No one cares about Perez. He is the ultimate non-factor.

Part of me loves that Mercedes had a terrible race. The other part of me wishes that Bottas could have actually brought himself back into the title fight. I don't think Lewis will have another weekend like that for a while.

I erased from my mind the fact there is a title on the cards. I think we can have a very fun second half of the season if the teams accept Hamilton and Mercedes will win it and take more risks.

If Bottas keeps struggling, we may even have a very interesting battle for 2nd place in WDC. I think Verstappen would love to clinch it.

Bottas crash made me think we are closer to have Ocon in Mercedes. And having Verstappen, Leclerc and Ocon at the top 3 teams is something I find very exciting.

You’re making it seem like Bottas is completely hopeless.

Sure he's much better than being hopeless. It' just that he's disappointing compared to how he performed at the beginning of the season. Giving people hope for a championship fight. Which is now gone. And therefore hopeless.

“Bottas being Bottas”, what does that even mean? In 11 races Bottas has finished on the podium 9 times with Verstappen only beating him twice, in Austria and Germany.

You’re making it seem like Bottas is completely hopeless.

There are many ways to see that. He's beaten Verstappen more often than not but he's closer to Verstappen rather than to Hamilton in WDC.

Also, it intrigues me how poor performances in the top teams are so poorly punished. Leclerc was 0.6 slower than Vettel and that was still enough for a P3 in quali. Bottas was 30 seconds behind Hamilton in Bahrain and that ended up enough for a P2 in the race - imagine being beaten by a teammate by 30 seconds in a middle-pack team, that would mean a huge deficit in most of the cases. So, in some cases, a podium finish hides the fact a driver had a poor race because there wasn't much competition around.

Bottas is a driver who has some glimpses of brilliance. But he doesn't seem to sustain the top of his game trough a whole season. A good Mercedes and somewhat hopeless drivers seem enough to keep him consistently on the podium.

None of this is new. Look back at F1 history and you'll see big performance gaps between teams and teammates. Small(er) performance gaps is something that really only emerged from the early 2000s.

Is Bottas a top driver? Yes. Is he a F1 great? Unlikely. Putting it another way, Bottas is today's Gerhard Berger. A phenomenal driver that is extremely quick and very talented, can be great on his day, but unlikely to be a world champion. While team mate to Senna, Berger would grab poles and lead races but more often that not fall back. He could not sustain the challenge against Senna across the season. And before anyone criticizes my comparison, I will state that I'm not suggesting that because Bottas = Berger then Hamilton = Senna.