On the formation lap Nico Hulkenberg asked his team Force India if he could pit. They said first yes and later that he should join the others on the grid. When he went in his grid spot the car shut off and didn't move anywhere. This lead to another formation lap.
After the two formation laps they could finally start the race. Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez had rocket starts and overtook both Valtteri Bottas and Nico Rosberg. Perez even challenged Lewis Hamilton for the lead. Bottas also managed to overtake Rosberg but had something wrong with the car. They didn't really know at Williams what it was but the car was much slower on the straights than it should have been.
Pastor Maldonado also had technical issues and retired after lap 2.
Later Rosberg overtook Bottas for 3rd position and started chasing Perez. When he reached him, Perez pitted almost right away and we couldn't see a real fight between them. Now Hamilton was in the lead with Rosberg 2nd as usual. They stayed like that till the end as you probably already knew or guessed.
Bottas pitted and got more problems than he already had. I have said before that Williams has the worst pit crew in Formula One but not even I could have predicted this! They gave Bottas mixed tires by mistake. I mean you could see it on TV when they did this! One tire had a white stripe and three tires had a yellow stripe. Of course this made Bottas' driving much harder and they didn't even tell him anything until he got a drive through penalty and wanted to know why. Bottas is really wasting his time at Williams. I mean I like the team but I feel Bottas' frustration.
Red Bull got more grey hair on lap 21 when Ricciardo's car broke down and he had to retire. This lead to a virtual safety car "deployment". Hamilton complained on the radio that Rosberg was driving too fast. When I looked at the sector times it was clear that Hamilton was wrong about his teammate.
Later Mercedes told Hamilton to pit but he wanted to stay out for a few laps. They told him that they will take Rosberg in first in that case and this made Hamilton pit right away. I got a good laugh out of it.
On lap 41 Daniil Kvyat, who was the only Red Bull driver now, overtook Sergio Perez for 5th and said "NEXT CAR!" on the radio. He had overtaken car after car but he didn't have enough laps left to rise higher. He had a great race and I really enjoyed his success. Red Bull had a really good tire strategy planned for him.
Lap 42 was a bad one for Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel. His tire broke before the last lap and let Romain Grosjean take 3rd from him. I am sure that if that wouldn't have happened then Grosjean would not have stood on the podium. He was happy though. He cried on the radio and who can blame him, Lotus has had an awful car ever since Kimi left the team and Maldonado joined.
Vettel's teammate Kimi Räikkönen on the other hand saved his tires and managed to finish 7th. Max Verstappen tried to overtake him aggressively on the last lap but failed and went off track. Kimi kept it cool because he knew that Verstappen couldn't have overtaken him at the same spot as Hakkinen overtook Schumacher in 2000. Luckily Verstappen still finished 8th.
That was it for the race and now it's time for my predictions + results.
Pole position: Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes - CORRECT
The race:
The race:
- Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes - CORRECT
- Nico Rosberg, Mercedes - CORRECT
- Kimi Räikkönen, Ferrari - WRONG. His former teammate Romain Grosjean surprised us all and took 3rd.
Fastest lap: Kimi Räikkönen, Ferrari - WRONG. Nico Rosberg was fastest.
Surprise: Kimi Räikkönen will be the fastest Ferrari driver - CORRECT. He was faster than Vettel all weekend but got a technical problem in qualifying and couldn't set a fast lap. In the race he finished and Vettel didn't.
Post your own predictions to our F1-4-LIFE PREDICTORS LEAGUE!
POINTS: 1st - 3
2nd - 5
3rd - 10
+ possible bonus points
HOW IT WORKS: the aim of the game is simply predict who comes where in the race (top3). A total of 18 points can be won on a race day. For example if you get winner and and 3rd place right but 2nd wrong you get 13 points.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PREDICTIONS: send an email to f14lifeblog@gmail.com or message the Facebook page to submit your predictions. You have until lights out to make them. If you submit them when the race has started they won't count. So be quick!
THE PRIZE: the winner of the league will win themselves a admin place on the F1 4 LIFE page along side AE, JT, MW & MH. If you don't want to be an admin you are welcome to participate anyway.
2nd - 5
3rd - 10
+ possible bonus points
HOW IT WORKS: the aim of the game is simply predict who comes where in the race (top3). A total of 18 points can be won on a race day. For example if you get winner and and 3rd place right but 2nd wrong you get 13 points.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PREDICTIONS: send an email to f14lifeblog@gmail.com or message the Facebook page to submit your predictions. You have until lights out to make them. If you submit them when the race has started they won't count. So be quick!
THE PRIZE: the winner of the league will win themselves a admin place on the F1 4 LIFE page along side AE, JT, MW & MH. If you don't want to be an admin you are welcome to participate anyway.
That's it for today and if you want to send me feedback then email me: f14lifeblog@gmail.com
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