Rate the race and Driver of the weekend: Round 19,
Interlagos, Brazil 2017
Mean reader score: 5.85
This year’s score was nowhere near as high as last year’s score of 8.03, but way higher than 2015’s score of 3.92. Then again, this time last year the championship had not yet been decided, Rosberg was 19 points ahead of teammate Hamilton and the championship could still have gone either way. Added to that, last year’s race was WET, had a liberal sprinkling of safety car periods, looked as if it would not be finished before the two hour limit had been reached and gave us (possibly) the best wet race overtaking of the season.
Not so this year: Both WCs have been won (WCC by Mercedes and WDC by Hamilton.) It was a dry race and we had only one safety car period, which came at the beginning of the race when, after a couple of incidents, Magnussen, Van Doorne and Ocon retired and Ricciardo found himself in the pits (and lower down the pack ) way earlier than planned.
Bottas had claimed pole from Vettel by 0.038s and Hamilton had crashed out in Q1 before setting a time, starting at the back of the grid. Overnight Mercedes fitted a new engine to the No 44 car, relegating Hamilton to a pit lane start, which in the end meant Hamilton was blessed with missing the lap one incidents. Bottas’s pole position didn’t last long, as Vettel had snatched it from him into turn 1 of the first lap, taking the lead which is where he stayed (pit stops aside) for the rest of the race. Talking of pitstops Mercedes almost (but not quite) managed to clinch the lead on Bottas’ pitstop on lap 27. They tried (and narrowly failed) to undercut Vettel but did manage to reduce his lead from 1.5 s (ish) to 1.5 tenths(ish.)
There was a lot of overtaking of back markers as Hamilton and Ricciardo made their way back up through the pack, which resulted in Hamilton winning yet another title this season, that of
Driver of The Weekend: Lewis Hamilton (45.16% of reader vote)
Mercedes had (again) looked dominant in the free practice sessions, with Hamilton leading FP1 and FP2 and Bottas taking FP3 by 0.003s from his illustrious teammate. So it came as a bit of a shock when Lewis crashed out of Q1 without setting a lap time. Not to be deterred, he cut a swathe through the field, (at one point leading the race for quite a few laps, until he had to pit for fresh tyres) in a way that had the race commentators speculating if he would be third or second on the podium. However it was not to be, as Raikkonen staunchly defended P3 and Lewis had a big lock up scuppering the best chance he had of gaining said podium position. Still, from Pit lane start to P4 was pretty good, even for a x4 WDC. Well done Lewis! The Dutch TJ13 contingent managed to not get a look in this week…
@F1TheaJ
So, you really needed Verstappen as a clickbait?
That’s simply, simply lovely 🙂
If your assertion is true then the tactic seems to have worked. However, it’s kinda funny that something you called out as clickbait gets lots of clicks – or are they “ironic” clicks, in the parlance of our times?
If you push your thoughts to the deeper implications of what “clickbait” really means then you’d perhaps realise that whilst its use is something of a positive comment on Verstappen’s popularity it says something altogether less complimentary about a fair chunk of his fans.
Having said all that, what I think the author is actually referencing with the use of Max’s family name in the headline is that history would suggest that all VER jnr has to do is show up to a race – whether or not he finishes – and he’s guaranteed a gong for driver of the weekend.
It didn’t happen this weekend. Instead, Lewis with his entirely predictable handgun-at-a-knife-fight effort got the choccies, proving that MV33 & LH44 fans have a lot on common.
Quote:
“Having said all that, what I think the author is actually referencing with the use of Max’s family name in the headline is that history would suggest that all VER jnr has to do is show up to a race – whether or not he finishes – and he’s guaranteed a gong for driver of the weekend.”
Maybe you should take a look at the official Driver of the day standings and find out that it isn’t Verstappen but Vettel
Source: https://www.formula1.com/en/championship/awards/driver-of-the-day.html
Driver of the day standings 2017 season up til now:
Sebastian Vettel: 7
Lewis Hamilton: 3
Max Verstappen: 3
Daniel Ricciardo: 2
Valtteri Bottas: 2
Kimi Raikkonen: 1
Lance Stroll: 1
Max got in your head too 😉
Hamilton’s drive was rather unimpressive, but to his fans, he was superman.
He got a four position gift at the start, and the safety car wiped out the pit lane start deficit, then it was a superior car set up in race trim. Yet he couldn’t overtake Raikkonen. It was entertaining, but in the end it fizzled.