Aye, Bottas was an absolute chocolate fireguard at the start there!
Undercut on the cards here?!
Well he’s a bit further up the road.. better than nowt
YESSSSS!!!!
Shove that up yer arse Horner!
Max has been incredibly lucky not to pick up penalties on this. It's all getting quite tense and arsey now between RB and Merc.
What a drive from Lewis though!
Classy reply from Max re the black and white flag.
What an absolute weapon.
Will we get to see his onboard anytime soon I wonder?
Verstappens attitude is awful
Team “black and white flag for weaving on the straight”
Him “ha perfect say Hi”
Lucky to not get a penalty for his shenanigans earlier pushing Lewis off the track
Aye was just wondering if we’ll ever get to see that shot bluearsedfly
Loved Totos reaction at the camera in the garage. Gan on son! 😂
Max and Red Bull are made for one another - no class and bad sportsmen.
Well looks like I'm cashing in that bet. Brilliant performance by Lewis and it really exposed how nasty a driver Max is. Warning flag for weaving, pushing drivers off the track and taking the piss out of the stewards on the radio for good measure.
Bottas denied a second there. Five seconds and a black and white flag. Max not worthy if he does win the championship.
What a drive!
Talk of damage limitation from Red Bull seems a bit of a stretch given the free-passes they’ve been given this weekend.
They don't like Max in Brazil, do they? 😂
https://makeagif.com/gif/richard-hammond-bad-winner-uaKNnv
Toto Wolff finding Horner in the paddock trying to make a quick exit.
😂
Edit, dammit how do you post a gif?
They don’t like Max in Brazil, do they? 😂
Or here! He’s such a classy fellow… perfectly suited to red bull’s current behaviour.
Unbelievable stuff. A true champion's performance all weekend. So much for the DSQ from quali deciding the title.
Going to be an intense last 3 races. As much as I dislike Max I still think he'll be deserving of the championship if he holds on but he lacks a touch of class and needs to mature somewhat.
If Lewis wins then this will be the race that was the key. Even dropping 7 points today by coming second would have pretty much been curtains bar a DNF or something.
Definitely more to come regarding the protests from RB about the Merc, listening to Horner after the race he made it clear RB think there’s something going on with the rear wing on the Merc (although Toto is adamant Merc have nothing to hide).
As with everything in life, I always try my best to see things from every perspective. I wouldn’t say I’ve warmed to Max or Horner recently but it was only yesterday morning I was listening to Horner and he came across as quite humble and almost likeable.
Fast forward 24 hours and things have gone against RB, both Max and Horner have slipped back into their usual spiteful ways. Any other team maintains a level of professionalism when things don’t go their way but RB are completely incapable of this from the management down to the mechanics (one of which was taking the piss out of the wing test yesterday on an Instagram post).
Horner also mentioned that Max shouldn’t have been penalised for running Hamilton of the track as Max gained no advantage in doing so. Has anyone ever taken the time to explain to Horner the basic fundamentals of motorsport?
Ps where’s the onboard from Max? Someone mentioned we have to wait for it to be downloaded?
Strange as we can see any other angle from any other car live as it happens.
Edit, dammit how do you post a gif?
Are we not talking about max running Valteri off at T1 cause it was the first lap?
Seems to be a tactic he is refining, run the other guy off the track without touching them, hoping they won’t let him just drive into them, and blame them if he does.
Are we not talking about max running Valteri off at T1 cause it was the first lap?
Glad someone else spotted that, but it probably went down as a first lap incident.
Lewis off to see the stewards again about his safety belt when taking the flag at the end.
You can’t make this up.
It'll be no more than a rap on the knuckles....but on the other hand, with these stewards, who knows!
€5000 fine with another €20000 suspended to next year. Phew...
When was the last time a driver was fined for that? Drivers do it all the time after victories and at home wins etc.
Drivers have always gone around touching each others cars. When was the last time someone was fined for that?
Touché.
That has to be one of the best weekend performance of all time.
