In Pictures: Great Britain 2021
Lewis Hamilton wins dramatic British Grand Prix.
This year’s race at Silverstone featured a different format, just two practices, one on Friday, another on Saturday, a Qualifying on Friday afternoon, albeit not for Sunday’s Grand Prix, but for a Sprint race on Saturday afternoon. This Sprint race decided the starting Grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix. Confusing? perhaps, but it is the new system being pushed by the FIA and F1 rights holder. We might only see this new format at selected Grand Prix in the future with the next two events in 2021 yet to be announced.
As for the racing, FP1 was packed with cars on track trying to acquire as much information as possible before qualifying later that same day.
This particular qualifying saw Lewis Hamilton setting the fastest time and getting prime position for Saturday’s Sprint race. He was closely followed by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, teammate Valtteri Bottas and Charles Leclerc from Ferrari.
Saturday started with the second practice of the weekend and as had happened with FP1, most teams got as much time as possible to gather information and to prepare them not only for the Sprint Qualifying race later on but for the Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Sprint Qualifying was packed with action and did saw many drivers exchange places from Qualifying the day before with Max Verstappen winning the Sprint Qualifying, adding three points to the driver’s championship and taking first spot in Sunday’s Starting Grid. Behind Verstappen came Hamilton, Bottas and Leclerc. It also saw George Russell getting a three-place grid penalty for crashing into Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari and moving from an outstanding ninth place to twelfth. Nevertheless, it was Red Bull's Sergio Perez who had the worst Sprint Qualifying, losing places off the start and then spinning by himself without contact to having to start the Grand Prix from the pitlane.
On Sunday, everything was set for a fantastic race. There were 140,000 fans on the stands, a beautiful blue sky and a very warm weather. The race started and as expected, Lewis Hamilton was attacking Verstappen everywhere, until they approached Copse, Hamilton tried to make a move through the inside and although Verstappen did leave space, Hamilton's front left wheel ended up touching Verstappen's rear right and sending him at full speed to the barriers. The Safety car came out, and we all were relieved to see Verstappen come out of the destroyed RB16B, albeit very shaken. He was examined on track by the race doctors and taken to the Silverstone Circuit Medical Center for initial checks as he had sustained a 51G force crash. He was then flown by helicopter to a local hospital for scans and additional tests. Several hours later he was released, bruised but otherwise in good health.
As for the race, it was red flagged as the Red Bull had to be removed and the barrier repaired. Before the red flag, a charging Leclerc had passed Hamilton and was leading the Grand Prix. During the race, as the rules allowed, Hamilton's Mercedes was repaired as it had a cracked wheel resulting from the crash earlier on and a few loosened bits in the front wing.
The race was restarted and Hamilton pursuing Leclerc, who started having issues with software settings and losing time; Hamilton was fast approaching Leclerc, setting fastest lap after fastest lap. Then the Stewarts communicated the teams that Hamilton was being penalized with a 10-seconds time penalty, which he served during his pitstop. Hamilton came out and started frantically pursuing Leclerc, and two laps from the end he passed the Ferrari and took a dramatic win, his eight at Silverstone and his 99th victory in Formula One.
QUOTES FROM THE PODIUM
““It’s nicely overwhelming. It was such a physically difficult race. What great weather. We’ve got the best crowd. A home crowd is the best! Thank you guys so much. Honestly, there is nowhere we go where we see people like this. They ain’t got what we got. I’m so grateful to the fans. I wish everyone to stay safe as always and to get home safely but this is a dream for me today to do this in front of you all. I couldn’t have done it without the teamwork from Valtteri and the amazing effort from the team.
I’ve been in the factory and just giving it absolutely everything trying to uncover performance with this car with the guys and I’m just so proud of everyone for just continuing to work, even though we have had a bit of deficit. Today of course, I always try to be measured in how I approach… particularly in battling with Max, he is very aggressive and then today I was fully alongside him and he didn’t allow me enough space. But regardless of whether or not I agree with the penalty, I took it on the chin and I just kept working and I was like, ‘I’m not going to let anything get in the way of the crowd’s enjoyment of the weekend and the national anthem and the British flag’.””
““We have to look at the positives in this type of situation, despite the disappointment of losing the win in the closing laps. It was a challenging race for me. In the first stint, I had to make some changes on the steering wheel to manage the engine cuts I had. After that, I felt that we had it under control. I managed to pull away from the others and lead for the majority of the race. Unfortunately, Lewis was just more competitive on the Hards. I could feel his pace as he approached me and there was not much I could do.
On the upside, we were quicker than anyone else on the Mediums, which we did not expect. It was impressive. On the Hards, we had a little bit less of an advantage but still showed a great pace. I am very proud of how we have been working. The team has done an incredible job and fully deserves this podium. They also deserve a win, so we will keep pushing to make it happen if we get the chance.””
““I think the weakness today was the starts. On both starts, I was wheel-spinning quite a bit, a bit like Lewis yesterday and that made it a bit more difficult, And obviously, I had to react to the stop of Lando in the beginning so we stopped a bit too early to be competitive towards the end but at least we got Lando and I helped Lewis to win.””
