Here we are, during this topsy-turvy season, in Portugal. Racing here, on this typically motorbiking track, last season in October and now in May, it's a different track facing the drivers. At a glance you can see that everything has changed in F1 as the drivers are wearing beanies more often than caps, they're not visiting the tracks during the hottest parts of the year as they normally would.
The final arrangements for the sprint race qualifying have been released this week. My feeling is slightly that of being deprived of watching qualifying as it now takes place on Friday afternoon - I bet lots of F1 fans work on a Friday afternoon. The sprint race will also deliver points, which seems unfair as you also win position on track for the main race. I have a gut feeling that each sprint race will either be fantastic viewing or a boring procession. There are three practice sprint races (Silverstone, Italy and TBC) this year but if it happens for every race next year, what about the processional races such as Monaco? This will be pointless. If there's any sort of incident though, the sprint race could be very good as there is no opportunity to reclaim places lost. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes and it means I get three evening of F1 on those weekends.
Sky F1 spoke to Bottas ahead of qualifying and he spoke about his problem this season is not being able to get his tires working. This is a fine reason if you are fresh in the team, like Ricciardo at McLaren, Perez at Red Bull or Sainz at Ferrari but he's been in this car for a fair few seasons now, he should have the engineering relationships and feel for the car to eliminate this. He tested for Pirelli between the last race and this, so perhaps this will help.
As quite often happens, teams bring upgrades to races but only enough for one car, this was the case for Aston Martin. Who got the parts? Four-times world champion Sebastian Vettel or the Canadian in his third season, Lance Stroll? Stroll of course, his daddy owns the team.
With Qualifying underway, Perez spun with a tail wind into the gravel in Q1 but this didn't affect his place in the next session. Russell continued his qualifying success, getting his Williams into Q2 every race so far this season. What is notable about this is that he beat Ricciardo in McLaren (with his team mate finishing the session in second and a hearty swear on team radio, thinks he'll feel and drive better after a sleep) and Stroll in Aston Martin (with the upgrades). In the end he didn't make Q3 but was "best of the rest" in 11th. It's all going in the right direction.
At the sharp end of the grid, Verstappen just couldn't put the lap together, especially after his first was deleted (track limits), costing him the pole position as the wind picked up towards the end of the session. The fact that he wasn't much lower down the grid than third was mostly due to other drivers not being able to best their initial lap. Bottas scored pole position, a much needed victory over his team mate, Hamilton. He puts this down to "hard work pays off", makes you wonder whether he believes the other drivers, at the top and peak of their profession spend their off-time eating doughnuts on the couch. What sort of hard work has he been doing? All the British media are secretly pleased that Hamilton didn't score his century pole as they can string this out for another race or two. Ocon scored a pleasantly high margin over veteran team mate Alonso, position 6 to position 13. Vettel was finally able to show his worth finishing 10th to Stroll's 17th. Sainz starts 5th ahead of his established team mate LeClerc in 8th. It wasn't all good news for team newcomers as Norris starts 7th ahead of Ricciardo's 16th.
Today's suggestion for improving F1 is to paint these controversial corners, which are drawn to drivers' attention as to where the track limits are. Let's paint them red or do it virtually like the advertising hoarding, this would make it much easier for us laymen to spot when a violation has occurred.
I wouldn't say the grid promises a spectacular race. Will the wind affect it? Last year it was incident-packed so fingers crossed...
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