#monaco lap 1 said ABSOLUTE CHAOS

[rb9]

i’m no f1 mechanic but i do know those tyres are not in the right place

[kindestofkings]

what came first, the chicken or the dickhead?

[smau]

f1driver!reader x lando norris (eventually, friends to lovers ofc)

authors note: this is so dramatic and for what! sorry to pierre for making you the villian, and lets pretend ferrari isnt as shit as it currently is! lol enjoy, would love to know what you think <333

yourusername

liked by danielricciardo and others

yourusername tough day in the office today, mexico '22 is just not to be I guess. As always a learning curve and we will grow from todays DNF 😞

See you soon Brazil !!

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ynfan1 we are still so proud of you! keep pushing 👍

f1fan this is literally what you get for trying to compete in a MALE sport

f1fan2 fr she's bringing down pierre and the team f1fan3 too emotional for the big leagues ynfan2 stfu you do realise your favourite MALE drivers dnf all the time aswell

alphataurif1 we come back stronger!!

yourusername 👊👊

alex_albon lily is wondering would going for ice cream cheer you up?

yourusername I love her, yes please 🥹 landonorris I'm coming yourusername nuh huh its for us pointless drivers! landonorris come on it was only 2..

f1fan4 lando norizz trying to make it a double date lollll

f1fan5 bro chill these two have been friends since literal birth

alphataurif1

liked by yourusername and others

alphataurif1 the difference 2 weeks can make! our girl yourusername is starting pole position on sunday here in brazil 🔥

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yourusername woohoo roll on sunday!!

ynfan1 go bestie go !

ynfan2 AT moving up💪

yourusername

liked by landonorris and others 

yourusername great work achieved today, the car and track felt good. hopefully we can convert this position into some points to finish of the season on a high, all we need is team work on the track (and for max's alarm to not go off so he misses the race 😀)

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maxverstappen1 why the personal attack

yourusername WHY do you have to win every week, surely you are bored by it by now ... charles_leclerc I agree, maybe take a week off? f1fan2 hahah these two i'm obsessed

landonorris please do well but not TOO well, just stay behind me 👍

yourusername and look at your ass all race? hard pass

ynfan1 that mention of teamwork is a lil suss...

ynfan2 not really?? it is a team sport ynfan1 yeah but do you not find it weird how unfriendly yourusername and pierregasly are, despite them being on the same team? f1fan tbf I have always noticed how forced their videos are together. and they dont even follow each other

yourusername

liked by landonorris and others 

yourusername lollll ruining my career one interview at a time, but at least we hit the clubs looking fire 🔥

p.s. I stand by what I've said I only have apologies for two people 1) my pr manager (who I dont pay enough for this) and 2) charles for linking your name to this hot mess!

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landonorris it's so great being the unproblematic one 😎

yourusername does mcclaren need another golden driver from bristol??? I fear im out of a seat soon .. ynfan1 this is so sad you are way to talented of a driver to be out of a suit

charles_leclerc No worries 😅 Just make sure you buy me dinner next time before dragging me into the chaos. 🍽️🤷‍♂️

yourusername you got it prince of monaco! f1fan2 PLEASE PLEASE DATE ynfan2 ewww no her and lando are so so in love they're just too blind and stupid

danielricciardo absolute legend behaviour mate!!

yourusername learning from the best danny ric 😎

alphataurif1 and yourusername

Liked by landonorris and others

alphataurif1 From grid battles to glory laps! 🏁✨ Our unstoppable driver just clinched her FIRST WIN at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix! 🏆 Watch out, world – she's rewriting the history books and leaving her mark on the track. 🚀🌟

#AlphaQueen #AbuDhabiWinner

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danielricciardo What a race! Big congrats, yourusername. That first win feeling is something else! Enjoy every moment!

alex_albon: absolutely smashed it! huge congratulations on your first win!

carlossainz55 felicidades!!

susie_wolff: breaking barriers and making history! huge congratulations on your first win!

yourusername AHHHHH I CANT BELIEVE IT ! I LOVE YOU TEAM !!

