Hey, F1 was back with two races on consecutive Sundays at Spa in Belgium and Monza in Italy. These were the las of the European part of the season, and now the last seven races are the so-called "flyaway" races. F1 has been on its summer break, and it has been busy with teams announcing drivers coming to race for the next year. One of the first big news was Force India which at the Hungarian Grand Prix was put in administration but was bought by Lawrence Stroll, father to Williams driver Lance, and had to start on 0 points, as it was classed as a new team. The other major news was the impending F1 retirement of Fernando Alonso as he was leaving to race in IndyCar after his stint in last years Indy 500. McLaren announced that Carlos Sainz would be replacing Alonso. Also, a significant headline was Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo announcing that he was leaving for Renault. Red Bull announced that they were replacing him with Pierre Gasly from sister team Torro Rosso.
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| Vettel celebrates as he wins the Belgian Grand Prix. |
Spa was the first race back, and it's the first major Grand Prix in back-to-back weeks, and qualifying made it advantage Hamilton. The big shock of qualifying was that Force India who took the second row of the grid on Saturday as the rain was pouring down in the final qualifying session. They stunned the hole paddock with their performance, and it looked like Force India were making a comeback to the standards they set 2 years ago.
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| Heart in the mouth as Alonso flys over Leclerc's Sauber |
At the start of the race, it was chaos as the Renault of Nico Hulkenberg braked too late and ran into the back of Fernando Alonso and sent him flying over the top of Charles Leclerc's car and became the first significant test of the Halo device. It passed with flying colours as it took the brunt of the hit and protected Leclerc from hitting him on the head. Also, Raikkonen and Ricciardo were having trouble in the first corner as they both sustained damage. Raikkonen tried driving with what seemed to be a minor rear wing issue which became fatal and retired after lap 8. Ricciardo tried to race on, but his car was too damaged to finish and retired and the end of lap 28.
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| Erricson showing off how reliable F1 cars are |
The rest of the race was supposed to have been a battle between Hamilton and Vettel. Still, after Vettel overtook Hamilton, the Ferrari just outpaced the Mercedes and Hamilton was left watching Vettel run away with the race.
The next race was at Monza, and it was the home Grand Prix of the Ferrari team. The Friday practise sessions had Force India top Free Practice 1 then in Free practice 2 Sauber's Marcus Ericsson had a spectacular crash which saw him hit the sidewall at 150 miles an hour and flipped all over the place and walked out of the car without a scratch on him. Then on the Saturday during qualifying, it looked like Vettel clinched pole, but Raikkonen stole it off his teammate in the fastest lap time ever in Formula 1. Vettel was furious as he thought he should have had the pole, but it didn't work out like that for the Ferrari driver.
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| Hamilton and Vettel collide on lap one. |
The race began with Brendon Hartley being sandwiched and retiring on the first corner. Then Hamilton and Vettel collided a few turns later which resulted in Vettel being dropped to 18th place and needing a new front wing. Then it became a battle between Raikkonen and Hamilton for the win. It became clear that Ferrari's tyre choice strategy as they have to take 13 sets of tyres and two different compounds and only took 1 set of hard tyres for the whole weekend which meant they had to be used on the Sunday race. This was backfiring as Raikkonen was losing tyre grip the longer the race went on meanwhile Hamilton could race longer and faster than Raikkonen.
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| Hamilton overtakes Raikkonen for the win. |
Hamilton overtook him with a few laps to go in the race and held it all the way to win in front of the Tifosi, the Ferrari supporters, and extend his lead to 30 points. Which meant that as the season heads back to Singapore and Ferrari would like a better Singapore Grand Prix than the race last year.
Another major battle was Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen, and they were racing wheel to wheel and then hit him on the run-in down to the first corner and caused Verstappen to have a 5-second penalty. Which dropped him from 3rd to fifth in the race with Bottas finishing 3rd and Vettel taking fourth place after a race-saving drive.
I'll be back with the race report from Singapore next week.
KRO Mark
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