I haven’t written anything on this blog for the past few weeks, largely on account of me being quite ill. Thus, I’m using this article as a way of summarising my opinions of the last two F1 races and the last IndyCar race before both sports come back from their summer breaks, after which I will hopefully be more proactive in writing blog posts.

The Hungarian Grand Prix was painful to watch. What should have been a triumphant result for McLaren turned into a joke. Whilst on paper the result was a perfect 1-2, no one in the team left the race feeling happy. This was because of McLaren’s incompetence. They decided to pit Lando Norris two laps before Oscar Piastri in preparation for the final stint, telling Oscar that they would re-establish the order once the threat of an undercut from Hamilton in third was covered. Unfortunately, the communication between Lando and the team was poor, which is a worrying common occurrence. Lando’s engineer first tried to convince Lando to slow down in almost every corner, waiting for many laps until giving Lando clear instructions to give the position back. By this point, Lando was resistant to giving up a second win, which resulted in the team sending him messages that resembled emotional blackmail, such as reminding Lando that he has meetings with Oscar every week and subtly threatening that the team wouldn’t support him if he didn’t obey their orders. This was quite unprofessional communication on McLaren’s part, all caused by a situation they created in the first place. Thus, Oscar’s win felt tainted, Lando felt unsupported, and Lewis Hamilton just felt awkward in the cool down room. Only McLaren can achieve a perfect result and still find a way to ruin it.

Watching Verstappen’s Hungarian Grand Prix also caused me emotional distress. Max is evidently unhappy with the relative decline in Red Bull’s performance throughout the year. But he went a tad too far in Hungary. Max was frustrated throughout the race, regularly checking in with angry radio messages, in which he swore at his engineer too many times for me to feel comfortable with it. Eventually his engineer told him that his comments were childish, which was not the best thing to hear broadcast on live TV. And Max’s frustration boiled over onto the track as well, as he attempted an opportunistic lunge that ended in a collision with Lewis Hamilton, dropping to fifth place and losing his chance of a podium in the process. Few people conducted themselves well during the Hungarian Grand Prix and this did not make it a fun watch at all.

The Belgian Grand Prix was better to watch, albeit not full of wheel-to-wheel action. As the four top teams were so close in relative pace, it made overtaking incredibly difficult in Belgium. This resulted in clean air being king, as was eloquently worded by Oscar Piastri. Charles Leclerc started on pole, which as a Leclerc fan, was exciting. He also maintained first place by the end of the first lap, but alas, it was not to be. The Mercedes proved to have too much pace over the Ferrari for Charles to maintain his lead, as Lewis Hamilton made an early overtake and utilized the clean air he possessed to stay in the lead for most of the race. However, his teammate George Russell attempted an alternative strategy, only stopping once. Due to high tyre wear, this initially looked like an overly risky strategy that would result in Russell dropping down the order. However, George put in a fantastic drive, managing his tyres perfectly and keeping Lewis behind to take a fantastic victory.

However, whilst George’s performance was one to behold, it did not last. The team had miscalculated how much weight would be shredded from the tyres. This led to Russell’s car being 1.5kg underweight and resulted in his disqualification from the race. This was an unfortunate development, as no one wants to see the result of the race decided hours after the race has finished. This made me slightly disappointed in the weekend, although my disappointment was tempered when I realized that George’s disqualification meant that Charles finished on the podium. Because nothing makes me happier than a good result for Charles.

The IndyCar race in Toronto was a remarkable affair. Like most IndyCar street tracks the race ranged from processional to chaotic, bolstered by some shoddy driving along the way. Will Power was particularly at fault, foolishly crashing into his teammate Scott McLaughlin, ruining both their races and Power’s chances of taking points out of his championship rival Alex Palou. Other than that, it was a fantastic performance from Colton Herta and the Andretti team, with Colton taking his first win in a couple years, after a few near misses that he should have converted. I like Colton, so I felt good about the result. But to be honest, IndyCar needs far fewer street tracks, they are rarely fun to watch and taint the reputation of a sport that is so good on other tracks.

Thus, I did not really enjoy any of these races, although Belgium was an interesting watch pre-disqualification. That, combined with my persistent illnesses, has made it difficult to find the motivation to write on this blog. Hopefully this motivation comes back when racing returns.