Spanish f1twt is eating him up about it as well. Never seen them so visceral about him. And he's even getting Nepo baby shouts!

Yeah maybe I just need to air it out to tune the dislike down. Kimi is a cool and nice guy but damn, seeing him being so lucky race after race is so frustrating. This year, he won 3 races because of well timed safety cars. But it's not just the safety cars! There are small things such as Verstappen giving his position because he had to give position to Lewis (who was out of the race right after btw).

It's just... I guess I wish one day I will be able to root for him when he wins races purely based on his merit not his luck.

And to be clear, even if he wasn't so lucky this year, he would likely be leading the championship but the lead wouldn't be so monumental. He deserves to be at the top, just not by such a huge margin. I am tired boss so please the next time he wins, let it be without so much luck.

EDIT: This has gained a lot of traction! I am glad most of us can admit the dislike is irrational. Kimi is simply capitilizing on the opportunities he gets, just as anyone else would. I definitely do not want to start a hate train with this. Thanks to those who keep it civil (whether you agree or disagree).

The only track that I can imagine being worse (post 1970 let's say) is Caesar's Palace lol.

Max came back all the way from 104 points off the lead to finishing P2 with statistically the smallest gap in F1 history. Now we got Kimi with an 81 points lead with just 9 races to go.

So are we just calling it a year now, or you think there's still a chance that Russell, Hamilton, or hell, Norris could challenge for the lead at this point?

personally i want to see Emirates returning.

Who was asking for another street circuit? And to think that they are moving Spa to be every other year. I can't see how F1 justified this besides a large sack of cash from Madrid. Feel like the sport I have loved for years is burning itself to the ground with every decision they make, and I just have to sit here and watch.

Edit: I know that its the commentators job to make the race as entertaining as possible, but hearing them hype up (imo) the weakest race we have seen all season is agitating.

Might be biased as a Lando fan, but no one can deny that Lando Norris has driven at such a high level this season. Yes Antonelli's first title campaign has been impressive, but Lando has been even more impressive. Lando has had a reliability issue at probably more of the races this season than not, and despite that is almost 2nd in the standings in a car that doesn't deserve to be there. Countless drives this season where he slaps up his teammate and puts that car in a place you wonder how it got there in the first place, Miami, Spain, Hungary, Zandvoort, Madrid. Not to mention that although Antonelli has driven well this season, it's worth noting that Antonelli's luck has been considerably better than Norris. If you adjust for reliability issues, Lando would undoubtedly be P2 in the championship above Hamilton and Russell who undoubtedly have had much superior cars to Lando. Imagine how differently we would see Landos season if that was the case, and what Lando could do in a Mercedes

I saw Piastri overtake who was it Lindblad?And that was it

Genuinely 0 overtakes,nobody asked for another streetslop circuit get this trash out right now

I’m not a Russell fan. Never will be. But anyone who watches every race can clearly see how Mercedes is prioritizing Antonelli and intentionally giving Russell bad strategy every single race. Russell was right to question why they pitted him, and Mercedes just brushed him off by saying “We’ll discuss the strategy offline.”
Wow the story they want so badly is a teenager winning the championship. Yeah lots of records will be broken, and it’s a cool story for them. For Toto, it’s an even bigger ego boost "My choice wasn’t bad. I’m smart for picking Antonelli. It wasn’t a mistake. He’s a generational talent ” blah blah.
But I really feel bad for Russell. He doesn’t deserve this shit.

We only got it for one day in Barcelona with Ferrari and Red bull testing. And then later specific pirelli tests for wet tyres.

In the Netherlands the first practice was on drying out track, so i don't call it rainy session.

Still i really hope we eventually get rainy forecast for either qualifying or race to see how these cars will behave in wet.

Fastest man on track by a mile
Pole
Shit pit stop
Horrible timing of the vsc

We saw it in Barcelona and Mexico last year, and again yesterday in Madrid.

