#wait guys can you do me a favour and put your theories for who max is in my ask box?

[gracieblood]

one of my favourite parts is episode 11 is when max is talking to jailey and hailey’s like lmao jake do you know him and jake’s like ummm what no oh my god i know him

[wokeinmemphis-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[redroses879-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[arcadeparade-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[asanusta-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[pooki-chu-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[sophistikatedblogger-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[quebrando-promesas-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[crashinthefastlane-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[theeblacksheep-blog1]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is �� so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[ourclassycollectionpainter-blog]

Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

The Russian Grand Prix is on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra from 12:00 BST

Lewis Hamilton starts the race in which he could equal the all-time record for grand prix victories from pole position on Sunday – but that 91st win is very far from the near certainty it might be in other circumstances.

After a dramatic qualifying session at the Russian Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes driver nearly ended up 15th after a combination of mistakes and bad luck, Hamilton has two major concerns going into the race – the tyres he is on, and the fact pole might be more of a handicap than an advantage.

First, track position. Pole gives Hamilton a seven-metre advantage over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in second place. But the run from the grid down to the first corner at Sochi is the longest on the calendar and the slipstream effect is huge.

In 2017, Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas used this from his third place on the grid to tow past the two Ferraris in front of him and into a lead he was never to lose on the way to his maiden victory.

Last year, when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was on pole, ahead of Hamilton, Ferrari used team tactics to ensure Leclerc allowed his team-mate – Sebastian Vettel, who started third – to tow past him into the lead, so they ran one and two ahead of Hamilton. That led to a big falling out at Ferrari, but that’s another story.

Inevitably, then, Hamilton is worried about being passed down the straight after the start by at least one of Verstappen and Bottas, who is third on the grid.

“It’s not a good place to start at all,” he said. “And this year our cars are more draggy and there is more tow than we have seen in other years. I genuinely expect one of these two to come flying by at some point.”

Hamilton takes Russian GP pole after time cut drama

How the qualifying for the Russian GP unfolded

Hamilton has some defence against this because he is starting on the soft tyres, which give the best grip off the line, while Verstappen and Bottas have the mediums.

Whether that is enough to offset the effect of the tow remains to be seen, but even if it is, Hamilton’s problems will be far from over, because the soft tyre is very much not the best on which to start the race. It wears too quickly.

Even if he maintains the lead at the start, Hamilton will have to fend off Bottas and Verstappen as long as he can – not easy with such a long straight.

“I am on the worst tyre,” Hamilton said. “It is a good tyre to do an actual start, but it has the biggest degradation – 10 times more than any other tyre, I think it is – so that’s going to be a struggle.

“I don’t know if that puts me on to a two-stop [strategy]. Unlikely, because the pit lane is too slow so I am just going to have to nurse those tyres as far as I can.”

If he can hang on, and Mercedes’ strategists can find a window of clear air into which he can exit after his pit stop, he might still be OK. But the team do not sound that optimistic.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said: “It is not the optimum strategy because after some laps the soft is clearly going to suffer and that means it compromises your whole race because you probably need to pit into traffic and that is not a great situation.

“But Lewis is the best overtaker in the field and I hope he can make his way back because he was the quickest driver on track today.”

How did Hamilton get in this position?

Hamilton described the session as “one of the worst qualifyings – it was horrible, heart in mouth the whole way”

The quickest driver Hamilton certainly was – he took pole by more than 0.5 seconds and Bottas was 0.652secs adrift, and admitted he did not know why. But the session was anything but smooth sailing for Hamilton. In fact, there were dramas from the off.

In the first knockout session, Hamilton ran wide on his first lap at Turn Two – the de facto first corner – and failed to comply with guidelines about how to rejoin the track.

That meant he had to do a second lap to make it into the next session – and led to a stewards’ inquiry, though no further action was taken.

Then, in the second session, which defines the start tyres, Hamilton went out on the favoured mediums and set a blistering first lap, 0.4secs quicker than Bottas. However, that time was deleted because he had run too wide out of the last corner and exceeded track limits.

He wanted to do another lap straight away and had an argument with the team when they called him in to the pits instead. Wolff said they had no choice – he did not have enough fuel in the car to stay out.

There was still plenty of time for another lap on the medium tyres at the end of the session, and Hamilton was about three corners from the end of one that would have put him fastest when Vettel crashed at Turn Four and brought out the red flag.

