Wednesday 22 March 2023

Would the real winner of the 3rd place trophy at Jeddah please stand up?

At time of press, Fernando Alonso was still the holder of 3rd place at the Saudi Grand Prix but that might change again, because, quite frankly I put nothing past the stewards at this point. 

What was a reasonably interesting race has been completely overshadowed by some very bizarre decision making on their part. 

What was looking like a half decent weekend for Ferrari was ruined by one of the odder safety car decisions of recent memory. Admittedly, given Leclerc's luck is looking like Webber's luck of old, I have no doubt that something else would have happened if they hadn't decided to use a full safety car to retrieve a car that wasn't even stopped on track (Chapeau to Stroll for parking it that well in an emergency. Did we ever find out what caused the emergency "stop the car now Lance" message?). 

Two failed ECUs and a half-decent Ferrari strategy shout getting ruined by non-Ferrari mistakes, all in two races, I'm not going to say Lady Luck is against us, but it's as good an explanation as any. 

It's particularly annoying because there are the green shoots of possible Ferrari recovery. 

Whisper it quietly, but, were it not for the safety car, that Ferrari strategy might have worked, and Ferrari had the fastest pit stop in Bahrain. 

Everything except the results seems to be coming together.

No comments:

Post a Comment