BritishBean apparently there’s an issue with the new fuel and keeping it cool, so yeah it could will have been the heat, although with a night race it shouldn’t have been too bad.
Much as I’d rather have seen someone else win tonight, it’s only fair to note that Max didn’t seem as aggressive as he was with Hamilton last year. Whether that’s due to a bit of self reflection, or some tweaks to the rules to make it clear where the metaphorical line is, or maybe he doesn’t feel as threatened by Leclerc yet I don’t know. But he did drive well and cleanly. Which is where I took issue with things last year for the most part.
That said, he’s definitely still sounding quite volatile over the radio. The “that’s so unfair” thing could have been straight out of Harry Enfield, and he seemed to spend a lot of time trying to get people penalised rather than getting on with the job.
There’s two issues with that:
1/ is this the next workaround note that the teams don’t have a direct line to race direction?
2/ that is a very definite weakness that can be exploited by anyone in the front rows of the grid. If Leclerc can deliberately skirt the lines without crossing them then that’s a major way to distract max. I can’t imagine that they’re not already planning that, and may have even done it tonight given that Leclerc didn’t get penalised but came so close.