My favourite was the Sky F1 commentators going on that Bottas and Vestappen pitting at the end to try and get fastest lap was proof the extra point makes for more exciting races, like how.
The absolute state of F1 that pitting to try and get a fast lap (at zero risk due to the gap) and overtaking under DRS (and then them going on about how amazing a maneuver it was) are the hilights of the race.
Yeah, the highlight-reel will be pretty amazing.
"Look, he overtook with DRS! What a move! Look at how he flies past the other guy!"... at that point, the overtake is less interesting than the driver actually catching up with someone.
The Austrian stream I watched also claimed that the bonus-point was a true gamechanger for the championship and a worthy addition to the ruleset... Have they even looked at the point scores of last season? The point usually goes to someone in the top 3 anyway and by the end of the season, the difference in points between individual drivers on the top is so wide, even if someone managed to hog every single of these points, it would not make much of a difference in the end. It's a tiny bonus, but it's utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
The commentators also started to suck Hamilton's dick once he overtook Verstappen, too. They literally called him the "Talent of a century" and that the voices questioning his abilites grow fainter and fainter. Balls to that. Credit where it's due: He is not a bad driver and he does not make many mistakes, but given that he's driving for the team with the single biggest technological lead for the longest time in F1 history ever, talking like any of that was his talent speaking is simply ridiculous. I'd be really hard pressed to find any driver incapable of becoming champion in that car. Even Mazepin would be competing for the title, if he had some more experience in F1 I am sure.
Two things that come to mind:
On one hand: FIA should have stopped and thought about the state of F1 the moment they implemented DRS. It's a workaround to allow cars to pass each other even if the aero-setup causes a lot of turbulences to any car pursuing another car. It's a really artificial way to allow overtaking to happen and while it doesn't cause rubberbanding most of the times (by having two opponents overtake one another over and over in DRS zones), it does showcase that F1 has had an issue with its current setup and they should have changed the rules for aero-stuff way earlier, so overtaking can happen more organically.
And on the other hand: Maybe the marshals should grab a couple of Merc cars from the last few seasons and completely pick them apart, everything down to the last screw, check everything, add a shitton of sensors and look if there's any fuckery going on inside the engine (like what Ferrari did with the fuel pumps)... Mercedes is just way to strong, it really makes me wonder if they are even playing fair.
s for whoever Nikita's engineer is. Poor bastard must have the patience of a saint.
