ZANDVOORT, Netherlands: The air was thick with orange smoke and a techno rhythm as Max Verstappen completed his lap of victory at Zandvoort. The three-day party on the Dutch coast, which began at the time the first car pitted on Friday morning, had reached its peak, with 70,000 people celebrating the first Dutch victory at home in Formula 1.
Given the hype surrounding Verstappen during the preparation for the Grand Prix, the first to be held in the Netherlands since 1985, it seemed unimaginable that anyone other than the Dutch would win on Sunday. But, by its own admission, Mercedes provided Verstappen with much more than it needed.
While Red Bull certainly had a pace advantage over Zandvoort, Mercedes had the strategic dominance by virtue of having two cars in the fight ahead compared to Verstappen’s only Red Bull. Verstappen teammate Sergio Perez was eliminated on Saturday in the first phase of the classification, which led to a pit lane start when the team changed the components of his car, while Mercedes went lined up with Lewis Hamilton second on the grid and Valtteri Bottas third. .
Plan A for Hamilton and Mercedes would have been to pass Verstappen on the first corner and try to control the race from the front, but once Verstappen maintained its lead on the first corner, Mercedes had to try to beat its rival. from the pit wall. . His strategists put Hamilton in a two-stop strategy and Bottas in a single counter, with the goal of catching Verstappen somewhere in between. But the execution of Mercedes ’plan ultimately lacked the finesse it required to succeed.
A slow first pit stop by Hamilton reduced the first attempt to overtake on lap 21 and a second timed stop, which brought Hamilton to remarkable traffic and saw Red Bull countered with a pit stop of his own. , delivering the victory to Red Bull and Verstappen.
In the final stages of the race, the world champions were left fighting each other as Bottas, who is expected to be eliminated by George Russell of Williams next year, was rogue with a faster lap attempt. which could have snatched a crucial point from the Hamilton championship.
Hamilton corrected the situation by making a third lap and securing the fastest lap, but the situation was messy and could have been disastrous if the pit stop had gone wrong, as he did, for example, in Bottas’ car in Monaco.
The final points count shows that the two Mercedes drivers overtook Verstappen and Pérez, who finished eighth by five, extending the team’s lead in the constructors ’championship, but the result at Zandvoort was a reminder that , in its current form, Verstappen and Red Bulls are the best comprehensive package.
Did Mercedes throw the race at the second pit stop?
Perhaps Mercedes ’most baffling strategic decision was the timing of Hamilton’s second stop. Only a handful of laps before seemed to be in a better position to downgrade Verstappen, but Mercedes let her through with concern about how many laps were left to run in a single set of tires, and then when the team did chest, he dropped Hamilton into the traffic that led him to deviate from several corners.
The timing of the pit call was partly rooted in Friday’s lack of track time in practice, which meant teams had no reliable data on the hard tire. As a result, Mercedes decided from the start of the race that it would not use the hard compound unless it was proven fast in another car during the race, and assumed Red Bull would take the same approach.
Facing Hamilton when he did, Mercedes hoped to force Red Bull into a long stage in the softs knowing that Verstappen had no choice but to adapt a second set of media as he had done. But Red Bull, confident in Verstappen’s ability on the three tire compounds, called bluff, covered Hamilton’s stop and installed hard tires that performed well up to the checkered flag.
“In terms of strategy, we have to say that probably 50 per cent of the race was probably lost in qualifying and the start,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. “They just had a huge pace. I think if we had moved forward, we would have emphasized, I think we would have had the pace, but it was important to take risks as well.
“We didn’t think they would stand it [tyre at the second stop]. That territory was a bit unfamiliar and our thought was to push them to an early second stop with tablecloths that might have given us a chance at the end. That’s why we weren’t particularly worried about where we would go [in terms of traffic]. They took it a lot, took a little risk and won the race. “
But even if the strategy had been resolved, Verstappen still looked comfortably faster than Hamilton throughout the weekend. He reached pole position for just 0.038 seconds, but Mercedes engineers believe the gap would have been closer to 0.2 had it not been for a Verstappen error when stepping on the 3 and his DRS not opening at the race for the flag.
