F1 – British GP – Race

Hello MiniFans and welcome to Silverstone! We’ll have a sunny Grand Prix ahead of us with quite a lot of fans in the grand stands again. Will Verstappen be able to increase his lead in the championship even more? One thing is for sure; Hamilton wants to make his fellow countrymen proud! Will he be able to pull off a victory? Let’s find out!

During the first couple of turns it was very tight up front with Hamilton pushing Verstappen to the limit. The Brit showed some understeer into Cops, while the Dutchman was still in front. The Red Bull’s rear right tyre got stuck behind the Mercedes’ front left tyre. Verstappen had no chance there and slid sideways into the tyre wall at full speed. The Dutchman clearly didn’t feel well after his crash and was taken to the medical center by ambulance for a further check up. The incident caused a red flag. Later in the race, Hamilton received a ten second penalty for his move.

We had a standing restart; a great one actually for the leading Leclerc. Bottas, on the other hand, got away badly again and had to give his fourth position to Norris. Vettel also didn’t have his best first lap. The spun and dropped all the way to the back. Surprisingly, Leclerc could hold on to the lead till [que]. He did have some hot moments, though, due to an engine cut. Luckily, the team could fix it before Hamilton could approach him closesly enough for an overtake.

Norris had a bad stop and dropped back to P6. Bottas responded with a 2.2-second stop to succesfully stay in front of the Brit. After serving his penalty, Hamilton fell back to P5 with a 35-second gap to Leclerc. The Ferrari’s were running in 1-2 after the stop the Mercedes’ driver. Unfortunately, they messed up Sainz’ pitstop which ended up taking 12.3 seconds. Leclerc’s, however, stop was much better. He managed to stay in the lead of the 2021 British Grand Prix.

Moving to lap 32 in which Hamilton passed Norris easily on the main straight for a podium place. He was now only 12 seconds removed from Leclerc with Bottas splitting the two. When Hamilton started to approach him more and more, Bottas got the team order to not battle his teammate. Right after Hamilton took P2, Aston Martin reported that there was a problem with Vettel’s car due to his spin earlier on in the race. The German couldn’t make it to the finish line with it and had to retire from the race in lap 41. With only 5 laps to go, Raikonnen lost control and spun while trying to overtake Perez for P11. Right after this hot moment, the Mexican moved up into the points due to a puncture for Gasly.

To say that Leclerc had a splendid race, is an understatement. He had a massive drive for Ferrari today and got a well-deserved P2 and Driver of the Day-title in return. The fastest lap went to Perez for this race, snatching the precious point away from Hamilton.

Lewis Hamilton wins the 2021 British Grand Prix in front of his fans with Leclerc and Bottas completing the podium. The top ten was joined by Norris, Ricciardo, Sainz, Alonso, Stroll, Ocon and Tsunoda. This result reduces the gap in the championship between Hamilton and Verstappen to only 8 points. It promises to become a blood curdling Hungarian Grand Prix in two weeks time!