imagine if Max came out after that bunch of cars

What a shyte race. Nobody can pass unless their tyres are 10+ laps fresher and robbed of what would have been a great battle for the lead b/c of braindead strategy.

Five mins ago Alonso was 10th, now he's 17th

Congrats Red Bull on fastest lap! What a cluster****

Red Bull: "Good effort Max, I really don't know what else we could have done". LOL

LMAO Horner, what a *****

Too many mistakes by Max and Red Bull, while Lewis is converting 2nd places into wins and a DNF into second

I'm getting sick and tired of the: "yeah but this is a Mercedes track" comments.

EVERY TRACK IS A MERCEDES TRACK

Yeah there is no way that 80% was accurate. Hamilton was within ~0.5s when he pitted and was immediately lapping a full second a lap faster with the new tyres. Max was a huge underdog to have a fast enough in-lap to get out still ahead. It might still have been the more likely way to get first, but it would have also meant coming out behind Bottas so it had potential to finish third whereas staying out pretty much guaranteed at least second.

I also think Red Bull only had used mediums left so Hamilton would have had a significant tyre advantage for the remainder of the race anyway.

This. That undercut by Lewis was always going to be successful

This Horner quote was like from a movie, “It could be Hungary all over again.”

It is just a matter of who blinks first for the 2nd stop as to would win it and Mercedes won that battle and therefore won the race. It comes down to such a knife edge.

Redbull has no WIM

Yeah, the thing I don't get is why Redbull didn't immediately pit rather than hoping it would all somehow work out.

They could have even pitted and put the super softs on with 16ish laps to go and had more of a chance. Their strat makes zero sense.

or even be proactive and pit first for the second change when Lewis was up their arse and it was clear he was faster than them

lol @ you guys criticizing Red Bull strategy

They were outgunned massively and would always lose the race on sheer pace. There was no defense vs undercut and they didn't have the tires to pit first. The best chance they actually had was a safety car after Lewis' undercut. All other strategies fail, because they didn't have a second medium set and any time Max ends up behind Lewis is just GAME OVER

Anyway it is good to see that Red Bull has come so much closer to Mercedes that you can no longer say that any driver would become world champion in a Merc. It is pretty plain that Bottas wouldn't have much of a shot vs Max.

Max has improved but Lewis has equaled his best start to a season, so the prodigy might not yet be ready to scale the mountain.

RBR need to soon show that they are capable of winning the title. Within a couple races, the gap could be 25-30 points. Lewis has only failed to finish in the points once in the last 4 years. Max has failed to finish in 7 of his last 30 races, if he can avoid repeating that he might be within striking distance in the latter half of the season.

He goes behind if he pits immediately after and is goodbye to Lewis. Only way that may have worked would be to go radical and maybe do another 3 to 5 laps and stick softs on and then try to overtake him.

Well it will be Mercedes again at Monaco.


Only defence was if Checo was in the top 4 and hunting around where Hamilton was released after his 2nd pit stop to hold him up but sadly he wasn't there.

I also fear that the Red Bull DNF's will kick in sooner or later and the championship run will be over. I want the title run to go as deep as possible into the season. Red Bull often finds extra pace during the season. Not sure about this year, since they are obviously putting a lot of resources into next year.

If Mercedes wins Monaco that would hurt a LOT.

I would be quite surprised if Checo can have any positive impact for Red Bull in this championship race at any point. A job that Gasly and Albon also massively failed at.

They left Checo out in Portugal. That was a very feeble effort. Hamilton blazed past Perez like he wasn't there (why is this guy ignoring the blue flag). Maybe even helped his laptime due to DRS

Hope Max can grab pole at Monaco. Red Bull has poled twice in the last four Monaco races, except that was Ricciardo both time. Daniel's record at Monaco with Red Bull was 2 poles, 1 win, 1x 2nd, 2x 3rd, 1x 5th.

Unfortunately Max has never been on the front row or the podium at Monaco.

Penultimate for Alonso. Half a grid behind Ocon.

Suppose the car just wasn't fast and the team's strategy was bad. But he did a good job on bad tires holding off five guys for like ten laps.

Nobody was passing all day except where the car behind was way faster. Lewis was obv. a bit faster than Max on the mediums, but maybe they thought Max could keep him behind barring a massive error or Lewis moving him.

Checo picked up 2 spots at the start then was stuck 1 second behind Ricciardo a ridiculous portion of the race. He didn't end up passing him until much later, after Checo had done a super long opening stint and then came up on Ricciardo again with fresher tires. Even then, I think it took him a bit of time to pass. I suspect he could have played more of a role in this one (maybe even threatened Bottas?) had he gotten the track position, but it wasn't to be.

Checo's also on record as saying it would take 5 races to get used to the RB. Keep in mind he's been in a Force India for like the previous 7 years, so it must be quite a change. The 5 races are almost up, so it's put up or shut up time.

There was literally no strategy call that would have won this race for RedBull even if their pitstop is a perfect 2 second one and even if they had a second set of mediums. Hamilton being able to sit in dirty air and within 1 seconds for many laps just means they had a massive pace advantage and would always pass RedBull. Race just looked interesting for a bit because Max got past Lewis in the first turn otherwise he is seconds behind before the first pitstop. If what they say about the flexi rear wing and the new tests forces RedBull to change them then the season is over.

Mrs Grosjean has put a photo of Romain's hand on Twitter
Pretty impressive mark he's got there.