The end of the F1 race reminded me of Nascar. I was waiting for a race extension or something… LOL
What a wild ending.
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I watched to the first red flag live, then decided I didn’t want to be up until 3am to see it through, so I watched the rest on replay the next day, so my memory of all the events is a little fuzzy.
But Albon was super impressive that first opening stint, would’ve been great to see him close out what was likely to be a high scoring finish. Being a slippery car, that Williams was consistently purple in sector two and he was hassling Fernando a bit in the beginning as they settled in.
George and Lewis came out punching hard, in a bit of a role-reversal from the last few years between Merc and Red Bull. Max was the same attacking style when he knew his car wasn’t going to be a championship contender and he only was going for wins. Lewis and George both know the battle is for individual wins for them this year too, so they can go aggressive, while Max can be cautious since he knows his car is peerless and he needs to focus on the championship. And having 36 km/h in pocket over the Merc once DRS engages means he knows he will breeze by on lap 3.
Ferrari needs a major reset in some way. No one in that team seems to know how to fix the issues, and I feel so bad that Charles is being wasted, trying to pull something out for his dream team while they continue to provide bad cars and bad strategy. His incident was bad luck as well, Lance got squeezed there and had nowhere to go. Carlos actually looked like a real threat and was dicing his way forward in the mid part of the race, but sort of stalled out in 4th and then the clumsy tap into Fernando which warranted a penalty, it’s just unfortunate it ended up being so harsh for at the end.
Usually an odd red flag spices up the strategy but it mostly neutralized it here unfortunately, since they first threw the SC, giving some people a change to jump in for a nice quick pit stop. But then they decided to go red and screwed all those people over who looked like lucky geniuses just a few minutes before.
With the low degradation it seemed like a lot of teams were suddenly finding pace out of nowhere, like Hulk was able to hang onto the back of the Aston for much of the race. Granted the DRS was pulling him along, but still, the Astons had DRS too, so the Haas car clearly could work in the right setup window. And Lando was cruising in the McLaren as well. I think all the teams are still learning the new tires, we saw a similar thing last year where Albon somehow made the hard tire last all race long and no one expected that.
The FIA needs to get their shit together regarding red flags. The first one was warranted, but they need to make that call right away, not call for a SC first and then change their minds halfway through the SC period after half the field pits. And the final red flag was a joke. Clearly used to “spice up the action” at the end, which ultimately didn’t change much in the top of the order other than penalizing Carlos unnecessarily, destroying both Alpines who had great races with Gasly especially good in P5, and then messing up a few other cars as well. And then it didn’t matter because they reverted to the previous lap anyway for the finish. Autosport’s podcast review of the race was pretty scathing of how the FIA handled it and they made a good point about how previously we had Masi (for all his flaws) doing a press conference to explain why they made the calls they did post-race. But the FIA now just makes calls and doesn’t explain them, and sometimes the calls seem arbitrary or contrived to make the show better. It’s fairly obvious now the FIA doesn’t know its own rules sometimes, which is a joke because as soon as Fernando got spun, he knew that Silverstone had a similar precedent last year and he noted immediately that they should revert to the previous lap and return him his podium. Which again highlights the stupidity of the situation, because now Carlos got an 8 position penalty for something that basically “didn’t happen” in the scope of the race because the lap it happened on was erased anyway. And the red flag just negated the last 57 laps of Gasly’s race because he drove a calm and great race to 5th and then for the sake of entertainment the stewards decide to red flag it and have the drivers go suicide mode on cold tires for a STANDING START. Why are we doing a standing start? Give them a rolling start so they have temp in the cars and aren’t all bunched up crashing into each other.
A fairly fun race though a bit boring at times and then completely mishandled at the end.
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Well said! Seems stupid to try and do a two lap race at the end with a standing start, what do they think is going to happen 
My guy Gasly doing very well until the chaos of the restart.
Even worse as well that Logan Sargeant didn’t get a penalty for drilling into the back of De Vries. One incident penalized too harshly one not penalized at all, especially since the aftermath of sainz crash was nullified but De Vries was out of the race.
I think they both should’ve either got grid drops for next race or at least no in race penalty and just the penalty points.
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Not 2023, but interesting. Nothing will come of it probably, but interesting nonetheless.
That was 2008. How is this being discussed lol.
Bernie Eccelstone made some comments suggesting in a recent interview that the FIA knew about Piquet’s purposeful crash but pretended they didn’t until the end of the season so there wouldn’t be any drama. Massa would’ve been champion if the Singapore results was thrown out or altered in some way.
I don’t think there is anything that can be done now, but obviously a pretty rough situation and Massa equally deserved that championship, just came up a bit shy.
Well that’s lame. But, in character for f1.
I don’t know what legal recourse there is, but it’s certainly worth looking at from a damages point of view. Bernie said he and Max knew, so that certainly changes things quite a lot. I think Massa is just throwing stuff out there currently, but if the FIA knew of the deliberate nature of Piquet’s crash then that’s really incredible stuff.
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Piquet Snr told Whiting at Brasil GP in 2008, and he told Max. So FIA were aware of this prior to the end of the season gala and didn’t launch an investigation due to ‘lack of evidence’ … but that’s why you launch an investigation. Spicey
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Agreed. DRS “zones” smack of produced show racing rather than skilled competition. Let them use all the tools at their disposal.
Feel bad for Massa. Sounds like he got robbed.
I feel like I hard about how investigation went about on a podcast recently but I don’t remember which one. Edit: bring back v10s, spa 2009, when fisi almost won.
Basically there were lots of suspicions and when piquet jnr got dropped piquet snr told Max. But without any evidence they needed a plan. So I think it was Spa they basically interviewed the top brass at Renault in quick succession without prewarning them.
So, there was definitely some delay in it becoming public knowledge but for sound legal reasons.
Ive always thought massa deserved that years title and it grates against my Hamilton fandom lol
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Massa was very good that year. Obviously Hamilton was too, but Massa would also have been a deserving champion. I always liked him. Not a complete driver but very quick and unfortunately a victim of first the spring-to-the-face-incident and then of Fernando taking control of the Ferrari team politically in 2010, so he took a couple years to find his footing again after those things. But it was cool to see him come back a be competitive in the Williams a little later. Amazing too considering they had to rebuild half his face a few years prior.
Boy that lap 57 restart was fun: everyone crashed into each other in a remarkable display of derpiness. Nice to see the f1 gang can go full t1 club race mode, too.
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It’s always nice to see them go back to their roots
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So I don’t remember it mentioned. But another loser of the last lap roll back was Hulk. He managed to avoid the chaos and get himself to p4 by avoiding carnage. He still got a solid finish in the points. But what could have been.
Carlos got hosed.
These rules seem made up as they go. And I’m not sure who they are attempting to please. From what I have gathered from here and across socials is that ending was nonsense.
We can’t go nascar rules and go overtime. But if there are laps or a lap left. Toss the red. Line em up and let them race. If team bosses don’t want wadded up cars they need to talk to their drivers.
Red flag in the last 2 laps should be a rolling start but everybody is 4 wide. That would pretty much ensure the winner of the race is the only finisher. The only true winner.
Toto: Fever dream of choice for the discerning housewife
I do not know who the fellow is but he was hired to “greet” folks at the paddock in Aus. Is this a Brit or Aus comedian?
To gasly: You are a sartorial explosion of crème
To Yuki: Your stature is small but your aura is staggering
To Horner: You have a wonderful air. You are like Daniel Craig if he were a cricket umpire.
That guy did make me laugh 
Must be Aus, never heard of him.