Bottas dominates before Verstappen

Sergio Perez completed the podium in the second Red Bull, followed by Charles Leclerc and Hamilton after their attempts to finish the race on a single set of Inters didn’t pay off.

At the start, where all the cars were fitted with intermediate tires, the first three scrambled off the line in the order in which they arrived, with Bottas Verstappen leading the way confidently into Turn 1.

Leclerc had the best start of the trio but stayed third after approaching Verstappen’s outside before falling back on the left turn.

Despite the difficult conditions, the only incident on lap one was Pierre Gasly Fernando Alonso knocking around as the Alpine tried to circumvent the outside of the first corner, which spun him into the back of the field – where he was involved in a collision in addition to the fact that Mick Schumacher turned in turn 4 on the second lap – and Nicholas Latifi turned alone in turn 9.

Bottas was leading by 1.3 seconds at the end of the first lap of 58 and it didn’t grow much beyond that in the next phase of the race – although Verstappen was looking for wet spots to cool his Inter and complained about a dashboard error message, which he discovered every time he switched gears.

On lap 10, Bottas’ lead had reached 2.4 seconds – having suddenly grown on the two previous tours – by which point Hamilton had reached seventh place after suffocating Sebastian Vettel in the last corners on lap one and then Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll had consecutively overtaken Tours on laps eight and nine after Tsunoda had kept him in check in the early stages.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M, Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR21, Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02 and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Hamilton then grabbed Lando Norris and finished sixth at Turn 9, while Bottas continued to extend his lead on Verstappen – the two Mercedes cars the only cars to lap the 1:33 mark at the time, and Leclerc fell a few seconds back from Verstappen.

But as the race neared the 20-lap mark, with Hamilton slightly overtaking Gasly in fifth before stopping at Turn 12 at the end of the back straight on lap 14, Verstappen increased his pace and began to get closer to Bottas again was put on how the Inters held up.

Bottas also increased his pace as the leaders advanced to the low 1:33 minutes. The Finn initially held his deficit of a little more than three seconds until he slipped half a second out of the first corner on lap 20.

But from then on, Verstappen couldn’t close much as all the leaders were looking for wetter spots as their inters wore off – Hamilton in fifth tore out Sergio Perez’s lead before the Mexican driver’s pace improved and he cleared fourth remained well behind Leclerc, who still had the top duo in view.

McLaren pitted Daniel Ricciardo to get new Inters from the back of the field, but the Australian didn’t go faster and was actually slower than the leaders, who began to wonder if a one-stop strategy would be feasible than the ones Half-time approached.

Here Bottas began to break away from Verstappen again – his lead increased to four seconds on lap 30 – while Hamilton, who had to withdraw from Nikita Mazepin’s lap time when he approached the Haas at the bend in the middle of Turn 11, was on the back straight, eventually reached Perez’s rear end, the pair nearly 20 seconds behind the lead.

Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes W12

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

They fought an exciting battle at the end of the 34th and 35th lap, Hamilton attacked the Red Bull at Turn 12 and stayed on the side until the last corner, Perez once cut behind the pits bollard and forced the Mercedes him out in the penultimate corner.

The fight continued into Turn 1, where Perez boldly stuck to the inside line and stayed in fourth place, with the fight then being replaced by the leading boxes.

Red Bull pulled the trigger by pitting Verstappen on lap 36 for new Inters. Bottas followed him on the next lap, slightly defending the lead, while Perez got in on the same side and got back in behind Hamilton.

The world champion and Leclerc in front stayed outside – Hamilton argued against a call from Mercedes to pit on lap 42.

Bottas, over seven seconds before Verstappen, who reported a problem with the steering wheel “lower left” in the last quarter, initially steadfastly joined Leclerc in his fresh Inters.

He then won large periods of time in the final laps and took the lead with a big grip advantage on the wet line inward into Turn 1 on lap 47, at the end of which Leclerc finally pitted.

From then on, Bottas easily diverged from Verstappen and took a first win in 2021 with 14.5 seconds – he set the fastest lap with 1: 30.432 minutes on the last lap – while Perez finished third after finishing lap 51 had ridden on Leclerc.

Ferrari had hoped Leclerc could catch up with the leading two on his fresh Inters, but he got into the bad graining phase where all drivers found a few laps after the pit stop, which meant Perez could easily take the place with a run to Outside of turn could take 12.

Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

On the lap before Perez overtook Leclerc, Hamilton had finally crossed the finish line and Mercedes felt they had no choice but to abandon the no-stop strategy because of Gasly’s presence in sixth place – already in a second set of Inters.

Hamilton initially got close to Leclerc on his new Inters, but then fell dramatically behind when he reached the graining stage where he furiously criticized Mercedes’ decision to box him on a series of radio messages.

He was able to hold Gasly up to the checkered flag, the AlphaTauri driver had served a five-second penalty when he stopped for the collision in Turn 1 with Alonso, who did the same for his shunt on the second lap with Schumacher.

Norris finished seventh, not far from Gasly’s bum, while Carlos Sainz Jr. finished eighth after working his way up quickly with a series of bold early passes from the back row of the grid – the Spaniard then also had to recover from a slow pit stop.

In this race to catch up, Sainz overtook Lance Stroll, who finished ninth, and Esteban Ocon, who was the only driver to finish the race with a single set of tires.

Remarkably given the conditions, all the cars crossed the finish line – Ricciardo’s early stop meant he finished 13th behind the Alfa Romeo pair and Alonso in 16th.

The only rider who tried to switch to slicks was Sebastian Vettel, who tried 22 laps to drive the mediums, but he came back after just a single tour where he was very slow and went off the track twice, to go back the inters.

Vettel ended up in 18th place – just ahead of the Haas duo, where Schumacher was again ahead of Mazepin after he had recovered from his spin in Turn 2 through Alonso’s contact.