This is Bottas best and possibly only chance to win a race. It will be interesting to see how much he will care about team orders

That Mercedes engine of Lewis' is going to haul some pretty good arse on that back straight tonight up the hill which is why Max is going to be a sitting duck if he doesn't get a big enough lead while Lewis makes his way through traffic. So on that don't expect Bottas to tear away like he could to hold Max up.

MOST HAT-TRICKS (current drivers)
18 - Hamilton
8 - Vettel
5 - Alonso
2 - Raikkonen, Verstappen, BOTTAS

What is this

Good drive by Bottas, but he usually runs good out in front

Don't think the late tyre change by Lewis really mattered and he would likely finish in 5th if he didn't pit.

Please don't rain in Texas or Mexico. We deserve some races without rain.

To give Gasly and Alonso the same penalty was harsh - Gasly's one was hardly a penalty at all and Alonso basically punted Schumacher out the way. You shouldn't get a reprieve just because a driver is suffering red mist over their eyes.

That 20 sec Perez v Hamilton sequence was the most fun segment of the season. Brilliant by both drivers

Perez surprised me pleasantly in this race. I was kinda expecting him to roll over and die to Hamilton.

It also surprised me how tough it was for Hamilton to advance, considering his pace advantage. I suppose the conditions were to blame for that.

Pole, win, fastest lap - https://www.statsf1.com/en/statistiq.../hattrick.aspx

I think he ran too much wing which is usually the Mercedes way.

It's true he would also have been 5th and more likely DNF if he didn't pit but if he had listened to his team and pitted the moment they first told him to he would have been at least 4th and possibly 3rd.

Ocon barely made it to the end and that tire would not have lasted another lap and Hamilton had abused his tires a lot more battling Tsunodi and Perez. Pirelli was actually not happy teams even considered going to the end on those tires.

As a Pérez fan, I was ecstatic that Lewis pitted. During the race I was thinking Lewis had the strategy spot on and he had such a lead that he might as well just stay out. He was 14s up on Pérez with 8 laps to go when he pitted and unless the tyres fell off massively (Ocon's did, so this was a very real possibility), he probably would have held onto the lead.

In retrospect, I think pitting was the right call. The tyres might have held up, but you have to protect against complete disaster and if a tyre punctures then you don't get any points. Whereas pitting locked up 5th, and possibly as high as 3rd.

I didn't really understand Mercedes' strategy though. Everyone else pitted on like lap 30-38 (of a 58 lap race). It seems like if you're Mercedes, you either pit Lewis then or decide to gamble and stay out. But then around lap 47 they changed their mind and decided to call him in, but it seemed like the bed had already been made, and Lewis, who is perpetually complaining about his tyres, was actually fine with the tyres, so maybe you just trust him.

What about fastest at all the practice sessions as well?

bwaahhahhaaaaa the international one finger salute of disapproval

Gold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lbhj2Ikl9k

(cannot embed it, won't work due to copyright)

Checo excited about the North American run of events it seems

Checo on provisional pole

Alonso fuming lol
Raikkonen can overtake outside the track and he cannot

Red Bull owes Haas about 10 cases of beer

can’t help feeling the team let Lewis down today

Seemed like Max was hurt way more by Tsunoda than he gained with Haas. Battling dumbass Yuki cut his lead from like 8.5 to 5 seconds.

That being said, even though I'm pulling for RB, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious to see Lewis get just one chance on the long straight with DRS to see what would've happened.

Lewis gained about 3 seconds from back markers holding up Max longer than Lewis and even Mick held up Max more than Lewis so that final DRS bonus to Max stopped this from becoming a massive argument about blue flags being ignored.
Although I agree one final lunge on the back straight by Lewis would have been fun to see.

Stewards made a ****ing mess of it - again.

Raikkonen went off-track and maintained his lead over Alonso. There was no action from the stewards, so Alonso mad

Then Alonso overtook Giovinazzi, going blatantly off-track and thought probably he would get away with that too, except that he didn't

Such a joke.

I'm not sure what Lewis or his team could have done. Verstappen pitted quite early and the undercut was always going to work

The Red Bull was quicker on the soft and medium tires, but it seemed to me that Mercedes had the advantage on the hard tires.

Verstappen pooped out a lot of really good lap times with his older tires. Halfway the race I thought Lewis would be getting to him in the last 5 laps, but he didn't come close enough

Noobish question but what happened to the superiority of the mercedes car? Has Red Bull tech caught up or is Verstappen just so much better than Hamilton right now that it negates the edge?

I always thought that the second cars give a good indication.

This assumes a more marginal difference between second drivers (and the rest of the pack in general) than between title contenders, and that a team's cars are (relatively) equal, all of which could be wrong.

For instance, I always thought M. Schumacher was very good because it was often him first followed by like Hakkinen and Coulthard in their McLaren cars, rather than second place going to Ferrari as well. Just as possible that Eddie Irvine (or whoever) was just ****.

I'd love to hear from people who actually know - most of the takes I read are just unrealtistic rambling from fanboys who think that Max/Lewis is just much better than their rival and in the event of missing the title have obviously been held back by their car.