Why the Portimaõ Grand Prix was “stale” for the fans but a dream race for the analyst?!




In the entirety of the history of formula one, only 5 constructors (teams) have had the opportunity to say that they’ve had 100 poles from both their drivers, but now that Lewis is on a record-breaking streak, after gaining most laps led, most number of races won, and having titled SIR LEWIS HAMILTON, he lost the opportunity to have 100 poles for himself since he started to drive in the McLaren, back in 2007.

His pole was stolen by his teammate, after Lewis was having struggled the wind and nearly losing his car in Q3. This however meant that we couldn’t see the historic figure of THE 100 and also see Martin Brundle jump up and down with joy.

Moving onto the race, Valtteri had jumped Lewis after the five lights had come on, and soon as the 20 drivers came round the iconic Portimaõ circuit, the fellow world champion Kimi Raikkonen had crashed into the back of his teammate, Antonio, the safety car was pulled out! Valtteri had somehow managed to keep all the drivers behind him when the safety car came in, and it gave him a humongous advantage! P2 and P3 were followed by Lewis and Max, but not running into the first corner. Max had caught Lewis napping, and moved up to P2. After Lewis had managed to get up to Valtteri, he made a textbook move to get up to being the race leader, and he hadn’t seen P2 since then!

A brilliant undercut from the Red Bill boys later in a couple of laps made sure that Verstappen had a fresh set of Hards. Later, Current race leader, Sergio Perez had come in after his tyres screamed off of the immense G-Forces coming through the undulations of the track. He was put on softs and held the fastest lap time of the race until Lewis got back into the groove after his engineer came on to the radio and probably said, “Get in there, Lewis..” and off he went.

Skipping over to the final minutes of the race, Valtteri had lost engine power and felt the car feeling slow, so instead of chasing Max for P2, James, Valtteri’s engineer, came onto the radio to tell him, “Let’s go for the fastest ..” looking at that, Max also came into the pits to change into softs. Valtteri had the fastest lap as he crossed the start/finish line as the chequered flag was waved, and he picked up the fastest lap, and also bagged an extra point for doing so! Max’s fastest lap however was short lived as he exceeded track limits and his lap time was deleted.
Lap times of Sebastian was doing pretty good until he managed to pit and finished P14, and as Otmar said, “He(Seb) is learning to get the car into the turns at the right places. He will soon be finishing in the points ..”

Sir Lewis Hamilton won the race, getting a brilliant race from start, and he has 97 wins. Red bull did challenge the Mercedes in terms of loosing grip and grabbing the opportunity, but looks like merc’s grip isn’t going to go loose anytime soon!!

Next week, the paddock moves 400-odd kilometers to Spain and ready to fight it out at Circuit de Catalunya, in Spain! Onto the next one, and it’ll all be fun and games until we hear Paul Di Resta or Martin Brundle going, “It’s lights out and away we go to the Spanish Grand Prix…” these words would be cherished as formula 1 fans all across the world are getting a back-to-back race after waiting for, what felt an eternity, between Bahrain for the first race and Imola the second!! Onto the next one…




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