Gutted kimi could not pull it off yesterday. I love that guy and hope he gets a W before he likely gts replaced by Leclerc. His best days may very well be behind him, but he's still bloody quick and if he does get one more win it's good to leave with something in the tank

Yeah, Seb really has no one but himself to blame. He got stuck behind his teammate at the start and that allowed him into the clutches of Lewis who made a fair pass and left him plenty of room. He didn’t need to force the issue as he had the best car and he seems to able to get the most out of it.

Great race and a great result for Hamilton. He is driving masterfully and I hope he wins another championship this year.

Driver moves aka Crazy time
 

So Kimi is out at Ferrari.

Only a little surprised. Kimi does great in qualifying but keeps coming up short on race day.

Never envisioned who they picked to replace him either. :thinking:

Wonder what other team changes are coming across the field.

Your thoughts?

The Official Formula One Thread!
 

This is just a wild guess on my part...

I reckon Ferrari always intended to drop Kimi for LeClerc at the end of the season.

I think they’ve done a deal with him that if he fully supports Vettel‘s title bid as a number 2 driver (like Bottas did last week) then he’d be rewarded with a 2 year deal at Alfa Romeo Sauber instead of being forced to retire.

Otherwise he’d just be looking out for himself until the end of the season and wouldn’t help Seb at all.


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I guess that Ferrari money coming through Sauber for Kimi is too much to resist.

Going to be a lot of pressure on Charles Leclerc next season. Sink or swim time for him.

Seb said earlier in the week that he is his own worst enemy this season, blaming himself for his situation (being 30 points down on Hamilton with 7 races remaining). Quite frankly, I think he's right. Incidentally, he clouted the wall in FP2 this evening and damaged his Ferrari. Wound up 9th fastest in the session.

That lap by Lewis was insane for a track Mercedes was suppose to struggle on.

Yup, it sure was an insane lap :wow: He crushed it!

He's on another level at the moment.

I’ve been following F1 for about 40 years. That lap today was as good as it gets imho.

It was a golden lap for sure. At times you click, flick and gravity plus adhesion all goes your way.

The following stint on fresher tires after that lap, when the clock in Q3 was coming to the end, he had pace on the flyer to better that time but one flick didn’t play out and he went wide.

He knew he might’ve cracked 1:36 but that one issue blanked out the opportunity. Toto’s reaction was telling. They have the package to win the race if strategy and incidents bringing out the safety car fall into their favor. If VSC’s occur then it’s anyone’s guess because Max is a threat (if he makes it through T1 after the G/F and doesn’t take out Lewis).


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Agreed.. Like Schumacher in his prime.

Likewise.. and tho I haven't seen it, I suspect it was. Got the race set to record.

It's all going to be down to what Max does at the first corner...

Isn't that the truth. Max is unbridled so expect the unbelievable.

Lewis Hamilton really nailed that Q3 lap today. He really is driving his best right now and I have to admire the hell out of him for that especially beating a Ferrari that is probably a little bit superior. I would love to see him win tomorrow.

Go Lewis!

Race wasn’t too exciting. I have no idea what Grosjean was doing ignoring blue flags for nearly 2 laps. It was so bad that Charlie had to apologize to Lewis and Max post race for Grosjean holding everyone up. First time I’ve seen someone got penalty points towards a race ban for blue flags.

To be fair, Lewis got stuck behind the racing between Romain Grosjean and Sergey Sirotkin for the best part of a lap. This allowed Verstappen to close up with Lewis and he was forced to defend his position while weaving through the traffic.

Lewis was generous in his interview later:
“If you are lucky you catch them at the right time, they let you by and you don’t lose any time but every time I caught them was at an unfortunate point and I had at least half a lap to a lap behind several of them.

Then we had that moment when they wouldn’t let me go and they were battling. Even to Turn 10, he [Sirotkin] was still flat out so I had to overtake him and I didn’t know if he was going to turn in or not.”




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Not a terribly exiting race but I was glad to see Lewis win another race that Mercedes was not supposed to do well at.

Guess I am easy to entertain. Rather enjoyed the race.

Was fun to be seeing lapped cars and what was up with the BTW Pink car? That guy turned into his teammate and two other cars.

Happy that Hamiltons lead is up to 40.

Now it is off to Russia. Am I the only one that thinks that entire circuit is garishly ugly?

I don’t know how Perez didn’t get any penalty points for driving into Sirotken. I can see how Ocon was deemed a racing incident but the Sirotken crash was pretty egregious.

I enjoyed it because Lewis won but there wasn't much passing on track so it is a bit of a high speed parade. The only lead changes were when cars pit for tires.