ynfan1 lando where is your congrats you are slippinnn!!

landonorris

Liked by yourusername and others

landonorris I've never been this happy to lose, but it's pretty cool seeing your best friend win in her rookie year. EVEN if she beaten me to it 😞

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yourusername LANDOOOO you are a the bestest friend ever

yourusername would not have gotten here with out you, my partner in crime <3

ynfan1 best friend?? y'all are still so blind

f1fan everytime you call her your best friend you reaffirm the lando NORIZZ name

danielricciardo facts alex_albon facts carlossainz55 facts charles_leclerc facts yukitsunoda0511 facts maxverstappen1 facts landonorris CAN YOU SHUT UP

scuderiaferrari

liked by landonorris and others

scuderiaferrari oh we thought we should just let you know our driver line up for 2023 👀 say hello to the dynamic addition to the Ferrari family, the wonderfully feisty yourusername! get ready for a season full of speed, passion, and fierce competition. Welcome to Maranello! 🇮🇹

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ynfan1 HOLY F*CK

susie_wolff wow congrats yourusername!! wishing you all the best !

yourusername thank you so much susie! your advice the last few weeks has help me so much ! ynfan1 I love when girls support girls 💓

yourusername can't wait to get started! forza ferrari ❤️❤️

charles_leclerc this is going to be incredible! congrats !!

yourusername thank you charles <33 be prepared to be sick of me lol ynfan1 so happy shes got a teammate who acc is a decent guy

ynfan2 LOLLLL I bet pierre is sick

landonorris slayed 💅

yourusername 😂😂 f1fan watch out mr norizz her new teammate is mr steal-your-girl

[mickstart]

what do you think are some iconic/memorable schumi moments? i just got into f1 and would like to know more about him bc somehow i can’t really find anything like that about him.... just stats which are incredibly impressive but i can’t find anything about how he behaved or just anything about his personality..... thanks <3

:) Hi anon, thank you for unleashing the beast.

Ok I love you for asking me this thank you SO MUCH. Welcome to the circus I’m glad you’re here! Also yeah, Schumi is often talked about in terms of statistics and not as a human, Which is a shame bc like! Schumi is fascinating and the dynamics on the grid in late 90s F1 is so much fun! Also, this is mainly going to be late 90s -> early 2010s stuff bc I was born in 98 so uhhh I didn’t properly witness ANY 90s stuff and had to learn about it.

OK so I got super carried away but I’ve divided this into 3 sections: Drives/races that I think showcase some of his talents, human moments we need to talk about more, and Chaotic Little Bitch moments. The key thing to remember w/ Schumi is that he personally tends to be nice but as soon as you put him in a competition, Bastard Mode activates like a cat’s pupils going wide.

I am so sorry for the following short essay. Also some crashes are briefly mentioned but only ones with absolutely no injuries and there’s no details.

Chaotic Little Bitch Moments

Schumi debuted as a SUBSTITUTE driver for Jordan when one of their drivers was in police custody (yes. really.) The highest a Jordan had qualified all year was 10th and in his DEBUT at SPA, one of the toughest tracks, in the middle of the season, Schumi qualified that Jordan 7th! THEN his clutch failed before the first lap was even complete, but Benetton and Jordan WENT TO COURT to fight each other to sign him for their team before the next race in Monza. He couldn’t debut normally he HAD to cause a scene and set the tone.

The Red Strings of Fate: He qualified 7th, his iconic 7 starred helmet, his first victory next year was ALSO at Spa - his first complete race would be at Monza, Ferrari Holy Ground, and he finished 5th which 👀 1) he was immediately racing with The Greats. 2) Mr 5 Championships With Ferrari.

Winning a race by taking a stop and go penalty on the last lap, crossing the finish line in the pits, and making such a complicated argument about said penalty that in a hearing that was SUPPOSED to be Mclaren protesting the race result the stewards scrapped the entire penalty and the 3 who awarded it handed in their licenses??? Iconic.

