The race, in a nutshell, was Seb vs Bottas vs Lewis. The rest were either slow today (e.g. Daniel, Kimi), or had technical failures (e.g. Max).
Start - good start from BOT (in 1), HAM (in 2), VET (in 3). Seb had the racing line and the better grip vs Lewis, and ended up driving around the outside. The top 3 (BOT, VET, HAM) stayed in formation for 8-10 laps, till VET did an undercut pit stop. A safety car brought the field in a couple of laps later, with the 2 Merc drivers doing a back-to-back stop. Merc screwed up BOT's stop (over 6 secs), which backed up Lewis enough that he got a 5 sec penalty for holding up RIC in pit lane (fair, IMHO, as he was trying to hold RIC at bay). To add insult to injury, his stop was also over 6 secs. The sum of all of this was enough to put HAM 20 secs behind.
Mid race - Mercs faster, but Seb in front.
End race - HAM drove like a wild thing, overtaking BOT and leaving him looking decidedly the #2 driver, but he did not have enough laps to make it up to Seb to have a real race. Shame really - we are still waiting for a competitive last 15 laps between the 2 world champs.
Result - another win for Seb, with Lewis 2nd, and Valterri 3rd.
p.s. 0.02 secs difference for HAM being #2 not #1 in quali, leads to him being on the dirty side on a sandy track, which leads to him being overtaken on the race start, which leads to his pit stop being compromised, which leads to him coming 2nd. Small differences...
