How Mercedes’ weakness cost Verstappen so dearly amid Hamilton’s rise in...

Given what’s at stake with a few races remaining and the pressure all the disqualification controversy has caused, as well as all those thrilling overruns in both the short and main races, Hamilton has confirmed his legend.

But it was all but forgotten at the start of the Interlagos main race when Verstappen reversed his loss in the short race by starting pole position against Valtteri Bottas.

The Red Bull driver got the better start this time from the left side of the grid and quickly put his car next to Bottas while the Finn got a “medium start due to a slight slip in the clutch”. But he continued to fight hard as he tried to regain the lead as they crossed Turn One.

He held on to the outside, but Verstappen slipped wide. The overtaking was solid, but fair, adding to Bottas’ nightmare first lap as he lost momentum the rest of the Senna and quickly had Sergio Perez beside him into Turn 4. The Mexican went to the outside and was much faster than Bottas who was on the inside narrow lane, causing Bottas to slide back into the exit safe behind Perez.

Verstappen had a 1.3sec advantage at the end of the first lap of 71, which was fine at that point in the race and Hamilton wasn’t on his mind. Speaking of Hamilton, he made good progress at Turn 1 before venturing past Pierre Gasly on the outside for Turn 6 and 7 to move up to seventh before securing sixth place, overtaking Sebastian Vettel on the outside of Turn 1 on lap 2. He then overtook Ferrari’s two successively over the next two laps before Mercedes ordered Bottas to clear the space for him at the same spot at the start of lap five.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing and Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes and Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing and Charles Leclerc, Ferrari and Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari

Photography: Motorsport Pictures

Hamilton was then behind the Red Bull duo, but the race was halted due to the entry of the safety car, with the need to clear the track of debris scattered in the first corners due to the accident of Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll at the beginning of the fourth lap.

After everyone crossed the pitlane for two laps, the race resumed at the start of lap 10, with Verstappen cleverly delaying the restart until the last minute, while Perez kept Hamilton behind. The leader quickly rebuilt the 1.3sec advantage he had previously enjoyed, while Perez began to face the pressure of Hamilton.

Perez demanded that his team pull Verstappen back a bit to give him the DRS, which Albin later did in the race and succeeded in before Gasly was able to get ahead of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon in the end. Doing so, however, would leave Verstappen extremely vulnerable to an earlier stop by either Mercedes, with the top four quickly slipping away from the Ferraris.

Perez rippled out loud on lap 18, but Hamilton made a breathtaking pass from the outside of Turn One. He delayed the braking surprisingly but stayed on the track and made it out of Turn 1 in front of the Mexican. But the latter did not give up and took advantage of the DRS system by heading into Turn 4 to regain second place from the outside, all of which contributed to extending Verstappen’s advantage to 3.8 seconds.

But Hamilton continued his attack and delivered an identical pass at the first corner, but it was decisive this time, as Perez was not able to stay close to him. The battle that everyone was waiting for has arrived. The fight for the championship resumed after being suspended by refereeing decisions in the earlier stages of the weekend.

After chasing Verstappen for six laps, Hamilton indicated that his medium tires started slipping. Up front, the Dutchman, who was like everyone else on Medium except Tsunoda on Soft, gave similar reactions to the Briton. So raging radio conversations about strategy entered the equation.

Mercedes made their sprinting first choice at the end of lap 26, calling up Hamilton to switch to “Hard” tires which both teams had never tested over the weekend, but were expected to be the mains for the race given the stark heat.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes

Photography: Motorsport Pictures

Red Bull responded to Mercedes immediately and called Verstappen on the next lap to switch to the same formula as Hamilton and was able to get back in front of him, after the latter got stuck behind McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo for a while. But the difference between them shrunk to 1.6 seconds.

But the various battles stopped again at this stage and for the third time after the first maintenance stops. After the virtual safety car system was used for the first time to clear the lane of debris strewn at the first corner after the Mick Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen incident that broke the Haas front wing, the system was re-implemented due to pieces scattered on the main straight line from the Lance Stroll car that continued Her injuries after his previous accident with Tsunoda. The safety car runs were short and didn’t have much of an impact on the lead battle.

But the second virtual safety car period had a special impact on the race behind Verstappen and Hamilton, as it allowed Bottas to make a near-free pit stop after he stopped two laps from Perez to take second place when the race resumed with all four on hard tyres.

However, the Finn was furious that the team had not tried to stay for long, and later said after the race that “it should have been a pit stop” and had a chance to “get second”.

But the events went as well as they did in terms of strategy, and now everything revolved around Hamilton’s chance of achieving his 101st victory in F1. The gap between the two leaders did not exceed 1.4 seconds at any point in the 12 laps following Verstappen’s first stop.

But Red Bull’s aggressive strategic decision broke that, with the team acceding to Verstappen’s previous request to be first in the second pitstop and the Dutchman already in to change his tires at the end of lap 40.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes

Photography: Motorsport Pictures

Mercedes had to make up its mind at the time when Max switched to other “hard” tyres. “We had been discussing the one-stop option, but it wasn’t an attractive option because if you miscalculated, you wouldn’t win the race,” said Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes track engineering director. “We felt we had a car to attack if we had a difference. Slight tire life.