Austria 2002 where Rubens was ordered to give the win to Michael. And then Michael fucking made him stand on the top step on the podium like “oh no no no RUBENS deserves this” and made a big SHOW out of it and its like “Michael stop you’re not making it heartwarming you’re making it WORSE Michael STOP” The Tension of germany 2010 podium VS the theatricality of THIS podium.

Team orders were banned because of this which also makes this indirectly responsible for Fernando Is Faster Than You having to be a coded message. You can’t escape him,

Blocking Alonso in Monaco qualifying and then, years later in 2010, overtaking Alonso technically illegally at Monaco (the race was ending under safety car, but the safety car doesn’t lead them over the line it pits and they’d crossed the safety car line and the regulations were NOT specific about the rules) and getting a 20 second penalty bc Damon Hill was a steward. Haunting FERNANDO specifically at Monaco like the ghost of christmas past? Getting a harsh penalty because ANOTHER driver he’d fucked over was a steward? Forcing the FIA to rewrite the rulebook to account for his nonsense when he was in his FOURTIES? I don’t know another chaos king.

Winning the 1995 championship by crashing into Damon Hill, getting AWAY with it for some reason, and then trying to do the same thing in 1997 to Villeneuve, failing to do so and simply rebounding off of him harmlessly, almost COMICALLY, and beaching his own car in a gravel trap at which point the FIA said “I have had ENOUGH of you Wacky Races Man!” and disqualified him from the entire championship

Forcing Mika off the track so bad at Spa 2000 that Mika realized the only way he was gonna be able to get past him was to re-invent the overtake and go for it whilst they were passing a backmarker. (The overtake itself is at 2:05 in the video but the build up to it is Important bc the key part it’s not just badass, it only happened bc Mika knew who he was dealing with.)

Spa 1998 was a Ridiculously Chaotic race it truly was the Mugello 2020 of its year, and after a crash at the start that took out almost the entire grid Schumi accidentally collided with Coulthard later in the race. (The teams used to have a spare car at every race then, so the race was able to continue after a restart.) This wasn’t a racing thing, Coulthard was getting lapped. So something in Schumi SNAPS, and he storms down the pitlane and tries to fight Coulthard while the mclaren and ferrari mechanics both hold him back and finally drag him away. He projected into the future, saw Coulthard was gonna talk non-stop shit about Seb, and acted accordingly.

Monaco 2012 Pole don’t talk to me about this I still can’t believe the audacity of this man to get the only pole of his comeback, at MONACO, at the ONE RACE where he had a 5 place grid penalty to take!!

In general, I know Cheating Bad but. I HAVE to admire the brainpower it must take to have the rulebook so memorized that whilst driving an F1 car Schumi could spot a loophole the size of the eye of a needle and then dance through it, forcing the FIA to add ANOTHER page to the rule book specially for him bc nobody else even REALISED that loophole existed.

Human Moments

A quick rant about Mika and Schumi’s entire friendship. After Spa 2000 Mika goes up to Michael, says something like “Don’t ever do that again” then they’re friends again. They had this mutual understanding that Racing was not Reality. This goes all the way back to their F3 days they were rivals AND friends for their entire career. They truly were the Sewis of the era if Sebastian was like 50% more evil. Their entire dynamic is “You’re the only motherfucker in this pit lane who can handle me”. Schumi would do some bullshit and every other driver would throw up their hands in frustration and Mika would just go “Okay” and drive better to put him in his place bc he was the only one who could keep up, and Schumi very visibly LOVED that he’s grinning after Mika owns his entire ass with that overtake at Spa. They were unstoppable force meets immovable object and I’m so sad their rivalry isn’t more talked about bc the way Mika is the only driver who can get him to behave like a normal human being is SO entertaining.

This is a sad one so I won’t link it but he started crying in the 2000 Monza press-conference with his brother and Mika when he equaled one of Senna’s records. The press kept trying to ask questions about it and Mika just has this death grip on his shoulder and tries to get them to stop or let them take a break and it’s so sad but also important to know about.

