A very entertaining race in general, unfortunately the timing of the SC played a big part but that's how it goes sometimes, while it pretty much guaranteed Hamilton the win I think the bigger question has to be was why did Merc put Bottas on mediums for his first stop?
I can get the point of leaving Hamilton out for a few laps, but then I would assume even without the SC they still would have put Hamilton onto the hard tyre which while in theory giving Bottas the lead back he's still boned and finishing 2nd due to stopping again.
Now I won't go to the extent of saying Bottas was royally stitched up by Merc as such, but I do find it odd they didn't even give him a chance of a 1 stopper by putting him the hards like they did with Hamilton.
Moving on to Leclerc-Mad Max's battles well what can you say that was an incredible battle, Leclerc obviously wasn't in the mood to make life easy for Mad Max after what happened at Austria and it produce a classic battle between the two.
As for Gasly out of nowhere he produced his best weekend of the season so far and wasn't far away from Mad Max at all pace wise, and its pretty timely as there had been a lot of rumors regarding his seat.
And as for Seb probably one of the worst weekends I can recall in recent years, he wasn't at the races for qualy but was having a solid decent race, but then Seb f*cked up unfortunately obviously it was a shame Mad Max got punted, but in a way I think it was karma for what Mad Max did to Seb at China last year.
Firstly LC that's impossible you can't brake test someone from behind and secondly Steve every time Seb has an incident of some kind it isn't a 'red mist moment' though I will grant you the crash he caused could be put into the moronic category this time if you wish.
Look this is what Seb said about it (quote taken from the F1.com site)
I think his thought process during what happened was fair enough, perhaps Seb should have factored in Mad Max does normally defend hard, but on this occasion Seb made the misjudgement nothing more nothing less, not an angry 'take this you c*nt' that you (Steve) probably always like to believe when Seb makes contact with someone.
Anyway my favourite post race quote was this from Gunther Steiner:
Lastly that's the last time I watch channel 4's F1 coverage live I thought Sky was bad but my god Channel 4's bias was obscene, the Hamilton love in was quite frankly beyond nauseating and once the race finished I immediately switched it over to the cricket, where at least they have the good grace to have English and New Zealand commentators sharing duties to a UK audience - so the biased commentary was at least equal in measure.
The UK F1 broadcasters could learn a thing or two from that, as will they never realise that continuously trying to shove Hamilton down people's throats, is one of the main reasons why many Brits don't like him in the first place.
You can't or more importantly shouldn't try force people to like/support someone, people have freewill and will not like being force feed and Hamilton in F1 terms is a perfect example of this happening for years, until UK broadcasters and the British F1 media stop being so biased and trying to brainwash potential fans - Hamilton will continue to not get the support himself and the media believes he supposedly deserves, at the end of the day him being British doesn't mean he automatically deserves British people supporting him.