And Mercedes (Mclaren) being hopeless until the last 3rd of the season

And then you go back to the 50's when the number of championship races were in single figures and one of those was the Indy 500 which they rarely run in and 8 points for winning. Honestly the stats are too skewed.

Alonso's praise for Lance has total Machiavellian vibes about it.

He is using his "future World Champion" praise to cement his No 1. status in the team by saying "look how much I, a 41 year old driver is beating this future World Champion by", so who are you going to back?

The fake praise will also go over well with Laurence as pretty much every one up and down the pit lane and outside of it knows that Lance is only there because he is the owners son. Laurence can point to Alonso's praise and say "see, I told you Lance was good".

And then........expect that to all come crashing down when they give Lance the preferred strategy (which I thought at one point was what it looked like they were doing in this race), not take action when he takes out Alonso, and just generally be's Lance Stroll.

Don't think they'll win a race this season though