Lewis has found his “Mojo” again, he’s keeping his cool, driving great and simply behaving like a man on mission, will that be enough? All I know is that he’s doing what he has do do if he is to have a chance at winning this years title with now 12 points behind his team mate in the standings. If we talk about Hamilton doing what he has to do, Rosberg is doing what he has to do too! Without all the reliability problems that Hamilton had, the German driver managed a good margin of points in which circumstances dictated that if he finished the last 4 races in 2nd place, that would be enough for him to consolidate his first World Championship. Many say it’s undeserved but I say that’s racing and he hasn’t finished the job yet, there’s still one more to go and as we could see in Interlagos, anything can happen. In Motor Sports not always the fastest man wins, fastest means more on the limit, which puts you closer to making a mistake and puts your machinery also more prone to failure and even though Hamilton may not win the title, he wont lose any fans for sure. Nico can finish third and still be the World Champion in the last race in Abu Dhabi if Hamilton wins the race.
Brazil has always delivered great racing and the rain has been involved in many, conditions were really difficult for these light machines that rely on down force to achieve the grip they have in the dry, that translates to driving on soap in the rain, even with those drastically radical and efficient tires that vacuum in average over 7 quarts per second at high speed. Many gambled a little bit over realistically coming into the pits for intermediate compound tires which proved to be the right decision for like 5 laps only but the wrong decision for Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson who lost control just as Grosjean did in the warm up lap coming into the main straight. Several cars were victims of that up hill entrance to the main straight, some with terminal results such as Grosjean (Haas), Ericsson (Sauber) and local favorite Massa (Williams) with some others proving to be way luckier with 360 degree spins like Perez (Force India) who finished 4th, Alonso (McLaren) who fell from 7th to 17th and in the last ten laps passed 7 cars to finish 10th. Vettel also had a 360 degree spin and a half there that took him out of the top 10 at the beginning of the race and Rosberg had a radical half spin in which the car somehow found it’s way straight back again.
Apart from that place, the straight that is not actually straight in Brazil took Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen out of balance and that caused the second red flag of the race (the first was deployed after Ericsson’s crash). Just like Grosjean was caught out in the warm up lap, Joylon Palmer (Renault) was caught out in a safety car period in which he did not manage to brake on time and hit the rear of Daniil Kvyat’s Toro Rosso which meant his retirement.
Chaotic race for sure in terms of safety car periods and red flags, several incidents but the highlights will be that eventually the race managed to be finished, and for sure the show of respect from the crowd and the teams as Massa crashed out and walked with a Brazilian flag into the pit lane and to his garage, I don’t think there has been a bigger and more spontaneous show of respect in F1. Who stole the show, Alonso did his part as he seemed to be the only driver in the pit lane smiling at the sight of a wet race but as I said before, being on the limit sometimes does not play in your favor and the spin he had late in the race prevented him from a higher position in the points, I bet he enjoyed it anyway but the real show was put by the youngest driver, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the team usually takes higher risks than their opponents, that’s the Red Bull mentality and it usually pays off but not today, the stop for intermediate tires from 2nd place was a mistake and that forced them to make an additional stop in which Verstappen drove brilliantly without doubt taking advantage of fresher rubber than the ones ahead. They all tried to fend him off but he made it look easy, perhaps except with Perez where he barely escaped unharmed after he went sideways for a second while millimeters separated the two drivers, the one that looked really bad was Vettel, yet again, Verstappen seems to take different approaches towards different drivers, when passing Perez while being on the inside, he did not force him out of the track but he made sure he did when passing Vettel, payback? maybe but if Vettel wants to be taken serious again he will have to stop complaining over the radio and start concentrating on his driving, he had done the same to Alonso before…
Hulkenberg (Force India) would perhaps finished third or fourth but a puncture meant an extra stop and he only managed to recover to 7th, still, great drive for the Renault bound driver for next year. Carlos Sainz (Toro Rosso) kept out of trouble with a clean drive to finish 6th behind Vettel. So the top ten ended up like this: 1-Hamilton / 2-Rosberg / 3-Verstappen / 4-Perez / 5-Vettel / 6-Sainz / 7-Hulkenberg / 8-Ricciardo / 9-Nasr / 10-Alonso.
