George Russell has converted pole into victory at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix after finishing a second and a half of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes who have struggled all season went into this race with the best chances of victory following a strong sprint and race from the Englishman, who edged ahead throughout the race.<\/p>\n
Russell who nearly won on his debut for Mercedes in Sakhir in December 2020 looked to control the race and hold off Hamilton in the closing stages. His lead was helped when his teammate Hamilton collided at the first safety car restart with Max Verstappen dropping him to seventh. But the seven-time champion fought back, with the Dutchman being awarded a five-second penalty.<\/p>\n
Mercedes made it clear both drivers were free to race, but it knew to make it a decade with at least one win in each season they realistically needed Red Bull and Ferrari to struggle. But this weekend has appeared to be a huge step, building off Mexico City, from Saturday onwards they looked to be at least matching the top two on race pace and that showed through out the race.<\/p>\n
For both Mercedes drivers, it was a brilliant drive as they fended off a late attack following a second safety car with ten laps to go, the team gave both drivers a chance to fight for victory, but Russell managed to hold off Hamilton in the final ten laps to take victory. Carlos Sainz pulled away from teammate Charles Leclerc during the final stint.<\/p>\n
The victory also offers significant consolation for Mercedes in a season where their eight-year streak of constructors’ titles was ended by Red Bull and brings them within twenty-three points of second-placed Ferrari ahead of the final race. And marks a decade where they have had at least one win in each season.<\/p>\n
Russell said \u201cWhat an amazing feeling and what a huge thank you to the whole team for making this possible. It\u2019s been an emotional rollercoaster this season, this season, this race. I felt in control, Lewis was super fast and when I saw the safety car I thought this was going to be a difficult end and he put me under so much pressure but happy to go away with the victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton added, \u201cI feel really good, we\u2019ve worked so hard this year to be where we are, to be fighting for the front row, fighting for the podium and getting a 1-2, honestly I am elated for the whole team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferrari looked to struggle to find the pace to challenge Mercedes with Sainz dropping three and a half seconds behind Hamilton by the end of the race. The Spaniard\u2019s attack wasn\u2019t helped when he was forced into an early second stop when a visor tear-off got caught in a rear brake duct, pitted out of the way, and Hamilton caught and passed Perez with twenty-six laps to go.<\/p>\n
Leclerc recovered well after dropping to the back after a collision with Lando Norris, which saw the McLaren driver gain a five second penalty after being deemed to have understeered into the side of the Ferrari to send it spinning into the outside barrier.<\/p>\n
Things wouldn\u2019t get better for McLaren as at Laranjinha, Norris was joined on the slide lines by teammate Daniel Ricciardo who made a slow getaway off the corner and was collected by Kevin Magnussen who was pushed into the McLaren as he spun.<\/p>\n
In a strange turn of form, it was their championship rivals Red Bull making the mistakes, the team put Sergio Perez onto the wrong tyre which saw him unable to pass the Ferraris and even losing out to Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n
Hamilton himself didn\u2019t have an easy race having had a collision with 2021 championship rival Max Verstappen at the first restart on Lap Seven dropping them both down the order. The stewards deemed Verstappen to be more at fault and awarded him a five-second penalty.<\/p>\n
But the race for Red Bull and Ferrari will be defined by his refusal to help teammate Perez past to help the Mexican in his battle with Leclerc for second in the drivers. At Red Bull, Perez had let Verstappen through earlier and been promised his team-mate would return the favour if he was unable to gain further places, but finishing seventh leaves him tied with Leclerc on 290 points going into the final race of the season.<\/p>\n
Asked what happened, Verstappen said: “I told you already last time, you guys don’t ask that again to me, OK? Are we clear about that? I gave my reasons and I stand by it.”<\/p>\n
Perez said over his radio: “It shows who he really is.” Later telling Sky Sports, \u201cI mean I was told I was going to get back the position, I don’t know what the communication was with him on his side.\u201d<\/p>\n
It later emerged post-race a similar call was being made by Leclerc, the Monacan asking to be switched with Sainz to help him with his fight with Perez. He was told by his engineer, \u201cWe believe it\u2019s too risky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Esteban Ocon brought his Alpine home eighth ahead of Valtteri Bottas, the Frenchman making up eight places following his collision in Saturday\u2019s sprint with teammate Alonso. With both McLarens retiring it moves the team nineteen points clear in the battle for fourth in the constructors’ championship.<\/p>\n
Lance Stroll rounded out the top ten finishing two and a half seconds ahead of Aston Martin teammate Sebastian Vettel, heading to Vettel\u2019s final race in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n
Guanyu Zhou brought his Alfa Romeo home twelfth finishing half a second ahead of Mick Schumacher, with the Haas driver finishing one place behind where hr started. Pierre Gasly finished five seconds ahead of the two Williams, with Alex Albon a second ahead of teammate Nicolas Latifi, as the separated the Alpha Tauri\u2019s. Yuki Tsunoda was the final finisher in seventeenth a lap down.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
George Russell has converted pole into victory at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix after finishing a second and a half of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes who have struggled all season went into this race with the best chances of victory following a strong sprint and race from the Englishman, who edged ahead throughout the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7315,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[51,218,304,369,390,647,664,709,754,814,961,1637,1642,1766,1768,1769,1843],"class_list":["post-11311","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-charles-leclerc","tag-esteban-ocon","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-one","tag-george-russell","tag-interlagos","tag-red-bull","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sao-paulo","tag-sao-paulo-gp","tag-sao-paulo-grand-prix","tag-lewis-hamilton"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11311","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=11311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.f1vault.co.uk\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}