Once said he didn’t want Mick to race in F1 bc the pressure of his name would put Mick under so much stress and he wanted his son to be happy. (He fully supported Mick in his endeavors! But only after making absolutely sure it was what Mick wanted, and making sure he knew he could just race for fun if he wanted and it didn’t have to be F1)

This whole interview just after Mick was born with the Schumacher family. Special shout out to Gina on his head the entire video and also Corinna talking to the press while Michael is captivated by Mick. Me too Michael.

Once allegedly pleaded to take a stray kitten home from the track?

I reblogged this yesterday but. Sticking like glue to Sebastian at an F1 test and immediately being like “This is my new son he’s gonna go far”. There’s a lot of pictures out there also of Michael being a guest at the karting races Seb went to as a kid and baby Seb visibly losing his fucking mind at being given a trophy by his idol. Every day of my life I think about him trying to ruffle Seb’s hair through his helmet at Brazil 2012

WInning the championship in 2000. Him thanking the entire team individually and pausing mid-celebration to kiss his wife Corinna so tenderly it’s in the F1 opening. Also, the way it literally cuts from the rest of McLaren looking like they’re attending a funeral to Mika grinning at him and hugging him fucking SENDSSSSS me.

Schumi was a little shit in all the 2010-12 press conferences like, lowering Lewis’ chair, playing with a microphone wire, but ESPECIALLY corrupting baby Seb and getting him to mess with Nico Rosberg.

He’s just GOOFY! Like I refuse to let him be remembered as a terrifying force of nature he was so goofy kind of similarly to Seb. PLEASE watch this incredibly awkward interview he did with Coulthard on a golf buggy where they both had to pretend they hadn’t thought about murdering each other at least once. I think Sky F1 should force Brocedes to do this when covid’s over. “Do you mind if I drive?” “Yes.”

EDIT: I CANNOT BELIEVE I forgot the 1999 Canada press conference where Eddie Irvine and Mika Hakkinen get into a water fight and Schumi immediately grabs a towel and hides behind it and is like “I had NOTHING to do with it” 🥺 adorable, actually

A lot of people at Ferrari, including Rob Smedley (who was on the other side of the garage with Felipe Massa so not in his inner circle) have said that a lot of the success of the team came from Schumi’s LEADERSHIP more than anything, that he’d make the team get together to bond all the time. When Schumi moved to Ferrari in 1996 they were NOT dominant. He did the same thing Lewis did - went to a team that everybody said would be a huge mistake and helped build them up behind the scenes.

THIS bit of the Canada 2011 Rewind where his engineer gives him the strategy and he’s like “... OkaAaAaAay?” and then when it turns out to be the wrong strategy he cheerfully tells them it’s too late. Little shit.

Speaking of Mercedes I also wanna say that like. They were a MESS in 2012 and his car DNF’d because of a failing on their part MULTIPLE times. (In Canada qualifying his DRS was stuck open and they couldn’t close it.) He did not say a single bad word about them EVER even though the press used this to attack him non-stop as washed-up and bad without Ferrari to cheat for him. At Ferrari he was the exact same with the team, any bastard antics Schumi had for his rivals did not extend to the engineers and crew.

OK this one is soured bc Top Gear is trash BUT if you were like, a kid in England who followed motorsports? Schumi’s fake reveal as The Stig on Top Gear was like the coolest, sickest thing,

Please view this image of Schumi and Mika when they were young and stupid

Iconic Races

ok so I have limited myself to a few races that show off some of his key strengths!

Hungary 1998 / France 2004 - STRATEGY/SPEED - Schumi switched to a 3 stop strategy in 98 and a FOUR STOP strategy in 04 and won both races. In order for the strategy call to work he’d have to basically make every single lap a qualifying style ‘flying lap’ and you best fucking believe he DID THAT. God I fucking miss when Ferrari was the king of strategy.

