Exciting race in Saudi Arabia, dubious politics

The last grand prix presents a curious venn diagram illustrating the overlap between sport and politics.

Dubious politics

Sportswashing is a thing. "Never mind about our repressive regime and our human rights abuses - we have football competitions, or the Olympics, or F1, so we must be good people, right?" For years, F1 allowed Putin to get his face on TV at races. There are several races now in Middle Eastern countries which would prefer that their politics were not mentioned, thank you. Saudi Arabia executes people by the dozen, and doesn't tolerate opposition. They recently allowed women to drive, but there are still women imprisoned for compainging for this to happen. The Saudis are supporting war in Yemen, leading to a missile attack which set fire to oil tanks not far from the race track. The official F1 web site barely mentions this. The drivers didn't want to race, but after long meetings, they agreed, and it's been reported that

drivers received unspecific warnings that there could be "payback" or "repercussions" if they took action

=> (source)

Exciting race

Perez produced an extraordinary qualifying lap to get his first pole, and made the perfect start to the race. But circumstances with pit stops and safety cars meant we wouldn't find out if he could have won. It was such a shame to see him do something amazing, then have bad luck take it away.

That left Leclerc and Verstappen to fight it out. They were very evenly matched, and ran very closely for much of the race. Exactly as last time, Leclerc let Verstappen through to take advantage of the DRS rules and repass him. This time Varstappen realised what was going on, and it almost ended up like the slow bicycle race, with no one wanting to lead into the last corner. When Verstappen finally got past, he had Leclerc right behind for the rest of the last few laps, so no room for mistakes.

Hamilton had a dreadful weekend, arguably made to look a bit foolish by Russell.

Quietly Competent award goes to Norris for getting a reasonable finish in a bad car. Quietly Incompetent award goes to the Aston Martin team, who only beat people who couldn't finish the race. Latifi has in the last three races caused two safety cars that changed the result. Coincidence, or is he just a bit rubbish?

=> #F1 | #SaudiArabia

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