Everyone was clean away at the start, I feel everyone has improved greatly this season in this respect. Hamilton continued to have awful luck in Abu Dhabi as Sainz tapped him off the track. He came back on track in front of the Ferrari and was finally made to give the place back. By Lap 9, Russell asked, as he seems to do most races, if he was free to race his team mate. Once confirmed, he was straight past him.
Mercedes are keen to pamper Hamilton as they gave Russell a 5.something second pit stop and then released him into the path of his friend Norris. He was given a 5 second penalty for this. There were a few slow stops, including Verstappen and the departing Vettel (his last pit stop?).
Alonso took the last bad luck as he retired for his last race with Alpine, on this stint has a race driver with the Enstone-based team. Latifi and Schumacher finished as they started and continued by crashing into each other. Vettel finished the race asking: "How did we get the strategy so wrong?"
With 3 laps to go, Hamilton lost all sort of functions on his car, pitting and retiring. He could have brought out a safety car to finish the Abu Dhabi race with a bang, as is traditional.
Verstappen had an easy win; not even a little panic about something not feeling right on the car. LeClerc took second place, with Perez behind him and taking second place in the championship. Vettel scored one point for finishing 10th and Ricciardo scored two for finishing 9th.
There were doughnuts all round.
No comments:
Post a Comment