The Irreversible Brazilian GP Awards

Best Driver:
Worst Driver:
Best Rookie/New Driver:
Best Team:
Surprise Team:
Worst Team:
Best Overtake:

Most Surprising Result:
Least Surprising Result:
Funniest moment:
Excuse of the week:

Special Mention:
Best post from the race thread:
Race Rating: ?/10

 

Best Driver: Hamilton made interesting points after the race and talking about 3 engines next year. Best entertainment was given by Hamilton. Vettel controlled the race at the front. Totally different drives. what about alonso managing 8th...
Worst Driver: RG for being useless. KMag for the same.
Best Rookie/New Driver: Gasly? i mean theres only the two TR drivers now.
Best Team: TBH mercs were underperforming in race in terms of bottas, hamilton was charging all the time. Ferrari were just consistent. Raikkonen ws a little meh. red bull struggled on tyres. Ferrari?
Surprise Team: hmmmmmm... was there a shock? Alsono getting 8th is heroic imo
Worst Team: haas. sick of them now. can't gt the car right at all.
Best Overtake: HMMMM most were easy enough no? there was a bit of fight in some but really it was blazing past. Ricciardo probably took most risk.

Most Surprising Result: force india being so poor.
Least Surprising Result: it turned into a massa celebration... again.
Funniest moment: none
Excuse of the week:.. none

Special Mention: kimi's race engineer. He soundsa beaten man TBH. satudays Q1 was hilarious.
Best post from the race thread:
Race Rating: 7/10 just a ral battle at the front away from a good race.

 

Best Driver: Massa & Alonso jointly
Worst Driver: Bottas
Best Rookie/New Driver: Gasly
Best Team: Merc
Surprise Team: Ferrari
Worst Team: Haas
Best Overtake: All DRS assisted?

Most Surprising Result: Alonso
Least Surprising Result: Merc fastest
Funniest moment: Kimi falling out with his engineer
Excuse of the week:

Special Mention: Lewis and Seb
Best post from the race thread:
Race Rating: 6.8/10

 

Best Driver: Ricciardo, turned down engine, forced into a pit-stop after being taken out and behind Hamilton by the start of lap 2, he had to make moves rather than breeze past on a straight
Worst Driver: Stroll, should've been given penalties for his blue flag driving.
Best Rookie/New Driver: Gasly
Best Team: Mercedes, great strategy to give Lewis a new engine and avoid the usual first corner melee, otherwise he would've been in the middle of it all.
Surprise Team: dunno, everyone seemed to finish where they should
Worst Team: Haas driver fail, poor Ocon.
Best Overtake: Ricciardo, lord of the late brake.

Most Surprising Result: Alonso
Least Surprising Result:
Funniest moment: Max bullshitting his way into getting a tyre change so he could nick the lap record. (for me anyway)
Excuse of the week:

Special Mention: Seb, Lewis, Alonso and Massa
Best post from the race thread:
Race Rating: 7/10

 

Talking of 'Irreversible', has anyone seen the French film of the same name?

Seriously screwed up stuff. Unpleasant watching.

Anyway, I'll do my nominations tomorrow when I have a computer rather than this useless windows phone.

 

Bottas the WORST driver ?

 

Best Driver: Ricciardo. Grid penalty and first lap spin not his fault, but fought back brilliantly in a car with a speed deficiency and some cracking late lunges.
Worst Driver: KMag and Grosjean jointly for destroying two drivers races who could have scored points. Hard to say Bottas was 'poor'.
Best Rookie/New Driver: hard to say really.
Best Team: Ferrari for a change
Surprise Team: Ferrari also for not screwing up
Worst Team: Haas.
Best Overtake: Pick one of Ricciardo's many lunges

Most Surprising Result: McLaren keeping pace and being reliable
Least Surprising Result: Bottas not attacking after losing the lead
Funniest moment: DC to Daniel on the grid abut enjoying coming from behind
Excuse of the week: Grosjean saying he had a puncture so spun into Ocon

Special Mention: Massa keeping Alonso at bay for the entire race. He will (and did!) enjoyed that.
Best post from the race thread:
Race Rating: 6/10. Lewis and Daniel aside, not a lot happened and was pretty processional at the front.

 

For me yes. Lewis showed the true car performance and would likely have poled it by 3 or 4 tenths and finished 20+ seconds up the road. But that aside he offered no fight or challenge all race. It’s rare I rate a leading driver in this category, but at least the usual suspects have an excuse each week - they are in a ****box of a car.

 

Ok . We will have to agree to disagree .

 

Best Driver: Ricciardo. Hamilton and Vettel very close seconds.
Worst Driver: Magnusson / Stroll / Grosjean. But Bottas? What a strange choice. In my opinion, this was his best weekend since the summer break. His driving performance was surely at least on par with Räikkönen, for instance.
Best Rookie/New Driver: Gasly.
Best Team: No easy winner for this but by comparison with recent events, I'll also give this to Ferrari. Mercedes did a decent job in off-setting Hamilton's error but Bottas didn't have an answer to Vettel after holding the door open into turn 1 from more than a car's length ahead.
Surprise Team: I'm struggling with this one. Perhaps McLaren for positives and Force India for negatives? But I found neither of these things surprising.
Worst Team: Force India's Ocon didn't get a chance to show what he might have achieved. As a team, Haas were probably worse.
Best Overtake: Ricciardo had several. His car was beautifully tuned to his ability to sense something about turn 1 others could not match.

