Why Was Leclerc so Hard to Pass? | Jolyon Palmer’s F1 TV Analysis

Jolyon Palmer is back from an exciting weekend in Austin to answer your burning questions! This week, he focuses on the Lap 1 carnage during the Sprint on Saturday, as well as Charles Leclerc’s masterful defence of second place.

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So the start of the sprint race then the most consequential moment of the weekend and let’s have a look at this big tangle behind Max Vstappen. So Max gets a great launch. It’s not the easiest place to start necessarily in Austin. A lot of times the the poleman hasn’t led but this time Max comes straight across and Lando gets the bad start. So you’ve got Oscar now attacking Lando and that’s going to be your catalyst for this incident behind Lando’s poor start and Oscar on the offense. Behind you’ve got Fernando Alonso now coming up the inside. An average start, but a nicely placed first corner for Fernando. It’s really wide in Austin, so it’s enticing. Drivers can go in really deep. Uh, but you can also cost yourself a lot of time on the exit, and you can go three, four wide at the at the apex of the corner. And that’s what we’re going to see at this moment. Max has gone in deep. Lando’s gone in deep because he has to defend from Oscar. So Oscar now is thinking, well, there’s no point me going deep because I’m going to go around the outside. I’m just going to get shuffled off the road. So, he’s now looking for the obvious thing, which is the the switch back move. But behind you’ve got Fernando here coming up the inside of Nico Hulenberg. So Hulk can’t get to an apex and he’s actually carrying plenty of speed in because he’s trying to defend from Alono on his inside and hold that round the outside after a great qualifying with with Sala. But as we play it through, Pastry now is trying to square off the corner. So he wants to get that exit. And actually with the trajectory that he has, it’s not inconceivable that he would lead this race were he not to get a whack from the back of of Nico Hulenberg here because as they’re getting on the gas, he’s just got the car straight. If I rewind it to the point of contact, he’s got the car straighter whilst Max and Lando are very wide having gone in so late on the brakes to cover their own positions. So Oscar is actually in a really great position at this moment, but he’s not aware that you’ve got Hulk and then Fernando Alonso right on his inside. Certainly not aware that Hulk has Alonzo on his inside and it’s a classic incident really of of Austin. So there we have the the contact absolute carnage throughout the field. A little bit more contact further back as well and uh and McLaren are both out on the spot. So, first question on this is uh why did Oscar get no further investigation for the sprint incident? Now, I’ve seen quite a few people who seem to think that Oscar’s to blame for this incident. But for me, that’s a nonsense. This is a complete racing incident. And I think the stewards are absolutely right to to wave play on. And even beyond that, the the Singapore incident was also a racing incident, but Lando took a little bit of responsibility afterwards. There were repercussions within McLaren for his contact with Oscar. But here, I don’t think Oscar’s really to blame at all. So, let’s have a look on board with each of these drivers involved because I think you can see the logic for every single one of them how they drive turn one. So, we start with Lando and he gets the bad start. So, he has to go defensive. Of course, he wants to be attacking Max, but Max is long gone. And now you’ve got Oscar coming in here. So, for Lando, he has to go late on the brakes. He can’t afford to let Oscar run his outside. These guys are championship rivals. Let’s not forget. their teammates, but championship rivals first and foremost. So, it’s obvious here for Lando to make sure he defends the inside. That’s what he does. He goes in deep. Max actually lures them both in to go deep. And you can see how wide Max actually goes as well. Just making sure that Lando’s not going to shove one up the inside of him if he’s cautious on the brakes there. And he knows only too well from last year that that’s a possibility. So, Lando does the sensible thing for Lando. But as he gets to the exit, there’s the whack and the contact. So, unlucky for Norris. certainly an innocent one in this, albeit his slow start is what is the catalyst. Oscar then. Now, I can see why people might think that Oscar is more to blame in this incident, but for me, he’s not. And he’s doing the thing that you’d expect a driver to do in this moment as well. So, he gets off the line well and is immediately alongside Lando. So, now you have a choice into turn one. Do you go in really late on the brakes, try and get around the outside, or do you switch back? They are your two options really on on this start. And because Lando and Max both go in deep. The obvious thing now for Oscar is to switch back. What other options does he have? Well, he could try and stay around the outside of this, but he’s never going to make it stick. He’d be shuffled out wide. He’d probably lose places to Hulenberg and Alono