So Mercedes waited until the end of lap 43 before calling on Hamilton to copy Verstappen’s strategy, despite the tire age advantage. This left the world champion with 28 laps to catch up and overtake his opponent.

But he fired a series of quickest laps after that to cut Verstappen’s advantage down to 0.6sec at the end of lap 46. It was the first time that Hamilton had been in the DRS behind his opponent and started putting pressure on him. But overtaking remained difficult, as Hamilton said at that point that “the Dutchman can generally keep up his pace”.

But just how difficult it was to overtake was made clear on lap 48. Hamilton moved to the inside line for Turn 1. It wouldn’t have actually led to any overtaking, but it did force Verstappen to react and move a little further from his ideal racing streak. This hurt his line and momentum in the rest of Turn 2 and 3, so by entering DRS 2 Hamilton quickly got close to his opponent and got ahead of him as they approached the break point and into Turn 4 left which was the only FIA with the FIA ​​keeping a close eye on the track limits.

But Verstappen did not give up. He got back on the inside line and pushed his nose to the top of the corner to retake the lead, but in the process of doing so he pushed himself off the track and into the exit safety zone, thus pushing Hamilton with him as well.

It was a controversial moment in the life of the race, as the videos from Verstappen’s car did not show the movement of his steering wheel, and race director Michael Massey, who noticed the incident and did not report it to the race management, said that the race management adopted a “let them race” philosophy in general in view of the different angles located. Perhaps the only criticism was that Massey wasn’t able to get the forward-facing camera videos on Verstappen’s car until after the race.

“We both tried to stay ahead by entering that corner,” Verstappen said when asked by Motorsport.com about that movement after the race. level of cohesion.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes

Photography: Motorsport Pictures

“That’s why I guess I wasn’t on top of the corner so the safe option was to go a bit wide. I was of course happy with the stewards’ decision to continue racing because I think the race was good overall.”

Hamilton’s assessment, on the other hand, was diplomatic: “I think I was ahead of him at first, I think he held on and the two cars went off the lane. Well I guess there wasn’t enough space for him so obviously I had to dodge him and get off the lane, but I didn’t think too much about what happened. “Obviously I’ll watch the replay, but it was a big fight and I really wouldn’t expect it. Our tires didn’t touch and that was fine.”

Hamilton had another chance in the same area 10 laps later, but Verstappen’s better streak in the early turns heading into the back straight was better with a ripple there, which resulted in him receiving a warning black and white flag from Massey, he had enough momentum to stay in Forward at the fourth turn. But that was different on lap 59.

Hamilton moved again in Turn 1 and again Verstappen responded. The streak of events ran almost identically to 11 laps earlier, but Hamilton moved forward enough this time to overtake by the brake area of ​​Turn 4.

“I got the experience from the previous try. I made sure I wouldn’t make that mistake again,” Hamilton said of his decisive third pass, adding: “I was determined and determined to get to the top. It was an amazing overtake, and that’s how the fight for the championship should be.”

On the other hand, Verstappen’s second set of tires was in poor condition, which the Finn felt “two laps before” to pass the decisive Hamilton, and he was “really struggling to have grip”. As a result, Hamilton was able to build an advantage of 10.5 seconds ahead of him at the finish line, while Bottas was unable to catch up with Verstappen despite the encouragement of Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.

“It was one of the toughest weekends, if not the most, given the things we had,” Hamilton later said, “but in terms of driving, I feel it was probably the best for me…”.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, in front of Max Verstappen, Red Bull

Photography: Motorsport Pictures

Adding to the excitement of this result is how Red Bull entered this weekend as the frontrunner.

The Austrian team took a convincing win there in 2019, and comfortably outperformed Mercedes in Mexico the previous week. In addition, Hamilton feared that the hot weather on Sunday would be a weak point for Mercedes, as the W12 suffers from poor rear-section stability during these conditions. All was well in the short, cold race, with Hamilton’s perfect exit from Turn 12 being a decisive factor in his overtaking succession. In addition, Red Bull did better overall in hot weather in 2021, and had better tire wear levels.

But that all changed last Sunday and Hamilton’s new engine has no doubt given him a performance boost, but there is also the suspicion that Mercedes could use a higher-power setting given there are only a handful of races remaining at the end of the season.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner felt the Silver Arrows “could use the Monaco rear wing here”, given the low rear section of their car, which Hamilton noted when he revealed he had “chosen a setting destination for the weekend that worked well”, although Mercedes She was silent about his explanation later.

Whatever combination made the W12 unbeatable last weekend, Hamilton was able to beat Verstappen at Interlagos.

Verstappen felt the second section “doesn’t have a lot of cornering but does cause a lot of tire wear”, as he was referring to Turns 6 and 7 at the end of the second straight, and the 11th left at the end of the second section. All drivers should not tire the tires too much at these points.

“Performance on the straights is very important on a track like this, and of course tire wear is also important,” Verstappen later said, adding: “I had to gain lap time in other sections to try to match Lewis, and that was in the middle section of course. My tires are more and my tires expired at some point trying to defend. But that’s how it goes.”

What it turned out to be at Interlagos was exciting, enthusiastic and inspiring, similar to what it has been like for the 2021 season so far. This race and the entire season will be remembered forever.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes

Photography: Motorsport Pictures