Such a great effort for Albon... easy DotD, and huge for Williams in the lower WCC battle. Hope it's a sign that the Williams upgrades are decent & we may see more of it.

Russell cracked under the pressure of trying to stay on the back of Alonso... absolutely insane that the car almost finished the race after that hit... I was surprised it finished the lap! F1 cars are made of strong stuff these days.

Max mega as ever... ominous that Newey appears to be fully invested in F1 again after a few years where he seemed to drift away.

Admired by Norris's last attempts, just wished he made it for the heck of it.

I love that Albon and Williams 100% played to their cars strengths, and nobody seemed to have an answer for it!

Favorite moment was Alonso's pit telling him Hamilton was just 1.9s behind. "Okay, leave it to me." And then suddenly it was a 6 second gap.

Yo why is this thread still here?!

I can’t understand how Perez just couldn’t compete with Ferrari’s pace at all. Not his best circuit.

I enjoyed the race. Being honest Max was on his own race as usual, but not that far.

The fight ALO-HAM was very intense, many many laps doing qualy laps each other and putting pressure on the rival. ALO managed the gap brilliantly IMO given the circumstances (lift&coast)

Ferrari's dice was right in this race 😄 Very good and consistent race pace, just marginally slower than podium cars on a diferent strategy. Kudos to them.

Albon: Driver of the Day on merit.

Plenty of action in the race despite the DRS trains

I know Max doesn't need the help but my god Perez does not deserve that Red Bull put Norris in it or something.

My observations are more on the community than the race...

1. This community was amazing this weekend. I was quite active in /r/formula1 and was apprehensive about a race weekend without them. But I don't feel like I missed anything being here instead. News about major developments got posted here, and the discussion was great. If other race weekends are this active, this is my new f1 home without doubt.
2. Moderation was great, warning people about stuff that's gonna be against the rules next week, while being chill about the fact that they're not finalized and everything was clear but just real non-confrontational. Thanks mods.
3. I thought a single discussion post for the weekend would be ok, but for me it wasn't. I was lost in the main thread by the time qualy started and struggling to find new comments or figure out what session a comment-chain was about. It significantly hampered my ability to follow things and I contributed less to the discussion thread as a result. In a change from my take when we were planning last week, I'm now strongly in favor of per-session discussion threads plus a post-race thread like this one. If the modbot situation isn't clear to the moderation team within a couple weeks of Lemmy v18 coming out, I'm willing to pitch in here to get a bot that can schedule posts for us in advance. With the big API changes coming in v18 of Lemmy, I don't think there's much point in trying to get it sorted prior to then. It's likely that any bot that works in v17 will be broken on v18, so I think we just get it going once all the modteam's instances are upgraded to v18.

I'm glad to see that the gap between RB and the competition is slowly closing. Maybe it was a one off, maybe they expected rain all weekend and went with a setup that favors stability over performance, maybe it was a dead bird, maybe Aston's and Merc's upgrades really work.

Ferrari took a gamble and DID NOT FUCK UP. That was a refreshing change of pace, especially after being in full Ferrari fuck up mode all weekend (all year so far?).

The battle between Alonso and Hamilton was epic, as were the ones behind Albon who held onto his spot by sheer will and raw pace.

De Vries being De Vries, taking himself and K-Mag out on an open online lobby divebomb...

All in all, a great race :D

But what did Lando do though?

I'm a Max fan but we need some more excitement for P1

Perez is nowhere and Aston/Merc just aren't fast enough at the moment

Good strategy from Ferrari? The end times are nigh

Unfortunately I wasn't able to see the race. I noticed that Valtteri scored a point though, so that was nice.

What the heck happened with Checo? He should have had a podium, but just got lost in a DRS train I guess?

Great race. Loved those last lap moves from Norris, Ocon and Stroll. Well deserved DotD for Albon. Feeling bad for Tsunoda though, that 6.4 pit stop was painful to see.

Decent race. Ferrari finally pulled off 5Head strategy, great recovery run by them.

glad to see things are getting tighter at the top, still max has a great advantage.

Was really hoping to see a fight between Nando and Hamilton at the end there, but I suppose that scrap for 9th was an okay substitute!

Weekend Warm-up Pundit Predictions Performance

Pundit__|1st_____|2nd_____|3rd_____|Points  
==========================================  
Laura___|Max_____|Lance___|Lewis___|_____4  
Lawrence|Max_____|Lewis___|Carlos__|_____3  

(2 points for correct placement, 1 point for on the podium)

Once again the safe choices produce a bevy of points, and Laura extends her lead for the season so far:

Pundit (appearances)|Points|Average  
===================================  
Laura (7)___________|____18|___2.57
Lawrence (6)________|____16|___2.67
Will (6)____________|_____9|___1.50
Jolyon (1)__________|_____6|___6.00
Rosanna (1)_________|_____4|___4.00
Alex (1)____________|_____4|___4.00
Sam (1)_____________|_____2|___2.00

Just realized Max had a bird in his break duct for a portion of the race. Did they mention it during the broadcast?

GG Albon would be my driver of the day. Good to see Williams not running at the back.

Albono master class! Dude is driving that shitbox to perfection!