Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) F1, 2021

I too would never underestimate MB. As much as I detest Mr Hamilton, I have to admit he is a brilliant driver and, as much as I would like to see Red Bull win lots of races, I can't see anyone stopping Hamilton becoming World Champ again.

Max is an arrogant little git but I do think he was right about Mercedes playing their old trick of sandbagging and they'll be on the front row again.
I would love to be wrong and would be delighted to see Mclaren doing well this year, and Perez.

I wonder if this will be the year when Max learns that it's a team sport, and having a strong team mate is a good thing - he does seem to burn through them at a rate of knots. Checco is strong enough and fast enough to deal with him... and then RedBull might challenge for both championships.

Aston and McLaren look well-placed to pick up podiums if Merc & RedBull slip up.

Ferrari are on the back foot, where fuel-flow cheats deserve to be - a shame for their drivers and customer teams. It's remarkable though - the red car was finally found to have broken the rules, instead of just redefining them - their usual agreement with Ferrari International Aid.

Lewis has to start as favourite. And is he as happy as he might be? That contract took a long time, there's hints that Lewis isn't happy with it, and he's parted company with his manager. Nico Rosberg showed it takes the finest of margins to beat Lewis - is '21 going to be VB's best (last?) chance?

& yeah, the Mercedes team is too good not to find the speed & reliability in their car. It's not fundamentally a new car, after all.

Second practice will start to show the real performance, qualifying will be interesting and the race... well it could be a real cliff hanger!!

But the first Championship that Murry will not be watching...

ah, yes, indeed.

Is there an app yet to tune the commentator's voice to a "pants on fire" setting?

Have you not been watching "the circle" ?
It seems to have been applied to all of them.

So, are we any wiser after FP2?

Looks like Mercedes and Red Bull are going to be fighting it out for pole but McLaren don't seem too far off the mark.

A pleasant surprise was that Ferrari didn't seem as far behind as I thought they were going to be with Carlos Jnr doing a very good job.

Let's see what happens in Qualifying.

We can see that RB are still out front but the rest are much closer....I’d heard rumours that McLaren had sandbagged a bit in testing....gonna be intriguing...
I suspect that we will have a better idea at race 2 of the season coz Bahrain, with its tricky conditions and abrasive track is nothing like Barcelona which normally gives a clearer picture of relative performance.
Looking forward to F2 as well today with the new sprint race ...
HB

Tend to agree with Bob, but I'm slightly confused by Mercedes: Bottas claiming the car was "undrivable",, whilst Lewis seemed to driving as normal.
Qualifying this afternoon will be interesting.
Hamilton is unlikely to win the race, he has a history of not winning the opening GP... or is it that he doesn't get on with the Australian circuit?

Sunday will be a good afternoon!

Interesting with McLaren. Remember they've got Mercedes engines this year so if they have got the packaging right they could be up there.

I do rate Norris and of course we all know what Ricciardo is capable of doing.

As Peter said, Sunday will be a good afternoon!