Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Last lap drama in Silverstone: Mercedes beats Ferrari 🏎😳🏁



Oh my God! First of all, congratulations to all Mercedes and especially Lewis fans - that was absolutely amazing. I could be only happier if Max would finally get the podium but we got what we got. Silverstone is by far my favorite track in F1 championship which is making me even sadder on the fact that GP-2019 is going to be the last one due to financial struggles (should I write a post on this?). Here we got the fastest corners where it reaches over 5.2G downhill power (if I am not mistaken in its name). 

And yes, this weekend we got the new track record from Lewis - 1.30.621. Amazing Lewis! Leading from the very beginning of the race and being on top during the whole distance was absolutely stunning. The only wrong moment (in my opinion) was the accident after Valtteri pitted and Lewis refused to let him in front to gain pace for both of them but said "I will drive him with me". I would be probably crazy if they lost their leadership because of what Lewis did but all ended up really well. 

1. From sinner to hero

As you probably remember Friday before the British Grand Prix was dedicated to the amazing F1 show in the center of London. All teams participated except one driver - one and only Lewis Hamilton. Yes, the pilot who has most love in GB decided to keep focusing on the upcoming race and title fight which meant that he took a few days off and skipped the event. Critics never ended. Lewis got a BILLION questions during the press-conference on why he didn't come to the event. The talks were all about him and his fans treatment. 

If you ask me what I really do think on that I'd say he has the right. He is one of the most famous drivers and he does a lot (sometimes not in front of the cameras), so it was his decision which he has the right to. 

Anyways he became kind of a sinner to everyone but I don't think he lost fans love. What happened next you should remember. Pole position (67th in his career and 5th in Silverstone which means he has equaled Jim Clark and is about to beat the record completing the same result next year), race win, new track record, new quali time record (1.26.600) and crowd surfing while two Finns patiently waiting in the press-conference :) Hero? I must say yes.

2. Mercedes got lucky enough

Let me begin from the very end of the race. What was that? I mean that tyre-drama two laps before finish. That was absolutely epic. Post-race reports keep saying Kimi and Seb had different type of tyre-issues but that looked really crazy. Pirelli started the investigation and I must say it is highly interesting to know what happened and brought such bad luck to both Ferrari drivers and lots of very good luck to Mercedes.

Being honest, I did not believe that Valtteri had a chance for the podium being almost three seconds behind two laps before finish, starting P9 after his five-place penalty (he qualified P4 which was strange since he was leading FP's whole Friday). Unless this absolutely unexpected problem happened and Kimi lost his pace immediately. I am pretty surprised that he still drove himself to the podium struggling so much.

Ferrari confirmed that those tyre-issues caught them by surprise. But what is most strange about that all is that the SAME problem with the SAME wheel had happened not only to both Ferrraris but also to Red Bull's Max. We saw Kimi quite frustrated on the podium, not the most emotional man was definitely sad about finishing third and not at least second (should we talk about the possible win here? Probably not). His teammate and the championship leader (1 point over Lewis - not a lot) Seb was even more unlucky having a puncture and urgently pitting which led to finishing P7 - not good for him at all.

3. Pit-stop lost for Verstappen

Talking about Max, I am pretty sure that he lost the podium during his first pit-stop. Yes, he probably could stay longer when all those happened to Seb and Kimi and still have a chance for the podium. But I do really believe that he could have the momentum if his first pit-stop would be one second faster. Yes, maybe it was that one second when he lost his position. Of course the team and Max himself explained that there was real need in this and they could not do better. But I still think they could. 

As long as Max did a great start and was defending so strongly against Seb before his pit-stop he surely had a chance. By the way, Christian Horner keeps confirming that both his drivers are about to stay in Red Bull for the next season - reminding you all "just in case" as he said.

4. Amazing honey-badger

Another Red Bull driver on the contrary had a lot of fun overtaking cars as he claimed. Starting P19 having gearbox five-place penalty and super frustrated quali (not even finishing Q1 blame on some technical problems the car had) Daniel finished the race P5. He could even start the race P20 if retired Alonso didn't get more penalty positions on the grid - I mean 30.  

Well, what Daniel did was kind of obvious for me because Red Bull definitely has a better car than many other teams so Daniel was about to fight against Force India, Williams, Renault, etc.- it is not easy but it is way easier comparing to what Valtteri did fighting against Red Bull and Ferrari. Anyways, Daniel finished P5 which is cool and was voted the driver of the day which I do feel is great cause my heart was choosing between him and Valtterri that time. 

5. Sainz vs Kvyat - to be continued

Toro Rosso got lots of bad luck this weekend and their drivers are the only ones to blame. Who crushed in this race again, do you have any guess? Absolutely yes! Daniil and Carlos, ladies and gentlemen. Two teammates who cannot stop fighting against each other. Even situation between Force India's Esteban and Checo became way smoother since they crushed in Baku. 

What I really DO think is that they both are kind of wrong (I mean a little bit embarrassing, of course). Anyways, Daniil keeps saying it wasn’t his fault and Carlos had hit him. Carlos keeps saying it WAS Daniil's fault as long as he crushed into him. In my Spielberg post I wrote: "they'd better behave smarter". Unfortunately they do not read my blog.

6. McLaren on top

Fernando made it possible, probably not in Q3 or the race where he had to retire again due to engine issue. He made it possible at least in Q1 pitting at the very end and being one second away not starting the fast lap on slicks at all but he DID it! Round of applause and lots of screenshots!


Talking about Q1 it definitely was quite chaotic as long as the start of the session was rainy enough to go for green tyres and the end of Q1 was all about changing into slicks and improve the time. By the way, the interesting fact of QUALI which I feel like mentioning here was Kimi. He showed the better time than Seb - that was a good kind of answer to the criticism he got from team management lately. 

7. One lap less - Palmer off

This time we got 51 laps instead of 52 and the reason to that kind of change was Joylion who got a technical problem which didn't let him not only finish the race but even start it. Probably that didn’t make a lot of difference as long as three cars had to pit one more time at the very end. Rumors about Joylion being close to replacing by Kubica, Sainz, Alonso or whoever keep surrounding him and this situation did not help at all.

The finish itself was quite not that predictable as long as we got Hulkenberg P6 and Massa only P10 instead of what we used to see from Williams lately. Grosjean finishing P13 was quite unhappy with the fact that his incident with Lewis took no further action "in case that Lewis is fighting for the title" as he claimed.

Silverstone forecast promised the rain to mix the fight but it ended up not happening which probably was OK for most of the grid. Race itself showed us so much and made the fight for the title waaay more interesting since Lewis is just one point behind Seb and twenty three above Valtteri.

Personally I can't wait till we see the next half of the season since Hungary 'cause literally EVERYTHING can happen here! See you in less than two weeks, amazing F1 lovers.

No comments:

Post a Comment