Argentina 1998 -  has it all. Talent, battling Mika, pit lane mind games with mclaren, and bullying coulthard xxx

Spain 1996 / a majority of the wet races - RAIN - One of Schumi’s nicknames was Rain Master bc he was so fucking good in the wet. If it started raining and you were a Schumi stan you were cackling evilly before the red lights even went out. I single out 1996 bc it was his first win for Ferrari and it was unexpected but in most wet races, even Canada 2011 post comeback, you can see Schumi thriving.

Malaysia 1999 - Schumi missed pretty much the entire second half of the season with a broken leg, came back for the last 2 races with everybody murmuring about whether he would struggle, and immediately put the Ferrari on pole. Also worth noting is that he was the number 2 driver for these 2 races bc his teammate Irvine was fighting Mika for the championship and he went along with that without complaint, allowing Ferrari to win the constructor’s championship if not the driver’s.

Monza 2002, 03, 04, or 06 just because it has the energy of the tifosi kneeling at the feet of an idol to their red god.

Brazil 2006 - Fuck All Y’all - Schumi’s last race for Ferrari. He got a puncture and ended up almost lapped, and then drove his way back from that to 4th bc he couldn’t go out without reminding us he’s a bad bitch.

Monza 2012 - Defending - Don’t tell F1 Twitter that there’s actual footage of Lewis and Michael having a genuine lengthy battle on track but DO watch Michael defending like a motherfucker and Lewis breathing down his neck for half the race we need to talk about this more.

Valencia 2012 - This isn’t necessarily anything special but I cried in my living room over the only podium of his comeback so it goes on here. It doesn’t have the same impact if you haven’t been watching him struggle with the car for years, DNF-ing from car failure most of 2012, and having BBC F1 telling you he’s washed up every single weekend, but you can just enjoy one of the best drives of FERNANDO’S entire career as he DRAGS that Ferrari by its hair to a home grand prix win and then watch the crowds embrace him like jesus and also Schumi being happy on the podium. Also, the very start of this clip from the press conference: him forgetting what language he’s supposed to be speaking 

Basically, Schumi was a hyper-competitive ambitious bitch who turned into a goofball as soon as he switched the engine off. This is by NO MEANS everything if I was making an exhaustive best races guide I’d do more research and another post but I hope this is what you were looking for?? THANK YOU SO MUCH for letting me go MAXIMUM SPECIAL INTEREST and I apologize.

[georgerussellls]

top 5 races and top 5 race tracks - mclarenrise ✌️😗

thank you for the question love! uwu <3

top 5 races:

1. brazil 2019. have said it b4, but it was super exciting and i almost died on the last few laps xd

2. austria 2020. 9 retirements and lando podium! what else do i need to say

3. canada 2011. i understand this is a popular pick, but it was an insanely good race. gotta give jenson a LOT of credit for that drive

4. germany 2019. carnage. absolute chaos.

5. brazil 2016. the rain, that one save from max, as well as some incredible  drives. sexy.

top 5 race tracks:

1. interlagos-brazil: makes for exciting races! also i’m a senna fangirl sorry

2. spa francorchamps-belgium: classic but good. fast cars go vroom vroom

3.  marina bay- singapore: night race with some pretty tight turns! i dig it

4. baku city circuit- azerbaijan: tight castle part where everyone crashes is so cool, provided you don’t crash lmao

5. circuit de monaco: i dont have to explain this one, it’s monaco

phew, this took  me a while but here we are!

ASK ME TOP 5 ANYTHING✨

[thisdaynews]

Jolyon Palmer column: Fortune favours the cautious in Germany classic

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/jolyon-palmer-column-fortune-favours-the-cautious-in-germany-classic/

Jolyon Palmer column: Fortune favours the cautious in Germany classic

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer, who left Renault during the 2017 season, is part of the BBC team and offers insight and analysis from the point of view of the competitors

The German Grand Prix was a race for the ages, one of the most exciting Formula 1 events there has been, and it was all because of the treacherous and constantly changing conditions.

A wet-dry race is usually that bit more exciting and can often throw up surprising results. At Hockenheim on Sunday, this proved to be the case in the extreme.

Races like this are so challenging because they make enormous demands on every member of the team.

