Vestappen's race pace today was crazy fast. Perez and Leclerc might have had him over 1 lap all weekend long but he was stupid quick in the race. He ended up over 20s ahead of Perez.
No kidding, Leclerc had pole 6 times out of 8 this season. He started from pole 4 times in a row and didn't win. Ferrari is almost unbeatable in qualifying, but it falters in the races. And if their racepace is decent, Ferrari will come up with a strategy to throw away an easy pole-to-victory-drive.
The largest gap in 2021 was 32 points (in Vestappen's favor before that silverstone race). Leclerc is 34 behind Vestappen at this point, more than Hamilton was at any point last season. Perez is only 21 behind though.
It's Lewis 'I cannot remove my ridiculous plastic sunglasses (25p from Poundland or a cool, eye-watering grand from a Monaco boutique) during the Grand Prix as they are surgically grafted to my face' Hamilton. The last time such an absurd procession of douchebag fashion items garnished an A-list celebrity, it was the mid-90s and the R.E.M. frontman, Michael Stipe, was undergoing his own special, self-absorbed journey beyond the event horizon of his own arsehole.
Whilst "gaslighting" is the most overused phrase in current year thus I avoid using it like the plague, I can't think of a better way to describe how the MSM can't stop making excuses for Hambone, despite George being the superior driver when comparing both against all objective criteria.
I suspect it's a generational thing. Alonso is the last of the previous generation that's still racing. If Kimi was still racing, he'd probably agree with Alonso. Even my favourite drivers on the grid are kinda soft when compared with the likes of Senna, Prost, Schumacher, Hakkinen etc.
I've left mine well alone for the past few rounds, and expect to be near the bottom now that things have panned out like they have. Might be time for me to swap out some of the Ferrari-powered stuff, which is a shame because I had big hopes for KMag and Zhou has been a pleasant surprise. Serves me right for forgetting that no matter how good they look on paper, Ferrari is and always will be Italian.
I also made the difficult decision to pivot away from the ferrari hype train, and am now all aboard Red Bull 2022, and i added a variety of different midfield teams and drivers, hopefully some of them can get me some good midfield points each week.
Binotto told journalists over a Zoom call that they will check the engines today. I am not expecting a real answer tbh. My theory is that the engine of Leclerc overheated and died. Just a reminder in Spain his engine also went out in a puff of smoke and that was also a very hot race. I am suspecting that Leclerc builds a setup which doesn't take much cooling into consideration. Or they build a setup for more engine power to counter the Red Bull advantage on the straights (Verstappen never had a chance to attack Leclerc despite DRS) and it blew up in their face (literally). Funny enough according to Binotto the Alfa DNF wasn't a fault of the Ferrari engine but a mechanical failure from Alfa.
Spain was a Turbo and MGU-H failure, this is almost certainly a ICE failure from the copious amounts of blue smoke and smoke from the airbox (looks the same Magnussen too).
The frustrating thing is that for English speakers, British sports coverage dominates. And the Brits will shove a Brit down your throat no matter what.
They should be hailing the dawn of Russell and Norris though rather than their constant excise making for their team mates. It seems like we have constant "Ricciardo/Hamilton are better than their young team mates, they're just struggling to adapt to the car/unlucky". It's like they can't let "their" generation of drivers go to praise the new generation who are definitely taking over the sport.
The way I see it, given current world climate and general clownery of society, if they don't talk up Lewis or say something that calls anything about him into question, then it would be the same as calling him a coon or a spade. I bet a lot of people will be glad when he is no longer involved, other drivers, team members, pundits, officials etc. I think everyone walks on eggshells due to him holding the racist card in his back pocket.
