Winners and Spinners - Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Assembled from trackside scrawlings in a notebook a la Ted Kravitz and furiously typed up on my flight to Kyiv, it's Winners and Spinners time.
Well here we are, it’s been an entire season of racing. We’ve had some exceptionally high highs and some crippling lows for many; all of which I will no doubt get around to when I do a big season review. Before then, we still have the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to look back over, and boy is there a lot to unpack. So let's get in on it.
Winners
Absolutely gunning it out of T5 in the Sunday sunset.
Max Verstappen - What a drive. What an absolute drive. Largely a little tamer than many of his other drives this season, but by no means was it without function. A slightly softer get-away from the line initially makes me think he was babying his gearbox to the end, trying to avoid the constant penalties for new elements that the Mercedes duo had been chewing through. Despite that, Max was able to hang with Lewis in the far faster Mercedes for a good chunk of the race. Not close enough to challenge him a great deal, but enough to keep the pressure on car 44 and limit Mercedes' options. In the end, the situation called for a Mad Max lap and with the fresher soft tyres on, he was able to absolutely perform! Even then it wasn't an easily won battle with the Mercedes able to nab a tow down the straights and unleash hell from its spicy Brazil engine, but on that final lap Max kept it clinically clean, no pushing to track limits, and brought it home. Was it his drive of the season? I don't know. But it is most certainly up there.
Lewis Hamilton - I cannot heap enough praise onto Lewis' driving this weekend. While he had an outright car advantage, he played every ounce of it and was able to pull out an extraordinary gap from the majority of the field in a relatively short space of time. But at the end of the whole debacle, the only thing that let him down was the FIA and his pit strategy. Throughout the race and the weekend, Lewis was absolutely on it. Several times this season it's been the aim of other teams to hold Lewis back. It's always been car 44 that's been the threat to those ahead. Not Mercedes, the Mercedes. His drive was a strong encapsulation of his efforts this season, marred as it was by the decisions made around him.
Carlos Sainz - Carlos friggin' Sainz man! The guy cannot catch a break. Every podium he's had in his F1 career has been overlooked with something else going on that weekend. He's scored points in every race since and including Styria, 15 races. Over the 22 race season, he failed to score points in just two races this year, even then only finishing 11th place in Portimão and Paul Riccard. It comes as little surprise that he's come home best of the rest behind Mercedes' and Red Bull's drivers in the final standings. I'll go into his consistency in my season review, but this weekend was like I said with Lewis, a perfect encapsulation of his performances this season. Carlos still had a lot of play for coming into this final race and he made it count, notching up a 4th podium visit this season. Well, technically third podium visit. His performances through qualifying and in the race out-classed his teammate by a significant margin. All in, another brilliant, if stereotypical Carlos case.
A surprisingly speedy boi this weekend!
Mick Schumacher - Hear me out, the kid deserves some praise. That Haas is still the absolute mongrel it was at the start of the season. Haas were open about not developing it. But this weekend we saw Mick extract some phenomenal pace from it. Williams this year were able to secure their place in the tailing pack, up the road from Haas and on occasion Alfa Romeo, but this weekend Mick was able to hang with the Grove outfit drivers and challenge for track position. His battle with Latifi was engaging and a testament to his skill behind the wheel, driving the VF-21 to the very limits of its ability. It was close at times, but he made it stick and had a riot of a drive, even if it was he came home as the last of the running cars, he was just a hair over half a second from Lance Stroll, it was a drive to be credited. Plus he was a half a second down the road from his teammate in qualifying. Kids come good.
Alpha Tauri - I've lumped Yuki and Pierre together for this one as the brace of them had a stellar weekend. But mostly this will be about Yuki. Because Ye Gods what a drive that boy made. He majorly outpaced his teammate in qualifying and then capitalised on his strong grid position from the onset of the race. All the way through he pushed and pushed making up a bevvy of positions. If you think his 4th place finish was a fluke of circumstance, think again. Early on in the race, he'd worked his way up to third before being called into the pits, one of the later drivers to make a tyre swap, he then pushed through the grid again, had a proper scrap with his teammate, and then blew past Bottas in a heroic pass to take best of the rest. After his weapon's grade T6 pass on Bottas he was right on the tail of Sainz and could well have lined himself up for a podium! Phenomenal! Pierre didn't do half bad either. A traffic mired qualifying saw him struggle to bag a strong grid spot, but after that, he was like something shot out of a cannon and quickly assumed 5th place for a good while before pitting. Again, he'd bagged and held this position on merit as much as he had on the situation. If both of these drivers can keep up the personal momentum that they've built up this season and go into 2022 with a competitive car, then Alpha Tauri could be a name to watch out for. But we'll get more into that in the next edition.
