THE TURKISH GP IN 3 KEY MOMENTS
F1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 16
1 Red Bull minimises losses on Mercedes’ day
Valtteri Bottas rightly hailed his victory from pole position in Turkey as “one of the best races I’ve ever had”, but it wasn’t enough to stop Red Bull’s Max Verstappen reclaiming the lead of the world championship. While Bottas led imperiously throughout, apart from a brief period after his sole pitstop, team-mate and title contender Lewis Hamilton had a more eventful run to fifth.
A strategic engine change, adding another internal combustion element to the pool for the title run-in, consigned fastest-in-qualifying Hamilton to 11th on the grid. He had the pace to overtake on the wet and slippery Istanbul track, rising to ninth on the opening lap and then slicing through the field quickly after spending eight laps bottled up behind Yuki Tsunoda’s Alphatauri, but a late call to pit for fresh intermediates dropped him from a potential third place to fifth at the flag. Second place, albeit 14s down on Bottas, was enough for Verstappen to move ahead in the points once more, with teammate Sergio Pérez joining him on the podium.
As at Sochi, Hamilton obeyed the Mercedes team’s instruction to pit only after challenging the wisdom of the call, but this time he lost out as a result – or did he? Only one other driver, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon, managed to make it to the flag without stopping on a day when conditions were never right to switch to slick tyres.
Damp conditions dictated intermediates at the start, and intermittent drizzle kept the track far enough away from the crossover point to make the race a question of tyre management on this occasionally unpredictable member of Pirelli’s family. When Aston Martin dared to be different and put Sebastian Vettel on medium slicks mid-race, he barely managed to keep his car on the asphalt for a lap before calling in for a fresh set of inters.
The need to extend the life of the inters – in anticipation of drier conditions which never arrived – kept the order up front static in the opening phase of the race as Bottas eased away from Verstappen. By mid-distance, as the treads on the inters were wearing down, teams were facing a critical decision: the safe choice of fresh inters, or the risk of leaving drivers out as their first sets reached unexplored levels of wear. After all, Hamilton won here in 2020 after doing most of the race on one set of inters…
Red Bull brought Max in at the end of lap 36 and Mercedes responded with Bottas a lap later, enabling Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc – clearly set on a no-stop run to the flag – to briefly take the lead. Pérez, pressured by Hamilton, also pitted. But Hamilton was adamant that his own tyres were OK.
When Hamilton first dug his heels in, his logic was impeccable: he was just three seconds behind Verstappen and lapping at a similar pace. If conditions changed over the remaining laps, dictating a change to slicks, he might have been in with a chance of winning.
But Leclerc’s dramatic fall-off in tyre performance prompted Mercedes to over-rule Hamilton. The potential downsides were now too big – the lesser of two evils was to pit (lap 50) and come out ahead of sixth-placed Pierre Gasly rather than behind him.
“In hindsight, we should have pitted 10 laps earlier and fought it out on track and probably finished third or fourth,” said team boss Toto Wolff. “But there was much more to gain from the other more dynamic choice.”
2 No recriminations at Ferrari over Leclerc call
Neither Charles Leclerc nor Ferrari expressed any regrets over the failure of their audacious attempt to snatch victory in the Turkish Grand Prix.
The relatively conservative pace of the leading duo in the opening stint meant Leclerc was only eight seconds behind when Verstappen and Bottas made their pitstops, enabling him to take the lead. At the end of Bottas’s out-lap Leclerc was almost seven seconds ahead, which would have been even greater had he not slithered off at Turn 12.
Initially Leclerc was able to maintain the gap and he began to discuss the possibility of staying out. This was perfectly legal since the race had been declared wet, removing the requirement to use two different dry-weather tyre compounds.
Ultimately Leclerc’s tyres lost performance and he fell behind Bottas, then he pitted for fresh inters and dropped to third, which he lost to Pérez when the new rubber went through a graining phase.
“For the first five/six laps we were actually more or less in line with the pace,” Leclerc said. “For me it was clear that it was not just rolling the dice. I was quick and we were all confident with that choice.”
“As Charles said, at the time when we stayed out, the performance was okay,” said team boss Mattia Binotto. “But then the track changed, it was drier, and we had to come in.”
3 Points for Gasly despite penalty
Pierre Gasly raced to sixth despite incurring a five-second penalty for contact at the first corner. Starting from fifth, Gasly found himself ‘sandwiched’ at Turn 1 with Pérez’s Red Bull on the inside and Fernando Alonso on the outside. His front-right wheel clipped Alonso’s left-rear, tipping the Alpine into a spin.
The penalty seemed harsh given that no sanction was imposed for a similar contact between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen in Imola. But FIA race director Michael Masi insisted the circumstances were different in that Gasly was “wholly or predominantly” to blame.
“For ease of interpretation, let’s call it, if someone is wholly to blame on lap one, it will result in a penalty,” he said. “If it takes two to tango and it is on lap one it would likely not result in anything.”