Qatar Grand Prix

Max Wins – Simply Lovely

I wasn’t expecting to have much to write after the Sprint Race, however Red Bull managed to find the cars pace in time for qualifying and in the end partially because of Lando’s penalty he had a comfortable win. I don’t think McLaren had the pace to beat Max, I felt that he was managing the gap when he needed to. Below are some of my thoughts after the race and I will try not to waffle too much…

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Sprint

As we had a sprint race, I will quickly touch upon it, not a great deal happened during the race, there were a couple of overtakes, mainly from the Red Bull not performing very well. However, it was a well work team victory from McLaren. George Russell’s post-race comments about the teamwork ruining the “spectacle” for the fan are a fair point. However, it is a team sport and you can’t tell me that in the same position Mercedes wouldn’t have done the same! I don’t know if it had been discussed before the race, but it was a nice touch by Lando to return the favour from Brazil with Oscar Piastri and one I wasn’t expecting.

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Qualifying

Quali was interesting to watch, after the sprint we all thought the fight would go down between Lando and George. Red Bull however found the pace in their car and came to spoil the party. Unfortunately for Red Bull their pole position was taken away from them after Max was given a 1 place grid penalty for driving unnecessarily slowly. The strange thing here is that both drivers were on a slow lap and George seemed to speed up as Max was in the corner, immediately complaining to the stewards. Max seems to think that George has made the most out of this situation and rumours that when both drivers were with the stewards, George was playing on the situation as much as he could to get Max the penalty. This resulted in a reported heated exchange between the two and prompted Max to comment after the race that he had lost respect for George after doing his best to get him penalised. Personally, I find these comments quite interesting because during the race Max was very quick to mention on team radio, he knew Lando hadn’t slowed under the yellow flags. However, we all know that this sort of thing goes on between all the teams and drivers every race weekend, so I am not sure why Max took exception this time. It’s just like footballers, they shake hands before the game, as soon as the whistle goes, they are all trying to cheat each other out of the match. It’s the same here.

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The Race

Thankfully for the fans at home and in the grandstands the main race was more entertaining and there was plenty of action throughout the field. Russell didn’t make the most of his gifted pole position and was passed by both Max and Lando. The Alpine of Ocon and Williams of Colapinto came together bringing out the first safety car. From there, I will discuss some of the key points from the race and give my opinion.

Russells woe

Mercedes race seemed to start to unfold when the pitted George Russell ridiculously early to remove the medium tyres and put on the hard. The gap they were trying to feed into was relatively small and unfortunately an issue with the rear right meant they missed that window and came out being Alonso. After that Russell struggled with the tyre and was not able to get past Alonso. The other cars in front meanwhile stayed out for several more laps and it really benefited them. This meant that when the safety car was finally deployed (will come on to that shortly) for the broken Williams wing mirror he was always going to struggle to get back into the podium slots, especially after they pitted him again under the safety car and put the hard tyres back on, I can only assume this was because they had no mediums available. I can only assume they were trying to get an undercut on Lando however Its a decision that ultimately backfired and cost them a podium.

Hamilton wants an early bath

Whilst on the subject of Mercedes, let’s talk about Lewis Hamilton. While you cannot deny he is one of the greatest of all time, there are sometimes where you can’t help but look at him and think “what a baby”. Over the years I have watched F1 I have seen this side of Hamilton on the odd occasion. It always seems to happen when he is outside the top 10 and is struggling with the car. For a multiple world champion, for him to keep radioing to the pits asking to retire the car is an embarrassment. For starters, you are paid several million a year to drive these cars, pull your socks up and get on with it. Secondly, you don’t know what is going to happen and you could still end up in the points. I understand that he’s had it tough of late and the love from the team has naturally faded away over the course of the season and I don’t doubt that George may have a slightly different car, but that is to be expected. You can’t expect the team to keep you updated on developments and future projects when you are leaving for one of their main rivals. On this occasion fair play to them not letting him retire the car.

The FIA Conundrum

This is the biggest talking point of the race because it also affected the outcome of the race. When Alex Albons wing mirror flew off down the main straight the put the yellow flag out. Watching on TV and seeing where it was on the straight you immediately think to yourself “that has to be a safety car”. Yet the race continued for several laps, we saw on TV from the graphics that one minute the yellow flag was out, then it wasn’t, then it was again, then it was double waved yellows and the safety car was only deployed after Bottas ran over it and Sainz and Hamilton seemingly got punctures from the debris. There has been a lot of chop and change at the FIA recently and the new Race Director has to also preside over some of the other formulas that raced that weekend. At this point the race became farcical, for a sport that claims it is the “pinnacle” of motor racing, they certainly know how to make themselves look stupid. I don’t know what their thought process was during this phase but to me it’s simple. Deploy the safety car for a couple of laps, get them to go through the pits, send a marshal onto the track to pick up the wing mirror. Sorted. Can’t help but think the turmoil in the FIA at the moment as played a hand here with the lack of experience and decision making.

McLaren Shoot Themselves in the Foot… again

After the sprint race it looked like McLaren were the team to beat. Then when the main race came around it went to pot. First of all, Piastri was caught out pitting a lap before the safety car was deployed, McLaren had a good enough gap to double stack under the safety car, but I guess at the time they didn’t know what the FIA were going to do (because the FIA didn’t know either) and couldn’t have known the safety car would be deployed a lap later. Then we come onto Lando Norris. A bit of a rookie mistake to be honest was the first my impression, however after seeing the replay on TV, the yellow flag came out just as he was getting to the marshal post, I guess at this point he might not have seen it. However, he did not slow down and was given a penalty. The stewards awarded the penalty as per the rules and it’s hard to argue against that. You could say that they could have used common sense to apply part of the rule, after all there was no marshal on track and there was no danger to anyone. I do think the penalty was harsh, I was expecting a 10 second time penalty not a 10 second stop/go and it really killed off a race that could have been spicy at the front for the last few laps. It was a harsh penalty but equally it was a needless penalty to get given. McLaren had a great chance this weekend to put some distance between themselves and Ferrari and once again have not capitalised on the performance they had. However, unlike Hamilton wanting to retire the car Lando got his head down and at least managed to score some points.

Final Thoughts

I feel like I have waffled on a fair bit here so I will keep this short. I think overall the race was enjoyable. It’s nice to see the drivers able to push on the tyres with low degradation, having to sit and watch Formula Tyre Save can be very frustrating. However, there is only really the main straight and turns 1 and 2 where you can overtake so that can make it a bit of a struggle at times. Fair play to Red Bull for sorting their car out. There’s been a fair bit of titty babbying between the drivers this weekend, maybe it’s a bit more predictable because Netflix was around so we have to ramp up the drama a bit. Hopefully McLaren and Norris won’t dwell on the mistakes this weekend and they can secure their first constructors since 1998. Would be great to hear other peoples thoughts and comments. Please keep them clean. Thanks for reading.