It’s Texas. They’ll load him up with Lone Star before the race.
I hate hate hate Buxton.
Now having said that, I did laugh out loud when he asked verstappen after the race “What a way to start your decent into your 30’s”
It’s not certain that we’ll have Will Buxton to kick around next year.
He’s an active poster in the Reddit F1 subforums and a contributor to other F1-related sites, so while we may not have him on TV we’ll still have him. He’ll probably become Sky’s roving F1 reporter anyway, so you’ll be able to watch him online.
In other news, Sky released the onboard from Stroll’s car showing the post-race crash with Vettel in Malaysia. I haven’t been able to watch it yet, but all accounts are that it puts blame for the accident squarely on Vettel. The stewards apparently didn’t have access to it during their inquiry.
Why?
From the link: *“ESPN has had a long commitment to motorsports, and Formula 1 is a crown jewel in the sport," Burke Magnus, executive VP of programming and scheduling, said in a statement. "
*
I wish my fucking name was Burke Magnus! 
Well, season is done. Lewis will be champion. Oh well. Always next year…
Don’t be so sure. Just as Vettel had two disasters, so might Hamilton, and there are four races to go. Hamilton leads by 59 points and there are 100 available. If Vettel were to win the next four races, then, well, it gets complex.
Because he rambles on long past the point of being interesting.
The last virtual safety car was bad news for Verstappen, though it’s likely he’d have traffic to deal with either way. One or two runs at Hamilton with DRS would have been nice.
I think it hurt Hamiltom more that Verstappen overall.
Lewis controlled the gap all the way through in a comfortable 2-3 sec range (I have no doubt he is being very careful with stressing the car at this point in the season) Max wasn’t able to get any closer to him until a) Lewis came up behind Bottas (and the car isn’t happy in disturbed air) and then b) after the VSC Hamilton had tyre temperature issues and vibration and it took him a bit to shake off.
Actually, the last VSC helped Verstappen, because the Mercedes takes substantially longer to warm its tyres than the other frontrunners. That’s why you see Hamilton bunching the field so much when the physical safety car is out.
ETA: ninja’d.
NBC’s frequent interruptions for interviews of McLaren brass are getting really annoying. I don’t care if McLaren personnel are talking over the commentators, but I don’t need a picture of the guy speaking covering a quarter of the fucking screen during a race or qualifying. Besides, literally the only useful information that has come from these sessions (three by my count) is that Stoffel lost places early at Suzuka because he was punted off by Kimi.
Happy to see Lewis closing in on a fourth championship, but my neutral observer half is disappointed that we’re not going to see the season come down to the wire. That is in turn balanced by the near endless scope for laughing at Ferrari for managing to fuck up three races in a row without assistance from anyone.
It’s also interesting to watch Lewis deal with Verstappen. The latter may win another race yet, because Hamilton doesn’t want to jeopardize his championship chances by dicing with him when second is practically as good as first. Also interesting to see that Lewis’ vibrations were coming from the power unit on changeups, not from the tyres. One wonders if he may have to take a grid penalty for a power unit replacement for the next race.
There’s a healthy respect there, nice to see. Lewis is in the enviable position of not having to prove anything by pushing hard for every win (though I suspect it burns somewhat when he knows he has to back off) and he’ll give up a place rather than go wheel to wheel until he secures the title.
Vettel on the other hand? it’ll be much more fun to see him and Verstappen racing closely, plenty of bragging rights and points at stake.
As for Lewis’s engine. He will take a hit for sure as there is no reason for him to try and avoid the penalty. A non-finish is a big problem but starting 5th or 10th? you’d still bet on him getting a top 4 finish and that’s all he needs for the next four races.
Really? With Vettel, Raikonnen, Verstappen and Ricciardo all capable of matching his race pace? He could easily still lose.
He’s scored in every race and only finished lower than fourth twice this year, and one of those was the Baku cockpit surround fluke.
The problem isn’t that Vettel is mathematically eliminated – certainly a DNF for Hamilton with Vettel on the top step of the podium would drastically change the outlook for the last 3 races. The problem is that Mercedes is a championship winning team, and Ferrari sent Vettel out with a known spark plug issue. I don’t necessarily mean as a dig on them; they’ve come a long, long way this year, and supplier issues are to be expected with such leaps in performance. But Mercedes isn’t having those problems. If anyone’s at risk of a mechanical DNF in the next few races, it’s not Hamilton.
Remember Hamilton’s engine blow-out last year?
But the other cars have got faster; Mercedes’ have not.
For all the last 4 races, if they all run perfectly and the tracks are right for both RB and Ferrari and not good for Mercedes then the likely lowest position he finishes is 5th. If he does that 4 times and gets 40 points it means that Vettel has to win all 4 races and not drop a single point. Even given the improvements that both teams have made that is unlikely.
Such a run would be like winding the clock back to 2009’s dog of a McLaren in the first half of the season.
Of course with a couple of retirements everything changes, as we’ve seen with Ferrari and that’s why I suspect Mercedes will play it safe regarding reliability and let Lewis’s pace do the rest.
Don’t forget things like Safety Cars. The point is that there is so much that could go wrong for Hamilton that it’s too soon to declare his victory. Sure it’s likely he’ll win but it’s not a sure thing.