The European Grand Prix was held in Azerbaijan. It is here where this posting for the Haas F1 Journal picks up….
Azerbaijan is a small country on the west coast of the Caspian sea, you know Europe. To the west Azerbaijan shares a border with Armenia. As a kid I feld weird because no one in my school ever heard of Armenia, and my mother’s parents both came from Armenia. My father’s parents both came from England and I inherited his skin tone, so I look European. But never in the history of my family or the entire Armenian race have they even been considered European. Here is a little video clip from my mother regarding the “Azerbaijan in Europe” fiasco… Select that link and you will hear Veronica has to say about that!
The race… The race did not fail to disappoint. I expected a boring race and those expectations were met. The course looks like a Google maps route for the pizza delivery guy. The track was divided into two sections, old and new. the old section had that iconic castle and a few nice turns.. the new part of the track consisted of many right hand turns. the racing was almost like stop light to stop light. the twitter feed during the race was wildfire because people were so bored from the race.
The one thing that I noticed were the stark streets. There were relatively no fans. The camera’s would pan as they followed cars around the track and there were no bystanders. No kids in trees. the race looked like it was being held on a movie set. During the race I stated on twitter that the race had an “erie” feeling to it. We later learned that the FIA hung backdrops over ugly buildings. these backdrops were painted to look like beautiful homes, and on TV it worked.
So my attitude towards this race is not healthy to begin with.
Romain Grosjean re-established himself at the team leader by out qualifying and finishing Esteban Gutierrez. Grosjean qualified 13th while his team mate Gutierrez qualified 16th. they finished 11th and 15th respectively.
There is nothing special about this race worth noting, and that is what makes this race special. With a workman attitude, the Haas F1 Team has brought home both cars for another complete race. Their mechanical reliability has stood up well. AMG Mercedes only has two DNF’s (Did Not Finish) this year. Haas F1 has three. Ferrari has also had three DNF’s with a DNS (Did Not Start) also thrown in, which is worse than a DNF. So that puts Haas second in terms of reliability with Williams and tied with Red Bull who has 2 DNF’s and a DNS. The Haas F1 Teams reliability is up there with the most experienced teams in the history of F1. Their results are not very shiny and it has been a while since we’ve seen points.
The Haas F1 Team is on it’s first time around the F1 carrousel . They’ve got a lot to learn as they collect new data for every track they visit. But every race they are bringing it! Let’s get out of this place and head to Spiegel Austria!