I held off writing this for a while so that I could collect my thoughts and not write out of frustration/anger/sadness/literally any negative emotion one can feel. However, I think I hold the crown as Pettiest Bitch Alive so I will try to be objective in the first half and be very much opinionated in the second half.
The lights went out, and George had a really good start despite being on the worse side of the track. Kimi ended up spinning at the same place Romain had his accident last week, but luckily the new tyre barrier wasn’t needed as Kimi just spun all the way around, not touching the wall. Only a few seconds later, Checo and Charles collided as Checo turned in on him through a corner. Technically Checo did have the right of the racing line, but he also left Charles nowhere to go. Max, who was right behind them, turned left to try and avoid their collision, but lost it a little, leading him straight into the unforgiving hands of the gravel trap as he traveled agonizingly across it and into the wall. Charles, with his front left suspension completely gone, also slid right in front of the wall, just a few feet from Max. These brought out a safety car, which was pretty bad for George as he pulled a Lewis and was gone after the first corner. George’s safety car restart was also very good, and he managed to maintain a gap to Valtteri of about 2 to 3 seconds. The race was fairly uneventful barring a VSC brought out by Nicky until shit hit the fan in the last quarter of the race. Jack managed to lose just the front of his front wing, ducking quickly into the pits, but debris still on the track. A VSC was brought out at first, but quickly turned into a full-on safety car. I don’t exactly remember every event that happened, but basically Mercedes made a bad call on a pit stop and managed to make a “colossal fuck up” in the wise words of Toto by putting Valtteri’s tyres on George’s car and nearly put George’s on Valttteri’s car until a mechanic realized and they switched at the last second, creating about a 27 second pit stop. This gave George no advantage however, as he immediately had to duck back into the pits, once again putting him and Valtteri on the same playing field. At this point, things were looking bad, but not impossible for George to recover from. Our hopes, dreams, and general happiness were all crushed when George got a puncture, meaning a race that could have been a 1-stop had turned into a 4-stop. By this point, there were less than 10 laps left, and George was down near 15th place. The shining moments for him, in my opinion, were those last 10 laps. His spirit must’ve been crushed, and they obviously were as he was crying after the race in parc ferme, yet he showed us what a strong person he is, and did something that no one really expected. He was pulling over a second a lap on Lando (P10), and ended up just over 2 seconds behind Valtteri, even with his additional pit stop. He easily had fastest lap, with his time (I believe) less than a millisecond over 53 seconds flat, an improvement of over three tenths from Bottas’s pole-taking time. Every fastest sector said one word: Russell. Instead of letting the mistake put him down like Valtteri seemingly did, George channeled that negative energy into proving himself, storming to his first, albeit bittersweet, points in Formula 1. After the race, Toto and Bono came on the radio to George, apologizing profusely to him and telling him that he did a great job, an obvious testament to how much they respect him.
Fuck you Checo. I really don’t have a problem with you but come on, man. You ended Charles and Max’s races when they both had incredible qualifyings, and even though it is a first lap incident, I’d say Checo was the one to blame, if anyone (feel free to disagree, again I’m the Pettiest Bitch Ever so I really don’t give a fuck). Yet, Checo was the only one who got away from that incident unscathed, got a free pit stop from the safety car that he created, and ended up winning not because he was the fastest, but because he took out two of the fastest people and the other two fastest people had stuff happen to them completely out of their control. Listen, I’m cool with Checo getting a win and all that shit, but I really don’t care. He’s had his time to prove himself and (unpopular opinion alert) so has Hulk. I love Hulk and don’t particularly care about Checo, but like come on, guys. There’s only so many times we can excuse your performances. They’ve had long enough to prove themselves, and Checo only just got around to it while Hulk still hasn’t fully proved himself. How many more chances can they ask for before people start saying no? They’ve had their chances and they blew it. So open up the seat for new drivers. Also words cannot describe how trash that podium combo was (for me, at least). I just turned off the TV because the sight of RP cheering while George was crying made me too upset, and I didn’t watch any of the podium interviews or even the podium itself (although it probably was nice to hear some different anthems). Also, I hope that this race will never be replayed because damn, it was worse than France 2019 (yes, I went there). At least France was expected to be boring and hit the standards set for it, but Bahrain initially exceeded expectations, then slammed them right into the ground, putting no mercy up for the kindest driver in F1 (he even gave Carlos, who he is not obligated or expected to help at all, a tow in quali! You can’t tell me he’s not a great person and unfortunately if you do, please remember my title and I’m not afraid to use it).
