Yesterday’s race at the Circuit De Catalunya was not the most entertaining race, to be honest it was a bit dull but what we did probably witness was the end of the title challenge by Valterri Bottas. After Hamilton’s fourth win from six races he now has a 43 point advantage over his AMG Mercedes team mate, thats almost two wins ahead and while anything can happen in F1 it seems very unlikely that Bottas will be able to claw that back.
Just to add insult to Valterri’s wounds he is not even second in the championship, some great drives over the last few events have put Verstappen six points ahead of Bottas. Max was able to beat Bottas to second place again yesterday to split the Mercedes pair and if Bottas isnt careful he may find himself battleing for second place with Max as opposed to pushing his team mate for the title.
Bottas didn’t get away well from second on the grid yesterday and found himself behind both Verstappen and Stroll after turn 2 and had to fight off Perez to avoid lsoing another position. Fighting back from this and losing any hope of staying in touch with Lewis meant he was 44 seconds behind at the flag. It is races like this that make it difficult to see Bottas as a real threat for the championship. When Lewis is on great form every race and maximizing his results you cant afford to have off days. Valterri is a fine racing driver and I myself have been a fan of his since he joined the grid and on his day he can beat Lewis fair and square but his problem is that he is unable to do that consistently over the course of the season. He will undoubtedly add to his win from Austria this year and there will be races where we see him at his best but clawing back those 43 points will be next to impossible unless Lewis runs into trouble.
As for Hamilton himself he had a pretty easy time of it yesterday afternoon. After he got away from pole into the lead he never looked back and Verstappen in second just didn’t have the pace to stay with him so he was in control the whole time. He even made the correct call to go onto the medium tyres at his final stop, knowing that the soft’s which Bottas had taken would not be the best choice. Indeed Bottas lost any chance of taking back second from the RedBull of Verstappen as a result of fitting the soft tyres.
Elsewhere Rcing Point picked up a good solid points hall with fourth and fifth, stroll ahead of his team mate Perez after the Mexican was given a time penalty for a blue flag infringement. It was a good race for the Silverstone based team but yet again they failed to trouble the podium places as I had predicted they would in the early races.
Carlos Sainz continued his run of scoring points in his home event with a fine drive to sixth place with Lando Norris scoring a point in tenth for a double points finish for the Mclaren team.
The stand performance from the top ten though surely goes to Sebastian Vettel in seventh who somehow managed 40 odd laps on the soft tyres, a fine piece of tyre management that finally gave him some sort of result this year. The good drive came despite evidence of some lack of communication from the pit wall as Vettel asked his team how many laps they wanted him to do on that set and they didn’t respond for three laps. It is clearly a tetchy, strained relationship between driver and team at the moment and although I’m sure Vettel will see out the year with them id doesn’t seem like it is a lot of fun for him at present. He is clearly unsupported by his team and they are jsut going through the motions to get to the end of the year which is a shame really as even though the partnership is coming to an end it is best for both sides to get something from it.
There is not really much else to say regarding the race, as mentioned it was not the most exciting to watch but Spain normally gives us this kind of race. Next the circus moves to the iconic Spa Francorchamps in Belguim in two weeks which is always a joy to watch and something I always look forward to. It’s a well earned rest for everyone before another run of three races for us to enjoy.
My F1 talk 