French Grand Prix
That was a race for the ages, in what's shaping up to be one of the more memorable F1 seasons ever. Hamilton's tires were completely destroyed by the end. For the last 15 laps at least, you could see a big wear stripe on his left front, and for the last five or so laps the back end was sliding out on the turns. It's amazing how close he came to pulling it off. In the end, Mercedes ran a bad strategy for both Hamilton and Bottas. Bottas seems increasingly pissed off, and it's hard to blame him. He'd have had an easy second if they'd not sacrificed him to use him to block Verstappen. Mercedes wrong-footed Hamilton with their first pit stop timing, then tossed Bottas under the bus to try and save him.
It's interesting to watch Mercedes make critical mistakes under pressure. I'm not sure how much of that's coming from Wolff deferring to Hamilton's judgement. A definite factor is the team trying to use Bottas to support Hamilton in situations where Hamilton is already sinking. Instead of getting a win or second from Bottas, you end up like today. That's a large part of why Red Bull is pulling away in the constructor's championship, I think.
And those... remarkable... trophies. I'll put that down to it being France. ***** Original posted at https://rain-gryphon.dreamwidth.org/223767.html
It's interesting to watch Mercedes make critical mistakes under pressure. I'm not sure how much of that's coming from Wolff deferring to Hamilton's judgement. A definite factor is the team trying to use Bottas to support Hamilton in situations where Hamilton is already sinking. Instead of getting a win or second from Bottas, you end up like today. That's a large part of why Red Bull is pulling away in the constructor's championship, I think.
And those... remarkable... trophies. I'll put that down to it being France. ***** Original posted at https://rain-gryphon.dreamwidth.org/223767.html