Bottas came to play. He was an actual threat for the pole. He messed up on the last couple of corners. Gave them tires a good smokin'.
He did better than I was expecting. Switching teams takes a little time to settle in from, but he's up to speed pretty quickly.
I don't think we can tell much from today. We still don't know how the cars will race each other wheel to wheel. My suspicion is that with the extra downforce they will disturb each other's air more and that will make following and overtaking more difficult. They will probably have to rely more on DRS, and if they are allowed to chop, block, swerve, and generally drive like little heathens, DRS is useless.
DRS is the easy way to pass, which is why drivers rely on it so much. Unfortunately you can defeat it very easily with a cheap swerve block. Instead of piling on the downforce, I would have rather seen them cut downforce (so they race in cleaner air), keep the big tires (so they have grip), ditch DRS and remove the "one move (swerve)" rule. That way they would have to race for it instead of pushing buttons or blocking.
The big danger of DRS is that it's the only chance you have, so you've got to go for it. The car ahead is defenseless, so he's forced it break the following car's momentum. With the closing rates so high, it's only a matter of time before one of them misjudges it and we have someone running over someone else's wheel at terminal velocity. We very nearly had that last year with Verstappen on Kimmi, though in fairness, the ridiculous rules allow that.
Let's hope it goes better than that though, and the wider tires will allow them to maintain grip in turbulent air. That would normally work, but I'm afraid the bigger downforce will negate that.
