvoort, George Russell alcanza el podio #30 de su carrera. 💪🏻 🩵 Definitivamente, uno de los pilotos más consistentes de la parrilla en los últimos años.

#Formula1 #F1 #DutchGP

[mo ✮ @russellatte]

completely sacrificing george so that the ferraris don't get kimi is just so cruel