The Portuguese Grand Prix on Sunday will go down in history as the event where Lewis Hamilton set a new benchmark for career race wins by claiming win 92. Schumacher’s record of 91 had stood for 14 years and it is incredible that so soon someone has surpassed that, most of us thought we would never again see someone reach that number. I will discuss this achievement in more detail in a forthcoming blog post but for now it is enough to say that we witnessed a big moment of F1 history in Portugal this weekend. And the incredible thing is that Lewis will push that mark even further as he is not about to retire yet, a couple more seasons worth of victories lay ahead so he will be well into the hundreds by the time he actually decides to hang up his helmet.
Whatever you think of Lewis we are very fortunate to witness such a huge achievement and talent.
Aside from that what was the first, and who knows maybe only Grand Prix at Portimao like? In my opinion it is a great circuit, very challenging for the drivers with plenty of opportunity for them to get it wrong if a small error is made. The track is one of the circuits around the world where an F1 car is shown off at its best, plenty of elevation change, different types of corners, blind corners and although turn 1 is the only proper overtaking spot the rest of the circuit does offer close racing too. We saw this down through the filed with the likes of Perez and co going wheel to wheel through several corners.
Who knows if we will see F1 cars at this track again, it only happened this year because of Covid of course so the smart money says that this will be a one off, although I have to say that I will be disappointed if there are no more races here.
The race itself took a very exciting turn on lap one with Perez and Verstappen coming together, which forced a great recovery drive from the Mexican, and the Mercs being overtaken by the McLaren of Sainz as they were dealing with Medium tyres which were taking longer to heat up. There was even some spots of rain in the early laps to add to the challenging grip levels.
Seeing Sainz out front was brilliant for those early laps but Bottas and then Hamilton quickly found a way past as the softs started were and the medium tyres came into their own. Bottas had done well to get ahaed of his team mate early on to make up for losing out on pole on Saturday afternoon but by his own admission he lacked pace all day and Lewis was soon getting by with the aid of DRS into turn one, it was a relatively easy move and from then on Lewis controlled the race and pulled away. By the end Bottas was 25 seconds behind car 44, the biggest winning margin of the year so far.
Seventy seven points is the difference between them in the championship and title number seven is not far away now, it could be clinched as early as Turkey in two races time.
Verstappen got the best he could have in third and LeClerc was brillaint all weekend getting an impressive fourth for Ferrari, therfe are some definetly signs of improvement from the Scuderia. Vettel came home tenth to score a point but as we have seen all year was never on the pace of his young team mate. Strangely he even said during the course of weekend that he couldn’t get near his team mate in terms of what LeClerc was doing with the car. OK we have all seen this anyway but for a four time World Champion to say this publicly is very unusual. I think Seb just cant wait to get the season over with.
Driver of the day was either Sergio Perez who came back to seventh despite two penalties and his first lap clash with Max or Piere Gasly who drove another brilliant race to finish fifth for Alpha Tauri.
Kimi Raikkonen also drove a great race and was pipped for the last points paying position by Seb Vettel late on and ended up eleventh at the flag. He had thrilled everyone on the first lap as he had passed a whole bunch of cars to get to seventh place on his grippier soft tyres. He may be 41 now but he still has plenty to give F1 and if he is still around next season as the rumor’s suggest then he will be giving us more of the same.
A good weekend then, an entertaining race and history made. Portugal was a success and we now go to Imola, a race I am really looking forward to this weekend. Cant wait!!!
My F1 talk 