ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX

Ideally, the last race of the season would be a nail-biting championship decider. But instead, we got the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The sheer amount of money invested into this track makes it an astonishing thing to see, but after a few minutes of watching the impressive architecture, you start to get hungry for some action.

In this case, the action never came.

In fact, you'd be way better off watching Free Practice 2 than actually rewatching this race.

Regardless of the lack of action, and regardless of the end result, it's still the last race of the season and that comes with all sorts of emotional baggage.

Do we really have to wait until March to get back to Australia and get our boys racing again? At least we have a record-breaking 22 races to look forward to next year, and all my favorite drivers are returning. See you all in March!

Here are my notes from the Abu Dhabi weekend:

Free Practice 1

- apparently Seb’s wife just had a third child. A boy after two girls!

- Charles driving past the boats in the marina and waving at them cause they are probably his friends

- A lot of people going over one turns curbs and getting launched in the air a little bit and it seems like somebody is gonna break something over the course of a weekend

- This is Hulk’s last F1 race for a while and possible ever

- Latifi announced at Williams 

- With a half hour left, Daniel’s car shoots flame out he back like a rocket ship and they have to red flag it to put cement dust down on the oil that came out of Daniel’s car

- Gasly got a face full of oil on his helmet cause he was right behind Daniel when the engine blew. Why is it always Pierre??

- It doesn’t seem like that’s gonna be enough cement dust to cover the oil but 

- Seb has a bad spin and hits the wall with the rear of his car and now session red flagged and will not be restarted because it happened within the last couple min of the session 

Free Practice 2 

- Seb isn’t going to be out right away cause they’re changing his gearbox from the crash earlier  

- Charles nearly hits the wall the same spot as Seb but saves it

- Then Bottas almost hits the same wall at Turn 19

- Then Gio actually does hit the wall at Turn 19 

- Grosjean drove into Bottas during a turn when he didn’t see him there and there’s a ton of debris so red flag.

Free Practice 3

- the Force India’s are spewing oil out the back and sprayed Kimi and that's the only thing that happened

Qualifying

- In Q1, Seb spun on the front straight and was facing backwards. Which is the second time he’s spun this weekend and this time around cost him his fast lap in Q1. Everyone knows this is embarrassing and a clumsy rookie mistake. 

- Grosjean was steaming down the pit lane and they released Kvyat right into his path and he almost hit him out

- Out in Q1: Grosjean, Gio, Kimi, Russell and Kubica

- Now George Russell has officially out qualified his teammate Kubica 20/20 races this year 

- Out in Q2: Perez, Gas, Stroll, Kvyat and Mags 

- In Q3, they let out Charles too late and he misses the final lap sooooo just like Monza this year 

- Hamilton first, Bottas second but will start from the back cause penalties, so Max in second really and Charles in third 

Race

- Charles has some kind of fuel investigation hanging over his head during the race and it’s the first I’ve heard of it 

- first lap Lance Stroll hit Gasly and took off his front wing and then Gasly spent an age in the pits to replace it because they couldn’t get the front wing off

- They decided no investigation necessary on Gasly and Stroll which also involved Perez 

- DRS is disabled because of a technical issue. What??

- 13/55 Ferrari double stacks their pit stop, Charles first goes fine and quick, then Seb’s is 7 seconds because they couldn’t get the front AND back left on 

- 18/55 DRS is finally available 

- 23/55 Kubica and Gio collide 

- In the end, it’s Hamilton, Max, then Charles

- They were saying Charles might lose third because they were gonna decide the fuel investigation after the race but it turns out Ferrari was fined but Charles keeps 3rd