A great Red Bull performance or an angry Hamilton: who won the Turkish Grand Prix?

The sixteenth Grand Prix of this season is behind us. The fight for the championship is at its peak, which was also evident in the race, especially in terms of caution and strategy. So what is the final standings for the Turkish Grand Prix?

Valtteri Bottas, who started from pole position, had a very good start to the race. Sergio Pérez moved from sixth to fourth. Finally, Daniel Ricciardo in his McLaren came out of last position.

The team took advantage of his poor starting position and replaced the power unit components on his McLaren.

We already saw contact at the first corner. It should be noted – the race was on a wet track, Pierre Gasly was also caught between two cars and was unable to turn into the left-hand first corner.

His car collided with Fernando Alonso’s Alpino, which spun as a result. However, on the second lap, he himself crashed into Mick Schumacher’s Haas, for which he received a time penalty of five seconds.

Gasly received the same penalty, and a rather severe one, precisely because of the first corner incident. However, the Turkish Grand Prix can be described as more of a strategic battle.

In fact, as the race progressed, the track continued to dry out and it was very difficult to predict the future development of the weather and how the intermediate tyres would perform in the second half of the race.

Sebastian Vettel decided to test the medium specification dry tyre. So he went to his mechanics on lap 37. But this set of tyres didn’t work at all. After a lap, he pitted again, this time for new intermediate tyres.

In the last 18 laps, the drivers who hadn’t yet made their pit stops considered finishing the race without a single stop. In particular, it was Charles Leclerc, who was leading the race at the time.

Of course, that’s not possible in the dry. There is a rule that says you have to run two different tyre compounds in a race, so drivers have to make at least one pit-stop. However, in the wet this rule does not apply.

Anyway, the Ferrari driver pitted for a new set of tyres on lap 48. Three laps later, the Mercedes team made the same decision, although Hamilton himself did not agree to the stop.

The longer the drivers spent on one set of tyres, the more grip they had. Why? Of course, rubber wears out during the course of a lap around the circuit, but in these wet conditions, this factor came in handy for the drivers.

Once that soft layer was off the tyre, this specification worked best. As a result, Hamilton struggled after his stop on the new set, and was significantly slower than Leclerc ahead of him for two or three laps.

The Italian stable had a solid performance throughout the race weekend in Turkey, which surprised Leclerc himself. In fact, he admitted it himself before the grand prix. On the other hand, their biggest rival (McLaren) in the battle for third place in the team standings had a very poor result – Norris seventh, Ricciardo thirteenth.

The final standings of the Turkish Grand Prix are as follows:

1. Bottas, 2nd Verstappen, 3rd Perez, 4th Leclerc, 5th Hamilton, 6th Gasly, 7th Norris, 8th Sainz, 9th Stroll, 10th Ocon, 11th Giovinazzi, 12th Räikkönen, 13th Ricciardo, 14th Cunoda, 15th Russell, 16th Alonso, 17th Latifi, 18th Vettel, 19th Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin completes the overall standings.

For Bottas, this is his first win this season, and he also managed to set the fastest lap of the race. The driver of the day, according to the vote, was Carlos Sainz, who took his Ferrari from 19th place to eighth!

“It wasn’t easy today, even though I tried to push, Valtteri had the better pace. I’m happy for second place, today was about a lot of tyre control and careful driving,” Max Verstappen confirmed the complexity of the race in an interview with F1.

Source: F1 Live