The last time Lewis and Max collided one was straight to the hospital while the other suffered a 10 second stop but still won the race. This time, I wasn't surprised when Toto Wolff claimed what Max did was to commit tactical foul as Max knew if Lewis got away he'll win the race. That was just his way of heaping pressure on the stewards to get the Dutchman penalised. And the Mercedes team milked the situation by making Lewis look like a very lucky victim. Their strategy worked wonders. Max was slammed a three grid penalty at the Russian GP with the stewards claiming he was "more at fault". They even sold themselves out when they said their decision was solely based on what happened during the race and not the fallout of the crash - Mercedes strategy to remind everyone that Lewis could've had his head crushed definitely got the stewards. The best Max will get next race is a fourth place start. With a paltry 5 points separating him and Lewis he may lose his race lead in Russia. With five races to go after Russia we should get ready for all the dirty tricks in the book these two and their teams will throw at each other.
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4 comments
A so called tactical foul is what Schumacher Snr did to Damon Hill way back in 95 (>=?) when he blatantly ran him off the road when he knew is race was over. Personally I think yesterday was a racing incident in that while Max technically had a kind of right of way I am not sure Lewis could get out of the way Besides as I said yesterday it showed poor race craft on Max's part. He had warmer tyres and would have had Lewis before lap end. He should have held back and used DRS to slingshot his way past Lewis.
I guess Max lost his cool seeing his rival ahead of him with fresher tyres. He is the biggest loser in this scenario except if he gets more point than Lewis in Russia.
Overall yes. He net gained in Italy because of the sprint but a 3 place deficit is likely to be a bigger cost unless of course his qualifying is 4 positions higher than Lewis' but he will have to do his thing and hope Lewis has a disasterous qualifying to achieve that or some kind of pit stop start for some reason.
Mercedes will never get a better chance of swinging the title battle in their favour with few races to go. They've had these chances and blew it before in past races with stupid decision making either with Lewis starting the grid alone or on different tyre component to the rest of the grid or Lewis pressing some magic button that cost him a race he should've won with Max already dead in the water. Let's see if they will finally make this count. Max has been dominant this year but he is still leading this title battle because of the unbelievable amount of error Lewis and Mercedes already made.