Baku Review/Introduction
An Americans take on all the malarkey that happened in Baku. As well as an intro to my self
So... this is my first stab at doing a blog type thing on the interweb... fair warning I was terrible at English in school so please let me go ahead and apologize for any miss spelling or punctuation thru out my life on here. I honestly grew up a baseball fan dad is a die hard Yankees fan which makes me one GO YANKS! But I was never good at baseball to be honest I always had a different calling.
At like 8 years old my dad taught me how to drive stick on a Pontiac Vibe thru our neighborhood (horrid horrid car but who cares it was a stick and I was 8 it was cool). When I was 13 me and my father attended a party on the east coast of Florida, my dad was not a drinker, got peer pressured into having a few beers and BINGO he was plastered. Now if you knew my father you would he is a cheap ass so instead of doing the responsible thing getting a hotel and calling a night he said i'm going to drive home he got about a mile onto the highway when he looked over at me and said, "Nico i'm too drunk to drive if you do not take over and drive we are going to end up in the ditch with the alligators." Now here I am at 13 years old at around 10 oclock at night with my father telling me he wants me to drive a brand new 2007 Corvette Convertible stick shift on the highway, I was ECSTATIC. That is until I got behind the wheel when your only experience driving is thru a neighborhood having to transfer that into driving on the highway in the night it quite terrifying, lets just say I was not Fernando Alonso with my start I had to stall at least 3 times taking off. After a couple hours of sweaty driving my dad awoke from his sleep to say he slept it off I did a good job and to let him take over from there, I pulled off the road slowed down and forgot to take it out of 6th bucking the car all the way to stop -___-.
Between 13 and id say 18ish I was just really into racing games never really followed and series until I watched Senna, that movie made me cry and that was the first time I ever looked at F1 any way shape or form but from that moment on I was hooked. I went out bought F1 2013 learned more about the sport and tracks, I would stay up late scowering the internet for any race I can watch. I would not say i'm a professional in any means but thru that time I spent a lot of time studying the sport and learning more and more so id say i'm pretty knowledgeable. But above my knowledge is my passion, I wish I had a way to get more involved with this sport, so that's why i'm here with y'all hopefully I make some friends to talk F1 with and maybe some people will actually like to hear what I have to say. So without further wasting of your time about my BS lets move on this fantastic weekend in Baku.
So this year has been very interesting i've been really hardcore following since the turbo hybrid era and all I have known is Lewis and Merc to be dominant. This year we all know they have been off form whether thru form or strategy (we will save those topics for another day). I genuinely thought this was going to be the bounce back weekend for them (yes yes I know they won but we will get into why they still have to worry). Excuse my non expertise here but i'm pretty sure Baku does not have the longest straight away "TECHNICALLY", but to me it sure does feel like it coming out of the last corner you are flat out for a very longgggggg time. Into a 90 degree left hander which honestly creates one of the best overtaking opportunity all season.
For the whole hybrid era Merc has easily had the most powerful engine making high speed circuits a Sunday drive for them. But man has this year been a breath of fresh air Merc is no longer a shoe-in to take the top step on a Sunday, and Baku was definitely held true to that and Lewis knows it.
So lets start from the beginning, the first incident what in the hell was Hulk doing the racing line from corner 2-3 is on the right side of the track he cut right across like he needed to be on the left causing Sirotkin to retire and Fernando to limp back to the pits. Which I might add has to be the most impressive limping I have ever seen he deserves a reward! Then the turn 3 incident i'm honestly going to have to say that Ocon just did not know Kimi was there because Kimi was ALWAYS there. From about half way down the straight away Kimi was along side I would hope that's not Ocons idea of a late dive, cause that would just make him sound like a Floida driver. I'm also very happy that this did not ruin Kimis race, Kimi deserves to be in the fight for the championship this year. The safety car restart had to be the latest re-start I have ever seen which was honestly brilliant, Seb waited till the absolute last second to hit the loud pedal making that very long straight away much shorter not allowing the cars behind to draft up and overtake into turn 1. Brilliant move by Seb, he is such an amazing race controller.
Then you have a key moment in this race Max overtakes Daniel going into 2 setting up the best battle we have seen this year. Before we could get to that battle tho the Renaults announced there pace with very convincing overtakes of both the Red Bulls if Hulk did not have his slip up and retire the car I really believe they could have been fighting at the front all day and may have been able to take the fight to Perez.
Then onto the "Battle Of The Bulls" Danny was FASTER it was a fantastic battle and Max was doing everything right until lap 27, Danny made an amazing pass on the outside and had cleared Max thru turn 1. But Max got a slightly better drive coming out of the corner and put like just the winglet on rear tire of Riccardo, and went for the overtake into turn 2 and Daniel was left defenseless. If the roles were reversed Max would have chopped the front wing of Riccardo Clean off. I get its racing but there has to come a point after multiple overtake attempts that you have to realize you are slower in this stint, especially if its your teammate. I am sure Max is frustrated by the start to his season but you can not keep making insane blocking moves and expect the guy behind to not get frustrated and eventually "Lick the stamp and send it". Eventually Danny does make it stick but its to late for him to take advantage of the pace that he has to build a sizable gap before the pit window. I don't know if anyone else noticed this but on his out lap Danny was weaving around like you would under safety car to get to heat in the tires. I get what he was trying to do but I feel like ultimately this was a big factor in him losing out to Max on the over-cut. Which i'm sure dug into his skin even more causing him to become desperate to get in front, and he still kept his cool thru the incident.
This was on Max. Max was covering the inside Daniel got the tow closed in went to the outside, Max moved right to cover the outside, Daniel moved left to take the inside and he had the pace to take it easily, and Max cut off the wing. I really like Max he reminds me a lot of Senna (which i'm writing this on the day of his passing R.I.P that man was the best). But he has to learn to pick his spots a little bit better 4 races 4 incidents that's too much Max is better then that i know it.
At the time of the Red Bull crash Bottas had a 20 second lead over Hamilton he would have fresh tires and Ham is looking at 3rd realistically. Now i guess you can say i am a Ferrari fan and i was so upset when Seb dove up the inside lets think about this. Seb has been faster all weekend then the Mercs, he is on the same tire as Bottas there is no reason to go for it on the first corner. They just came off what seems like an eternity behind the safety car, people have been having trouble all weekend with heating up tyres and grip why would you not wait for the tyres to heat up and then go for the move. Bottas is easily passable there as show in China, he will give you the room for god sake Seb patience.
Then you have the absolutely appalling job done by the marshals of cleaning up the circuit under the safety car causing poor Bottas to get a horrific puncture and end his day handing Lewis the victory and the lead in the championship. Being an American my favorite team is definitely Haas, first of all i was quite upset with coverage of them this weekend. I feel like Sky/ESPN did not mention or show Haas once the entire race until Romains ugly ugly ugly ugly terrible stupid ridiculous mistake. That was such a shame Romain was up there with Sainz it could have been big points but again we find Haas throwing away points. So disappointing but the team looks strong and i am very optimistic that they will have there best season yet. They just have to fix these silly errors.
All in All a great race had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. F1 is fine form at the moment the last 3 races have been HUGE entertainment. I am exited to see the updates everyone brings to Spain i hope Mclaren step up and get competitive, i think it would be good for the sport. Please argue with me in the comments if you think im an idiot, or praise me if you think im a genius. Either way i hope you guys enjoyed the article and refer your friends! And be sure to follow my page Purple Sector for more content!
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