Who'd have thought the last corner would dry so quick and allow Vet tel and others to pick up so much speed though ?

Well, the weather may well have scuppered my predictions for tomorrow! Exciting quali, but I think many were stunned at the end of that! I was wondering why the others didn't abort at the end of the first sector, too!

What's the old adage? Something like let your actions do the talking. Earlier in the season when Hamilton was on a roll he was there saying how he had a psychological edge over Rosberg. Christ has that come back to bite him on the arse,as he's seemingly lost the plot the last few GP weekends.

Is it me or is Suzi Perry pregnant??

Her jacket looked like it had a little bump

 

 

Is it me or is Suzi Perry pregnant?? 

Surely you'd know if you'd got Suzi Perry pregnant

I reckon tomorrow could be  great race, as long as Lewis can successfully negotiate the first lap. Do you remember Mansell hunting down Piquet in 87 (I think)? This time it could be Hamilton chasing down Rosberg.

I reckon tomorrow could be  great race, as long as Lewis can successfully negotiate the first lap. Do you remember Mansell hunting down Piquet in 87 (I think)? This time it could be Hamilton chasing down Rosberg.

I was there, it was '87. 

then Mansell changed tyres due to a vibration after 'flat spotting' the first set and had to make up about 1 second a lap to catch Piquet.

Rosberg's turn for some bad luck. Will Hamilton's car do the same?

A good win for Lewis. Pity Jenson didn't get the job done earlier. The usual excuse "despite pushing all the way, we just weren't quick enough".

Williams seem to be firmly back in the mix after years in the wilderness.

Nasty shunt for Kimi.

Interesting race and very entertaining indeed!!!

Really enjoyed it.... Start to finish.

Great to see Williams on the podium again and Ricciardo too!

Only a 4 point lead for Rosberg going into the next race - that's certainly mixed things up again. 2 retirements for Hamilton vs 1 for Rosberg and Hamilton is only 4 points behind.

 

Good race despite the hour delay at the start. Can't help feeling that if the damaged armco was in Germany, the States or the far east somewhere, it would have been fixed in 10 minutes max!!

Yeah. Friend of mine used to be a marshal and has done Silverstone, Brands, Castle Combe, etc. He was really annoyed by it and the fact Nando had overshot his pit box and no one noticed until later.

What was the piece of plastic s***e they handed out on the podium after the race?  Makes Santander look like idiots!

Good win for Lewis, unfortunate for Rosberg but thems the breaks.

But didn't Vettel sound like a big girls blouse? A man seriously out of his depths with a poor engine and reduced down force.

Only a 4 point lead for Rosberg going into the next race - that's certainly mixed things up again. 2 retirements for Hamilton vs 1 for Rosberg and Hamilton is only 4 points behind.

 

Good race despite the hour delay at the start. Can't help feeling that if the damaged armco was in Germany, the States or the far east somewhere, it would have been fixed in 10 minutes max!!

 

I thought Niki Lauda's comments were a bit odd, frustrated at the lost time he suggested there was zero chance of another car hitting the same spot so why bother replacing the armco. For a start, unless I'm missing something, the probability is not zero, just reeeeally low. It's certainly not worth risking driver/marshall/spectator safety. Made me smile when Eddie Jordan asked if Niki had a flight or prior engagement shortly after the race.

That was a silly comment from Lauda.


You fix the barrier because the one time you don't, is the time someone will hit it again.


That barrier will have tyres or tec-pro next year.

A good win for Lewis. Pity Jenson didn't get the job done earlier. The usual excuse "despite pushing all the way, we just weren't quick enough".

 

Yeah, nothing to do with the distinctly mid core car he has to drive at the moment. 

 

Good race, enjoyed it. Nice to see Rosberg get a bit of bad luck, hopefully Lewis will get back to smashing him again now. Alonso vs Vettel was a great battle, both as bad as each other for the moaning but I liked how after Alonso was laughing saying how he knew nothing was going to be done etc while Vettel was making out that he never moans and he only done it because he knew Alonso was. 

 

I really like Bottas, quiet, unassuming and seemingly a nice bloke but boy can he drive! I've liked him from the start but now he's got a reasonable car under him he can really show what he is capable of. I'd love to see him get a crack at a win some time this season. 

The Vettel Alonso battle was hilarious, with both of them exceeding the track limits. Although Vettel out qualified his team mate he ended up a few places behind him at the end of the race. The Red Bull car is poor this year, but Vettel is not the best driver in that team.

