The Official Russian Grand Prix Thread

Great race by Alonso, esp in the wet on slicks. He would have likely finished P5 or higher without the rain, but P6 is fantastic for that car. And Bottas, wtf? The guy is just a joke at this point imho.

It was an entertaining and eventful race. It turned out for the title contenders to be about as good as could be hoped for. Lucky for Max that the rain did fall, and made for an exciting finale for the top ten. Glad Sainz was able to climb back to 3rd after the early stop which handicapped him. Enjoyed Norris' sharp replies on the team radio, giving them the Kimi treatment. A valuable lesson for him about impending weather and what his team knows versus what he sees from the cockpit. Lewis drove well and kept it clean in a deserving 100th victory, even though was I hoping for the initial running order to maintain till the closing laps. Great run for Alonso for most of it, and good to see Kimi in the points again.

In my opinion this race was a lottery.

The first ticket was won by those who decided to stay long and then the MEGA ball taken by those who docked for inters on the last few laps.

Enterntaining? Hell yes.

I wonder if they are going to sack Bottas. The Hamilton media is outraged he didnt take out Max and allowed him to take an amazing second, from last, and keep a spanking new engine.

I found it highly entertaining when the Sky guys where lamenting how quickly Max was able to get by Bottas. "You would have thought he would put up more of a fight than that." or something along those lines. Even my wife was "why would he do that?" Exactly honey, Mercedes has disposed of him, is he going to feel some undue sense of loyalty to King Lewis, of course not. I really miss the Three Amigos, they would have called that like it was.

Yes. Possible, but absurd.

They were hoping Bottas would do to Max what Gasly did to him, hold him back for as long as possible. For Bottas to say he never saw Max coming say a lot about where his head is right now.

No defense for not throwing yourself on a sword for Lewis.

Bottas did what was also important, score points for the team where it counts and pays, in the constructors. He has about 30 more points than Perez and coincidentally, despite RB winning 3 more races Mercedes leads the constructors by just over 30 points. Through most of their winning years Mercedes built a car that was meant to take advantage of their engine and run out front in clean air. Their design has never been particularly good at negotiating it's way through traffic.

Yep, that's pretty much what I was thinking. Re: Hill's description of Bottas 'waving Max through', what the fuck did he expect? I mean, how many times have we seen Valterri 'wave through' (insert driver here), esp Lewis?!

Neither would I, but my point is that even if he did care, VB has overwhelmingly been ineffective wheel to wheel throughout his career, and esp while at Merc, for some reason. No reason to expect the light bulb to come on for him now, esp knowing he won't be there next year.