Have any of you ever heard such harsh criticism in F1 by a team towards their engine supplier, or any other similar sort of relationship? Or even in other pro sports? Wow, the way they ripped into Renault today.
Bottas lost his mind today, not only showing an awful ability to judge his grip in two incidents but also in post-race he half-blamed Danny for the T1 incident
RE Vettel: It's standard tactic when overtaking, when you clear an opponent before corner entry that you hold as close of an inside line as possible to prevent them from getting alongside you. F1 drivers do that all the time on corners where the normal racing line isn't hugging the inside curbs. Vettel was 0% at fault imo.
Vettel could have been more cautious and entered the corner taking the normal racing line (far right side of the track before turning into the corner) and given a couple car-widths of space on the inside through the apex . That would have increased the risk of being passed but I think he still 95% chance would have come out of 2 ahead. Would have been better to take that 5% risk of being overtaken , because it would drastically reduce the risk of being hit.
The fact that Kimi was right behind is a factor too. Vettel should have considered that Bottas is not only trying to fight him but also stay ahead of Kimi, so of course Bottas isn't going to just back off comfortably entering 2, accepting losing the position to Vettel, because that would risk him losing another position to Kimi. Vettel put too much faith in Bottas not bottling it.
Reminds me of Singapore... too negative of a mindset, too defensive and pessimistic. Too concerned that he couldn't beat his opponent(s) by taking a normal racing line so he tries to force the opponent into backing off. This could have been another DNF, a total disaster!
Ferrari and Vettel would have a comfortable WDC and WCC lead by now in my opinion if not for a combination of a lot of bad luck (losing wins due to VSC/SC lottery), bad strategies, really bad wet weather performance, and Vettel's mistakes at Baku, France, and Germany. Vettel continues to show great driving in both qualy and race pace, but those few 1 second lapses of judgment are so costly.
Sets up a great 2nd half to the season. Vettel is the fastest right now yet so far he's only finished on the podium 58% of the time! (7/12) If he averages finishing 3 points ahead of Hamilton the rest of the season he'll win the WDC by 3 points.