on the exit of the corner and we’d be thinking that was a ridiculous bit of racecraft. So, the other option is he simply parked it behind Norris, which also would be a strange thing to do when you’re trying to fight with a title rival. So, options one or two would be strange driving for me from uh from Pastri. Option three, yes, it’s a little bit more risky because he’s going to cut back and and tighten off the exit, but it’s the natural racing instinct for a driver. And because of the way the other two go in deep when we get to this moment and he’s managed to to cut back underneath Norris, he’s got a chance now. He will pass Norris if he gets cleanly on the gas. So, it’s a going to be a nice move. He may well pass Versappen because of the way that the top two have both gone in deep. So, it’s it’s an understandable bit of driving, but he’s gonna get the whack from uh from Hulkenberg. Some people think because he cut off that that exit on the corner, it’s definitely more Oscar to blame. For me, that’s a harsh indictment of of the racing incident here. I think Oscar’s done the logical thing that most drivers would do and he’s simply caught up in it because he’s got two cars on his inside. I’m just know what I’m going to do in that like I just got hit, right? So, um no, I I did nothing wrong. It’s uh yeah, further back things happened and then I just got unlucky and I got hit because of it. So I need to look a bit more carefully. It’s it’s more people further back just being a bit careless and um we are the consequence of that. Yeah, it’s obviously not ideal, but um I I actually haven’t seen what happened yet. You know, I tried to cut back on on Lando and I mean we’re both very far from the apex and yeah, then got a hit and um yeah, obviously sent me into Lando. So, um, a shame. So, let’s throw it forward now to the start of the Grand Prix. Everyone on tent hooks because we’ve just seen the carnage of the sprint start the day before, but it was a pretty safe start from most of the field. The critical pass is going to be Charlotte Clair on on Lando Norris at the front. So, once again, Lando not getting a great start. Max is able to cut ahead and only for the third time in the last eight starts keeps the lead from pole. The uh the key component here is that all of those three are Max Vstappen starting on pole. So he’s obviously got a handle on starting at Austin that other drivers don’t. We head in to the first corner. Charl on the soft tires knows he’s got the grip to try and go around the outside. Behind you’ve got George Russell now getting pinched behind Norris and that’s going to allow these two on the outside to sweep past George who started in fourth place. It’s a good start from Hamilton who manages to hold Pastry around the outside as well. But the key move is Charlotte who now gets off this corner really well with his soft tires and actually has the traction and the drive through turn two to momentarily look like he’s going to challenge Max for the race lead as well at this point. But you’re never going to throw any sort of shape unless you’re properly alongside into the high-speed sweepers there. So good to get into second. Had to do that on his soft tires and that pretty much set us up for the Grand Prix battle. Vappa is now going to win. The Ferrari can’t go with him, but it’s a good aggressive strategy from Ferrari andlair is certainly in the fight for second place. Max Stappen gets the launch off the line that he needs and chops to the inside line. Landon Norris P2 wide line for Llair. Can he get past? Can he use the traction of the soft tire? He’s positioned the car. Well, he’s going to get to the inside. He’s going to get second position. Oscar Pastri has gained a place. He is up to fifth. So, this was a battle then that raged for most of the Grand Prix. We had a few key moments where I thought Lando maybe could have passed Char in the early part of the race, but Llair’s defense was superb and by the time Norris couldn’t make it through here. Vstappen was certainly going to win. But let’s have a look on board with Norris. First of all, first chance in the first stint. You got SH defending and it’s very difficult in Austin to actually force the issue here because of the nature of the corner. So Lando hasn’t done a huge amount on the brakes here. You got SH defending, but he’s still safely to the apex. no lock up, no major threat on the brakes. So, it’s a switch back for Norris who now because of the switch back is back on the outside. And the nature of the um the turns in Austin, the left into the right into the left means that if you’re switching back, you stay on the outside line. You don’t have a left into a left where you can go outside and dive to the inside. So, Norris is back on the outside line and here he’s going to try another switch back through uh through 15. But Shaw just sees this coming and it’s quite scripted here from Lando. So you got Shell now backing off on the throttle making sure that Lando can’t dive to the inside. So he’s stuck on the outside line and he simply can’t make it through on on this lap and he’s just wasting time and hurting his tires a little bit at this phase as well. But it’s