Nicholas Latifi - Ok, don't be mad, but I genuinely think this was an exceptional weekend from Latifi. His pace in the race was only half a second off of Daniel Ricciardo in a McLaren chassis that had five podium appearances. His battle with Mick was a display of driving nous and had me captivated. Should he have been fighting against a Haas? Arguably no. But it gave us a chance to see his racecraft when really pushed, right up until the Williams bit. We know it's a chassis that still has a rough edge and a tendency to misbehave, but Nicky was able to outqualify George and keep up a strong fight through the race. At one point he was P13 and then tumbled down the order and just couldn't batter back. A shame really. Nonetheless, it was a strong drive from the Canadian. Noice.
Sergio Perez - Last of my winners for this week, and it has to be Checo. Those laps where he held Lewis back are pure class. On dying soft tyres, against a Lewis Hamilton who is charging for a championship win, Sergio was able to fend off his attacks for long enough that Max could catch up. He played the ultimate team game all weekend long, towing Max through qualifying, backing Lewis into him in the race. Sergio is lining up to be what Bottas was at his peak at Mercedes, this weekend is another green checkmark in Sergio's book of merits back at Milton Keynes. When Max said he won the championship because of Checo, he's not wrong at all.
Spinners
Michael Masi and the Stewarding Team - Much as I've alluded to with some of my winning drivers, this race seemed to be a race of character from many. Repetition of their greatest hits of the season. Masi and the stewards went one up and set a new bar for their actions. Latifi crashed on lap 50, there was still 8 laps or so for the race to run. Thiemo said in the podcast that red-flagging the race would have been sensible, if an overreaction, it would have prevented the chaos of running out of laps to go green on and the quick reshuffle of the order that annoyed many. Extending the race distance isn't something that is a viable move, especially as it'd muck with fuelling, tyre expectancy and such, so he couldn't just wack a few extra laps on. Since recording the podcast, and sobering up since then too, I've had a brilliant idea. Keep the full safety car, but allow the lapped cars to unlap from the onset. This means that it's a fair fight all the way down the grid. To keep those on track safe, the final mini sector would be under a VSC, you'd have a delta to keep to as you come into turn 13 and wouldn't be allowed to go to full safety car speeds until you'd cleared turn 15. This way the battle between Norris, Ocon, Leclerc, Vettel, Ricciardo and Alonso would have been unaffected. The lapped cars would have been out of the way sooner, and Max would have closed up to Lewis. Then even if we only went green for the final lap, the drivers behind the front two get a fair fight on track and it doesn't look like Masi has engineered the whole thing for clicks on the internet. Even travelling slowly, the lapped and then unlapped cars shouldn't be expected to rejoin the train of cars, which at this point was Lewis, Max, Carlos, Bottas, and the two Alpha Tauris. As long as they are clear of the safety car, they'll see on the light boards when the circuit goes green and can race away to attain their final positions without interference.
TLDR; let lapped cars overtake immediately. That way they can all overtake and you don't ruin people's chances of a last-minute move. (Vettel and Ricciardo really). This would prevent Mercedes moaning about Michael fiddling with the rules of the safety car and we'd see a truly fair result to the race.
Not to gloat, but this was my view on Sunday.
I will say this. Masi has been pretty consistent across the season. Consistent in his mismanagement of the sport and his ability to read and understand the sporting regulations. I'm a boring so and so and keep a copy of it on my computer's desktop and refer to it when writing. Surely Michael has a similar system where he can quickly check rules? I'm not saying he should know the entire 56 article document and three appendices by heart; I love playing Scrabble and Monopoly, but I don't know the minutiae of the rules off the top of my head. But I should think Masi has a PDF where he can just bung 'safety car' into the search function to check he's doing things properly.
Another thing while I'm here and on a Katy Fairman style rant, perhaps I was hitting on something when I said on the podcast that the sport I love and follow (literally across the globe, have I mentioned I was in Abu Dhabi for this?) is becoming a scripted drama. It's TOWIE on wheels at times. Liberty Media had no experience with any sport before buying Formula One beyond owning the Atlanta Braves baseball team. Just a sole team. To give them credit, they do seem to have pulled the team from the doldrums a little and they did win the World Series this year (although I know so little about baseball that I might have misinterpreted this stat). As a company, they have come in as a media giant that owns three-quarters of a digital radio service and they don't really know what to do with the sport? While they don't have a direct say in what makes the sport the sport, they are in control of how the sport is seen, promoted and sold; it's commercial rights. This new direction they've advertised the sport in seems to have had a knock-on effect on those within the sport who make important decisions. This is all speculation and just a diatribe from my mind, but it might be something to think about. Or disregard entirely. Is F1 focussing more on making good telly than making good racing? And if so, who's to blame?
McLaren - They'd started so strongly, hoovering up podium places with Lando Norris like they were going out of style, then Daniel Ricciardo came online and boom, a 1-2, the only 1-2 this season. Then nowt. This weekend was a weekend as many of their previous ones, one to learn from the data and promptly forget. Daniel's chance at chasing down a point was ruined by some top tier pantomime race direction and Lando suffered technically all race, I think he had a puncture at one point too. A shame as he'd qualified well and it looked like he could finish the season on a similar high to how he'd started it. Sadly not.
