It really was a racing incident, but I still don't like it. Now the points lead to Hamilton down to 9 points.
Finally a really exciting race, right up 'til the last lap. Of course, all of the excitement was caused by the safety car and some nimble thinking and incredible pit work by Red Bull. But as exciting as it was, it was really unfair. Unfair because the manner in which the safety car was deployed advantaged cars who had not yet passed the pit entrance. Cars from Max back had a shot at a quick tire change without losing track position. Ahead of Max, and you're choices were limited, if not out of the question. F1 needs to take a cue from NASCAR and close the pit until the safety car makes it back around the track. Then everybody has an equal shot at a tire change under SC conditions. That might have made things a bit less exciting, but a lot more fair.
Perfect summary! I watched the start, and went to bed expecting two Ferraris on the podium with Bottas. What a shock when I woke to the results! This chart posted by someone above says it all. View attachment 2530941 Sent from my iPad using FerrariChat.com mobile app
Determined drives by both Hulkenberg and Alonso. It's early days but I am surprised(pleasantly) that the Hulk is outperforming Sainz.
Unfortunately Ferrari is notoriuos for having bad tire strategies and today was another proof of that. Over all we had a great pace. So, they should have followed the Mercedes tire strategy and pit when they pitted.
As I sit here hours later, what bothers me the most is how Max’s arrogance seems to hurt Ferrari and especially Sebs championship run. Last year and now into the third race he’s already damaging Sebs chances. The fact that he hauled in points after two questionable actions in the same race is just one more thing wrong with F1. Honestly I think he just ran out of laps do do even more damage. Another two or three go around and he would likely continue the streak with kimi and Botttas. Thankfully he didn’t damage Sebs gearbox and cost Ferrari even more points.
If they do not clamp down on that rediculous child that IS Max Verstomping around like a bull in a china shop, it will be obvious that he is being employed to manipulate the championship results.
Max "Crashstappen" once again torpedoes the Vettel, although to be fair - with those tires, he would have got the position in time methinks without having to make a mess.
For so early in the new season, this is already the second race decided by the Saftey Car, Vettel beat Ham with the help of a Virtual Safety Car, and now Red Bull wins a race because of Safety Car timing. This hasn't been F1 racing on the track, it's been a classic case of "lawyer ball" (when a player is walked in baseball vs earning the achievement through athletic performance).
Absolutely right, the rate he closed, he knew he had the position, and likely Vettel knew it too and wouldn’t have made a fuss of being passed, maintaining fourth and staying ahead of elton. Max needs to learn when to attack hard, and when to be crafty about it, otherwise at some point he is going to hurt someone or himself really badly. The stewards should be having a word with him, and red bull, about calming down, as he managed to take out the third placed driver, ruin his race, who happens to also be the championship leader, in a race where he would have sailed past 30 seconds later with no fuss. He also managed to hit elton (although I don’t care a damn about that) and generally exudes a lack of consideration for the safety of anyone but himself
Max like Marquez. Otoh on a day where everything went against us we still ended up with a podium and kept 1st in the wdc.
Seb orchestrated his own doom. He should have known better than to go wide and leave the door open for Max......never, never never.....then Seb throws the towel in. Yes, Max's fault ....he would have blown Vettel off the track on the next lap. BUT, Max is a dicer, Vettel isn't.....A Max vs Alonso duel is long awaited...and looking forward to it. My guess is, the rest would run for cover !
I don’t see Max changing. Sure he apologized and admitted fault...a first... but from reading more comments from him I get the impression he doesn’t see anything he needs to change...I guess in his mind it only just didn’t work this time. Reminds of Anchor Man...”60% of the time... it works EVERY TIME!!!”
I did not get to watch the race as I was so dead beat tired last night it was not funny. I dosed off during the pre race, woke up right at the start then dosed off again about 5 laps in. Woke up this morning with the TV still on LOL Looks like I will be watching the reply this evening.
I can do ya one better. I dozed off last night at about lap 25 (intentionally as I thought the outcome was pretty predictable). Channel surfing this afternoon I found it was replaying on espn news (need to check this excellent guide more carefully: http://www.tvracer.com/ ) so watched some more laps and gave up again and went about other thangs. Now that I know the upset, I wanna see it so I'll be watchin' again tonite. For now, Indycars at Long Beach.
Just to put it into perspective of how beat I was yesterday I did not even watch the supercross race , and I am passionate about SX than F1.
tvracer.com tends to not list all the F1 practices, although I will give them credit for updating their listing when I wrote them for the Australia race.
Max is a talented idiot. He should have been disqualified, on numerous occasions. There are enough drivers who make smooth and efficient overtakings. Ricciardo is the very best example. But FIA will do nothing against Max, because they know he puts quite some salt and pepper in the otherwise boring F1 soup of today, just like that other insane, charlatan DRS invention. The engineer who invented this, is a shortsighted imbecile.
Ferrari need a sit down meeting to discuss how to fix planners mistakes. The car is great, both drivers are doing well except sending Kimi under a bus is plain unacceptable and ruins Ferrari reputation again so that leads to the pit wall needing to be less prone to mistakes and better planning. That's twice in the row they made huge mistakes. 1st nearly cost them victory and 2nd definitely seemed like the team in the pit wall was in tatters and put valuable results that could of been an easy 1-2 down the drain.
