Lewis Hamilton has won the Brazilian Grand Prix and Mercedes have won yet another constructors’ championship, with the Silver Arrows mathematically eliminating Ferrari from the title battle.
How it happened
The start was a very poor one from a Ferrari perspective. Bottas immediately overtook Vettel for P2, meaning that Mercedes had the one-two after the first turn. Behind that, Max Verstappen overtook Kimi Raikkonen for P4 but the Finn came right back at him, re-taking what was his.
It didn’t take Verstappen long to come back at him, though. Just a few laps after, he overtook Raikkonen, and Vettel was his next victim. Mercedes then tried an undercut on the 21-year-old, with both drivers coming in early and coming back out on medium tyres to end the race. But, Verstappen’s excellent tyre management kept him in touching distance after pitting, with the Dutchman being just a little bit behind Hamilton after pitting.
He then made a move stick on the start/finish straight, overtaking Hamilton for the lead and instantly pulling away with 30 laps to go. All seemed well for the Dutchman, but then disaster struck.
Esteban Ocon as getting lapped but fought back at Verstappen in the Senna S, clipping the Red Bull and spinning both cars around. The Frenchman had no right of doing that and got a 10-second stop-and-go penalty, but Verstappen’s race was ruined as Hamilton overtook him again and pulled away with a five-second gap.
Verstappen fought back despite having a damaged floor and cut the gap to a second, but it wasn’t enough to make it back-to-back wins for the first time in his career.
Daniel Ricciardo had a very good race outside of the podium. Despite starting outside of the top ten, the Aussie made quick work of driving himself into the top six
Leave a Reply