FLN Report: 2016 Belgian GP

Young Max “My arms are shock absorbers” Verstappen

Formula 1 is back baby! The endless summer break ended and the first race after the break had everything: collisions, red flags, a Mercedes disappearing off into the sunset, Ferrari screwing up, the stewards deleting times at random, and seeing as how this is Spa the race also featured a first lap nutcase. Even though he didn’t even reach a podium position at the end of the race Max Verstappen and antics dominated the conversation surrounding the race. In the first lap of the race approaching the first corner Max took the inside line on a space that was always going to close and caused a collision with both the Ferraris effectively ruining their race along with his. Here’s the thing, Max is young, Max is talented, and perhaps most importantly Max uses his arms as shock absorbers. When you’ve got arms strong enough to withstand a head on collision maybe you really can strong arm your way through life. It’d make sense especially when you consider that Max kept acting a fool during the race wiggling around as people tried to overtake him and not once getting reprimanded. Seriously, Kvyat pulls a stunt like Max’s ends up on the podium but because he lacks the super strong arms with which he’s gripping Charlie Whiting’s/Bernie’s/Christian Horner’s balls he gets chucked to Toro Rosso where as Max is celebrated and called the messiah. We here at FLN want to encourage young Max Verstappen to cool it with the rage, and remember to always leave a da space.

We don’t need no halo

Aside from the big incident with Verstappen the first lap also saw Pascal Wehrlein crash into Jenson Button, Carlos Sainz got a puncture and lost a rear wing somehow and something happened to Marcus Ericsson, that something was he was driving a Sauber so of course he couldn’t finish the race. Elsewhere in the race Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso had a hell of a time starting from the back of the grid and making their way up from 21 and 22 respectively after both of them incurred ridiculous grid penalties for pretty much getting brand new cars for this race. They were both making a good march up the field when Kevin Magnussen had a truly nasty collision at the top of Eau Rouge when he lost the back of the car and slammed into the barrier resulting in a red flag. At this point the race was pretty much neutralized and on the restart Hamilton could resume his climb up from p5 eventually ending in a podium position. Let’s be honest here, you put Rio Haryanto in a Mercedes stick him in fifth place on a red flag restart and he’d end up in a podium too. Let’s not act like Hamilton pulled a Senna or something.

The GOOD Williams

The other podium position, 2nd, was won by Daniel Ricciardo and he celebrated by performing an ancient Australian ritual of peer pressuring another Australian to drink out of a shoe. Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez of Force India finished the race fourth and fifth, this being Nico’s highest finish outside of Le Mans it propelled Force India to fourth beating out Williams F1 whose last moment of glory came at the hands of Pastor Maldonado in 2012. Think about that. Williams’ last race winner was Pastor Maldonado. How the mighty have fallen. Valteri Bottas and Felipe Massa could only manage 8th and 10th respectively in the race in what was an almost anonymous performance, that is until you look at Haas F1. Of note in Haas is that Esteban Gutierrez finished Higher than Romain Grosjean which is strange considering how much the internet as a whole insists Gutierrez sucks. Ferrari finished 6th and 9th and that’s even sadder to type than the fact that everyone is happy McLaren finished 7th. This is thanks in large part to the new Honda power unit which went from “GP2 Engine” level to “Not so sucky” over the break. Kvyat was sad. One Renault and one Manor finished the race also…but it’s not Rio Haryanto so who cares?

FLN Power Rankings

1. Rolling Restarts
2. The Power of Dreams v2.0
3. Shoe based alcohol delivery systems
4. Somehow going from 21st to 5th with 4 overtakes
5. Simone Biles
6. Corner with No Name
7. Hogging up the middle of the road
8. Rio Haryanto
9. Ferrari 2015 PU
10. Drake confessing his love for Rihanna