Another victory for Verstappen
Max Verstappen took his 10th victory of the season to extend his championship lead to 109 points. Max didn’t have it all his own way today though as both Mercedes put up a challenge. George Russell and Charles Leclerc rounded out the podium.
The Biggest talking point
The biggest talking point of this race is the fact that Mercedes should have won that race or at the very least finish second and third. On Lap 48, a pitstop for Verstappen would see him come out behind both of the Mercs but then came Yuki Tsunoda who decided to stop on the track because he believed that his tyre wasn’t on. Alpha Tauri told him everything was fine, so the Japanese driver got back underway before pitting, changing tyres and then stopped on the track again just 2 corners later. The VSC was then deployed which allowed Verstappen to make his pitstop and stay in P1. However, after Valtteri Bottas’ engine failed, a full safety car was deployed and Max pit and found himself behind both Mercedes in P3. However, in a weird decision, George Russell pit for softs but Lewis didn’t. This gave Max an easy chance to overtake Hamilton and win the race. George ended up being on the right strategy and overtook his teammate before Leclerc got past to knock Hamilton off the podium. Lewis was very angry on the radio and rightly so. Either don’t pit Russell so he blocks Verstappen and Leclerc behind or, pit Hamilton as well so he can have a shot at attacking Max. Splitting strategies was always going to mean that one of the Mercedes drivers were going to lose out.
The Standout drives in the race
I only gave 2 drivers a perfect rating of 10. One of them was Max because he won the race and was very calm despite all the challenges that he looked like he was going to face. The other driver that I gave a perfect 10 was Fernando Alonso. Fernando Alonso started in P13 at a track that is very hard to overtake and managed to finish in P6. The Spaniard has now finished in the points in the last 10 rounds and is arguably the third best driver on the grid right now. He is going to be a massive loss for Alpine and a massive gain for Aston Martin next season. The other drivers that impressed me today were the two Mercedes who both did really well, Lando Norris who drove really well today but will be frustrated to lose out against Fernando Alonso. Esteban Ocon also had a good race even if it wasn’t as good as his teammate. Lance Stroll scored a point which is a big positive for the Canadian and I thought that Alex Albon did really well to bring his Williams home in P12.
Drivers who had a horror race
I gave 2 drivers a rating of 1. Daniel Ricciardo was horrendous this weekend, absolutely abysmal drive from the Australian. Ricciardo had a very bad qualifying and I actually think he was even worse today as he finished 17th place with only 1 car behind him on track. Speaking of 1 car behind him on track, Nicholas Latifi was also really poor this weekend. Despite the late-ish safety car, he still got lapped and had no pace this entire weekend. Latifi doesn’t deserve to be on the Formula 1 grid next year and at this rate, neither does Daniel Ricciardo. I also thought that both Alfa Romeo drivers weren’t very quick today, and neither was Kevin Magnussen. Yuki Tsunoda’s incidents were just really strange.
Overall Race Result and my rating
Max Verstappen: 10
George Russell: 9
Charles Leclerc: 7
Lewis Hamilton: 9
Sergio Perez: 5
Fernando Alonso: 10
Lando Norris: 9
Carlos Sainz: 5
Esteban Ocon: 8
Lance Stroll: 9
Pierre Gasly: 7
Alex Albon: 8
Mick Schumacher: 5
Sebastian Vettel: 3
Kevin Magnussen: 2
Zhou Guanyu: 2
Daniel Ricciardo: 1
Nicholas Latifi: 1
Valtteri Bottas: 2
Yuki Tsunoda: 2
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