The Saturday in F1 Sao Paulo GP saw Mercedes with the pole but Red Bull having an advantage with two cars in the Top 5 for the race ahead.
The Saturday in F1 Sao Paulo GP saw a good show from the Mercedes end where Valtteri Bottas took pole and Lewis Hamilton fought through from back of the grid to be fifth on different strategies. Red Bull steadied on second and fourth whereby they didn’t take as much risk and went with the medium strategy, even though Mercedes split theirs.
It worked for them as Bottas passed Verstappen, who had to get by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz as well. The Spaniard was on the soft compound too and was a thorn in Red Bull’s strategy because Sergio Perez couldn’t pass him for third. The Mexican tried multiple times but didn’t risk a bigger move knowing that the race is on Sunday.
Bottas: “Everything went as planned and we opted to start with the Soft tyre because we though the best chance to get the lead was the race start and even with a bit of the risk that the end of the race could be tricky but it worked perfectly. It wasn’t easy at the end, the tyres started to be pretty finished but I just tried to avoid mistakes and tried to keep the focus and today was a good day. And I am also pleased that Lewis could get up to fifth place so that gives him plenty of opportunities for tomorrow and that means we can still, even with the issues of this weekend, have a great result tomorrow.
“I was really fully focusing on trying to do the fastest stint I can, and that means management with the soft tyre so especially in the beginning, I was obviously trying to create a gap but not to kill the tyres immediately and that middle part of that race really, just tried to optimise the pace and that includes quite a bit of management with the soft tyre, especially in certain parts of the track. And towards the end, yeah, I was trying to squeeze out every single bit I had left of the tyres. I mean, of course, starting from the pole, hoping to keep the lead and go from there but now it’s pretty open in terms of strategy for every team. Everyone can start with whatever tyre they like. So, we’re going to try to make the best plan we can.”
Verstappen: “I mean we started on the Medium tyre, also I think the track dropped a bit more than we would have liked. And then, besides that, I somehow lost all the gear syncs. So my start was already not as amazing on tyres but then, when you’re upshifting and it’s a terrible shift… so all-in-all that didn’t work out for me. Then of course, I dropped to third on the first lap but then after that, I mean the pace was fine but you can’t overtake around here.
“The tyres just very quickly overheat and you are stuck – especially when the cars are closely matched on pace: there’s not much you can do in the sprint without a pitstop. So, I just sat behind basically. Of course, I could see that Valtteri was struggling more and more and more but when you are behind, you just follow the same, because your tyres are even warmer because of trying to get closer to get the DRS. So yeah, it didn’t really look like it was a concern for Valtteri, in terms of how close I was.”
Hamilton: “Honestly, I had no idea what was possible today – I didn’t set a limit or a maximum. When I was at the back of the grid at the start before we pulled away for the formation lap, I think I might have been able to see like, 10 and I was like ‘okay, that’s my goal, I’ve got to try and get up as far as possible’ but then all of a sudden I was chipping away at it much faster and I really used a lot of different things for motivation today. I just never give up, you can’t ever give up.
“It has been tough today: while the team was working away, talking with the stewards, I was just trying focus on my work with my engineers and keeping the morale with my mechanics high and just focusing on the job at hand. Not thinking about it. Of course, it was devastating when I heard about the verdict but you can’t let that hold you back. You’ve got to keep your head down and keep going. I quickly reset, got my mind focussed on doing what I could do and just giving it my everything.”
Perez: “It was difficult to get past Carlos Sainz today, I thought I was going to get him quite easily, but I couldn’t get the exit right in the final corner and that effected my ability to pass him. We were expecting to hold them back at the start but that wasn’t the case in the end. The main issue I was having today was that Sainz was always getting a good exit out of the final corner while my tyres were overheating. The straight-line speed of the Ferrari was quite strong too. Tomorrow is the race that matters, there is still a lot to play for and we can take more risks than today. I could have made up that position today but it would have involved taking too many risks, more than I would like. I would like to move forwards in the race tomorrow, we will be pushing from the start and try to make the progress we want. It’s important to have a good starting position tomorrow and then work from there, I hope I can get through the Ferrari quickly and have good pace from lap one.
Leading the mid-pack was Sainz in third but teammate Charles Leclerc lost out to direct rivals McLaren’s Lando Norris as he couldn’t get his medium tyres to work. But still Ferrari seem to have an upperhand as Daniel Ricciardo ended up 11th after losing out to Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel at the start of the F1 Sprint Qualifying.
Both Norris and Leclerc gained on AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly after his soft tyre strategy didn’t work. At the same time, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon made it stick and crucially finished just behind him in their fight for fifth. Fernando Alonso ended up just outside the Top 10 as Lance Stroll also gained from his low-key F1 qualifying on Friday.