Most Surprising Result: Hamilton driving error in Q1.
Least Surprising Result: Vettel podium. Apart from mechanical error, it was as good as written in stone.
Funniest moment: Probably something Räikkönen said…
Excuse of the week: Ditto.

Special Mention: Massa. For the second time…
Race Rating: 7.04/10

 

Interesting, I would say consistent - which was the same reason I (and Bando) nominated Kimi last race. Furthermore, as you say he was equal to the lack lustre Kimi, in car which was 5/10ths quicker. I’m not sure if that’s worse? He had his opportunity to prove to the F1 community that he was a worthy Merc driver with no interference from Lewis - and he fluffed his lines.

It may be harsh, but not as off the wall as at first appears.

 

Eh?

• I said "driving performance": a personal attempt to ignore the difference in car performance. Please see below*.
• If instead, we try to accommodate it, we must surely resort to pure statistical evidence which shows the difference to be 0.057 seconds in favour of Bottas; roughly 10% of the difference you claim.
• Are you using some other criteria to conclude Bottas and his car were "5/10ths quicker" than Kimi and his car?

- - -o0o- - -​

*Obviously this is subjective; an attempt (however futile!) to ignore other factors such a chassis performance. I'll emphasise that I recognise this is a futile exercise and essentially an expression of opinion.

 

Errrrr Hamilton? The delta between the two has consistently been several tenths and was bigger here.The Merc was a blatantly quicker car, than Bottas produced. Kimi gets so much **** from all of us on his lacklustre performances, and rightly so.

It’s an opinion Cosi, we’re allowed one you know and I explained my reasons why and related it to my nomination last race of Kimi.

 

Of course you're allowed an opinion. That's why I asked. I'm not looking for a battle. I'm interested. I wanted to understand it. It's why I continue to be a member of this site.

My point is that we are comparing Bottas and Kimi. You were saying Bottas' car was 5 tenths quicker. That simply is not true. Hamilton's may have been; but then we also invoke a comparison with Vettel and it all gets very diffuse. All we can be sure of is that Bottas and his Merc were 0.057 seconds quicker than Kimi and his Ferrari. If we are comparing like for like, this has nothing to do with respective team mates.

I'm interested in your opinion, just as I am everyone else's. But I like to at least try understanding it.

 

It should be added that the Merc is known to suffer badly in dirty air, much like the RBR from a few years ago which was dominant when out the front, but struggled if it found itself behind others.

Bottas couldn't get within DRS of Vettel for most of the race as through the twisty bit the Merc just wasn't working properly. Hamilton breezed past inferior cars to his on the straight thanks to DRS and his Merc engine, but the Ferrari was decent through the speed traps. Look what happened when Hamilton rolled up to the back of Kimi, he barely had a sniff at him as immediately struggled when he got behind it for those last few laps. If the Merc was genuinely half a second quicker then surely he would have breezed by just like he did everyone else (except Merc powered cars where it took a few laps on most occasions)

The Ferrari was not as far off the pace as you are making out. It was said several times on commentary that Hamilton was able to use higher engine settings as it only had to do two races which gave him a helping hand. He was way faster through the speed trap then anyone else.

I think you're being harsh on Bottas. Just my opinion.

 

I'm surprised that Stroll wasn't penalised for his blue flag driving, there were 3 or 4 times that it looked like he closed the door on drivers lapping him. It was like he was channeling the spirit of Rene Arnoux.

 

Not even close! Stroll has a lot to learn before getting to the pinnacle of Arnoux, and Alliot for that matter

Maybe it was the Frenchness in them, with their French cars back by the French government? Is Stroll from the French part of Canada!?

The story behind Berger's Aus race is a funny one. Basically Ferrari's last hurrah in the turbo era. He was never going to finish the race as either he would have ran out of fuel or the engine was going to melt as the turbo's were turned up to max!

 

Yeh I agree, it’s harsh but Bottas should have won that race, comfortably - Lewis would have I have no doubt. It’s consistent with my opinion of Kimi From the last race? The consistent measure is your team mate.

I’m not Lewis biggest fan but he drove his balks off. The only reason he didn’t breeze past Kimi was because he was on 25 lap SS that had been abused - a lap or two earlier and he would have challenged for the lead.

Bottas has engine maps available, even if only for a few laps here and there, and he looked ordinary on like for like tyre.

I love this generalisation that the Merc is **** in traffic, but if Ferrari it’s thier drivers.

 

hilariously biased commentary... apparently mansell was completely alongside and should have been let through even though ti was rear tyre to front wheel bump... old murray at least had the grace to call it a dive up the inside and brush over it.

fanboys are not just millenials eh?

 

it's a bit skewed though, Hamitlon had a fresh new (upgraded?) engine and the SC negated his pit-lane start and gained him 6-8 places in the process, the only over-take he had to actually do a bit of work for was Verstappen, and he had a turned down engine and was struggling on the harder tyre. He breezed past everyone else, until he reached Kimi, then he had the same problem as Bottas. For me the only thing he did wrong was his passive start, gotta be the first time in years the pole sitter hasn't tried top block the 2nd man.