24 Hours of Le Mans - 89th running of the legendary race for the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. Live from Le Mans, France. Saturday @ 9:15am - Sunday 10:30am (MotorTrend) live
Merc takes another L, but Red Bull doesn't make them pay for it as dearly as they could've due to some exploding hard tires. Vettel gets his first podium after driving a great weekend and getting some good fortune. Hams leaves his brake heaters on and falls out of the points positions on a red flag restart with two laps left. Bottas has another forgettable weekend on another street track. Ferrari is still fast on slow corners and fast overall, Leclerc bouncing back from the no start in Monaco. Perez seems to be fitting into the Red Bull very well and gets his first race win as Verstappen's teammate. Verstappen was strong all weekend, was poised to take the win, but then he became the second driver on 30+ lap old hards to have them fail on the long straight at over 200mph; the first of those drivers to suffer a tire failure was Lance Stroll who was driving an excellent race up to that point and was running in 4th. A lot to unpack here, but the main items are Verstappen's DNF wasn't completely a disaster as Ham's mistake took him out of the points. Perez got 25pts (Viva Checo!) and made the race go how Red Bull has wanted for years; both drivers close together to maximize strategy and points hauls. Alpha Tauri was quick and Gasly parlayed it into a podium. Vettel takes second, looking like he still has the talent to compete if the circuit is right for the Aston Martin. Red Bull still leads the Constructors' and Drivers' Championships. Merc has two bad races and is working on getting back on track in France. Alpine will be at home this weekend, but are far from major contention, but have the ability to perform well in the mid-field. Ferrari is looking to continue putting a stamp on 3rd place in the Constructors' and McLaren is fighting for the very same position.
F1s last race in Canada was quite the controversial weekend. First things first, it looked like Ferrari was at a track that suited their car. Vettel and Leclerc were quick, Hamilton looked like he was going to take another pole and Vettel nipped him by 2/10ths. Hamilton split the Ferraris for the race though, Bottas had a bad Q3 and wasn't able to tuck another car into the first two rows, starting 6th. Meanwhile, the Honda powered teams looked good in FP3, but Qualy didn't work out as well, with Gasley of RBR being the only one able to get into Q3. That would be flipped back into their favor in the race though, three Honda powered cars finishing in the top ten, only Albon in the Toro Rosso DNF'ing and not scoring any points. In the void of the top runners not making Q3, including Max Verstappen, Daniel Ricciardo qualified 4th. This shows some significant improvement from Renault after the rough start; they've determined some of their core issues and have worked through them with powerunit upgrades. The race started off frantic as usual, but Hamilton and the remainder of the top few rows maintained positions and settled into race and strategy. Verstappen drives the wheels off once again and goes from 11th to 5th in the race. Stroll comes in 9th in his home grand prix. Kvyat shows another strong showing and takes the final point in 10th. Bottas salvages a not so great early race and finishes in 4th behind Leclerc. Vettel crosses the checkered flag first, but comes in second -- this is where the controversy comes in. On lap 48/70, Hamilton's reeling Vettel in, bit by bit, when Vettel loses the rear heading into turn 4 and cuts the grass in order to avoid needing to take the turn with no control. In rejoining the track the car drifts right; Hamilton, seeing the error is attacking the gap which is closed by Vettel who gets back on the power and corrects the slide, pinching Hams at the wall and forcing him to hit the brakes hard. In real time it looks a little rough, but happens really quickly. The stewards reviewed the incident and eventually, at the end of lap 57/70, gave Vettel a 5sec penalty because of a specific rule about unsafe returns to the track which essentially isn't up for interpretation. Hamilton's chase was halted by the incident and even though he tried passing Vettel through the final 22 laps, but he was unable to pass him, finishing a bit under a second from Vettel. Leclerc was working hard to try nipping second place as Vettel's tires fell off late, but couldn't quite get inside the 5second window. Vettel was furious, obviously, looking to boycott the podium, but he was notified of further penalties that would come by not speaking to the media and he worked his way back. Hamilton looked to try letting Vettel stand on the top step of the podium with him, but Vettel declined. Vettel spoke to Martin Brundel and explained the issue, but walked off afterwards. The race crowd booed Hams even though he didn't make the decision and cheered Vettel as the true winner of the race. Vettel also put the #2 placard in front of Hamiltons car on the way to the podium. Quite the scene, quite the wet blanket ending to a GP, as good hard racing is good for the sport and spectators. The counterpoint is would Ferrari be asking for this same penalty if the roles were reversed? So what we seem to have is a rule that should have some wiggle room built in so that the stewards have the power to interpret (or the penalty at least - swap positions potentially on the grounds of gaining advantage) based on circumstance; but that'll have to be a target for another season. Oh and Magnussen giving his Haas team crap for having a poorly setup car on race day after he destroyed his previous car in Qualy. Poor form, wtf. They had to build a new car from scratch, overnight, with a brand new chassis. I'm glad Gunther told him off.
In the end, Hamilton took his 7th win in Canada, equaling Shumi's single track win record. Vettel and Ferrari curse the call by the stewards and looked to appeal it, but as of today the result still stands. This would've been Vettel's first win since Belgium 2018, but he'll have to settle for his first pole in 2019. The Driver's Championship standings are as follows: Hamilton, Bottas (-29), Vettel (-62), Verstappen (-74), Leclerc (-90), Gasley (-126). The constructors championship gap between Merc and Ferrari is 123 points. The French GP has arrived just in time for Renault to get its act together; they finished 6th and 7th in Canada. We'll see if they can deliver the fans what they'd like to see.
Petrolicious looks at an enthusiast father and son duo who restored a Porsche 356A shell in their shed, over 7yrs, to a running, driving, customized and finished coupe of epic proportions.
Speed Is The New Black. Season 2 Ep3. Wednesday @ 8pm - 9pm (VelocityHD) new
It's been a couple busy weekends and I haven't watch the Canadian GP yet, was watching the 24Hrs of Le Mans and cleaning cars last weekend, so no recap for this week. We have two F1 races coming up back to back, starting with Canada, so I should have another in mid-July. I'll be smoking like a mofo this weekend so check my IG starting...today actually.
This pretty significant historic vid comes from 1956, via video camera attached to the back of Mike Hawthorne's Jaguar D-Type. He takes a lap around the Le Mans Circuit, during non-race time, providing commentary on his thoughts of the layout.
