in 2018<\/a>, when Hamilton defied the supercomputer\u2019s predictions of the perfect lap time.\u00a0<\/p>\nAfter Russell\u2019s last lap crash in 2023 and his barrier bang in this year\u2019s first free practice session, a comeback like that is something to be applauded. He came, he saw and he conquered. This is up there for me as one of the best race wins of the season. He controlled the race with an ease I\u2019ve never seen from him. It was fantastic from Mercedes all around. Toto Wolff, what are you waiting for? You wanted a team leader, and now you\u2019ve got one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now to everyone\u2019s favorite segment: How did things go wrong at Ferrari? Place your bets: Brake failure? Poor strategy? No pace? Crash? Engine failure? Lift and coast?\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you guessed poor strategy and no pace this weekend, you\u2019re wrong! Ferrari executed a beautiful strategy with Hamilton and seemingly had the pace to hang with the heavy hitters.<\/p>\n
The answers are brake failure and lift and coast. It looked like Hamilton might make it into the top five after chasing down an almost 20-second gap to catch Andrea Kimi Antonelli \u2026 until his brakes caught fire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What are the brakes on this car made of? Hopes and dreams? Ultimately, the Ferrari cars swapped back, putting Hamilton in seventh in front of Fernando Alonso. Because of the aforementioned brake failure, he cut some corners (literally) to stop himself from crashing. But if you listened to Alonso\u2019s radio messages, you\u2019d think Hamilton went and plucked each of his mustache hairs individually.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alonso got his wish in the end, because Hamilton received a five-second penalty for \u201cleaving the track without justifiable reason multiple times.\u201d Not sure how brake failure is not justifiable, considering he lost almost 40 seconds over one lap, but that\u2019s neither here nor there. This promoted Alonso to seventh, big whoop. By the way, these two used to fight for championships \u2014 Alonso just never won one over Hamilton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc\u2019s race wasn\u2019t much better \u2014 he had to lift off of the throttle (lift and coast) for almost every lap so his brakes wouldn\u2019t blow up. This means that he couldn\u2019t fully exploit the pace the car apparently had (re: Hamilton closing the gap to Antonelli).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s driver lineup is far too good for this to be the car and state of the team. Engineer Riccardo Adami and Hamilton are not a winning combination at this point in time, and they might never be. Leclerc\u2019s dream of becoming a champion in red seems more distant with each season. Something has got to give. I suggest management starts making tough calls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moving on to the actual broadcast of this race, I need the TV director to understand that the driver who wins the race crosses the line first. That\u2019s obvious, I know, but it means the race continues behind him for drivers who have not been lapped. We want to see the action, not the winning driver\u2019s reconnaissance lap nor his girlfriend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The whole Hamilton-Alonso debacle wasn\u2019t shown on the broadcast because we were too busy looking at the fans in the grandstands. We also missed Carlos Sainz Jr.\u2019s multiple overtakes in the closing stages of the race because we were watching Norris trail Max Verstappen as he had been for several laps at that point. I don\u2019t watch the races to see drivers\u2019 girlfriends \u2014 let them be! I don\u2019t care which celebrity is in the paddock! Truthfully, I only care that I\u2019m not in the paddock. I want to see action on the track. Let\u2019s see the winner celebrate and hear their radio message, and then tune us back into the drivers still on track. Please!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m excited for Round 19 in Texas because I\u2019ve heard everything\u2019s bigger there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roscoe, icon of the \u201cF1\u201d movie and Lewis Hamilton\u2019s beloved bulldog, passed away. Sending him love and light.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-205468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}