Four days, Three replacements, Two debutants and all in rush for 1 Grand Prix. Grosjean having a near death experience in a horrific crash, leading to Pietro Fittipaldi making his F1 debut; Lewis Hamilton testing Covid – 19 positive, just the day after the race and this result, which put an end to his 265 consecutives races raced streak, led to George Russell being taken from Williams by Mercedes temporarily which left a seat empty at Williams, which led to Jack Aitken making his F1 debut for Williams.
It was a Grand Prix weekend where it was expected that their will be sub – 60 second laps, and even 54 second laps in the Qualifying, beating the fastest ever qualifying lap set by Niki Lauda. There was no lap time(which was not a cooldown lap) that was over 1 minute in length, that just shows how different this Grand Prix weekend was. The Qualifying sessions were of the same length as always, and that gave teams more chances to fix their errors, as even Mercedes did 3 laps in Q3 to guarantee a front – row lockout.
The short lap times also meant that the margin or the time difference between all the drivers, was down to the smallest of differences with George Russell missing out on the first pole position of his F1 career by less than 3 hundredths of a second. This provided a lot of excitement and suspense in the Qualifying sessions, but even made it evident that F1 was racing in uncertain times, as most probably in a general and normal season, F1 would not use such a short and almost oval layout, and there would be a very low chance of there being two debutants and one replacement for the same race.
The race was known as the “Sakhir Grand Prix” and was on the outer layout of the Bahrain Grand Prix and was the first race ever in around 266 races, which did not have Lewis Hamilton driving a car as he was down with Covid – 19. But as the sport had it, there was no super – sub by Hulkenberg but rather George Russell replaced Lewis Hamilton, for what was in a way a breakthrough in his career. It was a chance to prove his actual worth and skills, in a different car as well and be rewarded for it and he got wholesomely rewarded to it, but only his qualifying.
George Russell was on his way to not only get his first ever F1 career points, but also bag a race victory and the fastest lap. Valtteri Bottas was not having a very good but looked on track to finish second behind George Russell, but some time after both the cars were put on hard tyres, almost around halfway through the race, George started losing time to Bottas, a little bit. It was all still going good as it seemed it would be a Mercedes 1 – 2 but then came the pit stop mixup which Toto Wolff described as a “colossal ****up”.
Mercedes are known and do perform some very good double stacks or basically two pitstops, one after another on the same lap. This is a tough task as the pit crew needs to ensure that they time it perfectly, neither of the two cars are compromised, They are able to perform the same sequence twice continuously and also ensure that the right tyres go on the right car, they are not mixed up, and they do not rolling away (exactly what the Mercedes pit crew messed up with).
They put the wrong tyres (Bottas’s medium tyres) on Russell’s car and let him go and they only realised that they had mixed up the tyres when they were changing Bottas’s tyres, who then had to end the race on the old tyres itself. They were lucky to not have destroyed the arces any further, and realising their mistake then and there, which seemed to be done by the crew member changing the left front tyre.
The tyres are allocated, in specific numbers and sets to each separate driver, and hence using other driver’s tyres is not allowed, and hence there was a doubt over the fact that Russell might get penalized, but he did not as, the rules which were concerned had not been violated as Mercedes changed Russell’s tyres by bringing him back in just as they realized. This had already destroyed the race for bith the Mercedes drivers but Russell with a tyre advantage, was catching up and would have gotten the first position.
The Safety Car had led to both the cars coming in. The Safety Car which was caused by the Russell’s car at Williams, being driven by debutant Jack Aitken. Mercedes had a very good pace advantage and the Safety Car had bunched all cars upto a large extent and allowed lapped cars(Cars who were a lap behind the leaders) to unlap, and that is how Russell was able to climb up the order easily, especially because the laps weren’t very long and there were several straights that lead to hard breaking zones. But a question rises and remains!
Were the pit stops necessary? Maybe yes, because it seemed like Bottas was losing out due to the old tyres after the Safety Car period, and even Russell wasn’t being able to work his tyres well before the Safety Car. But could Mercedes have done a 1 – 2 even without the pitstop, the exact answers can only be given by Mercedes and that is given below, which in summary basically hints that Mercedes know that pitting wasn’t a necessity and did become a great mistake.
“In a sense, the stop was a precaution, just to make sure we had the best tyres. It would have consolidated the lead of the race if we’d been able to perform it well and we need to make sure in understanding it, like any other fault, you focus on root cause, not all the other sort of noise and chaos around it.
“With hindsight, you could wind it back, it would have been great. We could have won the race on the tyres that we were on but we have to be able to do these stops and is something that could have caught us out in any of the past three years and it could have caught us out at the first race next year. It’s something that’s been there in the system and it was awfully unfortunate for the drivers and desperately unfortunate for George that we found that today but it could have caught us out at any point.”
— Andrew Shovlin
The recovery by Russell was reversed and all hopes of him winning the race where punctured when Mercedes had to box him again after the Safety Car ended, because there was a puncture in one of his rear tyres. This was the end for him but he still gave a good performance, set the fastest lap and was able to bag 3 points in total – the first points of his F1 career.
Ocon and Perez stay out and managed to not take any dangerous moves and were rewarded as Perez got his first ever F1 race victory and Ocon got his first ever F1 podium. Perez still doesn’t have a seat in F1 for 2021, but keeps making his case stronger for a Red Bull seat, in place of Alexander Albon.
Perez had dropped back to the 18th position after the crash in which Leclerc and Verstappen had to retire, and the horror of crashes continued.
The overtakes throughout the race were some of the most spectacular ones of the 2020 F1 season. The long straights, short laps and the corners, especially Turn 4 and Turn 1 and 3 allowed for a lot of overtaking.
“Beat it if you can because I can’t” – Martin Brundle on what Charles Leclerc might be thinking, when he did the best lap by a Ferrari powered car, all through the weekend, during Q3, and then did not do another lap.
|A GRAND FINALE FOR THE 2020 F1 SEASON AWAITS IN ABU DHABI|
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