Charles Leclerc - I think I'm only being harsh on Charles here because of how well Carlos drove. When you're Ferrari's wonderboy you really need to be putting in performances that have a little something to them each race. I'm not saying he needs to be on the podium each weekend or taking pole. But given how reasonably competitive the SF21 has been this season, it's not a tall order to expect Charles to come home most races scoring more points than an ostrich could count on one foot (more than two, ostriches only have two toes, they are didactyls). And this weekend, we didn't manage that. His fastest lap was slower than Vettel's in the mediocre AMR21. Hopefully, we'll see a step up next season, and we'll get to that in due course.
Aston Martin - With chaos in the field and the chance to make a left of field strategy work; this should have been a points haul for Aston Martin and a chance for them to go out on a bit of a high. The circumstances didn't play out as they needed it to and we, unfortunately, saw them play out the wrong way. Their fastest laps weren't able to compete with Alpine or Alpha Tauri. Maybe the setup wasn't there, or maybe, as we covered in the poddy C, Aston has given up on developing the chassis and this was the final culmination of that? Overall, I felt underwhelmed by their drives this weekend.
Alfa Romeo - A bit like Aston Martin, I'd say I was disappointed by Alfa's performance this weekend. Let down throughout by reliability issues it marred a weekend that could have been; as well as ruining a weekend where they waved goodbye to both of their drivers. Antonio had been looking relatively competitive again and was threatening a performance akin to his drives after his retirement from F1 had been announced. But the car just wasn't there to follow through with. Nor was it for Kimi. Just all in, a letdown.
The Rest
Alpine - 8th and 9th. Not bad but again, the Alpine positions were massively compromised by 'Masi Mayhem'. The pace was there, Alonso and Ocon were both faster than a Ferrari and really deserved to finish higher up. I wanted more. But their performances weren't terrible, hence the middling report. Don't @ me.
George Russell - Something wasn't right with the 63 chassis this weekend, braking seemed to be out of balance and the corner exit wasn't there. Pretty much every time George came through T5 there was a puff of tyre smoke or brake dust only to lumber out of the turn after. He seemed to be fighting it all the way until the gearbox finally gave out and he retired. Nothing lost, but equally, nothing gained here. Onto next season, onwards and upwards.
Nikita Mazepin - His qualifying was terrible and then he had an unfortunate Covid test that saw him unable to take the fight to Mick, although given the German's form over the weekend, I think that would have been unlikely. And then Robert Schwartzman after a few hours in the car obliterated his qualifying time. F's in the chat.
Valtteri Bottas - Not his weekend. Whatever happened his departure from Mercedes was going to be overshadowed by the end result, whichever way it turned out. Bottas came into the weekend and just seemed a little checked out. I can't blame him for this, and frankly, like him I suspect, I'm exhausted. A huge weight must be lifted from his shoulders. He's already at Alfa Romeo doing post-season testing in a plain white suit and festive helmet. I won't go in on him, hence this middling result.
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Comments (9)
Okay cool. Now post a photo of you the morning after heavily drinking in a hotel bar.
That content is coming. Including the videos of me enjoying myself after a few sambucas and tequilas. And the aftermath of the aforementioned shots... that poor hotel bin...
Great coverage as usual. I was heartbroken to see how Kimi and Geo went out, and that they retired Perez for ‘reliability issues’ after that monster drive.
Though honestly I’m split on the Liberty Media issue, like any sport in the modern era it needs to be good telly to sell, i.e. it’s expensive and the money has to come from somewhere more than just ticket sales. And like it or not I think we are seeing that they are broadening the fan base.
Now that being said I agree that the application of that should be more like rules changes to make the field closer and naturally more dramatic rather than stewards potentially skewing races for better TV. As with any competitive sport the rules have to be consistently applied otherwise it’s more like a scripted boxing match than an actual hockey game (shush I’m Canadian, read Football if you’re South of the border🏈 or across the pond⚽️).
Pulling for the Sauber/Alfa/Bottas/Zhou for the underdog constructor and drivers win in 2022!!!!
Thank you, thank you.
I wanted Kimi to have a proper goodbye race, a final display of Kimi on track. I was most let down by Gio's goodbye. There is a photo from Kym Illman that really sums it up, Gio walking off with a hand raised waving behind...
Read moreThanks for mentioning Sergio’s retirement! What on earth were the reliability reasons?!? The car was done after that race, and he had only a handful of laps left! Seems it was a podium gift to Sainz, but I just want to know. He deserved to see...
Read moreNot a bad summary put together from scribbled notes. I basically agree with your assessment.
I don’t think cars should be able to unlap themselves. All the work done to build an advantage is then ripped away and the result is still manufactured.