Lewis Hamilton achieves 100 pole positions, steals the race win and Driver of the Day!
As the lights went out Max Verstappen steamed into Turn 1, dropped his pants and showed Lewis exactly what he was working with. Gently nudging Lewis to the side, Verstappen steamed into the lead, dick flapping in the breeze thinking he had just evened the odds against the racing legend. Lewis would have the last laugh though as somewhere around lap 44, Mercedes would catch Redbull completely napping at the wheel. It was Hungary 2019 all over again as Lewis set his sights on the ailing Redbull and honed in on his prey in a relentless show of skill, grace, and utter tenacity.
Not only did Lewis snag another victory in his road to eight World titles, he also managed to snag driver of the day. when I saw the graphic posted it was Verstappen at 18% and Lewis at 17%. I couldn’t help myself, I voted for Lewis just to do my part in utterly crushing Verstappen’s morale. The message from Mercedes at this point is clear, watch your back because we can get you no matter what you do. Pre-race Toto Wolf was asked “One stop or two stop today?”, to which Toto replied, “We’ll have to wait and see”. Foreshadowing at it’s finest. Mercedes has this plan accounted for and knew they had the driver to do it. The only thing that could’ve saved Redbull’s race, was Max pitting immediately after Lewis, but even then it wasn’t going to be a guaranteed. Max would’ve had to put in a tremendous in-lap on old tires, while Lewis could have steamed out of the pits on fresh tires and possibly overtaken on the out-lap. Mercedes had it covered all weekend and they were the only ones to see it coming.
There was a moment of concern however as Lewis caught his teammate Valteri Bottas. It was then we were treated to a sweet, sweet team order radio message telling Valteri to stay out of Lewis’s way. The “wingman” however, would let his feelings be known, forcing Lewis to make a pass rather than giving him the line a few turns earlier. I just have one question, where. the fuck. was that last weekend?! Where did that go all season so far for that matter? Valteri finally showed some fangs but at the absolute worst possible time against the worst possible person. C’mon man we needed that the first three weekends if you’re really considering yourself a contender against Lewis.
I will say props to Charles Leclerc for pulling the ole switcheroo on Valteri on the opening lap and effectively nullifying the second Mercedes as a factor for the rest of the race. It took Valteri too long to get past the Ferrari and by then, the race leaders were well into the distance. Not only did Charles stick the Ferrari into P4 during qualifying, he was able to bring it home in same position at the end of the race, while teammate Carlos Sainz finished in P7.
A glimmer of hope shone through the midfield as Daniel Ricciardo finished P6, in what looked to be a return to form for the Australian driver. Daniel’s teammate Lando Norris who’s been having a breakout season was only able to manage P8 this go around the circuit. I will say this however, it was only one race and McLaren is still Lando’s team. Daniel looked good don’t get me wrong, but unless we see this same sort of performance over the next few races, we don’t know how truly comfortable, if at all, Daniel is with that McLaren just yet. We know the McLaren is capable of podium finishes and possible race wins and if both drivers can get to the front of the pack consistently, it could change the season entirely by the end.
Aston Martin’s troubles continue to mount as both cars finished just outside the points with Stoll in P11 and Vettel in P13. It’s hard to watch as the 4 time World Champion Sebastian Vettel has yet to score a single point this season in the newly branded team. With Hulkenberg waiting in the wings I can’t help but wonder if at some point we’ll see a swap between the two veteran drivers under the guise of “just to shake things up”.
To be quite honest at this point I’m going to call it since I couldn’t finish this post in time thanks to my real job, but I hope as potentially a new fan you can see how amazing this race actually was despite the lack of overtaking on track. There is so much more to F1 than cars going fast.
If you haven’t been watching Monaco by the times this is posted, you should. While Monaco may be boring they are driving those cars on a razor’s edge at every possible moment. It’s a lot wilder than it’s made to look,