Chief among them are the drivers. They have the most difficult task of keeping the car on track in constantly changing conditions, while pushing to the limit for corner after corner, despite never being absolutely sure where that limit is going to be.

The strategists, meanwhile, have to try to call the pit stops and choose the correct tyres at the right time. This is an incredibly tough task, particularly with varying levels of rain falling throughout the race.

Finally, the mechanics have their work cut out because they are up and down like a yo-yo making pit stops: Max Verstappen stopped five times on his way to victory in the Red Bull; his team-mate Pierre Gasly made four as well.

You have to go back to the famous European Grand Prix at Donington Park in 1993, when Williams driver Alain Prost made a record seven pit stops on his way to second place behind McLaren’s Ayrton Senna – who made four – to find similar numbers to these.

Hamilton’s worst performance for years edges him closer to the title

Verstappen wins thrilling wet-dry German GP

Listen: ‘Hamilton crashes & Leclerc has thrown it all away!’

Who could have predicted this podium combination before lights out?

Limiting mistakes was paramount

Because making a mistake is so easy in conditions where so much can go wrong, it is as crucial to limit the errors as it is to push to the limits in every area. Ultimately, that’s how this race was won.

Verstappen’s race wasn’t mind blowing, and neither was Sebastian Vettel’s to second place. Yet they ended with the biggest smiles at the end of the grand prix, along with Daniil Kvyat, who made a shock return to the podium.

Verstappen had a poor start and suffered a spin when Red Bull made a strategy error in pitting him for medium tyres instead of softs, which would have warmed up sooner in the slippery conditions.

Other than that, though, taking into account all the aspects of the team, Verstappen and Red Bull outperformed the competition.

The Dutchman’s pace early on was enough to keep an eye on the leading Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, who were running one-two.

But as the major contenders for the win started dropping like flies, Verstappen just stayed there, putting in laps good enough to never be challenged, and not making any further mistakes.

The team judged everything right after the medium-tyre call halfway through, and Verstappen ultimately had an easy enough drive to the win.

Hard Drive: What happened to the woman who beat Hamilton in go-karts?

Why fancy dress, soap suds and a baby made F1 brilliant again

Appearances can be deceptive

Vettel’s drive to second was nothing spectacular either.

If you just looked at the statistics, it would appear to be one of the best drives in history, coming from 20th – and last – on the grid to second place by the chequered flag.

In truth, though, Vettel lacked pace for much of the grand prix and was languishing in around eighth place from lap six to lap 56, with a high of sixth place at the latter point as Bottas hit the wall ahead.

Kimi Raikkonen in the Alfa Romeo seemed quicker than him in the wetter part of the race. But what Vettel did was produce a mature drive, keeping his mistakes to a minimum.

While many others, including Raikkonen at one point, slithered off the road, particularly at the perilous Turn 16, Vettel just kept plodding away until he reached a point where he was happy and comfortable in the car. Then, in the last part of the race, on soft, dry-weather ‘slick’ tyres, Vettel came alive.

From there, he exploited the Ferrari’s pace advantage over slower midfield rivals – his only competition left bar Verstappen out front – and breezed through for an unlikely second place.

It was the equivalent of a cricket team starting an innings slowly, just hanging in there against the more dangerous bowlers and waiting for the part-time bowlers to come on, and then smacking them around the ground.

Vettel’s maturity shone in this race rather than any supreme driving talent and it earned him a standout and much-deserved result, after a lot of bad luck recently.

Leclerc pays the price for aggression

So what happened to the usual major players?

Charles Leclerc, Vettel’s team-mate, was the first serious player to find the barriers, just after switching to slicks on lap 27.

His was a race in complete contrast to Vettel’s. Like the German, he also had a problem in qualifying, and had to start from 10th on the grid. But he roared up to fourth place in the opening handful of laps, and then had the pace to be challenging for a win, even before other drivers hit trouble.

By the time he switched to slicks, Leclerc was in a genuine second place, behind early leader Hamilton, but his aggressive mentality was ultimately not what this race was about.

