I'm going to start with a complaint about the Lusail circuit. It's a perfectly fine, and indeed occasionally excellent, MotoGP track. Because the bikes are narrower so you can race. The F1 cars are broad, and the track is so narrow they can't overtake each other even with the DRS button. A piece of technology whose only purpose is to allow overtaking does not work at this track - for goodness sakes, even Monaco, king of the moving traffic jam races, is wide enough for DRS to do its joy-ruining thing.
So there's a race with no overtaking, even with the magic over-taking button, and then they've removed some of the strategy wiggle room and deviousness by mandating two pit stops and twenty-five lap maximum tyre strategies.
I cut Pirelli some slack because they have to make the tyres to the FIA's specifications, but given those specs, why are they racing somewhere that they know kills the tyres?
The start was the last time the race was interesting, and Norris not fighting Verstappen was the sensible thing to do.
I'm not going to say McLaren made the wrong strategy call because, if it had worked out, they would have been geniuses, and it could have worked. The F1 coverage always gives the percentage change of there being a safety car, but not the chance of their being multiple safety cars. However, choosing not to pit was always a bit of an odd choice on a track where track position is king.
There were a few cars that broke at the end, but none of them broke in a way that required a safety car. I did feel most sorry for Gasly, who performed heroics in the qualifying, only for the car to break out from under him at the beginning of the race and then he had to nurse the car round for the rest of it.
Sainz jnr's car deciding to try to break right at the end gave me coniptions. So glad he made it to the end in one piece. I am enjoying telling people "I told you he was good".
Another note - is it me or are more teams screwing up their drivers's 5 second penalties? I swear this was the second time that's happened to Ocon this season!
End note: I am aware I am supposed to be a Ferrari-focussed blogger, but my team depress me (I recognise, with my soul, the noise the "Cleveland Browns" fan makes from 2.26-2.32 in this video - https://youtu.be/SFCPNT7FafI?si=0dVDR_Y6_CAP_xsF).