Now, there was jeopardy.

There were only two minutes 15 seconds left in the session. In theory, there was still time to do an out lap and start a flying lap before the chequered flag ended the session, but now Hamilton had another problem.

Time was tight, so there was going to be a rush to get out. Other cars lined up at the end of the pit lane and waited in a queue, with their engines switched off. Hamilton could not do that because the Mercedes engine cannot be restarted by the driver using electrical energy from the hybrid system, whereas those of the other three manufacturers can.

So Mercedes sent him out only when they knew there was sufficiently little time left before the restart for him to sit in a queue with the engine idling without damaging it.

But that still meant waiting a couple of minutes – and that meant the engineers insisted he switched to the soft tyres. Hamilton wanted the mediums again, but they overruled him because they were concerned the harder mediums would lose too much heat while he waited in the queue and that he would never be able to warm them up again.

Even on the softs, he still nearly lost it at the first corner before gathering it up again after driving through the run-off area. The out lap that followed was a tense one.

Knowing he was tight on time, Hamilton asked halfway around it how he was doing for time and was told he was 20 seconds behind schedule.

He picked up the pace and forced his way past Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz before the last two corners. He was then blocked by a Renault into the final turn.

As Hamilton backed off to give himself some space, engineer Peter Bonnington came over the radio, his voice urgent: “Need to go, need to go, need to go.” Hamilton floored it and crossed the line with a second to spare.

Can he do it?

The omens look good as Hamilton has won four out of the six races held in Sochi since 2014

Hamilton spent the eight-minute break between the sessions clearing his mind of the stress and composing himself again.

“Just having to calm myself down and find my centre, you know, calm my heart down and wanting to deliver in Q3,” he said.

“I was adamant. I had no choice. I had to deliver on those two laps. Valtteri had been doing great all weekend. Nothing new in that respect, but I knew I needed to have a perfect lap, particularly on the first run, to get the pole.

“Obviously pole position is not great here; it never has been. Still, going for pole is what we do.

“The first lap was really great. I thought it was going to be very difficult to improve on it, but I think I managed to improve just a tiny bit, I think, on the second lap.

“I’m super grateful to everyone for just about keeping their cool. And it could be a lot, lot worse. I could be out of the top 10, so I’m really grateful I got to compete.”

Having dragged himself out of a hole partly of his own making on Saturday, Hamilton now somehow has to find a way to do it again in the race.

“I am just going to focus on my race and try to run the fastest race I can,” Hamilton said.

“If these guys get by they are going to be pulling away, so I am going to sit down and work out if there is a different kind of race I can do to keep my position.”

The record he will not be bothered about, not of itself anyway. As he has so often said, he is not one for numbers, and as he pointed out on Thursday: “It will happen at some stage. I’m not quitting any time soon.”

But he still wants the win, for the sake of it – because that’s why he’s there and because it would be another giant step on the way to equalling another Schumacher record: seven World Championships.

Cancel Culture: Has it gone too far?

Video Games: The industries problem with inclusion

The article was originally published here! Lewis Hamilton has a job on to equal Michael Schumacher’s record in Russia

[scrawnydutchman]

Rick and Morty Season 3 Ranked Worst to Best (Spoilers)

Well friends, the long awaited Season 3 of the hit show Rick and Morty has come to a close. It will not be time again to get schwifty until Season 4 hits. When will it hit? Who knows? But do Mr. Poopy Butthole a favour and don’t waste your life waiting for it like you did waiting for Season 3. Anyways, now that the third season has ended, what did I think overall? Well, to be honest . . . it was very hit and miss. It doesn’t feel right to call any of these episodes bad, because bad by Rick and Morty standards is truthfully still leagues above the vast majority of television right now. But some episodes ARE undeniably stronger than others, and while Season 3 was no doubt a joy ride it DID end up being a lot more bittersweet than previous seasons. Seeing as there are 10 episodes altogether, I felt it was appropriate to rank these episodes from worst to best. This is purely my opinion; if you disagree with this list it’s totally fine. If you enjoyed the lower ranked episodes I’m glad you did, if you think other episodes are overrated that’s fair enough. Alright, enough padding, let’s get into it!

