Prior to lap 50 of yesterdays British Grand Prix at Silverstone I was wondering how much I was going to able to write about the race, there had been a couple moments of action, some good wheel to wheel racing but in all honesty it had not been a thriller. And then…….
As Valterri Bottas crossed the line to start lap 50 the sidewall of his left front tyre visibly started to crumple in on itself and as he neared turn 3 the tyre let go all together and he had to complete a full lap like that before being able to pit for new tyres. That was drama enough as Bottas had been in second place and although Verstappen in third had been closing down the second Merc a 1-2 finish for the World Champions looked certain. But then…….
Between that incident and the last lap Max Verstappen, now certain of finishing second made a pit stop to prevent a possible failure and try and snatch fastest lap and in so doing gave Hamilton out front a thirty second lead as he started the last tour, Lewis had been told over the radio to forget about trying for fastest lap himself and just bring the car home. As he accelerated out of Luffield and past the old pits complex his certain victory, his seventh at Silverstone was thrown into doubt as he hit exactly the same problem as Valterri, left front deflating and suddenly the race leader only had three tyres to get home.
That pit stop for the RedBull and the 30 second lead it gave Lewis was now invaluable, but would the leader still make it to the finish line before Max caught him? My gut feeling as I watched was that Max would catch and pass him at the very end but Lewis some how managed to keep enough speed in the car to take the win. Phew!!! What a finish I have never witnessed a driver crossing the line to win with three tyres before. And as if that wasn’t enough Carlos Sainz also had a failure of the left front tyre on the last lap and had to pit. If was 50 laps of relatively straight forward racing and then 2 laps of race changing drama and excitement.
It should be said that tyre management had been an issue for most and both Bottas and Hamilton had angry looking blisters on the front left for a while. The tyres that had come off of Verstappens car were also found to have some lacerations on them so there is no guarantee that Max wouldn’t have had the same problem if if had not made that last stop. Maybe without it he would have won but maybe he would have had his own failure. Whatever way you look at it he gained second place and fastest lap on a day when he was having a lonely drive in third all afternoon. He was quite rightly happy with that after the race.
One man who definitely wasn’t happy was Valterri Bottas. Despite being beaten to pole by Hamilton and never looking like threatening him in the race he was on for second which would have prevented Lewis extanding his lead in the title race by quite so much, but after finishing 11th after the late race drama he now sits 30 points back from his team mate. In this reduced and still not completely finalized season giving someone like Lewis that kind of buffer is not a good idea.
Eleswhere in the race there was drama on lap two as Kevin Magnussen and Alex Albon came together at Club Corner. It was a big disappointment for the Haas driver as had had a stella first lap. The incident put him out of the race and rsulted in a 5 second time penalty for Albon. The penalty was probably deserved in my view as Albon put his car into a space that was always going to get closed down. It was a good recovery drive from there on though as the second RedBull came back to eighth position at the flag.
That first incident brought out the safety car and it would reappear again on lap 13 when Kyvat had a very high speed shunt at Maggots, he was thankfully ok but the car was totalled and the clean up operation took around 12 laps. This gave everyone other than Grosjean a chance to stop, the Haas driver deciding that he had to do something different with the strategy to make headway. And in all fairness to him he seemed to have reasonable pace once the race got going again.
It was the Frenchman though that would come under scrutiny later in the race for his, shall we say robust defensive driving against Sainz and Ricciardo. He would be shown the black and white warning flag after the incident with the McLaren but didn’t appear to learn his lesson as he did something similar to the Renault later in the race. The kind of late moves in the braking zone that he was making are not right in modrrn F1 and he needs to be given some kind of penalty or disciplinary action to discourage further moves like it. He is one of the senior drivers in the sport and the chairman of the GPDA and really you would expect more from him.
I will finish this weeks race reaction with the biggest disappointment of the weekend as Nico Hiulkenburg wasn’t even able to start the race after the Racing Point team had probelms starting the car up in the pits. It was gutting for the German driver who had been drafted in at the last minute to replace Sergio Perez who had become the first person in the paddock to test positive for Covid -19. Sergio is well and is asymptomatic but had to self isolate and is suerly going to miss next weekend as well. Hulkenburg had done a great job all weekend to get himself back up to speed and ready for the race and it was cruel luck that the car let him down at the last. He will get another chance this coming weekend but some race experience in the car would have been very helpful for him.
Now we can look forward to another race at this brilliant race track this weekend and it should be very interesting as high temperatures are expected and softer tyres will be used meaning that strategically it will be a very different race, especially as the teams were having tyre problems already this weekend.
Bring on the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix
My F1 talk 