The second half of the 2017 Formula 1 season starts with the Belgium Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps in exactly 1 week on August 25th!
While the pendulum has swung back and forth between Ferrari and Mercedes, Sebastian Vettel has been leading the driver standings from the opening race in Melbourne, although Mercedes have got the upperhand in the constructors championship.
The last race in Hungary saw the Ferraris take P1 and P2 (Vettel/Raikkonen respectively) with Bottas in P3 and Hamilton in P4. Red Bull's Verstappen and Ricciardo took the 3rd row in P5 and P6. These two who came into contact on the opening lap with Ricciardo coming off the worst as the damage to his car proved terminal just a couple of corners later. Ricciardo remarked on team radio "f* sore loser" in the first public signs of the teammate relationship becoming somewhat fractious. I'm just suprised that nobody else has said anything like this before about Golden Child Verstappen.
There was more aggravation between drivers as Kevin Magnussen felt his Haas teammate Romain Grosjean had been unfairly barged off the track by Nico Hulkenberg in the Renault. No action was taken against Hulkenberg so Magnussen dished out justice himself by closing off the track as Hulkenberg tried an overtake and found himself with nowhere to go but onto the grass. Magnussen got 5 seconds added to his time after the race for this. In the post-race paddock interviews, when Hulkenberg sarcastically congratulated Magnussen for his "sportsmanlike behavior", K-Mag responded by inviting Hulkenberg to his genitals. With Haas and Renault being so close on the track, hopefully bygone won't be bygone and we may see this particular scrap and more offering of genitalia again before the season is over.
Up in front, Vettel reported issues with it "hanging a little to the left". His steering, that is. Kimi on the other hand was feeling a bit vulnerable to the Mercs and felt he had speed in reserve that he couldn't use due to Seb's slower pace. The team wouldn't swap them however, to the surprise of absolutely NOBODY, and Kimi just had to sweat it out.
Behind him, however, Valterri Bottas wasn't able to threaten him as he was down on pace and the faster Lewis Hamilton in P4 wasn't able to get a green-light to press Bottas as the team was having radio problems. Eventually the comms was restored and Hamilton asked to utilize his full pace to challenge the Ferraris - offering to hand the position back to Bottas if unsuccessful. This had probably come too late for Lewis as he closed in on Kimi but by the time he was in DRS range and able to have a go at the Ferrari, there weren't enough laps of the race left. Echoes of Seb's "one more lap".
Vettel finished in P1, Kimi and Bottas P2 and P3 respectively. Hamilton P4 and now 14 points behind in the driver standings. Verstappen finished in P5 but at 13 seconds behind the winning time, it threw up all sorts of "what if?" questions and "if only" hypotheticals because he had received a 10-second penalty in the race for the incident with Ricciardo. What might have been? As the saying goes "You can't win a race on the first lap, but you can lose it". Did he?
McLaren had cause for celebration as both cars got in the points. Alonso took P6 after battling hard with Carlos Sainz in the Toro Rosso. Even he would probably concede that it's a pretty good result for a "GP2 engine". Vandoorne finished in P10 behind the two Force India cars of Perez in P8 and Ocon in P9 who are starting to look pretty disappointing.
Paul di Resta filled in for the unwell Massa, and he retired from the race. Here today, gone today. I expect he'll be back to his usual reporting stuff for the remainder of the season. Stroll and Palmer gave the trolls nothing this time around as both finished the race without drama. We look forward to them, Palmer in particular, not letting us down in future.
So as the season resumes, can Ferrari continue to give Vettel a car to keep beating the Mercs (and more importantly, Lewis Hamilton)? Will Bottas now start to challenge for the title or will Merc put a plan in place to counter Ferrari and have Bottas play a support role for Hamilton the way Kimi does for Seb? Or is Ferrari playing chess while Merc play checkers?
What about the Red Bull drivers? With Ricciardo publicly criticizing Max for his "amateur" driving, how are things between them going to play out?