Red Bull and Max should calk up the race as bad luck, nothing more. At least they still scored points.
In case no one knows yet. Laurens Vanthoor was knocked out of the 24hrs of Spa in a freak paddock accident. He was on his scooter and got ran into by a quad, IN THE PADDOCK! Not even on the track. He landed on his head and suffers some facial injuries. He is ok.
Max was so lucky that that's it for the damage. Norris' car could have easily bang onto his suspensions and take him out completely. Or even worse, take out his brand-new engine. As it stands, He still gained 2 points in the standing.
Had he kept his cool back in Silverstone, at worse he would have finished 2nd and gain another 18 points instead of 0. Which also means he would have been 10 points ahead of Lewis instead of 8 back. His team would also be 6 points up instead of trialing by 12 points.
In order to be a Champion he needs to see farther out, not just a battle in a corner. He is widely recognized as one of the fastest driver in F1 now, he doesn't need to show off his ability by banging wheels with everything he sees. In order to win he first needed to finish.
Verstappen's reputation around the paddock sums up in less than 4 minutes.
Dive bombing torpedoing another car and spinning them out........checked.
Moving under braking........checked.
Taking out 2 cars from a rival team with one move........checked.
Hitting the outside car and take them out, a teammate no less...................checked.
Complaining about another driver driving like himself...........checked.
Going bargy bargy and came off worse.........checked.
With that kind of history, not sure how he and Horner has the guts to blame everything happened in the last 2 races on Mercedes. Do they not have mirror at home? Or in the motor coach?
Alonso burnished his credentials as a team player. While he would have enjoyed standing on the podium, he earned his keep on the team by impeding Hamilton. That's a dynamic that is not often covered in F1 analyses and the reason why there are two cars per team.
There's also reports that the Alpine cars generate an aerodynamically dirty wake while the Ferraris are probably the least turbulent wake generators. This was apparent when Hamilton had problems passing Alonso and Vettel attempting to pass Ocon. Hamilton, however, had little issues passing that Ferrari.
With the damages coming out of the yearly budget, the top teams are now finally experiencing what smaller teams and privateer teams being doing all along.
Before cost cap, those teams just simply out spend everyone else. The smaller teams all had a self imposed operating budget and every crash carries serious consequences down the road. Bring the car home in one piece has a different meaning to them.
Having damages coming out of the cap promotes cleaner racing. One can't just barge into another car as every wing, bargeboard, wheel and floor all counts now.
Ferrari had an interesting take, having the offending party pays for damages. Seems fair on paper, but that would put the stewards under even greater scrutiny, as if they aren't already. Blames were assigned either 100% at fault, aka Bottas crash in Hungary, or 51-49 as in the Lewis and Max get together in Silverstone with Lewis being considered to be predominantly at fault and Max isn't without fault, or 50-50 as in most contacts that's considered a racing incident. How do one split the damage bill then?
It also disproportionally punish the smaller teams. Some of them don't even spend to the cap, a crash would cost them more in percentage of their spending.
At the end of the day, racing is expensive. Especially F1. Perhaps next year the top teams should budget in more money for crash contingency, and spend less on development. That was the whole point of having a cap, to try and level the playing field and bringing the top teams closer to the small teams.
It would be nice to go back to like 2012 where 6 different manufacturers won a race in a season with 5 different makes winning a race for the first 5 races and 7 different drivers winning in the first 7 races. Kimi in the Lotus padded those numbers late in the season.
With the summer break and no F1, how about some GP2 historic moments?
Hamilton charge up from P19 to P2 in oh 21 laps. In a spec car. Yes most aren't 'great drivers', but still decent enough. Piquet Jr even has his OWN race team for chris sake. He did it with his skills. He turned down his wings to get straight line speed, and only rely on his ability and not the car to corner faster than everyone else to gain his advantage. And braking later than everyone else too.
He won Formula Renault in 2003, Formula 3 in 2005, GP2 in 2006, 1 point away from winning F1 in 2007 and won it in 2008.
Unlike Max, Nico, Piquet Jr, he didn't have a well connected daddy to pave the road. he got everything he got now with his ability. By winning at every level before F1.
He isn't the greatest person in the world, most don't like him just because of how he acts outside the circuit. But inside the circuit, there maybe no equal.
Max's fans might argued otherwise, but let's face it, Max is just coming of age, his last few years in F1 racing has developed him into what he is right now, and Hamilton is on his twilight years, arguably declining as we speak, of course there will be a point where the two lines intercept. Max has the added advantage of Red bull designing a car around his driving style, no arguments there with his revolving teammates that struggled in the same car. Lewis had always had a 'neutral' car, where it suits both drivers, see Alonso, Rosberg, Bottas, Button.
Hamilton always had the best car? No. 2007 he and Alonso has the same car, he beats him fair and square. When he jumped ship to Mercedes, people wrote him off saying he wouldn't never win another championship. 2009 was Button in the Brawn. 2010-2013 was Vettel in the Red Bull. even in the hybrid era the Ferrari were a very strong competitor to the Mercedes.
Along the way to his 7 championships, he beat 2 time Champion Alonso, 4 time Champion Vettel, Kimi has one too. So did Button. And Nico also has one.
History will tell how good Max can be. He will likely have his hands full with Norris, Leclerc, Ocon, Gasly. Russell. All have the potential to be world champion.
First thing I thought was that the previous generation Audi R8 still looks good. It's quite the timeless beauty even if overshadowed by the 250 GTO and F1.