As nothing else has been posted, I figured I’d open this up to discussion.
A brilliant race, I thought. Lots of fantastic battles. An intelligent strategy from Ferrari. Not too chaotic or arbitrary. Albon fighting on 40-lap old tires for a huge P7.
How’d everyone else enjoy it?
I can’t understand how Perez just couldn’t compete with Ferrari’s pace at all. Not his best circuit.
Not his best season.
not the best driver.
Yo why is this thread still here?!
Why not?
I enjoyed the race. Being honest Max was on his own race as usual, but not that far.
The fight ALO-HAM was very intense, many many laps doing qualy laps each other and putting pressure on the rival. ALO managed the gap brilliantly IMO given the circumstances (lift&coast)
Ferrari’s dice was right in this race 😄 Very good and consistent race pace, just marginally slower than podium cars on a diferent strategy. Kudos to them.
Albon: Driver of the Day on merit.
Plenty of action in the race despite the DRS trains
I know Max doesn’t need the help but my god Perez does not deserve that Red Bull put Norris in it or something.
+1 for putting Norris in as a fan. However if I was Red Bull management I’d keep giving him one year contracts until be becomes a liability. They’ve got constructors nailed on and a clear driver hierarchy. It’s ideal for them.
Yeah they need what Bottas was to Hamilton, up there but never making a serious challenge for number 1 like Rosberg did. Then again Max is so dominant that maybe fixing what’s not broken isn’t an issue.
Put Albon back in that car, now that he has the experience. He’s proving how good he is at Williams.
They have a perfectly serviceable multiple GP winner as a reserve driver …
I’m glad to see that the gap between RB and the competition is slowly closing. Maybe it was a one off, maybe they expected rain all weekend and went with a setup that favors stability over performance, maybe it was a dead bird, maybe Aston’s and Merc’s upgrades really work.
Ferrari took a gamble and DID NOT FUCK UP. That was a refreshing change of pace, especially after being in full Ferrari fuck up mode all weekend (all year so far?).
The battle between Alonso and Hamilton was epic, as were the ones behind Albon who held onto his spot by sheer will and raw pace.
De Vries being De Vries, taking himself and K-Mag out on an open online lobby divebomb…
All in all, a great race :D
I’m glad to see that the gap between RB and the competition is slowly closing.
Well… there was a dead bird in the break duct of Verstappen, so I don’t think they are closing the gap.
Admired by Norris’s last attempts, just wished he made it for the heck of it.
I love that Albon and Williams 100% played to their cars strengths, and nobody seemed to have an answer for it!
We need to add Alex to the ‘tyre whisperer’ club. It’s one thing to stay ahead of that DRS train, it’s another do so when his tyres were so old. I’m so happy to have Albon in the sport. It’s a shame Williams aren’t in a place yet to have a good second driver, who could also pull shit like this.
It isn’t some giant secret; they are super fast on the straights so followers with drs can’t get alongside, and are “fast enough” (but slow comparatively) in the corners that nobody can get past them.
We see this pattern from them in every race; they always lead a long drs train, with the car in front of them tens of seconds ahead.
Such a great effort for Albon… easy DotD, and huge for Williams in the lower WCC battle. Hope it’s a sign that the Williams upgrades are decent & we may see more of it.
Russell cracked under the pressure of trying to stay on the back of Alonso… absolutely insane that the car almost finished the race after that hit… I was surprised it finished the lap! F1 cars are made of strong stuff these days.
Max mega as ever… ominous that Newey appears to be fully invested in F1 again after a few years where he seemed to drift away.
kudos to Albon and Williams 👍 👍
But what did Lando do though?
My understanding is that he slowed down on the race track leading up to pit entry so that McLaren could double-stack him after Piastri. It’s against the rules to deliberately go slow and impede like that.
Interesting that Nando didn’t get a penalty for doing it worse at Monaco last year
I don’t remember Alonso driving overtly slowly under a safety car which led to an enormous gap between him and car ahead
@WatTyler makes sense, but its sad that it wasn’t covered in the broadcast
They did discuss it on the international (Sky) broadcast.
@WatTyler was unfortunately listening to the Dutch one
Ted whinged about the nondescript nature of the penalty so much that someone from the FIA got in touch to tell them what it was for.
Favorite moment was Alonso’s pit telling him Hamilton was just 1.9s behind. “Okay, leave it to me.” And then suddenly it was a 6 second gap.
Good strategy from Ferrari? The end times are nigh
The strategy was scary! Maybe with Meckies off to a new team someone else is getting a say
I think they used all the bad choices with sainz… although I can’t blame them, a race here with no SC was really an oddity.
I’ve pinned this to the top, thanks for starting the post.
Enjoyed the race which for me was interrupted by a biblical downpour causing my roof to leak. 😬
DotD for Albon. Kept it clean under huge pressure.
Decent race. Ferrari finally pulled off 5Head strategy, great recovery run by them.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the race. I noticed that Valtteri scored a point though, so that was nice.
Valtteri almost had 9th, but Stroll passed him at the finish line for 9th. Find a replay it was an amazing finish
Great race. Loved those last lap moves from Norris, Ocon and Stroll. Well deserved DotD for Albon. Feeling bad for Tsunoda though, that 6.4 pit stop was painful to see.