@bluearsedfly - it has been enforced before. Its fairly recent its been clamped down in though. Can't remember the precise race though
What an amazing race! Possibly the most exciting race in a ridiculously exciting season
The amazing thing about this weekend is that the stewards have made Mercedes, who have won every title in the turbo hybrid era, look like the underdogs
Good race track that Interlagos.
Toto going all Jurgen Klopp.
Brazilian crowd showing their class, especially considering Lewis pipped their boy to the title all those years ago, it as like a home race for Hamilton.
Mercedes have been the underdogs all season. You could see from the first race just how much the new floor rules had done to their car. Stability was all over the place, their ability to warm the front tyres (possibly partially load of DAS) was woeful and they’ve struggled with it all season. The Redbull on the other hand is more akin to last years Mercedes - it’s easy to setup and easier to drive.
Ultimately Mercedes had a bigger mountain to climb than Redbull as their whole aero philosophy was compromised. They likely assumed that everyone this year would be equally compromised. They were wrong. High rake cars were only slightly affected, whereas Mercedes lost 1.5-1.8s a lap. RedBull was more like 035-0.5 per lap.
Mercedes have recovered some of that deficiency by turning the ICE up, but you can see the effect it’s having on reliability. The car is still compromised, but is MUCH happier at higher speeds where they get the downforce they were expecting and thus the tyres work. That’s why they keep willing taking engine penalties.
That was utterly sublime from Hamilton. How many other drivers would have buckled under the weight of 25 grid place penalties and settled for getting in the points?
Max doesn't make himself easy to like does he? His petulance on the radio after been warned for weaving. Not sure how he avoided a penalty for his "defence" against Lewis either. Similar infringement in previous races have always been penalised.
Its still Max's to lose and with 9 wins to Hamilton's 6 you might say he deserves the title, but if Hamilton can win the next 3 races then he absolutely deserves it too.
Hamilton got driver of the day with 36% of the vote. Who did the other 64% think drove better?
Max doesn’t make himself easy to like does he?
He doesn't seem to handle himself under race pressure well that's for sure. I mean, he's clearly fast, he can qualify and race fast enough, but seems to crack too easily when pushed hard. The maneuver on Hamilton to send them both wide seemed like the stuff of desperation/amateur hour.
Mercedes have recovered some of that deficiency by turning the ICE up, but you can see the effect it’s having on reliability. The car is still compromised, but is MUCH happier at higher speeds where they get the downforce they were expecting and thus the tyres work. That’s why they keep willing taking engine penalties.
It does point to the penalty being insufficient.
I never get this “deserves to win” thing. The only person who deserves to win is the person with the most points! Makes no difference how many races you win, unless it’s a draw at the end.
Which has got me thinking. What if LH wins the next 2 races and MV comes second? If neither gets fastest lap they’ll go into the last race tied on points - spicy!!!
Personally I would love it if MV bins it completely on his own so he loses the WDC and can’t blame anyone but himself.
“ Hamilton got driver of the day with 36% of the vote. Who did the other 64% think drove better?”
I’m surprised he got it at all, in past races he has clearly been the driver of the day but people have voted elsewhere - we all know why.
It does point to the penalty being insufficient.
The rules aren't ever going to be perfect, and teams will always find a way to game them. Plus you have to add in the "Hamilton factor" there's few other drivers capable of going from 10th to 1st in a straight fight (ie without retirements or safety car interventions)
Sometimes the result is focused on more than the performance and specifically the result in the context of the championship.
Hindsight will probably show that regardless what happens in the championship. The performance yesterday will be the thing that people remember. So in that way he has kinda already won.
I'm glad it wasn't for the sake of the racing, but in the cold light of day I still don't understand how that not only wasn't a penalty for Verstappen but wasn't even investigated.
Hamilton was clearly ahead going into the corner, Max makes no attempt to slow enough to make it.
Anyway, what a season!
It does point to the penalty being insufficient.
I'm not sure it does - most of the time when teams take an engine penalty, they go for a whole replacement rather than 1 of the 3 components. Mercedes have determined that the ICE is degrading and are replacing only that. Seems fair. The same options are open to every team afterall.
