Last week after months of suppressing the urge, I finally wrote a piece on how Mercedes domination is killing F1. We’ve seen Ham-Bot-Ver in the top 3 since what feels ages now and quite frankly have become bored of the usual top three. Mercedes have become so dominating that they’ve not let any other team even have a sniff of the championship trophy since 2014. While Mercedes has earned every bit of their dominance of the sport. F1 is so much more fin when there is some doubt about the final outcome.
And what an outcome it was. From the start itself, it seemed like this would be somewhat of a different race than most as Bottas was getting passed by Mclaren and Renault in the first few corners. It still, however, looked like Hamilton would be the winner as he was pulling ahead until the Red Flag. As Hamilton got a 10 second stop and go penalty the race was thrown wide open.
Netflix Would Be Nutting for 3 Days Straight
Netflix is currently shooting the 3rd season of Drive to Survive. This week they were following Ferrari since it’s Ferrari’s home track. To say that they got some worthy content would be an understatement. Ferrari has been a shadow of it’s past in this year’s championship with both cars performing very badly. Their emphasis was on corner speed at the start of the season and they were ready to lose some straight-line speed. Now however they don’t have better corner speed nor a good straight-line speed. Vettel consistently qualifies in the bottom quarter of the grid. Leclerc also is nowhere as competitive as he was last year.
The pressure was already sky-high in Ferrari’s camp with a slew of poor performances, at Monza however it was a whole different story. Monza is Ferrari’s home a place where Ferrari fans, some of the most passionate F1 fans turn up in thousands and cheer for the team. There were no fans this time around due to the COVID-19 situation but still, Ferrari had to perform well on their home track for the millions of fans watching from their home. Netflix was following them in the hope of great content and boy they did get some great content. Ferrari were poor in the qualifying with Leclerc and Vettel managing 13th and 17th position respectively. The race was already over for them and they were expected to end the race with a couple of points at most.
Netflix curse seems to have followed them at Monza and Ferrari went from bad to worst. Similarly last year, Netflix followed Mercedes for their 125 years in motorsport anniversary in Germany. The whole of the Mercedes team wore dresses from the past as a part of their celebration and were expected to do well. The race couldn’t have gone worse for Mercedes with both Hamilton and Bottas spinning and crashing out from it. Similarly, both Ferraris were out from the Italian GP with brake failure and a crash. There was all-around chaos and we can’t wait to see what went down in the pits.
Gasly’s Redemption Arc Is Complete
Pierre Gasly the French driver who has had a torrid couple of years finally won a race proving his doubters wrong. Gasly was demoted from Red Bull to Torro Rosso citing his poor performance in the middle of 2019. His win at the Italian GP completes his redemption arc from Torro Rosso to Red Bull to again Torro Rosso and now winning with the Alpha Tauri.
Two races have taken place so far after I complained of Mercedes dominance in F1 and both of those two races have had Red Flags. There were not one but two Red Flags in the Tuscan GP, something that rarely happens in F1. If all I got to do to get an exciting F1 race is complain about Mercedes? Then let’s have an exciting F1 race every weekend.
