Great qualy

For a sec I thought Sanz could do it

Gonna be an interesting start with Russell at @3

Edited September 25, 20213 yr by Bjork

Bottas will take a new PU and take a grid penalty. He'll start 17th.

 

This is clearly purely to mess with Verstappen's tace and whilst I get it, and it's actually quite clever, I feel this is cynical in the extreme and a little unsporting from Mercedes.

At this point I’m not even shocked by what they do

Great to see Norris get a pole, he’s really been improving year after year and I’d love to see him take the win today if he can

This is going to be one of those races where the super low camera angle for the start is going to be extra annoying. It's bad enough that you can normally only see the first couple of rows but today we'll all be trying to watch the back rows at the same time.

 

I've never understood why they don't show the start from a drone or the helicopter's camera as that low angle sucks

Please don’t let the rain mess this up for Norris :(

Bugger I knew that was going to happen to him :(

That couldn’t have fallen any better for Verstappen, I bet he can’t believe his luck at 2nd!!

Max finishing second is incredibly pleasing to see. Glad the Merc’s tactics with Bottas failed miserably!

A shame for Norris,. I admire his boldness but it was clearly a very bad decision to stay out and ultimately he threw it away. I'm sure he'll learn from that

Lewis had the upper hand in the end though as Norris would have been taking more of a gamble to pit. Lewis could pit and retain second quite easily and of course has the benefit of knowing Norris’ decision.

 

Hopefully it won’t be too long before Norris gets a win, he really does deserve one after driving so well this year.

Very disappointed with Norris, so stubborn he didn't follow the team's order and ended up 7th instead of 2nd, there's a difference between being bold and being blinded, he had run so well but he gets a 0 from those final laps :/

It wasn’t like that though - he’s said in his interviews that he was informed that it was likely to stay as it was conditions wise and he was doing okay before it went all torrential!

 

I think it’s easy to comment post race when we know what happened, at the time it must have been such a difficult decision to have to make

of course Norris didn't have all the info about the coming rain

but he ignored all the team calls, as he explained to Hamilton

Hamilton said he ignored his first call, Norris replied he ignored them all

plus we all heard him on the radio telling his team no and then telling them to shut up

when they suggested him to stop

For McLaren to say they didn't expect more rain is particularly daft. Every other team knew it was coming and the only other drivers to stay out too long were Leclerc (who stayed out because Sainz was there), Giovinnazi (who had no radio) and Alonso (who admittedly handled it better than everyone else but should have known it was the wrong call).

 

The only logical reason to have stayed out that long was hoping for a yellow/red flag but when you're the driver most likely to cause it, that's one hell of a risk.

 

Lando's inexperience and impatience cost him a potential win and a virtually guaranteed second place but as I said he'll learn from this.

Alpine have said the same thing effectively, that they weren’t certain of a downpour and gambled because if they had been correct they’d have been P2, alas it was not to be and they were a lap late in pitting.

 

 

Wonder if Alpine and McLaren have a different forecast Partner to RB/Merc :thinking:

That was a brilliant race all the way through, the last bit reminded me of Spa 2008 with rain just coming in time for the final few laps and you had some drivers on slicks and others pitting for wets with varying outcomes. It's a shame for Norris, and for McLaren who could have had back to back wins after 9 dry years but I don't blame them for staying out. Had the rain not intensified (and let's be honest it's quite common for there to be a bit of rain only for the track to dry again soon after) he might have pitted and lost the win which would have also been just as gutting. Okay P2 vs P7 but it's always the hardest call for the guy/team leading.

 

Glad for Lewis to finally hit the century of wins, but gotta say Max has to be the more pleased of the 2 to only lose 7 points. Him & Bottas were having very underwhelming races until the rain turned everything on its head. All the late stoppers in Perez, Leclerc & Alonso were unlucky there but that's the beauty of F1 and its unpredictability.

The only logical reason to have stayed out that long was hoping for a yellow/red flag but when you're the driver most likely to cause it, that's one hell of a risk.

 

This is a very good point and one I was thinking at the time. Had anyone else crashed out (which was a very good possibility given the proximity of the walls at large parts of the track and 19 drivers trying to keep it on the road) then a safety car finish wouldn't have surprised me at all in which case Norris could have just coasted to the win under controlled conditions. Mind you, even staying on the track under the safety car wouldn't have been an easy task!

It's obviously easier to look at things in hindsight but even at the time it felt like a risky strategy out of desperation to get that first win. If he'd have pitted and that turned out to be the wrong call, how far down would he likely have fell? Perez was third over 40 seconds behind so even if he, Ricciardo etc. hadn't come in they'd have still had 15+ seconds to make up where they'd have been on the wrong tyre for at least the wet part the circuit. It's difficult to see how he wouldn't have been on the podium.

He'd have come out a very comfortable second yes but the problem would have been had it cleared up again and everyone behind him remained on dries then he'd have to pit again back for slicks so would have probably fell out of the points altogether. Impossible to say though.