Finnish Drivers Fail To Finish The United States Grand Prix

The inevitability of Lewis Hamilton winning his third Formula One World Championship title has hung heavy over the tail end of the season with teams and drivers all waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were, none more so than the Finnish drivers who are probably looking forward to the fresh challenge of next season as much as those that like to bet on sports in Finland at sites like ComeOn! Sportsbook are.

Finnish Drivers Fall Short

• Rain soaked US GP
• Valtteri out on lap 6
• Kimi out on lap 26

Lewis Hamilton won through in the United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, last weekend to take his third successive world championship title, despite stiff competition from his teammate and some of the most inclement weather the pinnacle of motorsport has ever seen. Indeed for a while it looked like the only way the cars were going to go racing was if the teams hastily converted them into submarines, attached sails or fitting more out-board engines, which might have suited the Finnish drivers better.

Hurricane Patricia which hammered into a thankfully sparsely populated part of the Mexican coast was so huge, the biggest storm ever recorded in the western hemisphere, had winds measured at over 200mph at its core, but up in Texas on the northern edge all it did was dump rain on Austin. Watching it on television the word “deluge” came to mind with something distinctly biblical about the scale of the adverse weather conditions. It was so bad they almost canceled qualifying altogether.

In the end they took the unprecedented step of holding the qualifying sessions on the actual day of the race, despite the conditions being only marginally better than on Saturday, and as the weather slowly began to improve the lap times came down and there was actually a race to be had. It was Nico Rosberg that ended up on poll just a tenth of a second ahead of Lewis Hamilton with the Red Bulls taking up the second row, the Finnish drivers having fared less well in the wet weather.

Finnish Drivers Get Wet In The USA

Valtteri Bottas’ Williams only managed a rather disappointing 12th place, his teammate Felipe Massa getting a sub-2-minute 9th place by comparison, and whilst Kimi Raikkonen did better by getting 8th place on the grid, Sebastian Vettel had grabbed 5th meaning that neither of the Finnish drivers had done as well as their teammates, nor as well as either one of them would have wished. However with Q3 not run as the rain came back everyone was willing to settle for just having a grid at all.

There had been rumors earlier in the weekend that the race might be postponed till Monday, which would have caused chaos with the television schedules, the commentators already having to blather their way through live coverage of sessions abandoned due to the overt precipitation, but in the end the race went ahead on schedule and those that took advantage of Finnish gambling laws to back their countrymen will have lost the lot because neither managed to finish the race.

Valtteri Bottas the junior of the Finnish drivers didn’t make it six laps into the race before one of his dampers completely failed causing him to retire instantly, and his teammate Massa was running well till on the 23rd lap a very similar problem befell him, meaning Williams got it’s first double retirement since Brazil in 2012 and has a serious issue to work out with its cars before the next race and indeed the next season if it wants to improve its chances of podium finishes.

Finnish Drivers Both Retire From US GP

Kimi Raikkonen, meanwhile, the second and more senior of the Finnish drivers, was having issues of his own as his Ferrari tangled with Max Verstappen (who eventually came home 4th) and went off into the gravel and hit a Rolex advertising hoarding. Kimi fought his way out of the gravel but the damage was done and just five laps later he was forced to retire as his right-front brake temperatures became alarming for the techs back on the pit-wall.

Of course it was Hamilton’s day, much to Nico Rosberg’s annoyance. The two had come close to crashing into each other on the first corner and Lewis had left Nico precious little road when taking turn one, but this if Formula One and you have to expect that sort of thing these days. Unfortunately Nico has never come to terms with not being as good a driver as his teammate and whilst the Finnish drivers failed to finish, Nico had to take the podium alongside his rival.

You would have been gambling news of Lewis taking the title wasn’t going to surprise Nico (Lewis’ lead all but unassailable for quite some time now) but that first lap move had soured the German visibly and after some boys-will-be-boys hat throwing between the two backstage he sulked like a child even as Elton John presented the trophy to his teammate. If Hamilton’s season has shown he has matured as a driver, Nico’s performance after the race on Sunday showed he hasn’t matured at all.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cYVi_YLgbwA