Third place by lap 20. Second place by lap 30. Assuming no first lap incident and no beneficial safety car.

Nice pick up.

As for qualifying, Checo's to lose even though Max has a massive pace advantage here and for Checo, he needs to hope Max gets held up a lot as he tries to make passes

It’s a really fun race grid.

Lolol Sir Jackie doesn't give a ****. This pre-race is awesome

Edit: Well it was before whatever the **** this LL Cool J, Will I Am bullshit is

this driver introduction is a Joke...

Yanks trying to ruin F1, that was absolutely awful.

RB too strong, kinda boring.

All 20 going to finish??

Alonso seeing an overtake from Lance on one of the big screens and commenting on it during the race was quite

Checo got schooled by Max this race. that must have been a reality check for him and his fans.

On a side note, that new commentator of Formula 1 is horrific. the less he speaks, the happier I am. Gimme Crofty back

I have to admit I stayed awake long enough to ensure I saw Max get past Checo then fell asleep or it could have just been before. Anyway it just doesn't seem fair. They probably turned up Max's engine for the race to help him I have no doubts because Checo just couldn't get away.

My only other comment was just the pit walk again and seeing Sir Jackie Stewart go through the security fence to try and grab Roger for an interview with Brundle. My eyes might be deceiving me and correct me if I'm wrong but did George try to pull Sir Jackie out the way so he could get to Roger or was that more a pat on Sir Jackie's back like moment. I was just a little confused. It made a bit more sense that Roger came over and said he was a fan of Mercedes so maybe George was acting like a fan boy of his but my estimation of George did slip because of that

You actually think that Red Bull is favoring Max and giving him more power?
Do you have any straight line speed data from the race to support this bold statement?

And what happened last week in Baku then? They favored Checo?

Seems a little less conspiratorial than that.

Max started on the better tire then went to the worse option, but did so as the track conditions improved and his fuel load lightened which meant the penalty he suffered reduced significantly. Checo did the opposite.

Also, Max is faster.

To be fair, Max was significantly quicker in all of the top speed classifications:
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/fi...speeds_v01.pdf

That said, I don't think you can deduce from this that Max was given a superior engine mode all race. Almost all of the other teams have a significant gap between drivers. Not entirely sure what the reasoning behind that would be, I can only guess that it comes down to DRS usage and personal setup choices.

IMO, Max is just a clearly better driver than Checo. Like almost leagues apart. Max spent 45 laps on the Hard tyres, even with high fuel and a green track at the beginning. He had plenty more in the tank should he have needed it too. Engine mode or not, Max and Checo are not even comparable in terms of skill, and yesterday must have been a bit of a wake-up call for Checo after probably thinking that he has a slim chance of the title this year.

In what reality does Max need better engine modes than Checo to beat him. He was consistently 0.3 sec per lap faster all through free practice and Q1 and Q2. And guess what that is exactly what he did during the race as well. Checo could barely beat his times on new hards when Max was on 40 lap old hards. It is like the old Bottas is going to challenge Lewis narratives. Checo has a couple of circuits he is good at, he is going to get beaten easily by Max on all the other ones.

Edit: Had to look it up but RedBull had to have been psychic to give Max better engine modes for the race as you can't change engine modes after qualifying starts.

Are we all forgetting the part where Max had to work his way up the field so would have been using DRS alot more than the man at the front of the pack. Might explain some of that top speed and yeah engine would have been turned up to do so.

Skill gap between Max is levels above Checo, ain't even close imo.

Would be unwise for RB to bring in a young stud like George, Charles or Lando to be the 2nd driver. Keep Max happy being king with a sidekick like Checo, willing to be the 2nd driver. Have W's once in awhile cause the car is so good.

yes when you have a much better car than everyone else it pays to have a crap #2. lewis + bottas worked much better than lewis + nico from merc's pov. ferrari paired schumacher with crap brazillians. it works

Not sure if you saw this message from Max to Checo.

https://youtu.be/Ngfugq4yq7k?t=56

Yeah I don't know what we can do with Checo - he can still bumble his way along and still get 2nd in the championship and help Red bull win the teams championship - no wonder he gets paid like a fraction of what they pay Max.

The current setup is close to perfect. No threat to Max’s throne, doesn’t talk smack in media, a solid 2nd driver that brings in second place points. Easy to babysit for Horner.

Nico-Lewis situation is not needed for RB. Great for fans but Helmut, Christian too wise to bring in unnecessary headaches. Max & his Dad are already a handful.

And contributes to Red bull's sponsorship so the net actual cost of Checo taking that into account would be like $5 million instead of $10 million notwithstanding all the merchandise sales Red bull gets from Mexican and Spanish supporters which would more than make up for it. Drivers in Checo's position should really get paid more even if a donkey could perform the same as Checo in that car

Kind of moot points on the financials, because there are very few drivers in F1 who don't come with the same financial benefits. Sure, there are some more than others but for a team like Red Bull it makes very little difference. If Checo was from Estonia and had brought no sponsorship he'd still be a solid option for RB because he's a proven fast driver who's happy taking 2nd place.

There are very few drivers on the grid who are in the driving seat (excuse the pun) when it comes to demanding a certain salary. Max, Lec, Ham, Alo - there are probably another 4/5 who hold some cards, but only while the top seats are occupied.

Sure, Checo probably should get paid more, but he won't because there are a heap of other drivers who are performing at a very similar level for a whole lot less. They just have to be okay with 2nd.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/65621373

Imola called off due to flooding

Surprised FIA made the right decision to call it off early so people aren't travelling to Imola for no reason.

I'm surprised they didn't try to do 2 laps behind a SC before calling it off

Rules have been changed so that you need to actually race before you can call it a race. So we can't have another Spa farce.