Mercedes pit crew just royally ****** up

Of course he will. He will want to win an 'easy' record 8th world driver's championship next season with the same cars and a useless teammate (no rules changes now until 2022) and then retire. By the end of 2021 Mercedes will have had the fastest car for 8 consecutive seasons. F1 as a product needs some serious changes to level out the playing field and make it more entertaining. Years ago Hamilton had a right old moan about Vetell and the state of F1 when he won four straight titles for Red Bull, oh the irony!

 

Bottas was actually reeling him in before the safety car, if you remember. He'd taken five seconds off him in the last seven or eight laps. I think George was struggling with the hard compound tyre. Would have been interesting to see them fight it out for the last stint, but for the Merc crew mistakes.

I don't rate Bottas much. I think he's in a car that's way beyond his ability. I think George and others would do much better in the second car and thus provide Hamilton stiffer inter-team competition. But I'd still back Lewis to come out on top over the season, regardless of his teammate.

I've said it before, but I yearn for Lewis to go to Ferrari and finish his career there. A few years trying to get them back on the top step. But there isn't a seat there. So he'll be with Merc next season and will no doubt beat Bottas most weeks. A shame Merc decided to renew Valtteri and not give Russell that spot.

Maybe other teams will close the gap next season, we'll see. It's been good this afternoon to see 'lesser' drivers on the podium.

And Fernando is back next year. Some great names on the grid. I just hope Perez gets that RB seat.

 

I agree over a season Hamilton would take some beating more to f1 than just driving fast ie verstappen.
Unlike others I think Hamilton would welcome someone like verstappen joining Mercedes just to prove a point he makes too many mistakes.

 

Bit convenient. Imagine the storyline if they had put a rookie in hamiltons car and he’d won. Would take the shoe off hamiltons season. Maybe it was accidentally on purpose. Conspiracy theory but how the hell did they manage to put old tyres back on. Lol

 

I thought they'd put some of his new ones and some of bottas's new ones on which is easy to do when you're getting 2 sets out of the garage at the same time.

Then with bottas they did the same thing with the opposite tyres but realised so took all the new ones off and put the set he'd just took off back on just to get him back out quickly

I may have got that all wrong though

 

They put Bottas's new tyres on Russell's car he then drove off and they put Russell's tyres on Bottas's car but had problems with one wheel and during the time they were trying to correct the fitting of that tyre somebody realised what had happened so they had to put Bottas old tyres back on and send him out they then called Russell back in put the right tyres on but by the time Bottas had got back round the safety car was back in and they couldn't replace his old tyres with new ones or he would have ended up last.

 

Fairly static rules next year so don't expect much change. Obviously we would never get a Verstappen or Leclerc in the 2nd car but as you say Bottas.isnt even close. At least Rosberg often gave Hamilton something to think about. Despite not being as quick as Hamilton is was food enough to be in the race and put him under pressure. Bottas has spent too many year getting humbled by Hamilton now, he is a beaten man.

 

ahh right - id not watched the actual race - just read the headlines. Maybe this is how conspiracy theories are born!?

I used to watch F1 a lot but got rather bored when it became a procession.

 

It was a calamity, but Bottas' pace after the ****-up, on the heavily warn hard tyre shows that they did need to make another stop.

Toto Wolf is Russell's manager/agent, he will have been seeing ££££ if Russell had a F1 win under his belt!

 

Why not? They've made them in the past and cost him victories.

 

Bizarre comment. How does whoever is behind the wheel dictate events in the pits? Or are you suggesting the pit crew were less careful?
If that’s the case then the offending crew members won’t last long.

 

They've ****** up more than once with Hamilton in the car earlier this season they pitted him when the pit lane was closed they also did something similar a few years back called Hamilton in during a safety car period when they didn't really need to one of the wheels got stuck and he lost places.