Olá, MiniFans! With the championship slowly but surely coming to an end, we couldn’t miss stopping by Brazil and its Interlagos, as they’ve given us some of the best shows in the history of the sport. Verstappen gets to a track that has always been good to him, while McLaren hasn’t exactly experienced the same. The S-race qualifying on Friday didn’t seem to agree, and awarded them the first and third places, whereas the bull had to make do with the sixth position, sharing a line with a very surprising Alonso.
A damp track was the main character before the shorter race even began. No intermediates were in sight, but it still wasn’t warm and fully dry by the time the kick.off time came around, forcing drivers to be careful and warm up their tyres very well. The tyres were mismatched, with most of those in the top ten that started on the even side in softs, including Verstappen, while the majority of the grid had chosen the mediums.
The start was very carefully managed as everyone felt for the actual conditions of the track. Norris easily defended from Antonelli, while Verstappen and Alonso swapped places, setting the four-time world champion in pursuit of Russell. Ferrari was doing better than in the qualifying session: Leclerc had gotten pararell with Alonso, eventually having to concede the position, whereas Hamilton went from 11th to 8th, right behind his teammate. A very brief yellow flag from a tiny collision between Lawson and Bearman that forced the British driver into a spin was the only incident in that first lap, after which the race started to settle, thanks in part to the track conditions.
A few laps went by without much going on, but a handful of laps in a crash in turn 3 halted everything else. Piastri had gone into the barriers after spinning, but he wasn’t the only one. With him still in the car, both Hulkenberg and Colapinto ended up a handful of metres away from the McLaren, luckily away enough from each other not to . The yellow flag went out immediately with the first crash, but the second and third forced a safety car before a red flag came out, due to the need to repair the barriers. As they were going back to the pitlane, Antonelli unknowingly blamed Norris for the incidents, claiming he had hit the kerb and sprayed water on the racing line, before he settled in his rightful second place.
With everyone lined up, Hulkenberg was the only one of the three drivers involved in the turn 3 incident who was named in the new starting grid, as he had managed to drag his front-wing-less car to the pits and his team had quickly gotten to work, with Jo Bauer closely inspecting the spare parts being fitted on the Sauber. As the time for the restart came by, Hulkenberg was allowed to unlap himself before race direction announced a rolling start, surprising the teams, as they had been privately told that the decision was to be a standing start. The top six went for the opposite decision on tyres than to what they had chosen for the initial start, with Norris and Alonso on softs and the rest on mediums, a decision that might have been different had they been warned of the rolling start.
The drivers got in line behind the safety car and took their lap, with everyone whispering down Norris’ neck. The McLaren delayed the throttle hit as much as he could, quickly getting away as the Mercedes fought between them and Alonso tried his hardest to get past Verstappen, putting up an incredibly close battle between them before the Dutchman came on top. Alonso dropped behind, as his pace still can’t keep up with the top cars, and had to switch focus to the Ferrari drivers behind him, a pair each fitted with a set of mediums that would start working better as the laps went by.
Norris’ softs weren’t working as well as McLaren had expected: the driver complained about the rears with around six laps to go, and Antonelly started to close the gap, desperately trying to get into the DRS zone but coming up short by barely a tenth. A few places behind them, Alonso was in a similar predicament, a train of cars lining up behind him and his worn softs, but Leclerc didn’t quite dare try and get past, likely not wanting to get into the damper parts of the track without a clear course of action. Antonelli’s demeanor was braver: little by little, he managed to lower the gap to around half a second, throwing an anchor to the McLaren and not letting him drop him out of DRS.
These two were the big battles ging into the last handful of laps, with Leclerc finally getting past Alonso once the softs couldn’t keep up anymore, which left Hamilton close to the Spaniard, but without pace enough to overtake as well. At the front, the downfall of the soft wasn’t big enough to allow Antonelli to have a proper chance, having to settle for second place as they both cruised to the line under a yellow flag caused by Bortoleto having crashed at the end of the main straight, with Norris accumulating points over both Piastri and Verstappen.
Brasil is one of those places where there will always be something happening if the cars are on track. The S-race did not disappoint in this aspect, with Piastri out of contention after a crash barely a few laps in and Verstappen not fully comfortable with the car setup. One red flag and a restart later, the tyres were swapped, with teams trying things out, as the single free practice session hadn’t been enough and the conditions were wildly different. A few fights broke off, but none that bothered a Norris who never abandoned the lead of the race, leaving the rest of the grid to scuffle and have to deal with others, while his only worry was an Antonelli that couldn’t get quite close enough to threaten his victory and subsequent bigger gap in the title fight.
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