Championship showdown this weekend. Will Lewis win his eight title or will Max win his first? All will be revealed on Sunday.
TV Times:
Qualifying Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports)
Race Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports and Channel 4)
Bring! It! On!
Horner said numerous times after and even once prior to the SC that Max need something from the racing gods.
Imola, Silverstone, Hungary in particular Lewis had huge slices of good fortune which are the only reason the title was on the line yesterday.
If Lewis didn't have that good fortune at say Imola he would be 10+ points behind yesterday at lights out.
I think we are in agreement that Hamilton should have given the place? That was my view of it anyway.
I have seen various people saying that Red Bull got their strategy perfect and Mercedes should have pitted Hamilton.
What was so incredible about RB's strategy when Hamilton was 12 seconds clear with 6 laps to go? Only a massive stroke of good fortune resulted in Verstappen winning.
Red Bull have clearly acknowledged that, they got lucky that there was a safety car, Horner and Max both acknowledged that and I don't think anyone has ever said otherwise. But they did maximise that with superior strategy and superb race craft on the restart (it's absolutely possible to hold a car behind you for a single lap when your tyres are worn, as Perez showed previously - the result was in no way settled before the restart)
Red Bull lost about 70 points between Silverstone, Baku and Hungary. Mercedes also got hugely lucky with red flags at Imola - the red flag at Imola alone gained Hamilton 18 points while the safety car at Abu Dhabi only gave Max the opportunity to gain 7. Safety cars and red flags are a part of the sport and sometimes one team gets lucky and sometimes the other team does. In this case, for once, it was Red Bull who got lucky.
So they were fortunate that Latifi crashed, but once he did, the correct procedures were followed and Red Bull did everything right and made the most of the opportunity. And over the whole season the right man certainly won.
Been watching F1 since I was a kid and I don't recall I've never heard F1 talked about in mainstream media so much
To be fair, the criticism was that Max in Saudi drove Hamilton off the track by doing the same thing himself.
This time Max stayed on the track and while his move was aggressive it's nothing that we haven't seen before. It's hard racing.
The issue isn't so much that Hamilton should have had to give the place back imo, it's more that he clearly gained a lasting advantage that wasn't given back.
Another one of Masi's great calls, that.
Currently rewatching the race. Lap 34 and around this point I debated going to the gym…
Hamilton was on the same tyres since lap 14. In any race that’s a massive gamble, and unless you’re so far ahead that you can pit and retain position a safety car can pretty much destroy your race.
In fairness I think it wasn’t so much RBs strategy - they basically had one thing they could do - but it was Checos excellent work slowing Hamilton down that essentially forced Lewis to stay on his current set that put them in a position to win it.
Masi is RD, not a steward, stewards would have made that call?
The stewards, and Masi, are all part of Race Control.
They did touch…watch it again. Lewis was bumped.
Again, someone completely forgetting that Spa even happened.
Oh thats totally incorrect. Luck evens out over the course of the season. Mercedes are being extraordinarily petty, toto whinging to the race officials was so pathetic. Lodging appeals and trying to win a championship via dubious legal avenues is such bad sportmanship. Toto last week thrashing equipment was also incredible. Wouldnt surprise me if mercedes get rid of toto pretty soon, he's shown really poor restraint and control at key moments.
And what exactly happened there that RB gained from in any significant way?
Are you blaming Max for the rain now?
Max was gifted a win and 5 points of an advantage, again because of a sh*tshow by Michael Masi.
They went out behind the safety car only to say they completed a race (2 laps). It was a complete gift because there was never any intention of letting them race with how bad the weather was.
Don't you dare try to suggest otherwise. That race should have been abandoned and anybody with any sense of the sport knows it. It wasn't and Max was gifted a win.
He owns a third of the team, it's unlikely he's going anywhere anytime soon.
I have, I didn’t see a touch at all…
I would say RBR gambled and it paid off, could just as easy back fired as was a shot to nothing it worked... was not strategy
They didn't gamble though. Gambling implies you have something to lose and Red Bull had absolutely nothing to lose.
What way could it backfire? Max ends up in 2nd but a few seconds further back? What's the gamble here because Max was nowhere near close to Hamilton bar lap 1 (and that sh*tshow), when Perez held him up (which Hamilton pulled away again) and then at the end.
It was absolutely a strategy to do the opposite of Mercedes in the event of a VSC or SC.
This idea Red Bull 'gambled' is complete and utter nonsense. They had nothing to lose deploying the strategy they did and everything to gain.
I don’t see a touch at all.
Definitely no touch! Sure ya wouldn’t have heard the end of it from Lewis over the radio if there had been and it would 100% have been another protest thrown in for good measure too!
It had to be run or else FIA would have been in legal trouble with the organisers in Belgium and with the broadcasters from around the world.
The minimum requirement to define a race is 2-3 (?) laps, so the fIA had to do that or else there would have been legal and financial reprecussions.
No one could say it 'should' have went ahead because of the conditions, but it 'had' to be run for the reasons above.
Let's say they raced. Max, in the rain, on pole. That's a heavy bet if there ever was one. Lewis was 4th coming into perhaps the most dangerous T1 in F1.
If you ask me that outcome was an advantage to neither driver.
I'm sure Mercedes will drop their case to protect F1 from being damaged. I wish they didnt though, can't have rules just being thrown out the window all season long. Hamilton should have been forced to give back the place yesterday for example on lap 1, then the situation would have been reversed, perhaps Hamilton would have been taking Verstappen on the last lap but then no doubt Horner (a prick of a man) would have been lobbying flat out to have it end on a safety car.
George Russels tweets made me chuckle, another dick.
Gambled what.
It looks clear to me that their cars bumped..nothing heavy, but bumped.
They didn't touch at all. You can clearly see that from Hamilton's onboard.
It was an advantage to neither driver?
Those 5 points and that extra win allowed Max to come into the final race of the season level on points but ahead by virtue of races won.
You seriously believe it benefitted nobody?
Ok, but when you look at the video, why does it appear that contact was made?
I don't care. There was no racing and that win helped Max to enter the last race in the lead of the championship.
You can't talk about Imola etc without acknowledging this.
