What a race that was! Edge of your seat stuff til the very end.
Interesting to see both protagonists making mistakes when driving on the edge this week. Hopefully that cools down both camps on these forums a bit. They're driving on the limit and sometimes over it. They're still human after all. We're in for a helluva year like this.
Few noteworthy things:
Excellent start by Max, did all that he needed to do to recover from yesterday.
Had a bit of a pace drop off near the end of his inter stint, but managed to fix it by switching earlier to the mediums, which I think was a very thrilling moment in the race.
Hamilton had a bit of a bad getaway and was skilfull enough to not drop back to P3, which was a real risk there.
Then later on caught a big stroke of luck with the red flag, otherwise he'd be facing a large gap in the standings by now. Then managed to make it work brilliantly and unfortunately showed how hard it is to get DRS balanced. It was not enough for some cars, but gives an absolute inescapable advantage to a faster car.
Norris did an amazing job all weekend. He delivered big time. Stuck behind Ric first, but after the swap he left him behind easily.
Also great job defending to Hamilton a couple of laps but it was a fight he could only lose eventually.
Leclerc great race! Also a very mature race, didn't see him put as much as a foot wrong except his little slide on the warm up lap. But no harm no foul.
Great pace as well.
Sainz, out of all the "guys with a new car" he was surely on top of things even if he made a few mistakes early on.
Then a few bad words.
Perez, had a slightly worse start than Max and then messed up yielding his place to Charles. Then kept piling on mistake after mistake. Granted, looking at all the guys with new cars these were extremely tough conditions.
Judgement will stay out for now but he will need a big result quickly to get the chip of his shoulder.
Ric & Alonso both lead star drivers being driven away by their younger team mates. Ric was completely outclassed, though I suppose we've never seen him be a star at wet driving. Alonso was just not on it this race. Hopefully he can regain his former strength in races to come.
Bottas ... tricky conditions and he's no where. Topped by his horrid qualifying yesterday. This is a weekend to forget quickly, and he's raking those up faster than he's raking up wins, which is a shame for someone driving that car.
Didn't think he did anything wrong with Russell.
Tsunoda - fast guy but has a steep learning curve ahead of him to get some patience in him.
Vettel - if he doesn't get on it soon and start beating Stroll he should hang up his helmet. Please let's not witness this for another 3 years.
Mazepin - this guy is so out of his depth in F1 it's worrying.
Russell - managed to ruin his race into the points yet again. Just like last year in Imola. Not doing himself any favours.