Okay, first of all, I have to apologize to you. It should be over a month once I release this post, since the last one came out. Fact is: F1 is important, but university is just a bit more important. I think most of you will understand that :) Yeah exams kept me quite occupied with revising and I finished half of them already, but still I have to revise a lot, so I'm already sorry to say that this post might be a one-off for some time as well. But now, let's talk a bit about F1, shall we?
Oh well, a LOT of stuff happened during that month. But let's start with the beginning: The driver changes. The most important of those transfers is definetly the move of Bottas from Williams to Mercedes, who actually got bought out by the Silver Arrows and even changed Paddy Lowe as a part of the deal with Williams. So it seems like they really want to have him.... Or do they? In fact, he only got a 1 year contract and yeah I know they said:" We want to give him a longer contract, once he performs!" But we all should know that what is said in F1 is not always the truth. Of course they could be honest here, but let's look at their opportunities for next season: Drivers like Alonso or Vettel are going to be without a contract (yet) and those two seem to be definetly more attractive than Valterri (as bad as it sounds). Yes I know, I already wrote about how unlikely it would be to draft in Alonso, because of let's say his past with Hamilton. But who says that they actually want to keep Hamilton? Almost everyone, and why? Because he has a contract. But why shouldn't he go for a shock retirement just like Rosberg did? What if Mercedes won't perform next season and Hamilton is fed up with the team? And again, all of that is being unlikely and remains to be seen.
Much more realistic seems the Vettel deal, who is OBVIOUSLY (hehe) fed up with Ferrari, or at least was that in 2016. And we all know that Mercedes really wants to have a German driver. So we should never say never to that.
To sum this up: Bottas seems to be the savest decision Mercedes could make for 2017. From my point of view, it isn't a really interesting or hype generating move, but the smartest they could do. Let's see, maybe he'll surprise me and actually play Hamilton into the ground.
Connected to this transfer, we have the comeback of Felipe Massa to Williams, who retired at the end of 2016 and now is back in a cockpit for 2017...... Okay okay, you might could already read out of that, that this seems rather awkward to me... Don't get me wrong, I am happy that we'll keep Felipe for one more season in the paddock but.... After such a nice send off he got in Brazil and Abu Dhabi, it just feels wrong to come back so soon. But Williams should have made a save choice, just like Mercedes did. They need an experienced driver and also someone, who could be a kind of mentor for a rookie like Lance Stroll.
And then, there's also Pascal Wehrlein. And if you ask me, I hold the view that Mercedes have let their own protégée down a bit. Sauber, who'll compete with 2016 Ferrari engines in 2017 are not likely to be more competitive than they were last season. We saw how much that affected Toro Rosso, especially at the end of the season. It just feels like a further step back from him, which seems unfair to me, because he performed really well at Manor by even scoring his point in Austria. And I know, that his attitude doesn't seem to be the best, but still if his own big supporter lets him down.... I would be a bit sore if I would be him....
Talking about the former Manor driver, we tackle another important point of the last month. Manor had to go into administration and is set to leave F1, although they started to look very promising after 2016. It's an absolute shame to lose an as sympathic team as Manor was. They went through so many highs and lows, which is also partly visible in all of their name changes, and now it's all over. I just wanted to thank the team for all the great moments it delivered to us fans. I guess every F1 fan will remember Jules Bianchi's 9th place in Monaco, and how happy the team and Jules were with that result. But also Wehrlein's point last season in Austria was definitely a high. I almost forgot that they already went before the 2015 season into administration, which is also the reason why they had to compete the whole season with a 2014 car. In all of the races they were about 4 seconds slower than the rest of the pack, but also that created a lot of funny moments and I guess that there were still a lot of people cheering for the team. All of those moments are history now and all I can say now is: Thanks for the ride! It was a lot of fun!
But there's hope, that we won't have to face sad moments like this particular one anymore in the future, because also politically and economically, a lot has changed since I was away. Connected to Liberty Media's takeover of Formula 1, good old Bernie has to leave his position as the patriarch of Formula 1. His position got taken by Chase Carey, who looks with his facial hair maybe not to confidence-inspiring, at least that's my impression of him, but already started to convince me by the first decisions he made. The most important of those was to take Ross Brawn into his team to "make Formula 1 great again." For those who don't know who Ross Brawn is, I just can say: everything. And by that, I mean almost everything he only slightly touched in terms of F1 became successful. The two points for which he is most known is on the one hand the era together with Michael Schumacher, especially as a strategist at Ferrari, and on the other hand when he took over the Honda team after the 2008 season and making his rebranded BrawnGP car in 2009 to a championship winning one. If somebody could make the sport attractive again, it is him. Therefore, my hopes are very high that he will make good decisions in the future.
Alright, so those are the major points I wanted to ramble about a bit. Of course there are a lot more minor ones, like the livery speculations at McLaren (FK YES FINALLY COLOUR! :D ) plus their changing of the name of next years car. But maybe we should wait about some of them, once we can be sure that everything is actually true. Thanks for reading and I hope I'll find the time to do these posts more regularly in the future!
Welcome to Georg's Grid! A blog, where I share my opinions about Formula 1!
