It’s nearly time for lights out!
Will Lewis be able to fend of Max? Can the McLarens move forward? Will the Alfas manage to stay high up the order, and can Danny Ric score points on his return to Formula 1?
Find out all this and more, next time on Dragon Ball Z!
For a first race back having being taken out in T1, Ricciardo has done a wicked job here. Tsunoda obviously not had the best race of the year, but he’s 10s behind right now.
Alpine having a nightmare.
Ouch
Zhou bowling! Strike!
Piastri is so impressive. One to watch out for. McLaren can let Lando go and still have a top driver now
I’d be starting to think about picking up Piastri over Norris at this point. It’s his rookie year and he’s on a very similar race pace as Norris, maybe not got the ultimate quali pace yet. Norris took over a year to look this close to Sainz, and never consistantly beat him. He’s only going to get better and the McLaren is notoriously unbalanced so he can handle an imperfect car. He’s probably cheaper and not on as long a contract. Norris is still the better of the two at the moment but I wonder if he will be for long.
What happened regarding the first pit stop though? Piastri’s stop was faster than Norris’, but this Norris managed to undercut him. Are they on different strategies?
Undercutting your own teammate is bound to raise questions. Hopefully we get answers after the race.
Also a slow stop for Piastri. He’s being robbed of a podium for a second time.
Afterwards he was pretty off the pace He was consistently slower than Noris. At first I thought he just had slow targets, maybe he had tire management issues, I have no idea.
Does piastri have some sort of damage. His pace has dropped like a stone in the 2nd and 3rd stint
Emotional damage from his teammate getting the preferred pitstop?
Update: Apparently there was a broken floor issue. Don’t know how, didn’t see him make any contacts. PIA better hope he does not inherit HUL luck.
Yeah he went from matching Lando to becoming 7 tenths slower. Only damage can explain that.
Don’t know how, didn’t see him make any contacts
Must have been like Hamilton in austria in 2021 where the his wing was damaged due to a kerb. Considering how low the floors are, he must have hit the kerb at the chicane
Very big gains and losses on lap 1. Good for Ferrari and McLaren, mixed bag for Merc, Alfa and Alpine the big losers.
How much damage is RIC carrying? Been at the bottom since the lap 1 incident.
It’s also his first race back in a car that has done poorly all season
True
Fucking Ferrari! The car is shit, the strategists are shittier and now the drivers are fucking up.
Why am I supporting this team?
Well, masochism is a thing. So, whatever floats your boat. ;-)
McLaren’s pace seems legit, which is cool, and fast corners at Spa should suit them even more than Hungaroring. Good job to the Woking boys.
Aston Martin and Ferrari should have been better here, so a middling performance behind Merc and McLaren doesn’t look good. Maybe just putting all their eggs in to next year’s basket?
Mercedes looked back to their usual performance levels after a great qualifying lap from Hamilton yesterday
Alpine is such a disaster of a team, I want to like Enstone like I did in the 2000s with Alonso and early 10s with Raikkonen, but they’re just tragic. Today wasn’t even their fault, but it’s such an Alpine thing to happen.
Perez was better today, especially on a track that’s hard to pass, but Ricciardo looked like he has a bit of a spark back. With Verstappen running away with every race I can’t deny that I wouldn’t mind giving Daniel a shot in the RBR at this point. Anything to make the battle for the lead a little bit different.
Great Quali pace from Alfa Romeo turned in to a typically pointless race result. While the Ferraris, Perez, Russell and Alonso were likely to get by, Albon in the Williams should definetely not have finished ahead of them. Considering the money Audi is starting to invest in the team I hope they begin to see more results.
If RIC to RBR is going to happen, I hope it’s at the start of next year. I’d like to see RIC have some time in the less mega car to get a bit more of his sea legs back before he’s judged next to VER.
I was struck today by Perez compared to his great drives in the Racing Point. I just kind of wondered what ALO would have done in the Pink Mercedes year. I’m rambling.
Leclerc, c’mon. You don’t have to make it even harder
I love the optimism, Sky, but there’s no way Hamilton catches Perez from 1.7 seconds behind in one lap.
FFS, Alpine.
Alpine… sheesh.
I missed the first 5 laps, wtf happened?
Zhou got a late start and went bowling instead.
I just watched the clip… Crazy. Alpine has the worst fucking luck this season.
They swapped straight to the podium positions and started the circular procession.
Most significant was Renault-domino (I’m going to ignore the Alpine brand for the rhyme): Zhou bumped into Ricciardo, who bumped into an Alpine, who bumped into an Alpine.
Oh wow both Alpines out in the first lap. Yikes.
Zhou into Riccardo and then Riccardo into an Alpine, and then into another Alpine.
