Charles Leclerc digs deep to shine a light on dark Belgian GP weekend
It was a weekend for everybody in Spa. What should happen to be a stimulating and joyous yield in the month of summer holidays turned into a sombre and heartbreaking weekend in which the youthful Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert was fatally hurt in an accident on Saturday.
For Anthoine Hubert was also a star on the ladder to Formula 1. His Father Francois was a rally driver however Anthoine took on the race track winning the F4 name in his very first season of racing.
Drivers: '' We hurried for Hubert
The Frenchman won the GP3 Championship last season and was rewarded with a contract with the Driver Academy of the Renault F1 team. Anthoine graduated to F2 and immediately impressed winning on home soil in France and at Monaco, and has been in line to get a seat with a few of the best teams in the F2 show for next year.
I didn't know Anthoine - I had just met him a few occasions from the paddock with some mutual friends, but by all accounts he was a popular and lovely man. I was interviewing Charles Leclerc after Qualifying in the Skypad neither of us knew how awful it was and as soon as the accident occurred or in fact that it was a friend of his who was involved. You were advised by the reaction from greats like Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost we are these days once we lose a motorist.
There were a lot of people in the paddock - in our Sky F1 team - and also on media who had been wondering how drivers can carry on driving through the same corners and carrying the risks. This ability focus when you put your helmet on and to disconnect from the world is exactly what makes racing drivers unique.
Where somebody has been killed, I have been fortunate that in 18 decades of driving race cars, I've only once been engaged in a race. This was
Allan Simonsen at Le Mans in 2013 and that I remember hearing about it as I'd set my helmet and also my team-mate Brendon Hartley came to shift and get in the vehicle. Possibly the simple fact that keep focused for the next 22 hours and I had to push straight away meant that I - and the rest of the drivers in the race - managed to continue driving flat out we were taking.
It is a mechanism which their brain is engaged in by most racing drivers. That feeling 'it will not occur to people' but every so often, tragically we are reminded by the game of the risks lurking around the corner.
If you talk with Sir Jackie Stewart about the era he raced in, he'll tell you that losing friends and competitions almost on a monthly basis wasn't uncommon and it's thanks to people like the FIA that we have not lost as many motorists recently. There will be a complete investigation of course and there'll be lessons that every person can learn but regrettably motor sport is dangerous and every single driver - Anthoine included - takes every time we get in the cockpit of a racing car to the dangers.
As for the Grand Prix itself, it was great to watch Charles Leclerc get the win he deserved. He has driven superbly all through this season and after the frustration of losing wins in Baku Bahrain and Austria, it was great to see him get one online. Charles was catastrophic in Qualifying, beating his World Champion team mate for the sixth Qualifying and this time.
In the race that he was able to break away from Sebastian with pace and much better tyre management. It turned out to be a mighty performance when Hamilton began to close the gap down, but it got a bit tricky in the end.
Mercedes ran more downforce and that of course made it hard for them to overtake. In addition,it meant so we had a cat and mouse game where a single car was obviously faster than the other at different parts of the track and that they had very good speed in the middle sector of their lap.
There is not a lot more that Mercedes might have achieved - perhaps a stop would have reduced the deficit with a couple of seconds into Leclerc but it's not really a race which they can be criticised by you about a lot.
Vettel appeared to endure with tyre degradation more than his youthful team-mate and also I wonder whether maybe Ferrari would have attempted to run a bit more downforce simply to assist him at the twistier middle sector of the lap since the benefit they had about the full power run through the very first industry was absolutely enormous.
When we visit Monza weekend that is next, Ferrari should have more of an advantage. There are corners than we have only a couple of corners which is the point where the Mercedes' front end grip is a step that is good greater than the cars that are red. They'd need to do next 21, something very wrong to not produce a victory in front of the tifosi!
Lando Norris was really unlucky to not have a end effect that is great whereas the place was inherited by Alex Albon at the end after a drive from 17th on the grid. The Thai motorist did a great job on his first outing with the group - he was three tenths slower than Max Verstappen at Qualifying until he donned his lap at the end on account of this grid penalties which turned out to be a very good effort for his first session in the car.
At the race, he bided his time on and then made strong improvement in the second half to record a result.
Don't miss the Italian GP this weekend. Find out more here to subscribe
Read more: http://giaoducphatda.edu.vn/?p=3063
>Read More
>Read More