I won't lie, my weekend moods are inextricably linked to the results of either Mclaren or my beloved Spurs. My sensible head say's "this is rediculous, I have no involvement with either team, and i'm not likely too in the forceable future". My heart rules my head however, and so I get up at 4:30am in the morning to (hopefully) cheer home a Mclaren 1-2. ...and so to Malaysia. You can say Lewis was unlucky in Australia. Jenson was superb. Vettel got lucky, and there is your top 3. Here I can't see anything but Mclaren having made a series of errors that cost them the race. Yes they were unlucky with the race being stopped, but 3 (Three!) bad pitstops and once again bringing in Jenson before Lewis, even though Lewis was ahead & you could see the slicks were faster was just stupid. They had the chance to beat Alonso in to the pits, but didn't, he didn't even come in before Perez. So he lost ground of both of them. I know this year Mclaren are attempting to do what Rb did last year, which is to streak of into the distance and control the race. Which they would have done were it not for the two safety cars. But when that has to change, their cars look woefully short on race pace? Is this due to being underfueled? Are they just geared up for Quali? Do they really have a car miles better than everyone else? I'm not too sure on the first 2, but I certainly don't think the gap is as Large as quali would suggest. I can't complain too much as I got my wish for another 2010 esque season, it just seems to be that Mclaren are going to throw away points in a similar fashion to Red Bull that year as well!
I know how you feel, I now place bets on drivers I don't want to win so that if the worst happens on track I end up with a little financial compensation. This weekend was a fine example, I used my free £10 sky bet as a wild card punt on Perez getting a podium finish, and also put £2 on a safety car. As for McLaren, they had some bad luck, but so did Red Bull. Both teams were not setup or suited to the conditions and given that these conditions were the exception and not the rule I'm not too worried. There were also a lot worse pit stops than those by McLaren but we do tend to focus on the teams we love and follow.
