FLN Report: 2016 Spanish GP

Chess not checkers

What’s this? A competitive race? in 2016?! That’s right folks and we have newly minted first lap nutcase Lewis Hamilton to thank for that. After being overtaken in the start by a Nico Rosberg who was in the “wrong mode”, that being the mode in which he overtakes Hamilton, Hamilton went for the ever increasing gap and ran onto the grass taking out both silver arrows. With both Mercedes out this left the door open for the rest of the field, except for Sauber to possibly win the race.

The rest of the race saw Ferrari and Red Bull go back and forth between who would win this race. In all seriousness it was a great race, we saw split strategies, great driving, and GINGER SPICE! Ferrari tried to psyche out Red Bull by employing two different strategies, pitting Vettel every other lap and getting Kimi to pull the risky “I’m almost gonna overtake you but not really move” hoping that young Max Verstappen would freak out and run off track. While on the Red Bull side of things they continued their tradition of screwing over the Australian by putting Ricciardo on the “fastest strategy” and “unfortunately” he leaving him to end up fourth, thus clearing the way for Max Verstappen to win the race in his inaugural race for RBR and set the record for being the youngest race winner and allowing the Formula 1 world to hear the Dutch national anthem for the first time which is called “The William”. It was a great moment for the entire paddock, Fernando Alonso shook the guy’s hand, Kimi smiled in a press conference, Martin Brundle achieved Nirvana, Jos Verstappen didn’t even hit anyone and in a corner somewhere in the back of the paddock Daniil Kvyat cried. Daniil cried cold Russian tears that only a man who has read Anna Karenina not one, not twice, but thrice can cry. One can’t help but feel for the young Russian who showed tremendous promise and today was relegated to celebrating overtaking a Haas as the flag was blue flagged, this sport is a cruel mistress.

This is why you don’t get an intern to do your social media

Elsewhere in the field, Williams finished fifth. A super distant fifth, Ricciardo was able to nurse a car with three wheels into the pits and Bottas still couldn’t catch up to him, Massa on the other hand was completely anonymous. Oh he finished eighth? Ok. Carlos Sainz Jr finished fifth after being up in third after the first lap and “impressed” which means that Red Bull will dump him into a heap in two years. Sergio Perez finished 7th and held the record for “least minutes on air by a car that’s not a Manor” while Hulkenberg was so bored in the end of the grid that he decided to finally press the “afterburner” button on his wheel which resulted in him retiring from the race. McLaren valiantly ended up in 9th place and Alonso retired which at this point is about as common as seeing Ferrari throw away a race. Over at Haas, Esteban Gutierrez overtook a car for the first time since 2014, while the Sauber duo threatened to crash into each other at every corner. I can’t blame Ericsson and Nasr though, the car hasn’t been upgraded all year so it probably feels like a demolition derby beater. The only thing worse than the Sauber car is the Sauber tweets. Renault finished a race with both cars and in a desperate bid for attention put on the Pirelli Hard compound tires. It’s like when I wore a Bolo tie that one time, and just as effective too as the only cars they were convincingly quicker than were the Manors who ended up being lapped only once, BUT their trailers are pretty sweet!

FLN Power Rankings

1. Dutch National Anthem
2. Split race strategies
3. Pirelli Hard Compound Tire
4. Carlos Sainz’s Meerkat
5. GP2 Engine
6. FC Barcelona
7. Mercedes Tree House meetings
8. Fire Extinguishers
9. Being “gutted”
10. Not noticing a driver switch

FLN Presents: Hot Take of the Race

This week’s hot take comes to us via Twitter by Martin Nottaway

If you would like to tweet your Hot Take at us or send us your favorite F1 related one tweet us at @1stlapnutcase