[morini]

I'm expecting Mercedes to be strong at Silverstone again this year. But, you never know what can happen as yesterday will attest. It was strategy / reliability that undid Mercedes yesterday though. Had nothing to do with their pace (this is why I am not unduly worried moving forward). It has been pretty rare for Mercedes to show reliability frailties over recent seasons. Law of averages says failures will happen at some point, lets hope for us LH/VB fans it is not going to be a common occurrence this year.

[Monster Hesh]

Im going to start by saying: What a weekend of sporting entertainment, best I have witnessed. Everything delivered, I had something that had to be watched from sun up to sun down.

SGDQ (Summer Game Done Quick - a Charity video game speed run marathon) had been running all week, so that filled what little gaps there were.
F1 dry all weekend, practice sessions delivered great intrigue. Some surprises and not in qualifying. Race delivered unexpected drama, adding more swings to the championship. 5 days to British GP practice.
World Cup: Oh my word, what amazing knockout matches. Argentina & Portugal fall in amazing play and goal fest matches. Spain and Denmark fall in super intense penalties. I leapt out of my seat cheering when Russia saved that final penalty. The Keepers in the CRO DEN match, great play.
MotoGP, the highlight of the weekend, Qualifying, the best session I have ever witnessed. Then the race, wow, no words. The world didn't deserve the show the Assen GP put on this weekend.




While we may be saying that Merc threw away their win away with their failure to pit under the VSC, so we could talk about Merc running to numbers, and ignore what was happening on track. Although perhaps they don't have their number right in the first place, they knew pit windows, they knew what tyre everyone were starting on, so they could calculate everyone safety car pit stop window, which when the VSC deployed was bang on for the US.

The big issue is the fact that Lewis' soft tyre lasted all of 27 laps, is maybe ringing alarm bells for them, I think Lewis knows this as he never swears over the radio. Maybe because they were in the hot dirty air of Ferrari, I don't know, as Vettel was in Kimi's tow for 2/3's the race, and their tyres looked much more clam. Kimi posting the fastest lap so late in the race outlined how well the Ferrari cares for their tyres.

Was this the answer to what would happen if tyre tread was the same for every race? We know too little to tell really.

Solid drive from Max, perfect result for the orange army that turned up, and for RedBull at their home circuit. On C4 C. Horner delight was palpable.

I had hope after qualifying that Haas had closed, or joined the top tier of the sport (for this track at least). Come the race it was the usual affair. Top 6 in a different race. Perhaps Haas fell back to the second tier. Maybe they turned their engines down or something, as they knew there was nothing to gain ahead and could easily defend from behind.

Alonso and McLarens 2017 front wing(not nose), brought back their competitive race pace, I hope this hasn't caused too many headaches back at base. Maybe some light has been shed on why their race pace has disappeared since Spain upgrades.

Captain hindsight turn up and told Toro Rosso, if you were taking penalties to change every element of the PU for Brendon, may aswell of changed the gear box too. Big shame for him.

[Purple-banana]

If I remember right Ferrari where around .5 sec down in Qualifying (pit wall made a cock up and sent Seb out into traffic also) last year and while running fairly strong where nothing like the pace Merc had (Ham built a 12 sec lead and held it there also put in fastest lap) Bottas charged through passing Seb at Stowe but run wide then re passed Seb again down Hanger straight. Kimi running second then had the tyre problem followed by Seb (running 4th?) a lap later.

Eugh, nevermind me, god knows what I was watching/remembering. One too many shandies in the mean time no doubt!

Cheers dude

[forzaferrari]

Eugh, nevermind me, god knows what I was watching/remembering. One too many shandies in the mean time no doubt!

Cheers dude

I confess I did watch that race again about 6 weeks ago lol

[Purple-banana]

I confess I did watch that race again about 6 weeks ago lol

I buy the season reviews religiously, I have every one going back to '96 when I really started paying attention, however I must concede that the last 7 or 8 have never made it out of the cellophane wrapper!

Maybe one day when I retire or if Mrs Banana splits (dum dum dsh!) I'll get chance to sit down and re-live some of the last few seasons