What a season we’ve had so far, from the rivalry between Hamilton and Verstappen to Ocon and Ricciardo winning a race. The Italian Grand Prix was no exception from the great races we’ve had so far, so let’s give my opinion on everything that happened!
The Honey Badger is back!
Everyone loves Dany Ric, so it was sad to see him struggle this much at the start of the season. I didn’t really have a lot of optimism ahead of the race that things would go better, but oh boy was I wrong! After a good qualifying session, Danny benefited from a slow start from the reigning world champion to promote himself to second on the grid. He took the lead at the start and pretty much never looked back, what a race!
Talking about ‘the incident’
Something I’m still finding bizarre is that because of the slow stops of both Lewis and Max they got back on track on the same part of the track. You nearly think F1 is scripted! But moving on to the incident, in my eyes it’s a pure racing incident. While Max was too aggressive in my opinion the incident wouldn’t have happened if the sausage kerb wasn’t there. Luckily enough Lewis is okay though, thank god for the Halo!
Williams is the points again!
Something which didn’t get enough attention is George Russell scoring points again! It must be said though that Nicholas Latifi was quicker at the start of the race, being around 5 seconds ahead, but George benefited from the safety car. Nonetheless an impressive showing from Williams to confirm their 8th place in the championship.
Who is getting the second Alfa Romeo seat?
A lot of talk has been around the recently announced driver transfers, Russell to Williams, Bottas to Alfa, Albon to Williams. This leaves one seat open at Alfa Romeo (if we ignore the Aston Martin and Haas seats not being announced), but who’s going to take it? Well, let’s talk about the candidates:
Guanyu Zhou
Guanyu Zhou seems the most likely to take the seat, the F2 ‘veteran’ has put up some impressive performances in his time in F2, but money seems to be the factor that makes him likely to secure the seat.
Antonio Giovinazzi
Giovinazzi has really impressed me with his qualifying speed in the last two races. But the problem is that this is coming too late. After 2 mediocre seasons, Alfa will be looking for a completely new line-up and Ferrari will probably be wanting him back as a simulator driver looking at past successes.
Nyck de Vries
A long shot, but definitely a deserved one if true. It would not only be lovely to have a second Dutch driver on the grid, he also has serious talent, winning the F2 and the Formula E championships along with other titles, unfortunately. It doesn’t seem likely this will happen though, especially with his connections to the Mercedes team.
It would be a surprise if Oscar Piastri gets picked, but after an extremely good debut season in F2 (so far) he surely would deserve it, unfortunately, his connections are making it near impossible to get him to the grid next season.
Looking ahead
The Russian Grand Prix, at Sochi, will be the next race and a few stories are already forming. Will Bottas continue his impressive run at this track? Will Hamilton and Verstappen take grid penalties and who will be ahead in the midfield battle? Let’s hope the Russian Grand Prix will be another classic race in the 2021 season!
