Land Norris was the star of the weekend without a doubt, even after having some bad luck same as others on Friday Quali his race on Sunday was exceptional, he has been openly hard on himself on team radio and interviews were he keeps saying that the car is getting better but he is not been consistent, race pace is all about consistency from the car, driver, pit, engineers, believe it or not Formula 1 is a team sports, the driver can't do it all, World Championships are not win just because of a good driver if not go ask Charles Leclerc who is a great one lap driver and I say one lap because so far he has not demonstrate with Ferrari he has the consistency require to win races every other week but I blame more Ferrari than Leclecr believe or not, I'm not a fan of him but I recognize he is a good driver.
Lando Norris reaction time was one of the fastest one, specially from the front of the grid, he had a better reaction time than Stroll, Alonso and Hamilton, Norris started in six place after Charles Leclerc crash on formation lap and Russel was given a penalty and had to give two positions on the grid for impeding the pit lane on Friday Quali, this reaction time and McLaren allow Norris to jump straight to second place, he had to put his elbows out on the first turn with Hamilton but not a big deal.
It is now public information that Red Bull has not done any mayor upgrades to the car since the season restart while other still are trying new things, the RB19 is still the dominant car on the grid by far but the McLaren has caught up a bit, Lando Norris was able to stay close to Verstappen for about the first ten laps and was constantly making the fastest lap but that straight speed great driving from Max Verstappen put down the hammer and start to separate from Norris.
Been the fastest on a specific sector of the track doesn't mean you are going to win the race, we can see on the graph how Norris did the fastest lap and was faster for certain time across all sectors but is that race pace, tire degradation, cooling and a great start that starts to add up on every single lap this allow Verstappen create a gap of +8 seconds and finish first at the Brazil Grand Prix. We need to consider that at this point Max Verstappen and Red Bull is that big wall that everyone on the grid is trying to bring down, it is very likely they win every race if they do a good Quali, there has been a few tracks when they had troubles like Singapore but it is very unlikely this happens twice in a row, considering this every second that the second driver takes away from a Verstappen win at the moment is an achievement, its improvement, this is what McLaren is demonstrating with their two drivers, people might think that Piastri had luck on a few tracks but the truth is that there are some where he has never drive before like Brazil and this is his rookie year at Formula 1, yes he was at Alpine but over there he did not had much seat time on an F1 car and that's one of the reasons he move to Mclaren. I think next year Red Bull is going to come stronger because they are cooking something already for 2024 but if McLaren keep this pace both Norris and Piastri are going to give them a good fight.
There were a few accidents before the race start and at the start, the race was red flag and had to be restart, the first out of the race was Charles Leclerc before it started, on formation lap Leclerc lost hydraulics leaving him without steering and brakes, Leclerc slightly goes into the barrier and on video you can see how he tries to correct the car but it doesn't matter because his wheel was not working, its on the opposite direction of the tires comparing the images above, this guy is probably the MOST FRUSTRATED MAN ON F1 at the moment, not only that he has the worst ration of converting Pole Position to losing race but every two weekends there is something with the car, the strategy or just bad luck as he said on the team radio after he crash "why I'm so unlucky..." I'm sure at some point he had consider moving from Ferrari but the question is WHERE? after all Ferrari is currently a top five team so moving to the middle of the grid makes no sense and other teams like Mercedes and Red Bull have better drivers, that would make him the second driver while at Ferrari he still the main driver. Once his car was sitting at the barriers without able to get back to the pits by himself it was game over.
Second accident of the race comes during the start, Magnussen and Albon make a Niko Hulkenberg sandwich, who was clever enough to hit the brakes and lucky the Alpine behind him was trying to overtake him from the left so he was clear from behind, after Hulkemberg hits the brakes Albon and Magnussen meet in a big collision, Albon took the most damage but Magnussen side pod was destroy so it was a DNF for both, other drivers suffer damage like Daniel Riccardo who got hit on his rear wing by Magnussen tire that came off flying and Oscar Piastri had some minor damage too.
George Russel from Mercedes also had to retire the car for cooling issues, something must had broken because the rest of the grid was not having cooling issues, weather was not bad for the cars but both Mercedes had a very poor performance during the race.
The driver of the day award was hard to decide for me, Norris had such a great weekend despite Friday Quali, similar to Piastri in Qatar, but then we have Fernando Alonso bouncing back from a hole Aston Martin was in against no other than the man media created rumors of replacing at Red Bull, Checo Perez. Last week there were some rumors saying Alonso was going to replace Checo at Red Bull and this got him mad, saying there were going to be repercussions, for the most part I thought he meant fucking up Checo at the track, that he did. Checo had a good race but Alonso put up a Master Class of Defense, the RB19 was clearly faster than the Aston Martin but the way Alonso kept charging the battery and defending at the perfect moment during the pits straight was beautiful, for ten laps Checo kept trying and trying without much luck until with one lap to go he did it but Alonso make it look like it was intentional like ok this is what is going to happen I will let you pass one lap to go but will stay close enough to use DRS on the last lap and not have to worry about defending any more, it was a gamble if it happen that way, on the last lap, on turn one after Checo overtake Alonso, he force a defensive move from Checo on turn one making him go a bit off the racing line and this allow Alonso to overtake him on the second DRS zone.
Closing the lap Checo had DRS and he was so close to overtake Alonso, the Red Bull was obviously faster on straight line but yesterday once again Alonso proof that he is still at his best, with the right car he can make things happen, both Aston Martin did very well on Sunday even though they were not that great during Sprint on Saturday.
My Podium prediction was 1) Verstappen 2) Leclerc 3) Norris, probably if Leclerc didn't had problems with his car this could be the podium but the race had a lot of anomalies at the start, I'm very happy to see Aston Martin perform this good and I hope they finish strong the next to races to go, Las Vegas that's unknown territory for everyone and Abu Dhabi.
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