George Russell will start the Sao Paulo Grand Prix from pole position after taking Mercedes first sprint win of the season after finishing three seconds ahead of Carlos Sainz. The Englishman took the lead from Max Verstappen as they duelled midway through the sprint with Russel diving past the Red Bull on his third attempt at the Senna S.<\/p>\n
After a season where Mercedes have fought hard to recover the victory in the sprint and gives Mercedes their first pole position for a Grand Prix this season. Russell, though not officially his first win somewhat a reward after strategy blunders and a tyre failure cost him a win on his Mercedes debut in Sakhir in 2020.<\/p>\n
Russell’s pace was impressive throughout the race from the beginning. He also was looking as if he was on the back foot from the start, the on the medium tyre when everyone else was on the soft. It was a hard attack by the Mercedes, but with Verstappen defending equally well it was not going to be easy for Russel.<\/p>\n
The Englishman\u2019s pass was very similar to the way his teammate Lewis Hamilton had past Verstappen to win last years main Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Mercedes looked to have their best chance of the season to win the Grand Prix through practice and qualifying they had been not to far behind Red Bull and Ferrari, but they have also tended to have a better car in sprints\/races this season.<\/p>\n
After Russell and Verstappen found their way pass the Haas of Kevin Magnussen, who started on pole, the two scrapped wheel-to-wheel during the first half of the sprint before Russell took the lead. With Sainz facing a five-place grid penalty for taking a new engine this weekend, Mercedes are set to lock out the front row for Sunday’s race.<\/p>\n
The two-time champion then slipped back after being passed by his former teammate Sainz and Hamilton. Verstappen was just as defences against Sainz, but the Ferrari ran him out wide as well as clipping the Red Bull’s front wing clipped the rear tyre of the Ferrari, tearing off its end-plate.<\/p>\n
Next to pass Verstappen was Hamilton, the seven time champion getting the run on him out of the first part of Descida do Lago (Turn Four) then making the move on exit (Turn Five) as they ran up the hill.<\/p>\n
For Verstappen and Red Bull, it marked the first time since the Austrian Grand Prix that they have lost a sprint or a Grand Prix win. But he did lead during the middle phase of the race.<\/p>\n
Russell said, \u201cIt was incredible, I wasn\u2019t expecting to have that much pace but I think it goes to show the hard work everyone is putting in and the progress we as a team have made and these last few race the car has been feeling so great. Obviously, it\u2019s difficult to know how Max would have got on if he would have been on the soft tyres but nevertheless it\u2019s a great feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sainz who was second but starts seventh said, \u201cI could see the Mercedes pushing quite hard. I wanted to get into the fight in the first laps with Max and George. I had to be aggressive because I am taking the penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen did complain about running over some debris, which might have damaged his car, following contact with Sainz. The damage allowed Hamilton to sail pass the Red Bull on the following lap taking third. Many would have expected the two time champion would have breezed passed given the pace Red Bull has had all year not so.<\/p>\n
Verstappen said: “It was a bit more difficult than expected somehow. But even on the soft we wouldn’t have been fast enough, so we were clearly struggling on keeping the tyres alive, so this is something we need to try and fix for tomorrow [Sunday] even though there is not a lot you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen finished a second ahead of his teammate Sergio Perez, but their will be questions for the team after they have dominated the second half of the season why they made that decision to start on the slower medium tyres, while everyone else was on the soft tyres, but it did give him a better launch.<\/p>\n
However, Hamilton, along with Daniel Ricciardo and Guanyu Zhou, is under investigation for an infringement on the grid at the start, and could still be penalised.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc was sixth with the Ferrari driver a second and three-tenths behind Perez with the top three teams. Lando Norris finished best of the rest as Magnussen tumbled down the order to finish three seconds behind the McLaren, it was clear that the Haas didn\u2019t have the pace to challenge for a higher grid spot.<\/p>\n
Sebastian Vettel made up places during the sprint to finish ninth despite being forced off by his Aston Martin teammate Lance Stroll, the four time champion finishing three seconds ahead of Pierre Gasly. Stroll drove aggressively in the sprint and forced Vettel wide across the gravel, too aggressively the stewards decided, awarding the Canadian a ten second penalty and dropping him to seventeenth.<\/p>\n
Alpine who went into the sprint looking to be the best of the rest, found their sprint falling apart from lap one. Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon went wheel to wheel on the opening lap, the Frenchman pushing and making contact with Alonso at descida do Lago on lap one.<\/p>\n
The result saw Alonso damage his front wing and Ocon with a damaged sidepod as he tumbled to eighteenth. Potentially costing Alpine in their constructor’s championship battle with McLaren, if the British team have a brilliant race.<\/p>\n
Daniel Ricciardo brought his McLaren home eleventh, finishing almost two seconds ahead of Mick Schumacher. both Alfa Romeo\u2019s managed to make up places with Guanyu Zhou finishing half a second ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas, with the contact dropping Alonso to fifteenth.<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda was sixteenth four tenths ahead of Stroll and Ocon, following his contact with his teammate. Nicolas Latifi was the final finisher as his Williams teammate Alex Albon retired on lap four<\/p>\n
George Russell will start the Sao Paulo Grand Prix from pole position after taking Mercedes first sprint win of the season after finishing three seconds ahead of Carlos Sainz. The Englishman took the lead from Max Verstappen as they duelled midway through the sprint with Russel diving past the Red Bull on his third attempt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51,218,304,369,664,709,754,814,961,1283,1298,1637,1642,1766,1768,1769,1843,1881,1886],"class_list":["post-11304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-race-reports","tag-51","tag-autodromo-jose-carlos-pace","tag-brazil","tag-carlos-sainz-jr","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-one","tag-george-russell","tag-interlagos","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sao-paulo","tag-sao-paulo-gp","tag-sao-paulo-grand-prix","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-sprint","tag-sprint-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}