Tyre deg is what drivers want to force them to drive the car an entire run with decreasing grip. NASCAR is notorious for a few tyre-deg tracks (Darlington but watch for Joliet next year on Independence Day weekend) where 15-year old surfaces cause problems (and Goodyear encourages it because it forces them to develop better tyres for heavy trucks). We saw Bristol what happens when tyre deg is rampant once the track temperature reached a certain level. Probably we won’t get “Bristol Tyre Deg” but F1 tyre deg could be an issue for Abu Dhabi. Drivers have to learn to drive their cars differently to get maximum life.
But in a 195-mile race (including formation laps to the grid and formation lap during the race) with a 38 gallon tank of racing gasoline, a cars must make 5.2 mpg with the 1600cc hybrid-turbo engines. It’s much easier than INDYCAR with a 2200cc hybrid-turbo engine running on ethanol fuel (no petrol), which is recommended at 4 MPG (road courses) for an 18.5 gallon fuel tank and the races are at times 50km longer than F1 for equivalent races and having half the fuel tank of F1 cars with less efficient fuel that can be doused with water in case of fire).
Teams must engineer cars to be able to go a full distance on tyres. The CCP doesn’t like it that way.
In the end, Verstappen couldn’t push Norris back into 4th-spot by his lonesome. Barring a mechanical, he was always going to have to have some help from Sainz or Russell or Leclerc.
I was puzzled by the strategery at the start when Max took off like a herd of birds because that stretched out the field, which let both McLarens exploit their superior race pace, and hindered anyone who might have been able to overtake Norris ... if they’d only got within DRS range.
Maybe they were banking on tire deg costing the McLarens if they tried to match Max’s pace, I dunno.
I also don’t understand why they didn’t pit Verstappen late in the race when he still had more than the pit delta over Piastri, and would have come out in front of him on fresher rubber, making him better able to take the defensive driving lines without risking being overtaken himself. And with the two of them dicing for the lead, they both would have been going slower and closing the gap to Norris.
In the end, max didn’t take WDC because he didn’t help himself. He didn’t employ any strategery that might have caused both Piastri and Norris to get bunched up behind him, so that Russell and/or Leclrec might overtake them.
Antonelli told Max “I’m really sorry” after Abu Dhabi because without the 2 points his bobble at Qatar handed Norris, the championship would have ended in a points tie between Norris and Verstappen, but Verstappen would have taken WDC on count-back by virtue of eight 1st-place finishes to Norris’s seven.
Max’s reply: “Mate, don’t be. It’s all good. No hard feelings.”
https://racingnews365.com/max-verstappen-responds-to-kimi-antonelli-apology-after-f1-title-loss