It was a weekend for everyone in Spa. What should happen to be a joyous and stimulating return in the few summer vacations turned into a heartbreaking and sombre weekend at which the Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert was fatally injured in a accident on Saturday evening.
For Anthoine Hubert was a rising star on the ladder to Formula 1. His Father Francois had been a rally driver but Anthoine took on the race track rather, winning the F4 name.
Drivers: We raced for Hubert
The 22-year-old Frenchman won the GP3 Championship last season and was rewarded with a contract with the Driver Academy of the Renault F1 team. Anthoine graduated to F2 and impressed winning on home soil in France and Monaco, and was in line to get a seat with a few of the top teams in the show for following year.
I didn’t really know Anthoine – I had met him a couple of occasions from the paddock with some mutual friends, but by most accounts he was a beautiful and popular guy. I interviewed Charles Leclerc after Qualifying at the Skypad when the incident occurred and neither of us understood how terrible it was in fact that it was. The reaction from greats such as Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost advised you how shaken we are nowadays when we shed a motorist.
There were lots of people in the paddock – in our Sky F1 group – and on media who wondered how motorists can carry on accepting the very exact risks and driving at high speeds through the corners. That ability to detach from the outside world when you place your helmet , and concentrate is exactly what makes racing drivers special.
In which someone was killed, I have been fortunate that in a race, I’ve only once been involved in 18 decades of race cars. This was Allan Simonsen at Le Mans in 2013 and that I remember hearing about it just as I’d set my helmet and put in the car and also my team-mate Brendon Hartley came to the pits to allow me to change . Possibly the fact that remain focused for another 22 hours and I had to drive straight away meant I – and the rest of the drivers in the race – were able to carry on driving flat out we were carrying.
It’s a defence mechanism which their mind is engaged in by all drivers. That feeling ‘it will not happen to us’ but every so often, tragically we are reminded by the game of the risks lurking around the corner.
If you speak with Sir Jackie Stewart regarding the age he raced in, he’ll tell you losing friends and competitions almost on a monthly basis was not uncommon and it is thanks to people like him and the FIA that people haven’t lost as many motorists in recent times. There will be a full investigation of course and there’ll be lessons which all people is able to learn but sadly motor sport is dangerous and each and every motorist – Anthoine comprised – takes every time we put into the cockpit of a racing car to the dangers.
As for the Grand Prix it was great to visit Charles Leclerc eventually get the win he’d. He’s driven after the disappointment of potential wins in Baku Bahrain and Austria during this season and all, it was good to see him get one over the line. Charles was devastating in Qualifying, beating his World Champion team mate by a of a moment for its sixth Qualifying and now.
In the race that he managed to break away from Sebastian with far much better tyre administration and pace. When Hamilton started to close the gap down, although it got a bit tricky at the end it turned out to be a performance.
Mercedes were conducting more downforce and that of course made it hard for them to overtake. In addition, it meant that they had great speed from the center sector of the lap and so we had a cat and mouse game where one car was faster than the other at different parts of the trail.
There’s not a lot more that Mercedes could have done – perhaps a stop one lap earlier would have decreased the deficit by a couple of seconds into Leclerc but it is not a race which they can be criticised by you .
Vettel seemed to endure with tyre degradation more than his young team-mate and also I wonder whether maybe Ferrari could have tried to run a bit more downforce simply to help him at the twistier middle sector of their lap since the benefit they had about the full power run during the very first sector was absolutely massive.
Ferrari should have more of an edge, when we go to Monza next weekend. There are corners than we have just a long corners which is the point where the front end grasp of the Mercedes is a step better than the red automobiles. They’d need to do week something quite wrong not to produce a victory in front of the loving tifosi!
Lando Norris was quite unlucky to not have a fantastic outcome in fifth while Alex Albon inherited the place at the conclusion after a push from 17th on the grid. The Thai motorist did a good job on his very first outing with the group – he was less than three tenths slower than Max Verstappen at Qualifying until he aborted his lap at the end due to this grid penalties which turned out to be an excellent attempt for his first session in the car.
In the racehe then made improvement in the second half to record a outcome and bided his time on.
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