It's hard to decide which car is where this season. Aside from the Merc, they all seem to be quite up and down depending on the track. Saying that, Williams really do seem to be showing themselves as best of the rest at the moment. After that, who knows? RB & Ferrari, Macca might be starting to pull themselves back up a bit. Until Silverstone FI are doing ok but they seem to get their results by being slower and just going for ages on the tyres, gets the result I guess. 

What was the piece of plastic s***e they handed out on the podium after the race?  Makes Santander look like idiots!

 

Did you see Rosberg checking it out when he joined the team for the photo? The look on his face was totally along the lines of "WTF is this?!"

Great drive by Lewis.  He was set to win even without Nico's retirement, but that does at least undo a little of his bad luck.

 

Alonso has always been a whiner.  Remember when he was with Renault the first time and he gained his championships after the rules were changed to let someone other than Schumi win?  In one race he made the wrong tyre choice and in he latter stages he was losing grip and Fissichela (his team mate) came up behind.  Fissi sat behind him for a while blocking the passing space on the track and eventually passed Alonso.  Schumi then breezed past both of them to win the race.  

 

I was expecting Alonso to thank Fissi afterwards for trying to help him.  Instead he whined that he didn't get enough support from his team saying tht Fissichela should havee done moe to prevent Schumi from overtaking him.  If Fissi had blocked the track for much longer he'd have been black flagged.

 

Ever since then I call him Fernando Ar***ole.  

 

Then, of course, he was upset that Lewis was a better driver at McLaren and whined to Ron Denis, asking him to tell Lewis to slow down and stop beating him because he was the number 1 driver.

 

I first saw Lewis in GP2 and have been a fan of his ever since - and that was before his stunning drive in Turkey.  If anybody is silly enough to doubt what a fantastic driver Lewis is they should look at that race - it's available on YouTube.

 

What a joy Ricciardo is to watch!  Shows how poor Mark Webber was.   Ricciardo is doing better in this year's car than Webber managed when the Red Bull was miles better than any other car.

What a joy Ricciardo is to watch!  Shows how poor Mark Webber was.   Ricciardo is doing better in this year's car than Webber managed when the Red Bull was miles better than any other car.

 

Not sure that's a fair statement of Webbers talents. For the past four years the RB was set up with an exhaust blown diffuser that required a counter-intuitive driving style (e.g. putting your foot down round the corner to get exhaust gases to pass over the diffuser and increase down force). Vettel mastered that style of driving and Webber didn't.

 

Now that exhaust blown diffusers are banned, Vettel is struggling resorting to a more "normal" style of driving whilst Riccardo hasn't had to adjust his style. Ironically, if Webber hadn't retired, he might be having the best of the RB inter team battle this year.

 

As for Alonso, I still think he's the best driver on the grid and usually outperforms his car. I suspect the issues he had at Mclaren were probably as much to do with Ron Dennis reneging on the promises he made to Alonso before he signed him as it was to do with Hamilton's performance.

I also wonder how Webber would have done with this year's car. I do think Vettel is a less "mature" driver - over the last few years, he just had the better car, but now it's not working so well, tends to whine a bit more. Take Ricciardo, Lewis and Nico - far more rounded drivers IMO. Ricciardo has the benefit of starting from scratch so can easily adapt his driving to get the most out of the car.

 

I also found it interesting how Nico apparently continued to give feedback / help Lewis after his retirement, although they didn't want to say what it was (so I guess it's unverifiable!). In a way, I too was disappointed when Nico retired as the ding dong between them both would have been great, although happy that it addresses the balance of bad luck a bit between this year's reliability and last year's tyre blowouts at Silverstone!

 

Oh and that plastic trophy! What a joke!

I also found it interesting how Nico apparently continued to give feedback / help Lewis after his retirement, although they didn't want to say what it was (so I guess it's unverifiable!). In a way, I too was disappointed when Nico retired as the ding dong between them both would have been great, although happy that it addresses the balance of bad luck a bit between this year's reliability and last year's tyre blowouts at Silverstone!

I wondered about that also, but my gut feeling is it's part of the "mind games" going on between Nico and Lewis. In the old days, an F1 driver would have been off by helicopter to an airport with his private jet on standby - there's no way they would hang around the circuit. I seem to remember Ayton Senna crashing out in Monaco and walking back to his apartment rather than go back to the garage!

 

I'm guessing that Nico's manager told him to do pit wall stuff and the after race team celebrations, etc., as a way of saying to Lewis that he hasn't been affected by the retirement.