@LewisHamilton claims brilliant #BrazilianGP victory after starting 10th. #F1 #SaoPauloGP

Hamilton Brazilian GP victory – Lewis Hamilton clinched his 101^st-career victory at the Brazilian GP snatching the victory from title-rival Max Verstappen with 12 laps to spare after starting 10^th on the grid.

 

 

Verstappen finished second in-front of Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas, with the Dutchman given a black-and-white flag from the FIA for his defending against Hamilton at one stage, although escaped an investigation by the stewards, which saw both championship contenders going off track.

 

When the 71-lap Brazilian GP began, Verstappen got the better getaway this time from the left-hand side of the grid and was immediately alongside pole-sitter Bottas, who held on around the outside of turn one.

 

But Verstappen ran the Finn out wide on the exit of the first part of the Senna Esses sequence to secure the move and take the lead.

 

 

Just behind, McLaren’s Lando Norris got a great launch off the line alongside the slow-starting Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in third place, with the Briton going far to the right of the circuit as it passed the SF21, but as Norris fell back left in preparation for the opening corners, the duo tangled, and the McLaren picked up a puncture.

 

Whilst Norris ran off the track and dropped to the rear of the field, Bottas’s slower line through the opening sequence after being almost fully off circuit at the turn one exit meaning Red Bull’s Sergio Perez was able to run alongside him as they charged down the second straight.

 

As they braked for turn four’s downhill left hander, Bottas went wide as he could not hold his line, giving Perez third as the two Ferrari’s – lead by Charles Leclerc after Sainz’s poor start – and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly also momentarily shot through the turn four run-off area.

 

Verstappen had a 1.2 second gap at the end of the opening lap, by at this point Hamilton already made up three places from his 10^th-place starting spot and then overtook Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel to grab sixth at the start of the second tour.

 

The Briton passed Sainz and Leclerc at the same spot in consecutive laps, with Bottas then ordered to let his Mercedes team-mate by at the beginning of lap five and gave Hamilton third place.

 

But on the next tour, the safety car was deployed, so the marshals could clear a large amount of debris at the opening corners, which followed Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda – the only driver not to start on the C3 yellow side-walled medium compounds, with the Japanese driver running the C4 red-marked softs – tangling at turn one as they battled over 12^th place and Tsunoda losing his front wing.

 

The race went back to green on lap ten, with Verstappen waiting until he was halfway down the grid slots before pulling clear, with the two Red Bulls able to keep out of Hamilton’s attack range behind.

 

Verstappen rapidly restored his 1.3 second advantage over team-mate Perez, who had Hamilton 0.4 seconds behind him, but then the Grand Prix was stabilised once more with the virtual safety car as the marshals cleared more debris at turn one – this time coming from a clash between Haas F1 Team’s Mick Schumacher and Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen at the back of the pack, with the Haas VF-21 racer suffering a damaged front wing.

 

The race went green once more halfway through the 14^th tour, with Verstappen’s gap maintained and Hamilton back at Perez’s rear again.

 

The top four immediately moved clear of the Ferrari duo, lapping in the low 1:14’s with the rest in the 1:15’s or slower.

 

Perez asked his Red Bull team for Verstappen to give him DRS assistance as he fought to keep Hamilton behind him, but the Dutchman continued to pull clear, with his lead 2.4 seconds at the beginning of lap 18.

 

Here Hamilton used DRS to get a good slipstream to be on Perez’s outside and the Briton moved ahead with a solid move late on the brakes at the left-hander, but the Red Bull driver hit back with DRS down the second straight and reclaimed second with a similar brilliant overtake to the outside of the turn four left-hander.

 

A tour later, with Verstappen’s lead up to 3.7 seconds as the following duo battled, Hamilton made the same move, but Perez was unable to stay in his wake and the Mercedes breezed into second.

 

He at first ate into Verstappen’s gap by a few tenths running in clear air, but the Red Bull driver gradually responded and increased his lead back towards the four-second mark as their mediums began to lose grip.

 

Now a two-car fight at the front, Mercedes brought Hamilton in at the end of the 26^th tour for a set of C2 white-branded hards, with Verstappen stopping a lap later.

 

Although Hamilton’s undercut advantage was reduced by having to pass McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, the earlier move to the fresher tyre meant the world champion cu Verstappen’s lead to just over a second.

 

After the leaders faced a second virtual safety car on lap 30 – called for more debris, which came off of Stroll’s Aston Martin as he raced by Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi down the pit-straight, a legacy of his earlier clash with Tsunoda, for which the AlphaTauri driver was given a 10-second time penalty – Hamilton was running out of DRS range behind his championship rival.

 

Red Bull reassured Verstappen he was continuing to be quicker in sector two, as he had been all weekend, with Hamilton’s less draggy F1 W12 EQ Performance racer quicker along the straights, which makes up most of the lap at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace.

 

By this point Bottas was up into third place, which he gained after pitting during the virtual safety car meaning he was able to jump Perez, who made a pit-stop the tour after Verstappen.

 

The gap between front-two receded and flowed slightly over the next ten laps, with Red Bull then opting to trigger the second round of pit-stops at the end of the 40^th lap – with Verstappen coming in for a fresh set of hards.

 

Mercedes left Hamilton out longer for three more laps, after which he emerged 2.6 seconds behind Verstappen – having momentarily looked like he might left out too long to run – as he was at the Circuit of the Americas.

 

Hamilton was much faster in the final stint, posting a series of fastest laps in the low 1:12’s and high 1:11’s, which meant he cut into race leader Verstappen’s gap and finally reached DRS range.

 

On the 48^th tour, just after Hamilton make a small move to the inside of turn one, to which Verstappen reacted, the Briton was close enough to make a move into turn four.