10. The Rickchurian Mortydate (The Finale)

You know, seeing as this is the note the season goes out on, it’s a damn shame how underwhelming it is. I still stand by that by Rick and Morty standards the worst episode is still leagues above most television, but man of man does this episode feel like a misfire for multiple reasons. For one, the whole episode feels like it’s on fast forward. Something about the pacing is incredibly off; there’s no time to process any of the still clever one liners. That’s probably due to all the shit they shove into this episode that isn’t handled nearly as gracefully as other entries in this list. While we’re on the subject, this episode feels the need to throw TONS of shit at you and just go in any random direction with no clear reason as to why. This series has a reputation for deliberately subverting expectations, but up until this point it’s done so in a way that feels logical and just as right as any presumptions we as the audience may have had. It has a Minecraft reference in it. . . I guess . . . but then it just immediately dismisses it by saying South Park did it. If they’re trying to avoid doing stuff that’s already been done then why even bring it up? It’s just misplaced randomness and not particularly clever. What’s most disappointing about this episode though is the fact that it basically undid everything Season 3 established. Beth and Jerry are back together, Beth literally states that the 4th Season will be like Season 1 but more streamlined (I thought forth wall breaking was Rick’s thing?), and the storytelling possibilities about Beth’s clone choice are pretty much thrown right out the window, so you can just disregard the fan theory I wrote (or maybe they’re not? IDK that whole aspect was so rushed and confusing). The finale had some great jokes (like Rick being afraid of pirates got a chuckle out of me) and it has a good amount of outrageousness, but more than a concise and tight episode this feels like a constant throwing of shit at the wall to see what sticks, and sadly the wall is clean for the most part. All well. Maybe Season 4 will do great things as a result of this setup and I’ll think differently about this episode in retrospect. Until then, it’s a pretty shallow conclusion.

9. The ABCS of Beth (Episode 9)

Before anyone calls it out on me, the rest of this list is NOT in order of chronological release of episode in reverse. ANYWAYS, Before the finale I felt this was the weakest entry in the series. My biggest issue with it is how on the nose all of the character analysis is. This may be the least thematically subtle episode in a series that involves a character turning into a Pickle with a family therapy subplot. It even goes as far as having Beth summarize the plot of what happened to Tommy like she was reciting a book report. And then when Tommy describes what he’s been up to via disturbing childrens play it’s not any information we didn’t already know. Then you have the subplot of Jerry being called out for being a closeted racist and sexist, ALSO verbally explained by Summer. This episode is a bad case of tell-don’t-show, which is a mentality you ABSOLUTELY want to avoid when you make a film or tv show. Being Rick and Morty it’s still got some good jokes (like the bit where Rick shows Beth’s old toys is hilarious) and the ending is nice and sweet (as well as the only hint of subtlety throughout the whole ride) but beyond that it’s basically just characters giving their own synopsis so you don’t have to think about it and a hard reliance on incest and cannabilism humor. 

8. Rickmancing the Stone (Episode 2)

Rick and Morty does Mad Max?? Based on premise alone you would think this would be a memorable ride of absolute mayhem, not unlike the franchise it homages. But that’s the real and unfortunate irony about this entry . . . it’s probably the most forgettable episode of the bunch. I remember Morty getting a huge muscular arm and Rick helping Morty drown a guy . . . that was funny. I remember Summer getting involved with a deadbeat apocalypse survivor . . . that was . . . . funny? I remember Jerry getting gusts of wind muttering “loser” to him. All of it is . . . not very impactful if I’m honest. Some might argue it’s memorability is a result of it being one of the earliest episodes in the season, but in contrast to it the premiere happened way sooner and it had some of the most memorable events of the whole series. Truthfully if any episode of the series was supposed to have the crazy fast pacing of the finale, I think it should have been this one. This is the perfect setup to just throw a bunch of crazy insane and violent shit at the viewers for no rhyme or reason. It does that SOMETIMES but not nearly enough. By the end it just becomes super mundane and downplayed. I get that’s supposed to be the joke because it’s meant to be a subversion of Mad Max, but the joke unfortunately doesn’t pay off that well. 

7. Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender (Episode 4)

Apparently this is series Co-Creator Dan Harmon’s least favorite episode according to some leaked audio footage. Personally I like this episode overall for a multitude of reasons (though they may be largely due to my biases as both an animator and superhero fan). For one, this may be the most beautifully animated and stylized entry in the season. The power effects are cool, the designs and overall concepts of the Vindicators are nice, it has some creative visuals and nice use of colour. Visually speaking the most mindblowing thing about this episode is Million Ants. The way he moves, the way he morphs into different shapes, the way his model is constantly shifting and morphing and how he’s very clearly hand drawn frame by frame (most of the time at least). Million Ants alone may be the best animation the show has ever done. The episode also has the bit about Morty thinking Rick is finally confessing that he loves him, only to find Rick meant to make that message for Noob Noob, which is easily the hardest I ever laughed the entire season (INCLUDING the Szechuan sauce bit). But the episode isn’t without it’s problems sadly. I actually watched a pretty good video analyzing why this episode isn’t as strong as others, and it pointed out that it goes against Dan Harmon’s treasured “Hero’s Journey” story arc, by having Morty’s change of heart about the Vindicators happen way too quickly. I’ll link to the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdQWTbLWYxI

It also has the unfortunate handicap of having the heroes be too difficult to like right out the gate, as we are only merely told of their heroic feats rather than shown them. Once again, we’re told what to think verbally by the main characters. Also, the dabbing at the end was beyond cringeworthy. In fact, come to think of it, there are a LOT of moments in this season that are like that, where it’s just a reference to something topical that sticks out like a sore thumb. The dabbing, the Minecraft bit, Beth saying “fake news”. Is there someone on the Rick and Morty staff that insists there must be an arbitrarily shoehorned pop culture reference every episode? All well, that aside this is a solid episode IMO. Not the best, but solid.

6. Pickle Rick (Episode 3)

Ah yes, who could forget the most quoted and frequently referenced episode in the whole series, all because of one strange punchline? This episode is very likable for similar reasons to episode 4. It has very imaginative visuals and some of the best animation in the whole series, especially that fight scene with the rats. It’s a very clever, funny and action packed homage to Die Hard and other gun towing action films like it, and it’s got some of the funniest bits of dialogue and surreal humor in the season. Some people were turned off by the family therapy scenes, and yeah, I’d be lying if I said they didn’t carry the same issues of spelling out character synopsis that the other episodes have. But I felt they were still a nice subplot that make great stark contrast to the ongoing outrageousness of the main plot. The calming and soothing voice of Dr. Wong makes the intense gore of Pickle Rick’s fight stand out all the more in comparison. Plus I liked her little monologue at the end as I thought it was one of the few bits of verbal explanation in the show that was warranted and welcome. Not much else to say about this one. I’M PICKLE RIIIIIICK!!!

5. Morty’s Mind Blowers (Episode 8)

Alright, enough bitching about flaws. Let’s talk about the REAL shining moments in the series!! This episode is Season 3′s alternative to interdimensional cable. While I was initially pretty disappointed that this was their stand in, that sentiment was immediately put at ease when I was gift wrapped the funniest, most grotesque and most deliciously pessimistic clip show I’ve ever received in my life (thankfully it’s clips we never saw though). The episode is all about going through the memories Rick had removed from Morty’s mind, whether it’s because Morty begged him to or because it’s something Rick wanted removed, and like what you would think every clip is outrageous, surreal and gut wrenchingly dark. The bit about the dictator squirrels was great, the bit about the smudge on the lens is hilarious, we finally get to see a character dubbed by a fan who won a contest (great job btw) and the episode isn’t without it’s nice dosage of references to the past. It’s pretty fantastic and is just as entertaining as Interdimensional cable (that said, I DO want IC3 sometime in the future). After a whole season dealing with family drama, trust issues, loss in faith and other depressing themes, it’s nice to take a break and have an episode that’s a pure comedy from beginning to end.

4. The Rickshank Redemption (Season Premiere)

Here it is. The Season Premiere. The answer to the questions we’ve been holding onto for nearly 2 years after the finale to Season 2. It’s also the best April Fools day prank Adult Swim has ever pulled. Delaying Samurai Jack was WORTH IT!!! Like I said, this episode managed to answer the most tantalizing questions for us after the heartbreaking finale of Season 2. Not only did it do that, but it gave us the most hilarious and epic answer we could have possibly hoped for. You think Rick did everything he did to prove he really did love his family? You think the reason he is who he is is because he’s had to suffer the tragic fate of losing his family before? FUCK THAT!!! It was all an elaborate scheme to get back at every authority that ever did wrong by him. He rekt the intergalactic government, the Council of Ricks AND Jerry all in 20 minutes of pure hilarity and intense espionage. And best of all, he made up that shit about loving his family. HE JUST NEEDS THAT SZECHUAN SAUCE MORTY!! I said before that the Noob Noob bit is the hardest I ever laughed in the series, but the Szechuan sauce is a VERY close second. This was the absolute perfect way to kick off the season and to stoke our fires in anticipation for future episodes.

