It’s not like Max was flying before the damage either. He was pulling away a little, sure, but nothing like usual. It’s clear the McLaren was just really fast here, just look at the relative laptimes of both Piastri and Norris before Max’s supposed damage.

I’m more inclined to think Max’s pace was lacking due to setup problems. It has happened before for Redbull, in particular on sprints. We’ll see in Imola just how well the new McLaren upgrades work. I suspect we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming, but I hope I’m wrong.