Butler and Ricciardo providing some actual entertainment and fun on the podium unlike the scripted cobblers about the fans.
It has been painful to have him and Jenson so far back on the grid. These guys should be putting their wits against the brilliant younger guns Max and Danny Ric, and of course the elite and champion drivers like Hamilton, Vettel, and (maybe soon to be) Rosberg. I don't know how things will shake out next year but I hope Alonso is in the mix.
If you are referencing Hamilton (which I wasn't aiming to do), I just want to clarify that I was referring in general to the corporate answers and interviews we tend to get from everyone. HAM does do it a lot yes but he is no different to a good few of the drivers and we just happen to see him on the podium every week so we see more of him. For the record I think Hamiltons a brilliant driver and in another league to Rosberg, so this is not about the tit for tat Hamilton chatter we tend to get on here. That said, I can't pretend that I don't find his interviews and persona excruciating, and the same with Rosberg. F1 should be fun and full of characters, so I'd rather see something like we saw with Danny Ricc and Gerard Butler tonight than listen to the Merc drivers tell the fans how brilliant they are (an apology for the snooze fest they paid to see) and thanking Petronas for their fuel on Malaysia podiums etc etc. Wouldn't you rather see drivers be real than watch this painful circus that we have become?
If course we all want characters, sadly they are few and far between, and when we do have a character there's always a sense that they should somehow tow the corporate/professional line. It's a very odd hypocrisy. As for the Hamilton bit.... it's as inevitable as the sun rising that no matter what occurs in a race, there will be a Hamilton gripe of driving too hard, driving crap, acting like an idiot, acting too corporate. It is quite funny.
Great job by Lewis. Sky reporting Nico got a free pitstop - pitted with Lewis (according to sky he didn't get a freebe), lost 10 laps of his medium stint and the advantage of being on the soft at the end. Really poor one sided journalism again. Alonso really spices things up, but if the stewards are consistent he gets a penalty for the Massa contact and both he and KMag exceeded track limits in their overtakes. F1 is becoming a very inconsistent joke. Excellent drive by Sainz and deserved that 5th place for me #robbed Ferrari....
Fair enough. Lewis will finish up as a minimum Triple WDC and an F1 great so all the bickering won't matter. He's proved himself against a lot of awesome drivers. He's actually been more impressive when he didn't have the fastest car. You won't hear me complain about him on the track because he's brilliant. The stuff off track probably weighs on me a lot more than it should purely because of how poor the spectacle is right now and also (as just mentioned above) the awful, and I do mean AWFUL, biased Sky UK coverage that makes it far worse.
I guess I'm quite fortunate in that I don't get to witness any of that, and I can appreciate how that would grind people down.
Hamilton... Did what he needed to do Rosberg... Did what he needed to do Ricciardo... VSC stopped him making anything at the front interesting I had high hopes after the first 10 or so laps, everyone all together on a few different strategies. It just never happened.
Interesting. It must have been a different Max Verstappen who ****ed his own race up by turning up for a pitstop that wasn't.
After a few reasonable races this one failed to deliver on it's promise, unfortunately. Enlivened by Massa, Sainz and Massa at the end, though.