On British soil, Lewis Hamilton returns to win after a long abstinence. With Max Verstappen out of the game, Charles Leclerc was able to have his say in a Grand Prix in which Ferrari did not expect to be able to challenge for a podium: however, the Maranello team’s SF21 car completed a race that could mark a turning point in the championship. McLaren is further behind and seems to struggle in certain circumstances.
A few meters were enough for the first huge twist at Silverstone. It’s not for us to judge the collision, however the red flag allowed the teams to fit new tires. Almost everyone opted for a new Medium set, except the two McLaren cars, while only Sergio Perez kept his choice and continued on the Hard. The Mexican driver therefore became a reference for the whole grid. The hardest tire in the Pirelli range corresponds roughly to the Hard of 2018. We are therefore talking about a tire with a fairly high temperature window, able to adapt very well to today’s asphalt temperatures, around 50 ° C. Also for this reason, Soft was completely snubbed.
At the restart we witnessed a time battle between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. The Englishman found himself at a crossroads on how to manage the ten-second penalty assigned to him by the commissioners. From the wall, Mercedes ordered him to push and try to overtake the Ferrari driver in order to build the gap necessary to serve the penalty and keep the lead. Nonetheless, the Brit struggled to get close to the Italian car. First of all because of the Ferrari pace, but above all because of the management of the compounds.
The Mercedes AMG F1 W12 struggled with overheating on both axles. Towards the twentieth lap on the front we could see some blistering. A phenomenon that leads to bubbles formed on the surface of the compound which, when they burst, create real holes. The phenomenon with the passing of laps spontaneously reduces and does not excessively affect the pace. However, the drivers’ concern was mainly due to the overheating of the rear compounds.
The ‘cuts’ in power on Charles Leclerc’s Power Unit certainly did not facilitate the Monegasque’s work. From the garage they strongly advised him not to go up in gear when the aforementioned cuts were taking place. That said, in the first stint the SF21 seemed to be the best in tire management. A phenomenal Ferrari on the mediums, that was able to avoid any visible degradation.
Arriving at the first pit stops, Norris tried to undercut the second Mercedes driver. The Englishman, stopping a lap early, almost managed to overtake Bottas by making an excellent return lap. Nonetheless, at the exit of the garage, Bottas found himself in front and was unable to engage in a fight because of Alonso, who, having not pitted yet, had entered between the two. Same strategy for Lewis Hamilton, who entering the garage to perform the undercut confirmed the enormous deterioration on the front left, even calling it ‘dead’. Charles Leclerc made the stop two laps late and lost little in terms of time advantage.
With the start of the second stint, the forces on the field varied again. The harder compound does not seem to have worked on the two McLarens. The two drivers lost their pace almost immediately and Carlos Sainz was able to attack Ricciardo’s McLaren, which has an 8-lap older tire. However, the Spaniard was unable to complete the overtaking, remaining stuck behind the Australian despite having the DRS. The cause is once again the same: a lack of horse power. A Ferrari power unit versus a Mercedes at the moment can do little. In addition, the problem with the pistol in the pits did not help the Spanish driver.
Up front, Hamilton has imposed a very high pace to try to recover the gap from Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque on his part tried to manage his race and impose a steady pace, aware that Hamilton would be able to catch him, especially bearing in mind that the harder tire has always suited the W12 very well. From the Mercedes garage a team order arrived for Bottas who let Hamilton pass. From then on Lewis managed to set a decidedly fast pace, even considering the clean air he faced.
Nothing more could have been done from the Ferrari garage. It was not possible to use another set of mediums, because otherwise the rule of using at least two different compounds would not have been respected. By using the Soft, the Monegasque would not have reached the end. That said, Ferrari comes out of Silverstone with its head held high. On one of the toughest tracks for tyres, the Italian car has shown that it has taken an excellent step forward since the disastrous French Grand Prix. An improvement they didn’t expect either. Suffice to say that plan A in Ferrari was the double stop, while plan B, which they then followed, consisted of the only stop. The Ferrari technical department had planned short-term and long-term work. Today we saw the fruits of months of work in trying to better preserve the compounds of the front axle, which had caused so many problems in previous races.
With almost everyone on the same strategy, a train of cars with the same compound was immediately created on the track. This was a bit of the story of Perez’s race, starting from the pit lane with the Hard tire, he recovered until he was stuck behind Gasly. The engineers therefore decided to stop it at the same time as those who used the Mediums. With the yellow tyres he recovered some positions, then found himself in trouble again in the middle of traffic. At that point he made a further stop for new tyres, in order to take the fastest lap of the race from Hamilton.
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