Decent race, some really good midfield action and watching Verstappen carve through everyone.
Merc breeze to the constructors, even with Bottas having another underwhelming outing. The strategy didnt help him much but even with that he put himself in that position because it took him 12 odd laps to get up to speed, while Hamilton had already passed Vettel and was building a gap of 3 or 4 seconds. James Alison was doing his best to stick up for him, but for me this was nearly as bad as Malaysia where he was a very distant 5th, he just looked poor. Had one good battle with Ricciardo but lost out to Kimi and then had his pants pulled down by Vettel, eventually having to pit with a few laps to go. We know the Merc had the pace, Hamilton just controlled the pace at every stage, not even worrying when Vettel had the better launch and led into turn 1. Ran in the dirty air, made the DRS move, and that was it (bar a very close call in the first pit stop). His title would be wrapped up if Bottas were a better wingman in one or two races. On to Mexico, he just needs a 5th place finish.
The call on Max is technically the right one, he goes out of bounds for a second and in doing so has the positioning to make the move stick, but in terms of how it looks, dragging the most exciting driver in the race from the podium is absolute bullshit. Max was right in how he responded, pointing out how you can run over the white lines everywhere, in all the sessions and its fine, but then he gets punished. The lack of consistency is so infuriating and I just think its a shit call to make in that situation.
Sainz had a really strong debut, him and Hulkenberg are going to have a fantastic battle next season.