Mercedes had the potential to put extra pressure on Red Bull with a well-executed strategy, but that was still Verstappen’s losing streak and showed no sign of doing so from the moment he pulled away from the pole. position.
With the win, Verstappen regained the championship lead by three points with nine races left to finish, asking him the question of whether the championship now also loses Verstappen?
“Well I’m giving it my all, we’re giving it absolutely everything, even since the first race, these guys have had such a strong car all year and we try everything we can,” Hamilton said. “But yeah, we’ve had a couple of races where it looked like we were almost in the pair or a little bit later, but there’s only been a couple and then we’ve made a big leap and it’s been tough.
“I can’t say anything more, we just have to keep our heads down, keep pressing, we’re ahead in the team championship, which is great, but of course we have to gain speed if we want to win races in the future.”
However, Red Bull team leader Christian Horner believes the design of the next two tracks, Monza and Sochi, will favor Mercedes.
“Their package of cars and engines has always been very strong on these circuits and they have been weaker places for us,” Horner said. “So I hope they have the advantage in the next two, but then it should be reduced, I’m sure I hope.
“The next two weekends for us we try to limit the damage as much as we can and get everything we can out of the car.”
Did Bottas come out to prove a point with the fastest lap?
For several races it has become clear that Bottas has moved to a supporting role for Hamilton this year in Mercedes, but this dynamic will be put to the test in the rest of the races, as it became apparent during the weekend of the Gran Dutch award that Bottas will be replaced by Mercedes next year. George Russell’s announcement as Hamilton’s teammate in 2022 is imminently expected and it is understood that Bottas, who is expected to switch to Alfa Romeo, knows his fate for next season.
In Zandvoort, Bottas put in a unique strategy to try to keep Verstappen at a crucial moment in the race and help Hamilton, but the plan fell through when Bottas made a mistake on lap 31 that compromised his career in the straight of pits. and presented Verstappen with an easy chance of advancement. It was clear that the Bottas race was being used to create a potential headache for Red Bull and it was also clear that he was never really in contention for the win. Which made him even more interesting when he made Hamilton’s fastest lap towards the end of the race.
Bottas began to experience a worrying vibration of his tires at the end of his second stage, which led Mercedes to sink him on lap 67 of 72 to make sure he didn’t risk crashing. That late stop gave Bottas a chance to use his cool tires to get Hamilton’s fastest lap (and the accompanying championship spot), and he did so right on his first lap flying out. of the boxes.
Mercedes’ pit wall sent a radio to Bottas to tell him to slow down, which he did in the final sector, setting a final time in the sector that was 0.8 s slower than he had in his previous lap, but an overall lap time that was 0.6 s faster than Hamilton’s previous effort. Hamilton then had to make a pit stop to regain the point, which he did with a huge amount of 1.5, but risked a chest crew error and added stress to the chest wall. Mercedes chest.
“Yeah, it was a little cheeky but understandable,” Wolff said after the race. “Valtteri is always at the reception because this championship is very tight. He rose en masse to the last sector and it was clear that Lewis would make the fastest lap and Valtteri knew it. Lewis in his fight for the championship got the point and it’s all good.
“I couldn’t have ended up losing a point for Lewis. It wouldn’t have been right either because I had the fastest lap so far. But you have to understand at that point the certain degree of frustration of Valtteri and Finally, it’s all “We’ll talk about it, but in the kindest and most professional way. But I can definitely relate to the situation.”
Bottas put the situation aside, saying he knew Hamilton would be able to face it and set up a faster lap. “Honestly, there was a pretty big gap in front, a pretty big gap behind, so for safety reasons, it was good to leave,” he said. “I think I could have reached the finish faster without stopping, but the end position was the same, so it was the safest option to stop at the end. I initially thought we were going to stop on the fastest lap, but then Lewis too had a void and stopped.
“I was pressing in the first lap in the first sector and the second sector, as if it were flat, but then the team asked me to slow down at the end of the lap, so I was just playing, because Lewis needed that extra point more than me, he fights for the drivers’ championship and as a team we try to get the most points, so that’s it. “
According to the tests of the last races, Hamilton will need everything to make his way to defeat Verstappen, which makes Bottas’ actions in Zandvoort even more interesting for the title fight.