Sainz: “It was good. It was good. Starts have been a bit of a thing that I wanted to improve since the first half of the season because it used to be one of my strengths in McLaren, Renault and Toro Rosso and it’s been a bit of homework over the last few races to really try and nail them. We’ve put in a lot of work and today definitely started to pay off. Good moves, obviously playing with the guys up here, the Mercs and the Red Bulls, is always a bit more fun and I get to enjoy some good battles.
“It was very tough because you know in the end the Soft is better for maybe the first two laps but then from lap three, lap four onwards, once the Soft is nearly overheating, you want a Medium tyre, no? But it’s always that balance to find between start performance and a 24-lap stint or race. We went for the Soft but we were honestly 50:50. And I guess the track dropping there at the end before the race start kind of swung me towards the Soft tyre, just because I thought it was going to be a bit easier to keep it alive – but I still think from lap five onwards the Medium was the better tyre – but yeah, it was a tricky call but I guess we did the right thing.
“He got very close pretty much half of the laps that he was behind. I knew like into the last corner, whenever I had a 0.7s gap, then I would have to defend into turn one. When the gap was 0.8s, I would just make it into turn one without having to defend and 0.9s would mean that maybe at the end even need to use my energy, no, so it was exactly the same every lap and I just hearing the gap from engineers – that he did a good job – telling me exactly as the DRS zone, then I could manage the battery to my liking and know whether I had to defend or not but I think his front wing was very close to my diffuser in a couple of brakings into turn one. But like always with Checo, good fun, good fight and good racing.”
Norris: “A good day for us with two positions gained. One on a very important competitor, which is the Ferrari, and one on the AlphaTauri, so we’ve given ourselves the best opportunity to score some big points tomorrow. There were some positives and negatives from today in terms of how the car was and how confident I was pushing the car. We’ll try to make improvements overnight and see if we can come out even stronger tomorrow. We did everything we could. Even though we didn’t quite have the pace of the Ferraris, we still managed to get ahead of one of them.”
Gasly: “We had a terrible start today, I lost three positions into Turn 1 and just didn’t have the pace to come back at the Ferraris and McLaren. It clearly wasn’t the start of the race we expected, so we’ll look at what we can do better for tomorrow. That wasn’t the easiest day for us, especially as the last few laps on the soft tyre were really difficult. As you know, it’s never over until the chequered flag, so we’ll look at the strategy tonight and do everything we can to come back stronger tomorrow.”
Alonso: “We started with the medium tyres and maybe it wasn’t the best for the race start, but we decided as a team to split the strategy. We lost a few positions into turn one and then found ourselves stuck in traffic for the rest of the Sprint. It’s difficult to overtake here and you need quite a big advantage to make progress. I think when you put the cars in performance order it’ll finish how you expect. And seeing Hamilton charge through the field it was perhaps more exciting for the fans to watch and shows what potentially could be done with the format. The points are on offer tomorrow so we can’t be too disheartened with the result today. What is clear is we need to make sure our start is good as that can make a big impact on the race.”
Vettel: I made a good start and gained a couple of places, but we had to fight hard to stay there with fast cars, such as the McLaren, behind us. I was in the train of cars, benefiting from the DRS, which certainly helped. The race pace was decent but starting on the medium meant that we were faster towards the end. I think it will be similar tomorrow. It is a long race, and we will need to fight hard to score points because there are some quicker cars, including Lewis, behind us.”
Behind this pack, their was contact between the Alfa Romeo F1 pair with Kimi Raikkonen losing out to drop at the back. The Finn managed to get through the Haas duo who took the gamble of a soft tyre start but he was stuck behind Williams. The British outfit saw another ‘win’ for Nicholas Latifi after he finished ahead of George Russell.
Raikkonen: “I had a good start and I thought I could make some more progress when I had the contact with Antonio. I went outside Alonso, he went on the inside and by the time we were at turn one, I couldn’t really see what was happening on the inside. We had the smallest of touches but that was enough to spin me around, that’s about it. Of course, this doesn’t help for tomorrow’s race. It won’t be easy starting from 18th but we’ll try our best to make up some ground.”
Giovinazzi: “The sprint result wasn’t too bad, P13 is not the greatest but we can put up a good fight from there. I am happy about how the race went and I am looking forward to seeing what we can do tomorrow. As for the incident with Kimi, it’s a shame we made contact: I don’t really know what happened – we were three-wide on the straight, I took the inside and then suddenly I saw Kimi on the outside. We touched tyres, I tried to avoid that but there wasn’t really anything I could do: I was on the inside and braked as normal. Unfortunately, I also picked some front wing damage, which gave me a lot of understeer in the last corner. Now let’s focus on the race: we’ll give our best, the race here in Brazil is always an exciting one so it’s hard to know what to expect.”
Here’s how F1 Sao Paulo GP Sprint Qualifying panned out