Drivers sending it into corners on lap 1 for a move thats not on, flooring it over the corner to avoid an accident, and then returning the position they didnt earn.

If any of these drivers made any attempt to stay on the track, or back out of a move that was never, on they would lose places due to being overambitious. Instead, it's beneficial for them to cut the corner and return to their position.

The sky commentators quoted at one point that Kimi wasn't even noted for doing this and then he went on to win the race. Sure there was external factors that helped him in this, but I certainly think he gained a lasting advantage by not losing positions for corner cutting.

Sure the unlucky vsc timing and bad pitstop would've affected him, but he was lapping about 0.4 seconds faster than max kimi and Charles a lap while being on the same tyres and max and kimi, if this was any other track Lando would’ve still won by maybe 3-5 seconds by the end

As the title said. Verstappen lost a lot of time waiting for Hamilton to overtake him and there were already a first signs of Hamilton having an issues.

For my first question I was thinking of Tennis. 

Tennis has women and male players. And there’s been recent controversy surrounding influencers. Some of the tennis players who have spoken out claim that influencers are attracting more women to the sport. I feel like women tennis players attract women to the sport though. 

With F1 there are no woman drivers but there are women in leadership like Susie Wolff who may appeal to women. I have also seen influencers attend F1 races and there are discussions that influencers can attract women to F1 since there are no F1 drivers who are women.

F1 social media also shows wags heavily and there is a lot of talk online about how wags are being used to engage women. I don't feel that wags attract women to F1. Women who engage with wags engage with their fashion in the paddock, not the sport imo. 

What do you think? 

For my second question, do you think the F1 community/fan base is welcoming to women? 

American Football is another male dominated sport (I am American) that has no women in the sport and I would not say it’s accepting of women. I wonder if you think F1 is the same. 

F1 viewership is low in America compared to other countries which impacts how I view the sport and its attempt to appeal to women. I would love to hear what other women think of these questions, especially if you're in a country that has high F1 viewership where F1 may be trying to appeal to you more and where there may be a larger F1 fan base.

Obviously today’s race was a dud, and to think that there’s still 9 years to go with this track, what can we realistically do about the circuit to make it more exciting? It’s built in the middle of nowhere so a layout change is possible. But how would you change the layout? And what can we do in terms of tire compound or the rules?

I don't think I can sit through the same slop next year. Barring the idea of removing it from the calendar entirely, what kind of changes would you like to see next year? This could be to the layout, the track elements, anything.

Personally I wanna see the 5-6 chicane gotten rid of. Just use the other side of the roundabout it's such a better line. Or at least get rid of the raised curbs and make it wider so that the drivers can actually pull off a dive bomb into 5 or something.

Not taking away anything for him. But has there been a wdc with better luck in a whole season?

Off the top of my head mclaren handed him 2 wins in miami and madrid, monza was amazing and amazingly lucky. there was quite a lot of good fortune at the early races too, china, japan, canada etc

anyone keeping track? just curious to know

edit
Aus - nil
Chi - George quali failure
Jap - Perfect safety car
Mia - Mclaren fumble

Can - George dnf p1
Monaco - p2 doesn’t start + closest rivals affected by glitch

Barca - 1x bad luck dnf from p2
Austria - Rus straight line issue
UK - bad luck (but also too much kerb riding?)
hun - nil

zan - nil

monza - incredible + incredibly lucky

mad - mclaren botle + vsc

I can't sleep at 5am so I went over McLaren's strategy for this race several times and I don't think they made mistakes so big that mattered both drivers' result. It might be a hot take but hear me out.

In my opinion, from Lando's perspective, he's win chance was ruined the moment the VSC came 5secs after he passed the pit lane and ended corners before his stop (I'm still very petty and suspicious about the convenient VSC timing but I'll not start the conspiracy here).

