Race 3 - Portugal GP

I hate doing this right now because this was not my favourite race, not by a long shot, but I promised myself I would review every race for my own perusal further down the season when I cannot remember what the freak happened in the first few races, and this is my second attempt to do this post, so here goes.



I usually review the weekend from Saturday only, but to be honest I was interested in Friday practice on this particular weekend. I loved coming back to this track. It is one of the prettiest tracks, and the most fun to watch an onboard cam footage of a lap. That nose cam is just *chef's kiss*! This might be one of the only tracks (Monaco being another one) where I love watching single lap quali more than the actual race. And of course, I am all set in terms of wallpapers for the rest of the year!

Valtteri had a strong start to the weekend. If George is Mr. Saturday, then Valtteri is definitely Mr. Friday. It is amazing how quickly he takes to a circuit, which speaks volumes about how much background sim work he puts in before the race weekend. I am hoping this means that he will have an edge over his teammate for the sprint quali weekend, because Lewis usually takes a bit more time (remember Bahrain testing anyone?).

The main reason I wanted to include Friday though, obviously, was one Mr. Callum Ilott. Ah how awesome was it to see him, finally, in a formula one car. It just left me wanting more. I wish the broadcast covered him a little bit more. Come on F1, give him a drive already!

FP2 saw the resurgence of Alpine who finally showed up this season. Mclaren still seemed like they were nowhere, whereas Ferrari were looking reasonably strong. Mick ended the session at P15 in FP3 for a while, which was thrilling. I said out loud to the screen, “Good job, son!”

Qualifying was honestly great. First, Mr. Saturday in Q2 again BUT Daniel and Lance are out in Q1 while Lando puts himself in P1 and, more importantly, Seb puts himself in P4! Seb had the best qualifying he has had in a long, long time. It made me so happy to see him get into Q3 quite convincingly. I literally loved everyone in Q3 and had a hard time deciding who to root for. Carlos pipped Lando, Charles and literally every midfielder to get in P5 with a sexy lap. I love these glances of awesome he is showing us and would love to see so much more of that this season. I forgave him for getting that cursed ketchup song in my head after the Ferrari challenge.

The race started off pretty well. Kimi had a very odd mistake and crashed out in Lap 1 but every other driver finished the race which was awesome but I think teams were expecting another safety car at some point, which didn’t come. This is a cool summary of the top three finishers after that.

Some highlights for me - Carlando battle in the initial laps, and also Carlos x Checo as well as Lando x Checo. I swear Lando saw me commenting that he isn’t as good a driver as Daniel (yet) and is bent upon proving him wrong, and honestly, I am not mad at all. Attaboy. If only you show that consistency, I am never taking you off my fantasy league teams for the rest of the season.

Then there were the Daniel moves, a Gasly x Ocon tussle just for the kicks, Mazepin messing up again and earning his first 5 second penalty of the season, Lewis doing his thing where he complains about the tyres and then follows it up with the fastest lap - I mean, what is that? There was the sexy move by Fernando on Daniel at Turn 1 that had me cheering so hard. I hope we see this Fernando more in the season! Also, the fact that Lance went about 40 laps on the medium tyres but Charles had to change out of his after just 19 laps - what was that?

Ferrari got their strategy quite wrong this weekend. Carlos deserved points after that quali and he finished P11. Charles hung onto P6 because by now he is powered more by his stubbornness than his red tractor but it was behind Lando and I was very surprised they didn’t even get close to a battle despite running quite close for a good two-thirds of the race. Also, Mick Schumacher’s first overtake of his F1 career! Everybody liked that. Seb had quite a rubbish race, but the bromance of the year so far seems to be Seb and Mick which I should have seen coming but somehow it has caught me by surprise! They are winning hearts all over SM. BTW Mazepin finished the race almost a lap down from Mick, and got lapped by George Russell in an undrivable Williams. Please, Callum was just sitting there - give him the drive already!

And finally, the last few laps brought some of the quali excitement back because Checo, Valtteri and Max all went for a new set of boots in consecutive laps to get the fastest lap, with Valtteri winning that one. Valtteri’s luck is just… it makes me cringe. I have no idea how he keeps his spirits up and I can’t help but wish good things for him. But ultimately Lewis won the race, quite convincingly in my opinion, having won battles against Max, Valtteri and Checo in the race. You never write him off. Never.

I’m glad there’s a race next weekend, but then again it is Barcelona. I’m curious to see if there will be any difference since we didn’t have testing here this year, but I am not optimistic to be honest. Still, boring race weekend trumps no race weekend any day. See you next weekend - Adios!