SPANISH GRAND PRIX

As usual, I was very excited for the Spanish Grand Prix. And, as usual, it was a disappointment. Despite waking up to watch the race live again - which we've done for several consecutive races in a row now - there wasn't much action at all. I fell asleep again right after it was over.

Anyways, glad that's out of the way for this year. Here are my notes from the weekend...

FP1

• this weekend track limits will be more enforced and you only get 2 warnings before a black and white flag instead of 3

• Roy Nissani in for George Russell this weekend

• Perez is back in his car!

• Apparently the FIA is introducing new regulations that after Belgium they can’t have special quali engine modes and it is supposed to hamper Mercedes engined cars and doesn’t effect Ferrari because they apparently don’t have special engine modes for quali

• Nissani has a little spin

• Bottas almost got hit by a bird in his helmet and it was like a pigeon or something

FP2

• Nico Rosberg is in the commentary box with Crofty this session!

• It’s 86 Fahrenheit right now which is blistering hot

• pretty big grilling of Otmar about the break ducts issue and quite uncomfortable but there’s a lot going on in that team

• Nico Rosberg insinuates that Sainz won’t be a threat to Leclerc at Ferrari

• George Russell says his car is handling like it’s driving on ice

• Bottas goes really wide into the gravel but no yellow flag

• Grosjean has a loss of power

• They announce that the fans will be returning to the track in Russia and there will be 30,000 fans there

FP3

• Nico Rosberg commenting again for this session!

• Toto gave an interview yesterday saying he may leave and they are discussing if he will and if he did if Lewis would stay

• Latifi says Max gets in people’s way too over the radio

• Lots of talking about how people were going slow and causing traffic dangerously and how they need to change that

• Moments after they were talking about the dangerous traffic thing, Ocon crashes avoiding Kevin Magnussen and red flag

• Everyone in the commentary is like wondering what happened to cause Ocon’s weird crash and the speculation is that he was just distracted and it looks like he panicked at the last second and turned into the wall and everyone was like you could see what Kevin was going to do from a mile away. Anyway the car is wrecked now and it’s totally Ocon’s fault

Qualifying

• Stewards said incident with Ocon and Kevin from FP3 is no further action which is awesome

• incident involving Kevin Magnussen and Kvyat investigates after the session which is an incident we didn’t see

• Everyone rushes out at the end of Q1 because of track evolution and it’s a huge traffic jam

• Esteban Ocon complaining about a long brake pedal and the team was like sorry deal with it

• Kimi just makes it into Q2 this time! But sadly George Russell missed out on Q2 this time

• Out in Q1: KMags, Grosjean, George Russell, Latifi, and Gio

• Charles thought he had a horrible lap in Q2

• Out in Q2: Seb, Kvyat, Daniel, Kimi, Ocon

• I love that Ocon is last in Q2

• Gasly is doing great and ended Q2 in 5th

• Charles overtook Stroll during the slow lap in Q2 costing him tires but overall it was really smart cause he was out in clean air free from traffic

• For a second Seb looked like he was going to get into Q3 for the first time cause he improved so much but then he got knocked out at the last second

• At the beginning of Q3, they released Alex Albon right into Hamilton’s path in the pit lane

• Hamilton on pole, Bottas in second and Max in third

• Ferrari starts 9th for Charles and 11th for Seb so things aren’t great

Race

• Hamilton keeps the lead and Bottas falls back into fourth from second passed by Max into second and Stroll into third

• Bottas repasses Stroll for third on lap 5

• Max has awesome pace compared with Lewis in the lead and they are saying it bodes well for Max’s chances to give Hamilton a run for his money for lead

• Hamilton is driving slow in the lead for tire preservation

• Max comments on Hamilton being super slow out front

• These guys on the cranes way up in the air for the cameras are super precarious

• Now they’re saying that Alex Albon almost hit a Mercedes at the start. Now they’re reporting on people Alex ALMOST hit even though he did nothing wrong

• Max is furious about being left on the terrible tires until lap 22 but they pit him as soon as they can and they do a 1.9 second stop to get him out again in front of Stroll in 4th

• They pit Hamilton to cover off Max’s earlier stop and Hamilton has a slow stop! And they double stacked the Mercedes and so it could have effected Bottas stop right after

• Bottas gets on the radio on this 90 degree day and says “these black overalls are ****** hot”

• After lap 37, Kimi becomes the man who has done the most distance of anyone in Formula 1 ever

• On lap 37, Charles engine dies mid corner and pulls a hand brake and caused him to spin and yellow flags it and goes to pit and then they send him back out but then he has to pit AGAIN because he is worried about his SEATBELTS and then they try to fix it and It’s over a second in the pits and finally they retire Charles which was completely not his fault and it was right in the middle of some great fighting moves with Lando

• People starting to do their two stops

• Alex giving Sainz a good run for his money for 9th

• It is looking really rainy all the sudden and the sky is purple by lap 46 and they are expecting rain around lap 50

• Perez being investigated by the stewards for ignoring blue flags apparently for when Lewis was trying to pass him

• This is really a non eventful race it feels like, especially in compared to the other races this season

• They ask Seb what he would think about staying in this on these tires and Seb is like um I asked you this before

• Perez got a 5 second penalty for ignoring blue flags! Not even sure how that happened but it must be because it was Lewis

• Now Kvyat is under investigation for ignoring blue flags probably for Lewis

• Kvyat also gets a 5 second penalty

• Grosjean impedes Kimi and he’s really mad

• Grosjean and Gio under investigation

• Grosjean has a really good save from a drift

• They pit Bottas at the last minute because he has a huge gap to fourth and Bottas gets new lap record to take place of Daniel in 2018

• Lewis wins, Max in second, Bottas in third