Sports Articles: Formula 1: Belgium Talking Points

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Formula 1: Things To Think About After Race 12 In Belgium

1. Similar to last week, the rain made qualifying more entertaining and mixed up the grid a little. However a track like Spa allows cars to overtake, so the lack of rain on race day did not destroy the race like last week in Hungary.

2. Those first few corners, wow! It was all set up nicely for a battle between Hamilton and Vettel, but the safety car intervened and Hamilton made a mess of the restart and it was all over then. Such a shame Ocon and Perez had not been able to get past though, when they were four abreast on the straight, as that would have made for a real race.

3. So good to see Force India able to carry on, though it does make you wonder what they could have done if they had been able to afford to bring all the updates to previous races. Though Haas would disagree as they have been moaning about everything from the prize money the pink team will get to the garage position they get! Personally though, I am looking forward to seeing if they can catch, maybe even overtake, Haas in the team standings before the season ends.

4. It is clear Ferrari have the edge in engines over Mercedes right now, but what was interesting was that Honda look to be very close to the top two engine manufacturers, as the Toro Rosso did not lack for grunt on the straights. While Renault look to be lagging a significant margin behind the other three. If Honda keep up this pace of development, Red Bull might just have lucked into the best engine for next season thanks to Fernando Alonso's stroppiness.

5. Speaking of Alonso, I wonder how much he must regret forcing McLaren to change from Honda to Renault power units? It really does feel like McLaren wasted their time pandering to their star driver when he was always likely to leave. Great driver that he is, I certainly will not miss his whining when things are not going his way. He made bad choices and then just threw his toys out of the pram and did little to nothing in the way of helping to make the best of them.

6. Was it just me or did Bottas' charge up from the back lack any real genuine excitement? Pretty much every car he came up to just moved aside to let him pass and made it easy for him. Whatever happened to proper racing in the midfield when a top car caught them? I often wonder if F1 would not be much better if they removed drivers radio calls for anything other than safety issues. Then drivers would not be getting told to let someone go as they are not racing them and hopefully would not drive to deltas etc too. The sport would be so much better if drivers were given freedom to drive.

Written by Tris Burke August 26 2018 16:35:38