3. Rest and Ricklaxation (Episode 6)

Of all the entries to Season 3, this episode feels the most like Season 1. While the majority of Season 3 is some sort of switch up to the status quo where either Rick goes on an adventure with a different member of the family or Morty isn’t his usual worried or panicking self (and is notably turning into an unapologetic pessimist), this one goes back to the roots of the shows good ol’ fashion premise of Rick taking his timid grandson on a life changing, dream crushing adventure. Not only is it a refreshing back-to-basics episode with great morbid humor, but it actually has a very interesting and fresh commentary on what it means to be a good person, told in a more tongue-and-cheek way than other episodes have talked about their core themes. The episode is all about Rick and Morty removing their ‘toxicity’ (I.E. what they hate most about themselves) and their toxicity manifesting into negative unhealthy versions of them. The point the episode gets across though is that personality traits aren’t necessarily good or bad in all circumstances. Sometimes it’s good to be shy and timid and sometimes it’s good to be forceful and upfront. Sometimes it’s bad to be confident and it’s bad to be passive. The episodes point is that everybody has things about themselves they would rather not have but the truth is, every facet of our being is what makes us who we are and it isn’t actually healthy to go into any extreme. It’s a heartwarming message about self acceptance told in a hilarious, cruel and dark way that Rick and Morty always does. What’s not to love?

2. The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy (Episode 5)

This episode is beat for beat, pound for pound, consistently, the funniest episode of the whole season and QUITE POSSIBLY the whole show. It’s comedic writing and execution is right up there with The Rick’s Must be Crazy, which is my favorite episode of the show. It has SO many great lines, my favorite being “Momma’s coming, baby! Momma’s coming AND SHE CARES ABOUT YOUR TITTIES!”. It has great bits of dark humor with one of the most fucked up scenes in the show being when the kid unknowingly kills his sister for good. It has great fake outs like the gif you see above this paragraph. It’s just a consistent laugh riot. Throw that in with a great Attack on Titan homage and of course the sexy and sinister voice of Clancy Brown as the main antagonist (has he ever played a hero character in his whole career) and you got a badass entry to the show. Also, much like million ants or the pickle rick vs. rats fight, it features some of the most damn impressive animation in the show between the rollercoaster fight and the tripping balls scene. GOD what a good episode. This is in my top 3 of the whole show for sure.

1. The Ricklantis Mixup/Tales from the Citadel (Episode 7)

Any followers of my blog who have read my article “Why the Ricklantis Mixup should be awarded” could see this coming as the number one spot. But can you blame me?? This episode is a MASTERPIECE, not just by Rick and Morty Standards which are already super high, but for television in general. If you want to know my full thoughts on this episode, go back and read my article about it, because what I would type here doesn’t do it justice. The worldbuilding, the multiple perspectives, the likability of all the characters, the humor, the animation, the personality, the performance of nearly every character by Justin Roiland, the core themes of prejudice and societal norms, the storytelling leading up to THE MOST BADASS TWIST ENDING OF THE WHOLE SHOW. Everything about this episode is simply perfect. It’s mindblowing that this was achieved in 20 minutes. I’ve said before that The Rick’s Must be Crazy is my favorite episode of the show, but that’s in terms of very subjective variables. Objectively, this episode is the most brilliantly constructed and executed. If by some horrible tragedy all but one Rick and Morty episode had to be wiped from existence, to me this is the one that needs to survive.

So yeah. Season 3 was the most hit and miss of the show thus far. But I’d like to reiterate that I don’t think I can call any of these episodes bad. There’s something likable in all of them and it’s still some of the best entertainment you can find today. In spite of how nasty I may have come across earlier in the list, when this show misses, it only misses by a little. When it hits, BY GOD ALMIGHTY does it hit. All I can say to end this post is Season 4 cannot get here soon enough.