[pob]

Belgium Race recap:
The story of the weekend was Hamilton taking a huge grid penalty and starting from the back for changing his power unit multiple times so he has enough new engines for the remainder of the season after suffering bad reliability at times this year. He came from the back row to a great third place.
Rosberg took the win easily, although Red Bull should be happy that Ricciardo was fairly close behind in second on a track where they should struggle.
Force India showed good pace with Hulkenburg in 4th and Perez 5th.
Ferrari's race went pearshaped at the first corner with Vettel and Raikkonen colliding with Verstappen. The first corner incident was probably Vettel's fault combined with Verstappen being a little overly optimistic . Verstappen was once again criticised for his late defensive moves when battling with Raikkonen, but the stewards didn't intervene. Vettel finished 6th and Raikkonen 9th.
Alonso had a great race coming from last on the grid to seventh for McLaren.
Bottas was eighth and Massa tenth for Williams.
Magnussen had a huge shunt in his Renault, and emerged shaken but was passed fit for the next race. This is the end of the crash:

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Italy Results

Titch takes cliptheapex's fifth victory of the year, which slashes the gap to league leaders f1world to 20 points.
Sportsbabble didn't place in the top 10 this race , but keep trying!
As always, if you made a prediction but don't see your name in the top 10 or list of also rans, please tell me.

Pos_nickname_______forum_______zdkf1_points__forum_points
1__titch___________cliptheapex______64____________25
2__king_arry_______ja606____________63____________18
3__onemanband______motorsportforums_57____________15
4__sgtbhaji________not606___________57____________12
5__manutddaredevil_ja606____________56____________10
6__dreggsf1________f1onboard________55_____________8
7__juliuscaesar____not606___________55_____________6
8__montecristo_____thefastlane______53_____________4
9__bigmangalhit____f1technical______52_____________2
10_teabagyokel_____cliptheapex______52_____________1
scores for also rans from sportsbabble:
stairs 43
sco 36
amelia 27


League Table
Pos_Forum__________Points
1___f1world_________272
2___cliptheapex_____252
3___not606__________171
4___ja606___________163
5___v2_______________87
6___sportsbabble_____86
7___motorsportforums_83
8___f1technical______80
9___f1onboard________74
10__f1forumorg_______50
11__thefastlane______44
12__garagistasf1_____36
13__forumula1________16


Individual Championship
Alcig from v2 leads on 563 points.
F1onboard's dreggsf1 has moved into second place on 558 points.
F1madgirl from f1world is now third on 551 points.

All players from sportsbabble:
nickname________points__pos_(/67)__pos_on_zdkf1_(/291)
amelia___________459_______21______________125
stairs___________450_______23______________142
sco______________416_______32______________186


Quali Trophy
Well done to onemanband from motorsportforums for scoring the maximum 3 points for best pole time guess on zdkf1.
4 other players got within 0.25% for 2 points.
10 players scored 1 point for being with 1%.
Cliptheapex's cider_and_toast still leads:
pos_nickname_______forum_____points
1__cider_and_toast_cliptheapex_12
2__manutddaredevil_ja606_______12
3__racechick_______f1forumorg__11
4__dreggsf1________f1onboard___10
5__pob_____________various______9
6__king_arry_______ja606________9
7__f1madgirl_______f1world______8
8__bls_____________not606_______8
9__vfc_cipher______f1technical__8
10_andykarter______f1world______7

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Race recap:
A bit of a boring race. Mercedes were much faster than anyone else, and the battle for the win was over at the first corner with Hamilton again struggling with his clutch giving him a poor get away gifting the victory to Rosberg. Hamilton just had to be patient to pass the two-stopping Ferraris to take second place. Vettel was third and Raikkonen fourth.
Ricciardo had a good race to fifth for RedBull, including what Martin Brundle called the overtake of the season when passing Bottas, who was sixth.
Verstappen had a quiet race to seventh, possibly due to having had a talking to for his aggressiveness.
Perez, Massa and Hulkenburg rounded out the points paying positions.

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Some news in the driver market:
Button will not race next year, but will have a 2 year contract as reserve for McLaren. He may come back after a year out if Alonso then retires.
Massa announced his retirement. He may be replaced by Canadian teenager Lance Stroll.
Perez has ended rumours of a move away from Force India, he will stay at the team.