The two-stopper turned out to be not enough to provide an exciting race. This track would need somewhat of a drastic change to make the racing here exciting without taking away from the exceptional qualifying we get on the Saturdays.

Stroll despite being all over the place during the weekend, made the only overtake of the race. He demonstrated excellent car control out braking Hulkenberg into the Nouvelle chicane. Alonso who was almost assured of getting his first points this season had to end his race early due to a power unit failure.

Hamilton was the only who benefited from the two-stop rule and was able to get P5 with the timely stops. Charles got close to Norris’ tail but had no realistic chance.

The teams opted to use their second driver to slow the field down and created a gap for his teammate. Lawson did this brilliantly and helped Hadjar finish P5.

Sainz and Albon did this too and managed to get both the cars in points. Mercedes’ race got worse after Albon slowing the pack frustrated Russell enough so much that he decided to cut the chicane and get ahead of Alex. He rightfully got a drive-through penalty for that. It looks like Mercedes would like nothing more than to forget this weekend.

Verstappen went long into his stints hoping for a SC/VSC to get a cheaper stop but except for the VSC caused by Gabriel the race was uneventful in that department too. Tsunoda was lucky enough to not get back ended by Gasly who had a brake failure.

The weekend ended with drivers suggesting interesting ways to make the race more exciting. Which included suggestions like drivers having a button to open sprinklers around the track (Russell) and Cars having an addon to throw bananas like Mario Kart (Verstappen).

Both championships are heating up with Norris 3 points away from Piastri and Verstappen lurking close behind. Mcl have a bit of a lead in constructors but the 2nd (Merc), 3rd (RBR), 4th (Ferrari) are separated by just 5 points.