This weekend was a Formula 1 weekend, and as usual, I want to discuss it, as it has made the fight for the drivers’ world championship more interesting and increased Max Verstappen’s chances of winning this year.
A qualifying session under the rain
The weekend started on Saturday with an exciting qualifying session under the rain, with a Pole of Lando Norris, followed by Max Verstappen, and a surprising Carlos Sainz finishing third, squeezing every tenth of his modest Williams, at least compared with the rivals’ cars. Due to rain conditions, the track improved a lot every minute, and because of this there were some important surprises. Hamilton, with his Ferrari, finished last as he failed to make a good lap, being the first time since 2009 that a Ferrari finished last in a Qualifying session. Yuki Tsunoda, the teammate of Max Verstappen, finished 19th, which was disappointing if you compare with his teammate.
On the positive side, there was also Fernando Alonso, who finished 7th, which finished second, outperforming the performance of his car, and proving that he is one of the best drivers under difficult conditions.
The race day
The race started with Lando Norris losing his Pole position, as he ran wide on the first corner, losing 2 positions; however, he could reduce the damage, finishing the race second after a huge push to recover the second position. As soon as Norris got the second position, the team pushed him to catch and overtake Verstappen, which would have consequences as we will see later. Anyway, the race was won by Max Verstappen, which put more pressure on winning the championship. Piastri was not fighting for the lead in any moment, so it seems that he is not in a position to fight for this championship anymore, he needs a huge change in his performance in these last 2 races to push his teammate Lando Norris. However, after crossing the finish line, we all had the feeling that this championship was almost decided, but the night was not over.
After the race investigation. Mclaren disqualified
Some time after the race, the bomb dropped. Both McLaren cars got disqualified because the skid blocks under both cars were below 9mm, which is the limit established by regulations. These kinds of infringements are quite automatic, if you are outside the norm, you are out. But why did this happen?
All car makers want the car as low as possible to maximise the ground effect and have more grip. But when the new regulation was introduced, a lot of cars had huge vibrations which in some cases led to hurting some drivers. To limit this, FIA introduced regulations to ensure a minimum height during the race and avoid physical damage to pilots.
Also, aside from the wrong setup of the car, in my opinion, the team made a mistake with Norris. When he was chasing Verstappen, there was no need for pushing like that. There was no need to overtake him; a second position was perfect for his championship fight. He would have had few points against Verstappen, but only 2 races and 1 sprint race remain. They already won the championship because they had a superior during many races, but it seems that the strategy team is not ready to be the champion.
Personnel were on track while racing in the first lap
The final topic of this race is a very dangerous situation that happened on the first lap, with assistance staff on track while the cars were racing. This is not the first time in this season, the same happened in Mexico, for example. If we continue this way, it’s a matter of time before something very bad and serious happens, you can search on YouTube videos about that (sorry, I cannot post images here as I don’t have the rights of the images).
This issue should be investigated, and the person responsible for that decision should be fired immediately. We cannot continue tempting our luck like this, it will not be the first time that assistance staff die on track, and no one can allow that.
Discover more from Kimchi diary
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
