[The_bluester (Paul)]

The race led me to wonder about the setup that they use. More than one he has been out of position for one reason or another at the start and they have made setup changes to the car as a result, usually taking downforce away and trading it for top speed and compromising what would be quali performance for race performance. At least once they worked on it in park feme and started him from the pit lane to make changes.

Both times he notably carved his way through the field. RBR have often appeared to sacrafice straight line speed for downforce, which works well if the cards fall your way and you are in clean air and can put the downforce to use to carry high corner speeds to make lap time but if you are fighting for positions the dirty air compromises the aero performance and the lower gear ratios they select to drive it against he drag in high downforce trim leave them legeless when they get up behind someone and instead of the DRS meaning a relatively easy pass, it just results in a long time on the rev limiter.

You would have to ask why they do not set his car up like that more often. Better to be a couple of rows back on the grid with a car that can actually pass another one without the other car driver having to make a mistake than to be up the front in a car that is a sitting duck in a straight line.

His luck this year seems to be mirroring the luck he had in earlier years.

Edit: And I thikn from quotes from him, Webber shares my view of the current tyres. I just can't come at them "I can drive slower than you and still be impossible to pass" to preserve tyres which can go from new to worn out in around 15 minutes of a 2 hour race just does not do it for me. I want to see drivers having a big crack on old tyresto try to jum the car they were behind with one cracking lap after the other car pitted than to see cars lapping slower and slower and slower and then one of the cars pits for new tyres so they get a benefit out of that. Tyres that degrade by seconds per lap in a live of just a handful of KM are just bleh to me.