2017 race 20 Abu Dhabi, discussions thread

Ricciardo gave the middle finger to Grosjean for blocking in FP1. Quite rightly as well, it was very blatant and he surely knew Ricciardo was coming to complete his lap. Grosjean as usual spent the practice session spinning out and crashing into things. Steiner told Grosjean to shut up in Austin, that message didn’t work – the next move needs to be the P45.

After calming down from when he entered F1, Grosjean had promise, now though he's just useless and all he does is moan too.

Grosjean is old news now. His experience hasn’t penetrated particularly superior results compared to Magnussen, and his set-up struggles and crashes in 2017 have made look more like a rookie.

It was a decent weekend for Bottas, but not a decisive one. The pole position was very impressive, but Bottas’ race pace wasn’t particularly outstanding. You would have to be seriously off the pace to get overtaken in the same F1 car around Abu Dhabi, it was more a case of Bottas hitting his marks for 55 laps. He did that very well, but undoubtedly, Hamilton looked significantly faster on the Soft compound. Bottas needs to address his race pace for 2018, in Interlagos he also dropped back when they switched to the harder compound. I’m not sure Abu Dhabi would have convinced Mercedes go give Bottas a multi-year deal. They would have been able to see the relative pace of both drivers, and known that Hamilton found another gear on the Soft tyre. For me, Hamilton was outstanding on worn Ultra Soft’s; he was lapping quicker than Botttas could on new Soft’s. It was a shame that the backmarkers resulted in Hamilton bailing into the pits.

Even this discussion is depressing. If you’ve just gone eight tenths faster than the car in front, you should be able to get within striking distance to overtake. The circuit layout is just dreadful, and needs addressing immediately. The ultra-complicated front wings don’t help either. Let’s hope that the 2021-regulations deliver genuine solutions, not more sticking plaster-solutions like DRS and a tyre called ‘Hyperhard’.

I don’t wish for F1 to turn into a spec-series like F2, but the F2 racing at the same circuit was just fantastic. The equality of the cars helped, but so did being able to follow very closely without the dreaded turbulence, and the understeer which is associated with that. The current F1 front wings don’t have road relevance, they harm the racing in several ways, and the cost of developing them only increases. Either simplify them or actually ban front wings. LMP1 is a mess; nothing should be copied except the nose designs. They can follow so closely, and there would be no gimmick with changing the nose designs – it’s just a different way of designing things.