Diesel wrote: ↑30 Oct 2017, 02:29
This has to be contender for the most boring race of the year? Other than the first lap "drama", which robbed us of a race for the win, the only notable on track action was when Vettel & Hamilton had to overtake Massa & Alonso. All other drivers just let them through, what was that all about? Literally every driver Vettel & Hamilton sailed up to going in to T1 just stayed left and let them pass down the inside. The best part of the race was Alonso vs. Hamilton. Bottas was 20 seconds off the lead, Kimi was another 30 seconds behind? What's going on? It's a massive shame the top 3 didn't make it cleanly through the first lap, I feel like we missed out on an epic battle for the victory. Ah well, congratulations to Lewis Hamilton for another well deserved WDC.
It's a truly truly awful track. The cars have problems with aero due to the altitude so for some reason they decided to use a track surface that offers absolutely no grip whatsoever, making moves around half the track near impossible. DRS barely works due to the lacking drag on the car you're trying to pass. It's flat, the corners are all slow, mostly very narrow and 2/3rds of the track is awful.
Design is bad as well, the compromised absolutely everything to get the track to go into and around the stadium. They really should have had some kinda hairpin with the run off into the stadium with a couple Germany/Malaysia type straights into/out of it, then go around both stands on the outside. The having to go through the middle makes the last corner terrible, the complex slow and awful and designed with effectively zero possibility of passing inside the stadium.
If they had a hairpin Germany style with the stadium next to it, the fans there would get so many overtakes to see throughout the race. As it is, nothing, just everyone filing through slow as hell. Three awful races imo and the sooner it's gone the better. Unfortunately it seems to be getting well attended by the fans despite being crap races so... we'll see if Liberty choose to renew it or not, 5 years afaik so 2 left for sure.
Bad altitude for a track, bad design, bad surface. Maybe if they reshape some of the corners, resurface the track so there is some actual tire deg and grip. That is the other issue, bad grip is one thing, no tire deg so there is basically no strategy possibilities makes it bad. Sochi has that issue two, both need resurfacing with far more abrasive surfaces. Sochi actually has interesting corners, Mexico just doesn't.