F1: Who’s Taking the Checkered Flag at Zandvoort

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After 36 years Formula 1 will be going lights out at Circuit Zandvoort in North Holland, Netherlands and the 70,000+ fans will be decked out in orange and going crazy for their hometown favorite, and Pole sitter, Max Verstappen. The last time F1 held a race here at Zandvoort only 3 drivers (Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen) were even born yet so this will be one of the least known tracks amongst drivers. Only Yuki Tsunoda has never driven here at all before where most drivers have raced lower tiered circuits on this track but none of the drivers have any experience in a F1 car.
After an exciting qualifying session earlier today we had the familiar faces leading the pack with Max Verstappen narrowly taking pole position over Lewis Hamilton who took 2nd place and his Mercedes teammate Valterri Bottas rounded out the top 3. There was quite a few stoppages during the qualifying sessions where we saw both Williams’ drivers end up in the wall and it screwed up the timing for other teams. After a restart in Q1 drivers were coming out of the pits slowly to give each other more space and it ended up not allowing enough time for Red Bull’s Sergio Perez and Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel to complete their laps and record a time to get them into Q2. Perez will start the race in P16 and will have to make up alot of ground to cath the leaders and help teammate Verstappen in his battle with Hamilton and Bottas.
If you are not already you have to start paying attention to what Pierre Gasly is doing in his Alpha Tauri. After another great saturday Gasly finished in P4 and will start on the second row next to Bottas. AlphaTauri, for those of you that is unaware, is Red Bull’s second team and their drivers are part of the Red Bull team. And Pierre Gasly was Red Bull’s second driver to start last season and struggled a bit at the beginning of the season to get used of his new car. So team principal Christian Horner pulled the plug on Gasly in his first season with Redbull, before even the summer break, and replaced him with Alex Albon for the remainder of the 2020 season. Albon didn’t do much better in the Redbull second seat and the team was struggling to find a suitable teammate for title contender Max Verstappen. Meanwhile Gasly went back to AlphaTauri knowing he wasn’t given a fair shake to show what he could do with a top team like Red Bull and started to drive his ass off. He had the race of his life at Monza for the 2020 Italian GP where he pulled off a miracle win and it looked like he earned his way back in that Red Bull seat. Unfortunately Horner decided to look outside of the Red Bull program and signed veteran Sergio Perez. And after Gasly impressed again this week in the lesser AlphaTauri we saw Perez not even get out of Q1. The Red Bull seat is not an option at least for another year and I really hope another top tier team will give Gasly a shot.
After rumors that his seat is in jeopardy and he might not be driving in the upcoming 2022 season, Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi shocked everyone when he found himself on the 4th row in P7. Giovinazzi almost didn’t even get to Q3 if not for Latiffi’s red flag that ended Q2. The Alfa Romeo drivers’ front tire would not come off after he went to the pits during Q2 and he was unable to get more laps while stuck in the pit. But when the red flag came and ended the session prematurely other drvers were not able to get more laps in and Giovinazzi’s time held and he was still in the top 10. His pit crew struggled for a long while but were finally able to get the tire off and he was able to start Q3 in time.
Lights go out at 9 am Sunday and it’s going to be a great race. The Orange Army will be in full force cheering on home grown Verstappen as he looks to build his momentum from last week’s rained out/half points win.

ShowerSheriff

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