Miles and miles of run off, tarmac either side resulting in easy to recover racing and muddied rule books. Everyone talks about how the cars don't allow for great racing but I think the biggest problem will always be the character of the circuits they are racing on.
The Paul Ricard circuit sums up the worst aspects of many Grand Prix racing tracks today. Gravel trap and grass would define the circuit limits and the driver would know about them. I no doubt believe that there are no gravel traps for 'safety reasons' and that tarmac runoffs are safer but such laws of safety don't apply when these same cars go racing in places like Monte Carlo. And it's a real shame because at the end of the day, these sanitised/glorifed car parks that make up much of the Grand Prix calendar (and a lot of Tilke's often dreaded 'new tracks' are the culprits) usually get bypassed in larger discussions and it's the drivers, the beautiful cars and everyone else who works their socks off every week that get the blame for disheartening racing like this.
As for the result of today's race - I don't think anyone ever doubted the outcome of who would come out on top. Lewis, despite the criticisms of the race, drove superbly all weekend and was clearly in a class of his own. Bottas shouldn't be too disheartened - he did as best as he could to get second place. It's laughable that there were comments by delinquents on twitter and the BBC Sport feed criticising Valtarri for his uncompetitiveness against Lewis today which is laughable because there is no driver who can live with Lewis's performance levels at the moment. He is at the absolute peak. Bottas will probably never be world champion material but like Rubens Barrichello at Ferrari he is the perfect second driver/understudy. Not too fast to disrupt the hierarchy at Mercedes but not too slow to sabotage efforts on the whole constructors championship effort (ala Heikki Kovalaeinen at McLaren in 2008). Unlike Barrichello at least he doesn't thrash around excuses of unfair treatment to cover for his obvious lack of speed up against his far superior team mate.
Oh and could someone at Haas do the decent thing and get rid of Romain Grosjean? He's a charlatan who is constantly crying foul of other drivers despite his own awful car wreck reputation in wheel to wheel combat and inability to keep all 4 wheels on the race track. I moaned above about miles and miles of runoff but then I think that must be inbuilt just for the fact that Grosjean is racing in this series. Seriously, I swear that guy has made more friends with armco barriers than he has with human beings throughout his time in f1.
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