@martin-futter I intended to Lay Hamilton before I knew it was raining, the reason for that was the short run to the first corner with Max alongside. I was expecting a possible contact in that first corner, not a major impact but enough to slow them down and possibly let Bottas through to the lead or Max getting the better run away from the contact, something he often does. After that initial contact, if it happened that is, I intended to trade out right away. If no contact or overtake, I could see a likely change of lead at some point in the first half of the race even if only temporary through the pit stops. You can boil this all down to one thing - I didn't expect Hamilton to get the win easily. I expected a decent fight & thought it would be enough to get a decent trade.
Then it rained, screwing up my expectations but increasing the chances of a good scrap. Hamilton is good in the wet but so is Max. This new short track (ruined) layout in Germany has been decent for overtakes & is tough in the wet, I thought there was a very high chance of spins, crashes & overtakes and it delivered plenty.
Hamiltons lay SP was odds on, which seemed good value to me given the circumstances. The big thing I missed was the superb performance from Vettel, I really didn't expect that, he had to overtake so many cars, I thought he would definitely go off the circuit or spin at some point but he drove like the Vettel of old. He would have been a very good B2L.
Next race will likely be back to normal with a 1-2 qual from the mercs, 3,4,5 & 6 the red cars and red bulls.
I should just point out that with hindsight, I got lucky with the lay of Hamilton, the team cocked up his race and all of his troubles were down to that wrong tyre choice, if he'd refused to go onto slicks, which was his instinct, he would almost certainly have been on the podium & likely on the top step. I stick by my decision to lay though.