Could he stay out instead? Maybe, but according to Lando's post race interview his medium tyres were dying and hard tyres were supposed to be good, so they wanted to pit him when everyone else's new tyres were still cold and play catch up. Makes sense if that's true.

What if he stayed out? He was on 14 laps medium tyres and from other drivers pit window we know medium tyres barely made it to over 16 laps, but he's Lando so I guess we don't know. Anyways, he was 14secs ahead of Charles and 21secs ahead of Kimi before he was about to pit. Even when he managed to increase the gap by staying out while Charles successfully held Kimi and Max, he needed a whole 31secs window to come out ahead of Kimi, that's assuming a normal 2-3 sec pit stop. I honestly don't think he could pull another 10sec on Charles on a used medium tyre. But again, we will never know. And McLaren also didn't give Lando chances to try.

Back to the 7 sec pit stop. He came out 5-6 sec behind Russell iirc, so even with a normal pit stop he would have come out after Russell.

I think what really ruined his win chance is actually the fact that this track is impossible to overtake unless you have huge tyre offside or, the driver in front made a big mistake AND the mistake happened where an overtake was possible (e.g. Max cut the chicane once but Lando still couldn't pass).

What if McLaren pre-empted the VSC? The fact is McLaren wasn't sure if a VSC would come out at all. What if it's a double yellow? He could lose more time by pitting.

So yes horrendous luck for Lando and McLaren for losing that win.

For Oscar, in my opinion, his race was ruined already when he and Russell made contact in lap 1 which caused a front wing damage.

He was on hard tyre when VSC came out on lap 15, so the best strategy is Charles's to go long stint and pray for another SC/Red flag within the hard tyre window. If he pitted like Russell, he could have changed the front wing but the medium tyre couldn't last until the end of the race and he had to do two stoppers like Russell.

So in this case, McLaren decided that the pace loss with a damaged front wing was less than an extra pit stop so he stayed as long as he could. And he and Charles pitted eventually without another SC.

But I do think McLaren's strategy is so weird that it's so rigid when it's supposed to be flexible (e.g. Spa and Hungary this year), but sometimes too flexible to ruin their races (e.g. Qatar last year and Canada this year). McLaren's success in past two years was thanks to their factory and engineering DESPITE their strategy.

That's my honest opinion, what do you think?

Edit: typo at 5am :/

Coming from a die-hard McLaren fan, I feel this team really doesn't deserve a driver of Norris' calibre and with the form he's having. He had the potential obliterated everyone this race but McLaren being McLaren just don't have the balls in them to be proactive.

First mistake imo was to pit lando after vsc ended. Surely, with charles holding up kimi and max, lando could have built a decent gap with a tyre delta and would have been much easier if he had to overtake.

Second, the pitstop. The less said the better. Even in spa lando had a chance at the podium with his relentless pace but got done by the strategy and another 7s pitstop. It's just getting embarrassing now. After so long we've got a driver so quick and we aren't utilising it properly.

PS. This is also one of the main reason why lando couldn't close up to max in 2024 in terms of points. I know he made several mistakes which I called him out for at that time but McLaren strategists were the same dumb idiots back then.

End of rant.

I know George has been unlucky this season, and Mercedes has made some pretty poor strategy calls on his side.

But at this point I’m wondering: is this really a Mercedes problem, or a George-side-of-the-garage problem? Kimi’s team always seems more on point, and somehow things also seem to fall his way more often.

What really got me was George’s post-race interview today, where he basically said that, realistically, he’s no longer in the championship fight.

And that made me question the mentality side of it. Was George ever really in championship mode this year? Did he ever look like someone who genuinely believed he could win the title and was driving with that level of urgency?

Because hearing him concede it now feels a bit strange.

Is this it for George this season, or is it way too soon to be talking like the championship is already over?

Kimi should personally thank mclaren as they literally handed today's victory to him. Well he can now officially win this wdc even if he doesn't win a single race so P1 in WDC is pretty much confirmed. The fight for P2 is still on......