An utterly spectacular Brazilian Grand Prix ended with Max Verstappen taking victory after a controlled race from pole position. Behind him, Pierre Gasly made it to the podium in a crazy end of the race that involved two safety cars.
Let's quickly review last straight and fight between Gasly and Hamilton. It was wheel to wheel from last corner, and nail biting to the finish line. It was just epic. Imagine it there weren't safety car before. DRS would ruined everything.
Mercedes have managed Hamilton's race supremely badly today. Very poor strategically.
Couple of strange decisions, nothing at stake, nothing to loose, I just think they wanted to have some fun
Possibly they wanted to see just how much they could throw him under the bus in one race!
Literally fed him to Red Bull twice and then pitted him off the podium, leaving him to try overaggressive moves that probably weren't on- inadvertantly ruining Albon's day, which really sucks for Albon, and STILL probably finishing off the podium after penalties.
I don't know who wins today's Darwin award between them and Ferrari.
Mercedes dropped the ball here, fair play they got the undercut at the first stops but Hamilton was swamped by Max.
Their mistake was in the second stint, Lewis showed he had good pace as he was catching Max at the end of the stint. They should have pushed harder earlier and gone for the undercut on hards, that way they would have forced Red Bull in to doing a longer stint on the mediums.
Last edited by Wass85 on 17 Nov 2019, 21:12, edited 1 time in total.
Good race by Max. He is definitely on for the WDC next year. Give him the car and he will maximise it.
Hamilton was just having fun out there. I am actually surprised that the Mercedes is defenseless on the straights! Max could just breeze past Hamilton up the hill. crazy stuff.
Rookie Mistake by Vettel again, what a shambles. I feel so embarrassed for him right now.
Everyone is blaming Mercedes but Hamilton was having a lot of say on strategy throughout the race. So do we know for a fact that it wasn't Hamilton's decision to pit at the end? Knowing Hamilton lately, why would he have pitted if he didn't think it was the best decision? He would have ignored orders to pit if he thought it was wrong.
Did Hamilton pass before the start/finish line on the last restart? Or was it legal to be side-by-side at the line as long as you aren't ahead of the car who was in front of you during the yellow?
The bias is so obvious on Sky. 99% of incidents Brundle argues in favor of the driver who was ahead and was "driving the racing line", he'll say that the driver is "entitled to the racing line". But Hamilton causes a crash and suddenly he reverses his long standing interpretation of fault.
I was a Vettel fan but the number of collisions, crashes, and other embarrassing incidents he's caused in the last few years has been crazy. Next year I suspect Vettel will make for a lot of problems and drama for Ferrari and hold back Leclerc in multiple races, while Leclerc will be solidly better throughout the year. Though we'll see..
Why do the stewards take so long to decide? If they can't decide by the time of the podium they might as well take their time and announce decisions a week from now.
Too bad that F1 is going the way of Nascar and artificially making safety cars to spice up the excitement, but such things are accepted as part of F1 now. There was no reason to even touch Bottas' car, or just wait for the crane to come and lift it from the other side of the wall. It would have just required seconds of a local yellow for a marshall to attach the lift to the car.
Still the result of course was amazing. What an awesome race.
Last edited by Brenton on 17 Nov 2019, 21:15, edited 1 time in total.
Mercedes dropped the ball here, fair play they got the undercut at the first stops but Hamilton was swamped by Max.
Their mistake was in the second stint, Lewis had good pace as he was catching Max at the end of the stint. They should have pushed harder earlier and gone for the undercut on hards, that way they would have forced Red Bull in to doing a longer stint on the mediums.
No, the mistake was not following Verstappen into the pits under the first safety car. They left him an absolute sitting duck at the restart. It's clear the Honda engine was every bit as good, if not slightly better than the Mercedes one here, and on old tyres? It was inevitable he'd get overtaken.
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Strangely, the Safety Car driver and race control seemed, in both occasions, to be trying to advantage Hamilton.
During the first time, they took ages to complete their stay on track. By that time, Hamilton needed his tyres to last.
During the second time, they were rather fast to leave the track. As a coincidence, Hamilton needed to attack a take advantage on DRS enabling.
Mercedes dropped the ball here, fair play they got the undercut at the first stops but Hamilton was swamped by Max.
Their mistake was in the second stint, Lewis had good pace as he was catching Max at the end of the stint. They should have pushed harder earlier and gone for the undercut on hards, that way they would have forced Red Bull in to doing a longer stint on the mediums.
No, the mistake was not following Verstappen into the pits under the first safety car. They left him an absolute sitting duck at the restart. It's clear the Honda engine was every bit as good, if not slightly better than the Mercedes one here, and on old tyres? It was inevitable he'd get overtaken.
No, that was the thing to do as Lewis didn't have the pace to pass Max.