Great from Lewis all weekend and an excellent comeback. Having the Sprint really reduces the punishment of starting from the back though.
True, but Lewis was demoted from 3rd, not 1st so Max was always winning that. But either way, it's going to be an exciting climax.
I do wonder if Red Bull will do what Mercedes did and replace Max's ICE. Yes, it will incur a 5 place grid penalty but looking at how much pace Lewis had this weekend, it may be worth the gamble.
He’s had a great season. Charles maximised the Ferrari performance again (though he had a poor race in the sprint, by his standards). If Ferrari and McLaren can get their cars up with RBR and Merc next season, it’ll be a heck of a lot of fun.
Mercedes have asked for a review of the Verstappen move on Hamilton that forced him off the track. I suspect this is only the start of this sort of stuff between now and the end of the season.
What I do think is that , as I have said previously , Toto is no angel but he’s a better person imho than Horner . All I want as a fan of the sport is for the titles to be decided on the track . All this tit for tat rubbish is in real danger of ruining a good title battle .
If the stewards deem this new evidence Mercedes have presented to be strong enough to warrant a penalty for Max then a 5 second penalty added on to Max's race time will be sufficient to see him drop to 3rd, losing 3 WC points in the process. It will also have huge ramifications for the constructors championship.
I’m no expert on F1, but if a driver does 71 laps of a circuit and only overshoots a bend 1/71, at precisely the time someone is trying to pass him on the outside, I think I would be a tad suspicious as to whether or not it was accidental.
If Lewis hadn't taken evasive action it could have been another Silverstone, with Lewis being the one going in the wall. Just because there was no contact it doesn't mean an offence hasn't been committed. I'm all for it being decided on the track but it has to be fair, and that was not a fair move by Max.
I would lean towards it not being a penalty and was happy to let them race though I don't think it was consistent with other decisions across the season (a considerable amount of which I've disagreed with).
Not particularly. There's a reason that drivers often overshoot the corners when competing for places, and rarely do so when they aren't: the best way to get ahead or stay ahead is by braking later than your opponent. Verstappen braked very late...probably too late to make the corner in fact, and you can see how late he is on the brakes by how much ground he gains on Hamilton entering the corner. Going down the inside as he did, you're always going to run wide. There's absolutely an argument to be made that Verstappen should have been penalized based on the penalties handed out this season. From what I can tell, though, it seems that the pattern the stewards have established is, broadly: - Telemetry shows no attempt to avoid collision/conscious attempt to run car off the road: penalty with or without contact. - Telemetry shows attempt to avoid collision, collision happens anyway: penalty for unsafe driving. - Telemetry shows attempt to avoid collision, collision doesn't happen (even if it's the other driver preventing the collision): no penalty. With a much greater degree of lenience for the car ahead. Now, I've made no secret of disliking the way that penalties have been assessed, and that's true here as well. Personally, I think that the "car ahead sets the line" thing is stupid, for precisely the reason we saw here: one way to get ahead is to cook it down the inside of a corner in such a fashion that you haven't a hope in hell of staying on the racing line. It's basically what Hamilton was trying to do at Silverstone, only he couldn't meaningfully get his nose in front because he lunged from too far back. And because the stewards are placing a high degree of emphasis on whether your steering and pedal inputs show intent (rather than simply being reckless), creating a situation where you full send it to get ahead is to your benefit even if you have zero chance of remaining on the tarmac thereafter, so long as you're making a fruitless effort to do so (and I presume that the data showed Verstappen was making the effort, he just had terminal understeer because he braked approximately 3 inches from the apex). So would I penalize Verstappen? No. But that's because I want a completely different standard applied, not because I agree with the standard that they're applying.
The initial review hearing that Mercedes requested finished quite a while ago. I think Max could be in a bit of bother here. If a second hearing is arranged it means there is significant new evidence and that hearing will decide if any penalties should be imposed.
