hamilton's one weakness is that he lets the team dictate the strategy without hardly ever calling an audible. so tell me, when "strategy" costs him places (especially to his teammate) you just expect him not to talk to his team about it? working together with other people requires communication, right? especially when trying to work through problems?

and sure, it seems more like shit luck thats shafted lewis in saudi arabia, melbourne and miami. imola he just sucked, and the only fortune he's had was in bahrain when the redbulls dnf'd lewis onto the podium. but if it was me i would certainly start wondering what was going on with that kind of consistent bad luck. lewis drove really strong races in saudi arabia and melbourne, and a decent race in miami but still somehow ended up behind russell because of ill-timed cautions

Maybe not use an all-american company for the tarmac too, they can boast about it being all American, but when the track starts coming up before F1 cars have even run on it? Maybe there's something to be said for international co-operation after all...

they could claim the cars weren't all american or weren't using goodyears/firestones, thus being incompatible to the freedom tarmac™

I hate to sound like I'm knocking the USA (there's plenty of more legitimate reasons!), but I get the impression that companies and people skilled in laying roads have suffered from chronic underfunding for decades. That could be the impression from public roads, of course...

Building a track on essentially a sandy swamp is always going to create settlement issues

Heaven only knows how they expect to make a profit next year now that they've pissed off all the marks who paid the $13k.

Despite charging $13k to get into the Paddock Club, and other tickets not being that much cheaper, the promoters still lost money.
Heaven only knows how they expect to make a profit next year now that they've pissed off all the marks who paid the $13k.

I must be the minority race fan... When I go to the track I give zero fucks about all that garbage. All I want is a good track and adequate paths to walk the circuit. It helps if the grass is mowed and it look nice, but all that other bullshit can stuff it.

Must be why I love Lime Rock and Watkins. All that junk is easy to bypass.

I think it's a Mercedes weakness all told that they have such a team mantra that when it comes to strategy they bat it back and forth between asking the driver his opinion, asking the cheif mechanic and a strategist and then weighing up if it's fair between both their drivers and not showing too much favouritism to one over the other.
All this takes time, as seen yesterday when by the time they'd made the (fairly obvious) decision to pit for softs, it was too late
Saying that, they would've lost to George's fluke whatever happened (And once again the race director seemingly waiting for him to make a pitstop before changing the VSC to SC, when everyone around could see that was obviously going to be a SC immediately)
and Ocon didn't exactly burn through the pack on his softs either, so it might not have changed the final result much at all
Awaiting Nico Rosberg's take that this is all somehow Lewis' fault so he can get a few more thousand views on his various channels....

I echo most of the comments here, the SC saved it from being a 2/10 race to being a 4/10 race, just enough action in the last quarter to make it worth watching
Vettel is in his final season, no question now. What was that, 2 spins and the contact with Mick? (one was off camera though, he might've done a Bottas and just ran wide a bit but still...mistake after mistake)

Track needs changes for next year though, especially the horrible chicane under the bridge that everyone seems to hate unilaterally
Maybe not use an all-american company for the tarmac too, they can boast about it being all American, but when the track starts coming up before F1 cars have even run on it? Maybe there's something to be said for international co-operation after all...

Hamilton really got into some people's heads. He was not relevant in this race, and certainly has no relevance in this championship, yet is still the topic of some mad obsessions