good defense from Charlotte Clair and it’s a similar sort of thing to what Lando did struggling to pass Max last year before their eventual run wide at turn 12. We get another chance a couple of laps later. This time Norris is slightly better on the brakes down at 12. You can seelair is is fighting the car more which gives a chance on the exit but once again Shaw knows he covers the inside. There’s nothing he can do here. This is an ambitious attempt from from Lando. He’s never going to have it around the outside of oflair here. Isn’t far enough. Hasn’t done enough on the brakes and he’s forced wide once again. So getting very frustrated but in the end the pressure tells the soft tires remember on the Ferrari are going to give way. And thankfully for Norris in the end it’s a drive by pass because ofair’s defense. It wasn’t easy but he had the speed in the fast section and could just stay close enough in the end at turn 12. Problem is for for Lando they were on different strategies and actually as it turned out I thinklair strategy was probably the best in the Grand Prix the soft medium. So it’s the the conventional strategy if you know it’s going to be soft medium but a lot of the teams were thinking the soft might be too uh too high degradation. They were thinking it probably would be a medium hard, but the opportunity of running a soft was there. So, everyone started on the medium apart from if they had known it was a one-stop soft medium, I think you’d have seen everyone probably starting on the soft because it givesllair the chance to jump into the pits first and effectively undercut Norris again, which is what happens here. You’ve got you’ve got Sha pitting and now everyone else, Vstappen, Norris, Hamilton, Pastry, Russell, they’re all starting on this medium tire. They can’t pick to cover offlair because they’ve got to go to a soft tire and it will not do the uh the remaining 30 laps or or so that they’d need to do at this point. They don’t want to fit a hard tire because it’s just too slow at this stage. So, they have to just stay out in this phase of the race where they’re going to get jumped once again by Shaw. You can see Max suffering with a bit more degradation. Hamilton certainly falling away from the back of Norris having had a good start to the the first stint. Lando is actually by far the most comfortable at the end of the first stint which keeps him in the play with withlair for second place. But Charl on the fresh tires will just undercut back again. And it’s a good strategy from Ferrari and it means they’ve got to go racing once more and it was a big fight. Lando pushing really hard for many laps after it’s pit stop catching up but simply overheating the tires and running out of grip. So at that point, you stay close, you start to uh to to kill the tires completely, spiral out of temperature control, and you lose grip, which is what kind of happened for Norris. So we heard Will Joseph on the radio saying, “Back off, cool the tires, get the carcass temps down, really work on uh on staying cool, back off in the high speed, back off in your peak braking, and give the tires an easy time for a number of laps because these softs, they can go again if you can get them under control.” That’s what happened. And finally, we get what I would say is a really good dive from uh from Lando down at turn one. So Sh was pretty stable in the in the race. He was had great racecraft throughout. Was really good on the brakes, but this time Lando just sends it down the inside at turn one. And it’s a great move because he’s under control. There’s no big lockups. He gets to an apex and it looked for a moment like it was going to be done. Butlair’s not so easy to pass. Jumps on the gas on the exit and and comes back through. But the difference here is that with this move, Lando set himself up for a good run through the high speed, starting from way closer to the gearbox of the Ferrari than he would have done if he had just stayed in in line with with Charlotte and not tried to put the move on at turn one. So that means few corners later, we get another chance and this time Norris with the stipstream with the DRS dives to the inside. It’s a lot of marbles on the inside. So it’s a slightly risky play. He’s got to then make it stop. He’s already up to his limit of of track limits violations as well, but he’s squeaky clean. And finally, it’s a good move from from Lando and three more crucial points for him in his championship chase as well. Pastry struggling. Norris back into second, but Vstappen long gone for another win. I’m happy, but also a bit disappointed to to lose second place at the end, but I felt like this is where we belong. Uh, at the moment, it was a fun race as well. I really enjoyed the the fight with with Lando. Um and um yeah, I made his life a bit more difficult, but uh at the end he he got the better of it. I certainly a little bit harder than I would have liked, but a fair and and a tough battle. Um so enjoyable. I obviously would have liked to have challenged Max, but considering I could barely barely get past the Ferrari, uh who wasn’t as quick as Max, then uh I doubt I ever would have been able to get past anyway.