🇳🇱 F1'22: R15 - Fight yourself forever

Make the right decision, at the right time. In theory, this is a simple sport, but the second half of the Zandvoort GP showed the thousands of complications that drivers calculate in the cockpit, some better than others. 

You don’t get a choice but to be decisive in an F1 car. You’re belting around at 200mph around the world with 19 people you have varying levels of trust with and you’re trying to compute imperfect information while trying to continually go forward - the job of Formula 1 driver is immensely difficult and there’s no really easy way to replicate it. But in the Netherlands, an intriguing strategic battle was cut off at the knees before it even got going as Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas stopped near the first corner with 17 laps to go. 

Cue an awkward safety car period where almost everyone went onto soft tyres to sprint to the end. Almost everyone. Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez stayed on mediums. It was not very effective, especially as the track position advantage lasted just a few hundred metres as Max Verstappen blew past him for a lead he never relinquished. 

Hamilton’s teammate was decisive. George Russell made the call himself to go onto soft tyres and fight from third. He passed his teammate too with minimal fighting from Hamilton, who seemed to be fighting his pitwall with some Malcolm Tucker-style swearing.

Fill in your own blanks. After the experience of Abu Dhabi 2021, how could Hamilton think not pitting for tyres under the safety car was the optimal strategy? It’s all very well being angry at your team (and it’s completely understandable to be a bit sweary at those speeds) but Hamilton is a seven-time world champion and one of the best - if not the best - to ever drive in this sport, yet it feels like his decision-making has fallen off a cliff. 

It’s not even the first time this has come up this season. It happened in Miami, where he wanted to be led on what to do, and it was starting to get better again in France, as the car and the team’s results were improving and there was genuine optimism at the possibility of a first victory in 2022 and their first in 16 races. 

On balance, by the end of the race, Hamilton thanked his engineers and his team. Again, the heat of the moment is one hell of a drug, but in that case, why was he so stung by Alonso’s words in Belgium?

There is no doubt that on a clever strategy, Mercedes were in contention for that elusive win - they may yet be in contention in this season’s remaining races, but this felt like the statement about where F1's leading teams are. In the past, to beat Mercedes, a team had to do everything perfectly. There was zero margin for error as the team were brilliant at everything - winning eight Constructors’ Championships in a row in the process and being the True Final Boss of the sport.

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Now, all you need to beat them is a safety car and some silver indecision, it seems. The thought at the start of the season was that it would be a competition between whichever teams could adjust to the new regulations. 

Yes, drivers can fight closer now - although Zandvoort was tougher to overtake at than any other track they’ve been to so far - but the real battle teams have faced this year is with themselves it seems. Teams have either been overthinking or underthinking their strategic calls, with Ferrari getting the most spotlight for some calls that can only have been made by throwing darts at a board. But Russell showed that drivers have to be their own advocate in these situations, being able to diagnose that if Max Verstappen is going on softs, he has to as well. That Hamilton either didn’t want - or couldn’t - change his tyres is on him as well as the team, not just one party. 

That’s not to spare Ferrari completely. During the safety car period, Carlos Sainz pitted late on and not for the first time this season nearly caused an collision in the pit lane. Apologies for embedding my own Tweet but no one else has posted it…

Assuming it’s the same McLaren mechanic, I wonder what they think when they see a red car on the road. A five-second penalty can have varying effects on a driver’s race. In this case, with a late safety car, it pushed the Ferrari driver to eighth, his lowest finish of the season. Teams and drivers have to be more careful, or this is going to get worse. 

It has put some distance between him and Russell, with the Mercedes driver up by 13 points now. Perez and Leclerc are tied on 201, which would be enough for fourth across the whole of last season. Bottas made 226 and both drivers seem destined to pass that, as does Russell, despite the Brit not winning a race yet this season. 

The most intriguing storyline after the summer break was whether Mercedes could win a race this season. I think it’s a different question now. Will George Russell win before Lewis Hamilton?

The final European race of the season comes at the end of this triple-header with Monza. Previous winners there are Ricciardo, Gasly, Leclerc, Hamilton. Red Bull haven’t won at the Temple of Speed since 2011. With Verstappen taking his fourth consecutive win, he and Red Bull could make it five in a row, especially while their competition overthink - or fail to think - about what to do when the pressure is on.

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🏁 Zandvoort 2021 was probably the weakest thing I've ever written on here🏁 Strategy was the theme in France this year🏁 This is still a huge result for Mercedes, especially when compared to where they were in Miami