 

Although Hamilton got ahead of the Red Bull on the outside line, Verstappen charged back on the inside and pulled back towards the Mercedes, the pairing going side-by-side off the track on the exit of the turn four left-hander, but with the RB16B narrowly in-front.

 

The incident was noted by the stewards, but they decided that the investigation was not necessary, which made Mercedes furious in it’s discussion with Race Director Michael Masi.

 

Verstappen held his lead at just under a second over the next stage of the Grand Prix – at one point weaving left-and-right down the other straight, which gave the Dutchman a black-and-white warning flag, as Hamilton mounted a second attack at turn four, this time failing to get far enough alongside the Red Bull meaning Verstappen had to firmly defend as he did before.

 

But with 12 laps remaining, Hamilton again forced Verstappen to react a little after a look into the inside of the opening corner, which meant the Red Bull was slower down the second straight once more after being on the less ideal line through the rest of the Senna Esses.

 

Hamilton was therefore much closer to the Dutchman with DRS this time and got ahead before the braking zone, the seven-time world champion swept the Red Bull from the outside to the inside just before the left-hand fourth corner and sealed first place.

 

Hamilton pulled clear over the final 12 tours to claim the Brazilian GP victory with a 10.496 second gap to Verstappen, as Bottas could not meet Mercedes boss Toto Wolff’s requirement to “go and get” Verstappen – as the Finn finished three seconds behind the Red Bull in the final podium place.

 

Perez was on course to finish not far behind Bottas in fourth before Red Bull opted to pit the Mexican on the final lap to snatch the fastest lap bonus point on a set of softs right at the end, which he done so, as behind him Leclerc lead his Ferrari team-mate Sainz to a fifth and sixth place for the Scuderia.

 

Gasly fought by the one-stopping Alpines later on to recover to seventh place on his two-stop strategy, with Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon ending the race in eighth and ninth respectively.

 

Norris claimed the final point on offer finishing tenth after his one lap loss was negated by the deployment of the safety car and the Briton rose back into the points – aided by McLaren team-mate Ricciardo retiring late on with a power issue and Stroll also forced to end his race early not long after.

 

Aston Martin’s Vettel was 11^th and in-front of Alfa’s Raikkonen who ended the Grand Prix 12^th and Williams Racing’s George Russell who came home 13^th.

 

The other Alfa of Antonio Giovinazzi finished the race 14^th and ahead of AlphaTauri’s Tsunoda who took 15^th and Latifi 16^th in the other Mercedes-powered FW43B racer.

 

The two Haas VF-21’s of Nikita Mazepin and Schumacher brought up the rear.

 

***In breaking news, Hamilton was hit with a $5000 fine for breaching Appendix L Chapter III Article 4 of the FIA International Sporting Code for undoing his seatbelts while in motion on track. The Briton also picked up an additional $20,000 suspended sentence for the end of 2022.”

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2021 Brazilian GP – The Top Three

 

 

2021 Brazilian GP Winner – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W12 EQ Performance:

“What a race, the team did an amazing job, Valtteri did a great job. I was pushing as hard as I could. From last on the grid, and then another five-place penalty – I think that’s the hardest weekend I’ve had. Things kept going against us, but it just shows – never give up, keep fighting. Never, ever stop fighting. It feels like the first [win].”

 

2^nd Place – Max Verstappen, #33, Red Bull Racing-Honda, RB16B:

“We were just missing a bit of pace, but we gave it our all and had fun. We still have a good points lead, today was a bit of damage limitation. The coming races we’ll bounce back.”

 

3^rd Place – Valtteri Bottas, #77, Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team, F1 W12 EQ Performance:

“The start was quite tricky, I’m disappointed with the start and the first lap. Towards the end the pace was okay, I thought we could have done a one-stop quite easily. Lewis did an amazing job today.”

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Formula 1 Heineken Grande Premio De Sao Paulo 2021 Race Results Classification (71 Laps)

 

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	LAPS	TIME/RETIRED	PTS
1	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES	71	1:32:22.851	25
2	33	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING HONDA	71	+10.496s	18
3	77	Valtteri Bottas	MERCEDES	71	+13.576s	15
4	11	Sergio Perez	RED BULL RACING HONDA	71	+39.940s	13
5	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	71	+49.517s	10
6	55	Carlos Sainz	FERRARI	71	+51.820s	8
7	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI HONDA	70	+1 lap	6
8	31	Esteban Ocon	ALPINE RENAULT	70	+1 lap	4
9	14	Fernando Alonso	ALPINE RENAULT	70	+1 lap	2
10	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN MERCEDES	70	+1 lap	1
11	5	Sebastian Vettel	ASTON MARTIN MERCEDES	70	+1 lap	0
12	7	Kimi Räikkönen	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	70	+1 lap	0
13	63	George Russell	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	70	+1 lap	0
14	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	70	+1 lap	0
15	22	Yuki Tsunoda	ALPHATAURI HONDA	70	+1 lap	0
16	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES	70	+1 lap	0
17	9	Nikita Mazepin	HAAS FERRARI	69	+2 laps	0
18	47	Mick Schumacher	HAAS FERRARI	69	+2 laps	0
NC	3	Daniel Ricciardo	MCLAREN MERCEDES	49	DNF	0
NC	18	Lance Stroll	ASTON MARTIN MERCEDES	47	DNF	0

* Provisional results

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2021/races/1104/brazil/race-result.html

 

Click here for the Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings

 

Round 20 of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship heads straight to the Losail International Circuit in Lusail, Al Daayen, Qatar for the Formula 1 Ooredoo Qatar Grand Prix 2021 from Friday November 19-Sunday November 21 to complete the final triple-header of the season.