Round 14 – Madrid
Introduction
The race this week took place in Madrid, at the Madring, which marks the first time since 1981 that Formula One has raced in Madrid. It’s the home race for both Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz. It’s a very interesting track; there are a total of 22 turns and only a few straights. One of the drivers described it as “a faster Monaco” and he wasn’t wrong. Monaco is considered one of the most boring races on the calendar, because there’s really no way to get any overtaking done, so where you start is typically where you finish. Monaco has been on the calendar before there even was a calendar, though, so it’s not leaving any time soon. (Formula One started racing in 1950, and the first iteration of the Monaco Grand Prix was in 1929.)
To recap last week’s race: Kimi won, George got second, and Max got third. Kimi is leading the Driver’s Championship by sixty five points.
Qualifying – Saturday, September 12
Qualifying was very interesting. Max got first in both sessions, but Liam Lawson—who’s still filling in for Isack Hadjar and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future—came out of nowhere during Q1 and took pole for a little bit. There was a lot of swapping back and forth between who got pole during the entire qualifying period. Lewis had it at one point, and then Charles did, and then Kimi and George, and Lando was also in the mix a little. Q2 ended with Max on pole, and when everyone went out again initially for Q3, Max was on pole again, but he ended up losing it to Lando Norris. He qualified third, and Kimi qualified second. The Ferraris qualified fourth and fifth.
Race Day – Sunday, September 13
The race was equally as interesting as qualifying. Despite the lack of overtaking, it was still a fun race to watch. Lewis and Max had an incident right off the bat. Max drove off the track and came back on, claiming that if he hadn’t gone off, Lewis would have driven him off. He was told to give the place back after he’d overtaken both Lewis (illegally) and Kimi (legally). He put up a fight about it, as expected, but he did give the place back, which was unexpected. Leaving the track and gaining an advantage is a ten second time penalty, though, so Red Bull probably didn’t want to risk it. Luckily for Max, Lewis had brake issues and Max overtook him pretty soon after he’d conceded the position. Unluckily for Lewis, his brake issues didn’t get better, and he was forced to retire the car. It was his first retirement all season, and the first time all season he finished outside the points.
While Lewis and Max (mostly Max) were having their fight, Lando managed to hold onto the lead. He held onto it for a very, very long time, and then Lance Stroll also had brake issues, and stopped on the side of the road, which is par for the course for both Stroll and Aston Martin this season. A virtual safety car was deployed, and Max, Kimi, and George took advantage of it in order to pit. The pit lane at the Madring is the longest pit lane currently on the calendar. Under normal circumstances, a driver loses 25 seconds of time in the pits at Madrid. Under a VSC, they only lose 13 seconds. Lando pit just as the VSC was ending, and he had a seven second pit stop on top of it, so he lost a few places.
Max, Kimi, and George all passed Lando, and Charles Leclerc was the new race leader. Charles hadn’t pit yet. George Russell, after getting new tires, wanted to finish the race on the same tires. His engineer apparently thought that was stupid, because George was called into the pits later on in the race and dropped from fourth place to sixth. He only managed to fight his way back up to fifth.
Ferrari, unfortunately, decided to keep Charles out to cover off the gap they could potentially lose if another safety car was deployed. He still hadn’t pit on lap 39 of the race, because if they pit at that point, they’d come out fourth and lose the lead of the race. And they needed to pit Charles at some point, because every driver needs to use two different tire compounds during the race. Charles finally pit on lap 49, and came out in fourth, like Ferrari predicted. Unfortunately there was no safety car, so they just looked like idiots, but that’s normal. Kimi was the new race leader after Charles pit and was, as usual, running away with the lead.
Max and Lando had a very tense battle for second place. Calling it a battle feels disingenuous, though, because it was mostly just Lando following Max really really closely and waiting for him to make a mistake, which he didn’t. They ran into some traffic on one of the last laps and I thought maybe Lando would get by Max, but he didn’t. He did, however, get on the radio to complain that Max had overtaken him offtrack, and Max was noted for it, but the stewards apparently didn’t find anything, because there was no further investigation. Kimi finished in first with a four second gap to Max, and Max finished in second with less than a second’s gap to Lando. Charles and George were fourth and fifth, respectively.
WDC standings: Kimi (292), George (211), and Lewis (191)
WCC standings: Mercedes (503), Ferrari (358), McLaren (306)
There is no race next week, but there is one the following week in Azerbaijan at the Baku City Circuit. My predictions are the same: Kimi pole & win. I’ll throw a Lando pole in there, too, but we’ll see if it actually happens.
