"NEWS: He’s coming home! Esteban Ocon #31 will be our Reserve Driver in 2019! Thanks for the spoiler in the Press Conference, Toto! " Just read that on Mercedes Facebook page, so not sure if there's an actual link. Sam Ninja Edit: Never mind, went and found this: Link
Horner was either on fine wind-up form or being his usual knobber self depending on who you ask... Saying Abiteboul was nothing more than the tea boy when RBR and Renualt partnered up. Then when the press were asking Wolff about Ocon he chimed in with '...maybe you can teach him what all the flags mean'
This is the Mercedes F1 team we're talking about. They don't just want to win, they want to grind everyone else's nose into the dirt. If they fit new engines they'll be starting from the middle of the grid, they want to win the race, take Seb's record of most points in a season away from him, have Lewis equal his record of 11 wins in a season, set the record for most 1-2 finishes at the same venue and get Valtteri into third for the driver's table. I really want Ricciardo to win this weekend, one last poke in the eye for Horner 'n' Marko.
...and if they instead entertain the fans by having both engines **** themselves to death on track, what do they care? they've already won both titles.
So, bets on exactly which part of Ricciardo's car will fail now that he has outqualified Verstappen. I'm going with hydraulics.
How did everyones predictions do? Merc to win constructors - Correct Car doesn't perform well - Partially compared to Ferrari, still a diva at times but revisions made a big difference Red Bull to have a strong end to the season - Correct Red Bull loose wins due to reliability - Incorrect, maybe in the early season tho never became competitive enough to be outright number 1 a given weekend and when they where strong Verstappen binned it Three way shootout - Incorrect, only a two horse race Raikkonen and Bottas nowhere - correct Raikkonen getting a race win - Correct McLaren picking up points and looking competitive - Partially correct. Should really be Alonso picked up points and looked competitive for half the season then focus must have switched to next seasons car FI and Renault for 4th spot - Partially correct Until FI financial problems it looked possible. Their combined totals still behind Renault but not by much. FI and Renault to start knocking on top 3 - Top teams especially Red Bull took another step forward. Renault maybe matched at best but certainly didn't gain any ground. TR finish last - Well off the mark, William's and their paid drivers.....that should have been obvious in hindsight. Tho TR did finish second last they where close to Sauber Honda continue dreadful trend - Completely incorrect, looked to have leap frogged Renault. Most problems look like they where due to McLaren Hartley and Gasley look Mediocre - Partially, Hartley looked less than medicore almost loosing the seat by Canada if anyone could have replaced him, Gasley looked solid and showed he could potentially be much better at several points in the season. Haas at the back - Well off the mark, 4th Best team at the start of the season certainly upper mid near the end. Haas fade towards the end - Bang on the money tho maybe didn't fade as badly as I thought. Definitely outperformed my initial expectations for the team Sauber look strong - Maybe at the end due to Leclerc but really a lower midfield team looking to scrape points when things went their way. Ferrari engine helped massively. good performacne from Leclerc and Ericsson - Leclerc was phenomenal this season, Ericsson started strong and completely disappeared after mid season.
...maybe? It did not suck. It sucked. It just didn't suck as much as the McHonda or the 2018 Williams Surprisingly... no... partly because STR had no-one to replace them with. Yep. Depends who you ask.
I probably missed something, but why didn't Bottas get penalty for leaving track and gaining advantage like Alonso and Ocon got 5 second penalties ? They even shown a message in the F1 coverage saying he did cut the corner, so i am confused. It might have been for repeated cutting, but aparently Alonso got 5 seconds for each corner cut, bringing it up to 15 seconds total.
Isn't it all about timing, if he didn't go faster than before then he didn't gain an advantage, even though he probably did. Anyway he lost 2 places after so it didn't really affect anything.
Sure, in the end it didn't change anything. But who knows, Verstappen might have attacked Vettel if he wasn't held back for 2 more laps. It still leaves a bad aftertaste when you see 3 people do it and 2 get penalized for it, while the last one there is not even an explanation from officials why it was not investigated.