[morini]

Stay safe everyone its good to "see" you all.

Good to see you too Neil. In fact, nice to see so many members logged on and commenting during / after  the race. The place has been like a ghost town since winter testing.

Most of what you say is spot on but I'm not sure I agree with this circuit being a good one, I actually think the opposite and have never really liked it much. It's very difficult to follow / overtake without a tyre advantage, they put an extra DRS zone in and that hasn't helped either. Lewis pass on Albon early in the race was far too easy, he breezed on by before the braking zone was anywhere near. Kind of "not the answer". Like you, I don't like safety cars but unfortunately races like this one need them otherwise they'd not be interesting at all.

Are the Mercedes gearbox problems real? Anybody have any information on that? I was (still am) suspecting a lot of that was to discourage the drivers from taking each other out. Hamilton looked a lot quicker than Bottas in race trim (Jody pointed out on Friday that was the case and he was correct) yet Bottas was doing a determined job of holding position. The chances are they would have had contact at some point if they let them fight all the way. My gut says that they didn't really have major gearbox problems but it was a means of ensuring the one two finish.

Disappointingly I think the Mercedes performance advantage is way too big. This is only a 63 second lap and the gaps were enormous. Rumours are that the second race at this circuit could be wet. I'm hoping so as that may well level the field a bit (or not, we will see).