Leclerc had already nearly come unstuck a couple of times at Turn 16, which was slippery and critically had the equivalent of an ice rink as its run-off area, because of the oils and rubber deposited on the drag strip that is there.

Finally, through all the bravado of his race, Leclerc pushed one step too far and found the barriers. He accepted the blame for the incident, and called the run-off area unacceptable as well.

In reality, though, this was a moment that highlighted his inexperience once more.

Leclerc is undoubtedly super-talented and will surely win a race before long. But sometimes in his youthful exuberance he can be found guilty of overdriving.

His crash in Baku qualifying was an example, taking too many risks in overtaking when trying to make up ground after Ferrari had messed up his qualifying in Monaco was another. This race is the latest one.

But the 21-year-old is nonetheless on a superb trajectory, and his pain will be softened in the fact that, unlike Vettel when he crashed out of the lead in Germany last year, he was by no means the only driver to find the wall, particularly at that part of the circuit.

“I don’t really care where everyone else finished,” Hamilton said. “I was in the lead and I finished pretty much last.”

An unusually chaotic day at Mercedes

Mercedes looked set for a win, particularly in the hands of Hamilton, but he too proved just how slippery Turn 16 was – and how easy it was to make a mistake like Leclerc’s – as he slithered off on the same tyres a lap later, under safety-car conditions.

This was the beginning of the end for Hamilton. He hit the wall at a time when he shouldn’t have been pushing at all, then was forced into pitting in a manner against the rules, which earned him a five-second penalty.

To compound matters, this time it was the Mercedes pit wall and mechanics who were all at sea in a race.

No doubt they were surprised at Hamilton’s swift decision to pit, and they didn’t know the extent of the damage either, but it was chaos in the Mercedes garage, a team who are usually serenely calm and methodical.

A pit stop nearly a minute long followed and Hamilton tumbled down the order. But his difficult race was compounded by further Mercedes strategy errors.

Hamilton could have somehow still been in contention to win, but Mercedes failed to pit him and Bottas under a late safety car. They then waited too long to pit Hamilton when slicks were the obvious choice shortly after that, and he then fell out of the points positions.

As a driver in this situation, with the laps ticking down, it is easy to overdrive, and Hamilton became the latest man to do so, in a race in which survival was key.

He lost it at Turn One and ruled himself out of any further contention, but at least got back to the pits, unlike Bottas.

Bottas was desperate to pass Lance Stroll’s Racing Point and earn a podium, which would have helped him reduce his championship deficit to Hamilton.

But as the Finn was getting frustrated stuck behind the slower midfield car, he dropped a wheel onto the wet part of the track at Turn One and hit the wall, putting him out on the spot.

The balance of risk and reward

It was the sort of race F1 has not put on for a long time, with so many incidents, safety cars and changing weather conditions.

Anyone who completed this race without issue scored points in the end but it’s never easy to judge this from the outset.

It’s easy to say in hindsight, but it’s just so hard for the drivers to judge how hard to push and how much risk to take when they are lining up at the start of the race.

For the midfielders, though, the strategy gamble is always a bigger lure, because the risk-reward equation is weighed in their favour. And with so many front-runners dropping out, it was Kvyat and Stroll who made the most of it, to finish third and fourth.

Ironically, these two who looked sublime at the end actually ended up in this position because they were further back and had nothing to lose with 20 laps to go.

Stroll was right at the back, ahead of only Robert Kubica’s Williams when he pitted for slicks, and behind George Russell in the other Williams. Kvyat was ninth, five places behind Toro Rosso team-mate Alexander Albon, who also had a tremendous drive.

Inevitably, the drivers further up the order didn’t risk fitting slicks as early as those further back, and Stroll’s mediocre first two-thirds of the race ultimately gave him the lead for a moment.

Credit to both drivers, though. They got themselves into strong positions and didn’t make any substantial mistakes thereafter.

All in all this is the sort of race people love. There was uncertainty right up to the last lap, and it even ended with the feel-good factor of three delighted drivers on an unlikely podium. It was a classic.

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