The bad news for us is that there probably won’t be a much better pair of DRS zones than this last weekend :-/
Well done to Bottas though
Now that the season is under way the consequences of the politics played in 2015 and 2016 have become much clearer.
Ferrari, Red Bull and the FIA were desperate to not have Merc running away with another championship. This resulted in the rule changes for 2017, which all 3 thought would benefit them.
The net result of all these changes is a racing formula where many corners that required careful control of the throttle etc to get round them, are now flat. This means that F1 has become more of a powerplant biased racing formula than before. And there will be less overtaking.
It is ironic that Red Bull thought that increasing the aero capability of the cars was going to help them (Adrian Newey could lead the development of a better aero solution than other teams). Whilst Newey has developed very innovative solutions in the past, he has not worked full time on developing F1 aero for a few years, in the meantime Merc have demonstrated a very effective development approach, which has continued this year. And at Ferrari they have clearly gone back to what they have had a lot of success at doing, which is making flexible aero components (front wings, rear wings and the floor) to improve the aero solution.
With significant differences in the powerplants remaining (and the duty cycle having changed somewhat, making it even harder to achieve high levels of reliability), those differences have been amplified a bit more and Red Bull are no closer to winning at present, whilst Ferrari have put RBR comfortably behind them with their improvements.
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Like that’s ever going to happen! LOL.
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Not sure that would make much difference.
IME even if you give a good car to a team, never mind let them look at it, there is a considerable difference in how well they understand it, and how well they optimise it at the circuit.
The Lola CART car was a good case in point. The cars were delivered to the teams with the same technical data yet there was more than 4secs per lap between the fastest and slowest Lola, and it was not all in the driver.
The same was true of F3000 when it was a one make formula, the cars and data were the same but some teams were much better than others at getting the best out of the car.
This is the main reason why one make formulae do not necessarily reveal the best driver.
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Great win for Lewis Hamilton. Strategy good and a great drive in the last stint. It would have been incredibly close had Bottas not held Vettel up so well.
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Yep, that was a pretty good race!
Cant recall LH sounding so out of breath over the radio.
Merc strategies worked. Lewis owes Bottas…he’d likely been 2nd otherwise.
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Phew, talk about close shaves…
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I presume that would have been with a broom in his hands
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If any man knows about carbon fibre debris…
Posted on Freddy’s own page…
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Button not fastest, disappointing…
Not as much as Lewis fecking up the quali
…and Jens is through into the top 10 
not that the car will last the race
Kimi on pole for the first time in 9 years.
One word to describe Lewis…petulant.
Not a classic but interesting none the less.
Button was a little, errr, over-ambitious 
So Fred was doing well in the Indy 500, till his Honda engine went pop…! 
I suspect anyone from Honda will be giving him a wide berth for a few years…