F1 Event: Portuguese Grand Prix
Race Track: Portimão Circuit
Bottas and Hamilton at the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix, Saturday – Wolfgang Wilhelm
Weather: dry 19.5°C
Tarmac: dry 39.2°C
Humidity : 37.7%
Wind : 0.8 m/s NW
Pressure: 1004.6 bar
Lewis Hamilton won his 97th F1 race at the 2021 Portugal F1 GP today. He started from P2 and won on the Portimao circuit for the second time. It was the 117th victory for the Mercedes team.
The start was clean all cars got away from the grid. Red Bull driver Sergio Perez lost P4 to Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz and we saw a nice battle between McLaren driver Lando Norris and Esteban Ocon in the Alpine for P6.
On the main straight after lap 1 both Alfa Romeo drivers collided. A broken front wing and retirement was the result for Kimi Raikkonen. Antonio Giovinazzi was able to go on undamaged. The safety car was deployed for 6 laps to clean up the debris on the track. At the restart Red Bull driver Max Verstappen was awake and able to pass the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton for P2 at turn 1.
In lap 9 DRS was enabled and Verstappen tried to get into DRS range of Valtteri Bottas’ Mercedes. Hamilton did the same and passed the Dutchman for P2 again in lap 10.
Daniel Ricciardo had won 6 places on lap 18 and was already inside the points on P10 with the McLaren.
In lap 20 Hamilton overtook race leader Bottas for P1. Verstappen was still behind the two Mercedes drivers looking for a opportunity to pass them.
Carlos Sainz was the first to get rid of the soft tyres. His Ferrari got fitted with medium tyres. He was driving on P5 and came back on the track on P11. His teammate Leclerc was the first who pitted to get rid of medium tyres. He switched to the hard tyres in lap 26.
The top 3 waited for lap 36 until they did their pit stops. Verstappen tried to undercut Bottas and had a great pitstop of 2.3s. One lap later Bottas also pitted for the hard tyres but his pitstop took 1 sec. longer. Bottas just made it to enter the the track inf front of Verstappen, but the Dutchman already had warmer tyres and passed the Mercedes for P2 in the braking zone of P5.
Sergio Perez was leading the race now. He was 10 sec. in front of Hamilton still driving on the medium tyres. The Mexican driver did his pitstop in lap 52 to hold up Hamilton. He switched to soft tyres as soon as Hamilton had passed him and came back to the track P4 behind Bottas.
In lap 55 Bottas told his team on the radio he was losing power. His gap towards Verstappen was increased in one lap from 1.8s to 5s. The Mercedes team told him a faulty sensor in the exhaust had caused the problem and he was able to attack again.
At the end of the race Verstappen and Bottas both went in to get a set of softs to try and win the extra point by driving the quickest lap of the race. Bottas was quickest in lap 65, but Verstappen was quicker in lap 66 and won the point at first, but lost it again due to crossing track limits in turn 14.
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Classification 2021 Portuguese F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:19.865 min by Valtteri Bottas in the Mercedes no. 77 on lap 64
Car 9 – 5 second time penalty – Ignoring blue flags
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