I bet it was a tough race mentally and physically though. No room for error on that track and very little run off area if you make a mistake.

Lots of history there between Sergio Perez (the aggressor) and Esteban Ocon (the soon-to-be rideless). Bad mojo for 2 years now despite the Team Principle’s repeated sanctions on them.

IMHO Perez has no respect for the team - he’s bounced around different teams and wasted his great driving talents by headstrong and poorly placed on-track decisions. He has many podiums driving an underpowered car so good shoe, but...

He’s consistently trying to get a shot at a better funded team.

The Force India team was virtually bankrupt for this season and was just purchased by Lance Stroll’s daddy.

So Ocon is out and Lance is in. Perez is staying I presume - unless his funding attracts another seat.


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I'm a Mercedes fan but I was actually really hoping for Raikkonen to win in Singapore.

And Lewis Hamilton extends his lead to 50 points over Sebastian Vettel in Sochi, Russia... with a little help from Valtteri Bottas and team orders. I wasn't thrilled with that aspect of the race but it really isn't surprising that Mercedes told Bottas to move over and give Lewis the position (basically the lead and the win). It was a smart move by Mercedes and perfectly within the legality of the sporting regulations.

What a great race by Max Verstappen though. He passed 8 cars in the first three laps coming from 19th position on the grid, due to an engine change, to finish 5th. Drive of the day for him. He didn't put a wheel wrong all weekend.

Completely agree with the decision (there really wasn’t any other choice) but boy did they make a hash of it and turn it in to a PR disaster!
Should of let Hamilton do the pass in the pits and fully agreed before the race.


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I don't think it's a PR disaster at all. It is a team sport and the team decided what was best for both championships. If Bottas had been in the title fight the team would have let them race, as they did with Rosberg when he was Hamilton's teammate. It's a tough pill for Bottas to swallow for sure and if you're a fan of his you are probably a bit disappointed with the decision but it certainly isn't a PR disaster.

Didn't get to see the race..(traveling in Italy.. ), but the win for Hamilton surely puts him in the 'drivers seat' for another championship. The Mrs will be overjoyed. Always a tough pill to swallow when you're #2, tho not a contender for the championship, as in the past with others leading in the points.
Kudos Hamilton...

Not sure I agree.

(I’m a massive Hamilton fan by the way, not a Bottas fan)

Instead of Mercedes celebrating a 1-2 finish, ALL the media attention was about team orders and not the result. I just feel that if handled differently this situation could have been avoided.

Toto admitted himself that he was up the night before worrying about the 2002 Schumacher/Rubens debacle.

I agree that they are racers at heart and they started that race with the intention of letting them race. I also agree that it would be different if Bottas was still in the title fight.

The biggest difference this year compared to the Rosberg years is Mercedes were so dominant they were just racing themselves whereas now they actually have a battle on their hands to win the constructors championship.


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F1, if anyone, may have suffered some negative PR from the team orders. Such orders have been been a concern for a long time. The ruse this time was a “concern” about a blister beginning to form on one of Hamilton’s tires. Bottas saw straight through that. Not an easy fix though...

Remember the debacle about Race Engineers not providing assistance to drivers over the radio? How’d that go, Bernie? :chuckle: (prior ownership reference). In the past, F1 tried to also block direct orders to surrender a position on track. So silly since the team management can always “engineer” the situation via pit strategy and tire choice. The artifice was farcical. Yet fundamental fairness in being a season champ makes people cry for a fix to the farce.

FIA pays officials a nice rate to enforce fairness and then teams can throw it out the window. For every fan who revels in Hamilton getting a few free points, there are prolly 10 Ferrari Tifosi who seethe at this. Those of us who see the gamesmanship can let it slide, but open wheel racing in Europe is going to suffer in the long run methinks.

Liberty Media has a franchise to consider (current F1 owner) and is not ready to repeat the mistakes of the past. So I don’t see an easy answer to the Driver’s Championship.

My proposal would be to split sponsorship of each team - for example, Mercedes underwrites the technology and funds the Constructor’s Championship. But each driver must have an equal sponsor for the Driver’s Championship. So the cars may look the same designwise and power packages - but not in livery.

Team bosses would not have radios during races and each driver has separate Race Engineers at the peak of their pyramid answerable to the sponsor. Yes, I know it’s sounding crazy but that is how Indycar has managed it fairly.


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So when Ferrari did the same thing where Rubens barrichello had to let Schumacher past you're okay with that? Ferrari has been doing team orders for many many years so let's set the record straight with a fair playing field. And as we know the rule book says team orders is completely Fair this year so there's simply playing by the rules.