I’m on a short vacation, so I missed the sprint qualifying, the sprint, and the race qualifying.
I made time to watch the race on the bus from Honfleur to Le Havre, from the station to the accommodation, and then the rest of the race at the accommodation, going all the way with the phone in my hand to watch the stream.
Very good start for both Ferrari cars: Charles gets P1 and Hamilton P2, while Antonelli drops to 3.
Hamilton receives a 5-second penalty, apparently it was a jump start.
Oscar Piastri has a problem and loses a lot of positions, McLaren had a bad race.
Verstappen recovers quickly and gets behind Russell.
Antonelli stays on medium tires for a very long time compared to the others, hoping to switch to hard tires later and recover to catch Charles.
I think the plan would have worked well for Mercedes if not for a technical issue that forced Antonelli to lose time: pit in, come back on track, pit again, end up in 10th place, and also receive a 5-second penalty for exceeding track limits.
I was glad he had the initial problem, but on the other hand I felt bad because it was clear he wanted to do everything possible to stay in the race until the end.
Charles, Hamilton, Russell, Verstappen head to the finish, with Verstappen recovering for 3rd place.
Verstappen goes off track with 5-6 laps to go. Safety car.
It seems we have an emotional finish after all, with a restart from behind the safety car.
Hamilton is called to the pits because everyone expected 2 more racing laps after the safety car. With relatively new soft tires, he would have caught Russell even if he dropped to 2nd after Lewis’s pit stop.
The race does not restart and ends under the safety car. 🙄 That was very odd for me, Verstappen’s car was cleared and at least 1 lap could have been done in race mode.
Charles wins, Russell finishes P2 without doing anything and getting really lucky, and Hamilton P3 (if no further post-race penalty is applied).
