CHAOTIC Grand Prix costly for both drivers, writes PETER COSTER:
TWO driver changes are likely after the second Grand Prix at Bahrain on Sunday. George Russell would almost certainly have won had it not been for the chaos in the Mercedes pits that saw him sent out with the front tyres meant for Valtteri Bottas in the second Mercedes.
Russell, who led the race until both Mercedes came in for a double stop when the race slowed under a safety stop, had to return to the pits on the next lap.
Bottas, who was behind him in the “doublestack” first stop was sent out with worn tyres because his replacements were on Russell’s car.
The Finnish driver said later he was made to look like a “fool” and something else, which referred to a part of the female anatomy although something may have been lost in translation.
Bottas slipped back on the field to finish eighth while Russell was to suffer a puncture and had to pit for a second time, finishing ninth.
The British driver was standing in for seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton, who tested positive for coronavirus after winning the first of the end-of-season triple header. The third race is at nearby Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf this Sunday.
An almost certain win for Russell in his first drive for Mercedes reminds those of us with very long memories of the Italian driver, Giancarlo Baghetti, who won the 1961 French Grand Prix for Ferrari in his first world championship race.
Embed from Getty ImagesRussell, who drives for Williams, was having his first race for Mercedes, but it is unlikely to be his last.
“A star is born,” said an abashed Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, who described the bungled pit stop on Sunday as “a colossal fuck up.”
Sky Sports apologised for the word, which is becoming commonplace on F1 broadcasts, if not by team managers but by disappointed drivers.
Daniel Ricciardo dropped the f-word after a bungled team order cost him a potential podium finish.
The Renault driver, who is going to McLaren next year, was already past the pit lane entrance when he was ordered in for a tyre change.
Pit bungles were not the the only set backs on Sunday. Ricciardo finished fifth, which would normally have been considered a good result, but Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc were out of the race on the first lap in a incident that also involved eventual winner Sergio Perez.
“Checo” was able to get back to the pits and change tyres. He was last when he rejoined the race, which made his victory on Sunday all the more remarkable.
Perez is without a drive next year after being dumped by Racing Point in favour of the out-of-form Sebastian Vettel, who was dumped earlier by Ferrari.
Perez has since driven knowing his career depends on it. Sunday was the Mexican driver’s first win after 190 races.
Again, this reminded those with very long memories of the last time a Mexican driver won a Grand Prix.
Pedro Rodriquez won in Belgium in 1970 in a BRM after victory in the South African Grand Prix in a Cooper-Maserati in 1967.
Sergio Perez now becomes the ideal replacement for Red Bull’s Alexander Albon, who finished sixth on Sunday and has not been confirmed for next year.
At Mercedes, George Russell could take the second seat alongside Lewis Hamilton after Bottas’s contract expires.
Russell was the 2017 and 2018 Formula 3 and Formula 2 champion before his first race for Williams at the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park last year.
Williams has Mercedes engines and the Silver Arrows team (whose car are painted black because of its support for Black Lives Matter) has first call on Russell as part of its driver development program.
Russell was still learning how to drive the car on Sunday when he started posting the best times in practice and was beaten for pole by Bottas by only two hundredths of a second.
He led from the start in spite of having to ask over the radio where the “overtake button” was on the Mercedes to use its stored battery power.
The racing boots he was wearing were at least a size smaller to fit inside the carbon-fibre survival cell built for Lewis Hamilton.
Russell remained calm even when, as he described it, the race was “taken away from us twice.”
Wolff was abjectly apologetic and admitted Russell had driven a “perfect” race and would be back in the Mercedes seat at Abu Dhabi if Hamilton still tests positive for COVID-19.
Last Sunday was not going to be “his last attempt to win a race,” said Wolff, who is part-owner of the Mercedes team, “it’s just the beginning of a fairy tale that didn’t work out.”
And for those whose memories are not so long, Pedro Rodriquez, was the elder brother of Ricardo Rodriquez, who died in the Mexican Grand Prix in 1962 when the suspension on Rob Walker’s privateer-entered Lotus 24 failed and he hit the barriers.
Pedro Rodriquez died the year after he won the Belgian Grand Prix when a tyre came off a front wheel. As with his brother, the failure sent the Ferrari he was driving in a sports car race into the barriers where it caught fire.
That had its an echo at the first race in Bahrain when Romain Grosjean’s Haas speared in the barrier and erupted into a fireball.
Motor racing remains dangerous, but the drivers are more likely to survive.
PETER COSTER is a former editor and foreign correspondent who has covered a range of international sports, including world championship fights and the Olympic Games.
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