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Someone check Chrill's blood pressure.

But Alfa doesn't have the wheel covers on.

I think this season really demonstrated my issues with F1. The racing was not actually good. The championship math was good, that's a totally separate question. Max and Hamilton barely ever raced each other without hitting each other or running the other off the track, and the only reason anyone can get close enough to pass is DRS.

More directly: how often, on Monday after the race, was the conversation actually "wow what great racing" instead of "well that should have been a penalty/that team is cheating/etc." Almost never. COTA maybe? But like nothing actually happened that race. And that's not just on the stewards. The rules and tracks are set up in such a way that they're forced to make calls, and the losing side will complain forever.

The new car is the only hope for good racing, but I'm sure the teams will find a way to make it impossible to be close to anyone.

The last two weeks were races by some definition, I suppose.

Personally, I think Verstappen was the better driver all season, including at the end. Mercedes certainly brought something incredible beginning in Brazil, but I think some of Max's qualifying laps show that he was having to push the car way harder to keep up. They were both great. The biggest difference is that I still don't buy into this narrative that Silverstone was actually just an example of Max being too stupid to win a championship. I don't think any championship-caliber driver backs out of that corner, he was easily ahead and Hamilton wasn't close to making that apex. I hate this entire argument. Without just getting absolutely taken out there, and Hamilton's free car fix in Imola, it's not really that close. I've seen Hamilton fans complain about Spa too, but there's every chance Verstappen comes out of there with a bigger lead if the race does run to full points.

Ultimately, I think F1 has a lot of bad rules, which are also applied inconsistently on top of that, and both teams and drivers started driving to pressure the race director/stewards into making calls from Silverstone onward.

ESPN wasn't clear about where the practices were airing, so I didn't see any of them.

Pretty sure those two seats will be De Vries and Albon.

Arguably both by lack of results.

I can't think of another recent driver who has held on to an F1 seat as long as Giovinazzi for basically no reason.

A second race at COTA seems likely. Unfortunately, it seems like it's going to be the week before the existing weekend, which conflicts with NASCAR being in Texas as well.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of people talk about an amazing race on Sunday... it was fine. It was good for what F1 can offer these days. A late race pass for the lead is better than no pass for the lead, but it's a DRS pass.

I'll take any one of Grosjean's passes in the IndyCar race over an entire race of DRS passes.

There seems to have been a bit of walking it back today, with Red Bull saying they're happy with his performance so far. I think both can be true anyway.

I think Perez has shown that he can be closer to Max than anyone since Ricciardo has been, while also backing up that the Red Bull car has unique driving characteristics that aren't immediately obvious. But with a brand new coming next year (as we've discussed elsewhere), I hope he does well enough to get a chance in that. Unless a driver massively underperforms or is terrible at car feedback, I don't think teams will be in a rush to make changes this offseason.

He was also fourth in qualifying in Portugal, only 0.15 down on Max.

I see the "Horner says Perez has to be closer to the front" stories have already begun. Thankfully they'll fire him at the end of the year so they can insert a different name into the same story next season.

The fact is, the only reason Verstappen even had a chance to win this week was because he beat Hamilton into turn one on the start. The reason Hamilton couldn't easily pass him (Barcelona) is the same reason Perez couldn't easily pass Ricciardo (Barcelona). If Hamilton had held the lead at the start, it wouldn't have even been close. So people can focus on the strategy and everything, but the reality is that the Mercedes was just way faster but they happened to be on a track where you wouldn't be able to pass even if your entire rear wing fell off down the front straight.

I'm glad to see it. I want to see if he and Mercedes can win under different regulations. Especially since the new regulations should give a little more influence back to each driver's ability to race other cars.

Canada hasn't been very good with the current car and regulations though.

More Swedes anyway. Could even be three next season.

I want to go to the 500 sometime, but I don't think I would want to go regularly. Dealing with an event with 300,000+ people doesn't really appeal to me.