F1 2022-Round 15 - Zandvoort :Dutch GP

What a weekend!

As it was the first GP I’ve ever attended, I wasn’t sure what to expect. When we arrived in Amsterdam we had some negative locals tell us it will be total carnage trying to get there and back.

In fact, it was the complete opposite. Seemingly from lessons learned last year, there were near constant trains to Zandvoort and back with a good queueing system. Biggest wait was today, on the way back, and only around 10 minutes.

The walk to the track was excellent too. The small town of Zandvoort has fully bought into being an F1 town, with locals out selling random clothing and food, like a market. Because the heat was intense too, there were people giving away free chilled cans of water.

When we got to the track, it was a total festival atmosphere. EDM banging out with everyone in good humour. Our seats were just at the pit lane so we had an excellent view of the cars coming down the final straight(and there was a TV so we could see everything else) we could also see turns 2 and 3 due to the elevation.

Everything was so well organised. Never waiting too long to get a pint or food, and there was loads of options.

The atmosphere for the race was unreal. Obviously mostly max fans but a lot of Hamilton/Mercedes fans too, watching Russell overtake Hamilton had some people genuinely shocked! The collective groan of Ferrari being Ferrari was hilarious too. Being able to cheer Max across the finish line was unbelievable.

We stayed for a couple of hours after because there was a DJ the missus loved on stage, and to be fair he was excellent.

Just got back to the hotel now. Wrecked, but both of us already thinking about our next race. Still buzzing!

I wish! Saw Lando leaving, closest I got to them apart from that was the drivers parade, where they were out in open top porches waving to the crowd.

Obviously Max got the biggest cheer, but the second biggest by a distance was for Ricciardo. Goes to show that whatever about his struggles now, he’s still insanely popular.

It felt like Verstappen (and his car) are so much faster that barring mechanical failure there was no scenario he wasn't going to win today.

The commentators tried their best to generate excitement but it was never in doubt.

I don’t know, it felt like Hamilton had a shot at winning today with the way the one-stop and the hard tyres were performing. Verstappen, through no fault of his own, almost seemed to be in no mans land strategy wise before any of the safety cars. Hamilton was closing the gap rapidly after Perez and Vettel cost him time and Verstappen was going to have to come up past Russell and Hamilton from a bit of a distance whenever he did pit.

Relied on a clean race though and that was the risk. We know the Merc can’t match the RB. I think that was a big part of Hamilton’s frustration (knowing he had a genuine shot at the win) and then he doesn’t even get a podium.

Social media fairly grim today. Seems to be a lot of hate directed towards Hannah Schmitz

Some nonsense conspiracy doing the rounds that she used AT/Yuki to get a safety car for Max’ benefit.

F1 Twitter is the worst. She’s been prominent this year because she’s been exceptional, but now people know her she gets horrible things said about her.

She apparently had Max say on radio he didn't want hard tyres, right before she had Yuki pull a stunt to bring out a VSC to give Max a cheap stop but make it look like Max was being hard done by the VSC.

Apparently Red Bull,who lead both championships by 100 points are going to pull such a stroke that risks them getting thrown out of both championships that are 99.9999999999% going to win barring something fairly epic in the next 7 races happening.

A lot of it is also because its a woman calling the strategy too

Sounds like it's mostly British fans up to that nonsense ?

Social media, giving idiots an audience and triggering mostly decent people to react to their idiotic comments in an attempt to change their ways. You can put out all the anti sexism and anti racist adverts you like, it's not a lack of education it's just awful people getting satisfaction from being awful.

Anyway she's still RB principle strategist doing a great job and they are still low life's sitting on their phones spouting nonsense, it will never change.

She's very clearly the best at what she does.

Abu Dhabi last year was a masterclass in tactics and strategy. There was a number of incidents which forced RB into changing tact quite a few times in the race. As things changed, they kept adapting. I thought it was a joy to watch and have watched that race back quite a few times. Then when opportunity arose they were in prime position to capitalise. Same as they did yesterday.

They've been consistently the best at strategy for quite a long time. Fair play to the woman and her team.

To be fair Wolff said it was bizarre and it did help Max but they still probably wouldn’t have won the race.

Sky will spin any story they can into a pro Hamilton one, because they’re a British channel and he’s by far and away the most popular driver there. If they can make people think Hamilton is back to winning races then they’ll get more people watching, it’s that simple.

A channel asking you to pay to watch a sport probably isn’t the best place to get news for it, I think.

Even Merc said their own timing would have given Max the win, but he would have had to work harder for it.

look Toto is protecting LH. Fact is LH made the call to stay on mediums... GR made a call to swap for softs... i guess GR was in on the conspiracy? Its all to protect LH