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Sergio Pérez scored his first F1 victory on a day when Mercedes gave a “sweet to a boy” by putting George Russell in his car, and “stole it” with an incredible mistake. This story will remain in the memories of Formula 1, as one of the heartbreaking moments in the history of the discipline.
Sergio Pérez won after a series of late “disasters” that followed Mercedes, when George Russell was preparing to win.
Going backwards, George Russell immediately took the lead in the race by making a better start than Valtteri Bottas, passing Turn 1 already ahead of a race he always led since then, until ‘Murphy’s Law’ took effect in Mercedes.
Following the first lap confusion resulting in a safety car, after the restart Russell quickly established an advantage that fluctuated between two / three seconds in the first half of the race.
He went to the pits five laps before Bottas, and when the Finn changed the tires, the difference was eight seconds. Bottas recovered a bit, and when the margin was about five seconds, the race turned around after a departure from the track of the driver who replaced Russell in Williams, Jack Aitken.
With a big lead, Mercedes called both of their cars to the pits, for a precautionary stop, putting on “new” medium tires. Here, the monumental error occurred when the team accidentally put a mixed set of tires on Russell’s car. They quickly realized the mistake, in the middle of a tire change from Bottas, who had ‘parked’ immediately behind. Mercedes put my tires back on Bottas’s W11 and sent him out on the track after an astonishing 27 seconds. Logically, he had to call Russell to return to the pits, since the Englishman had tires that were not his. With the confusion, Bottas and Russell fell to fourth and fifth, that’s where Sergio Pérez comes in at the forefront of the race.
With new tires, Russell still seemed to have a chance to regain positions and eventually reach Perez, he was already second, after having passed Lance Stroll and Esteban Ocon. Perez had a 3.6s lead at the time, but Russell soon narrowed the margin to two seconds when he was called up by the team … due to a puncture. He dropped to 15th place, then bounced back to ninth place, scoring for the first time in his two-year F1 career. A week ago scoring would have been an immense joy for you, this time you ended the day crying with sadness.
In any case, George Russell made an extraordinary debut for Mercedes, he deserved the victory for everything he did, not just in the race, but throughout the weekend and must have left Toto Wolff frowning. The class George Russell got everything right with during Sakhir’s Formula 1 GP, not only must have put Valtteri Bottas on the brink of a nervous breakdown, as Toto Wolff showed the driver there.
Because the story is unpublished and excellent, of course, the victory of Sergio Pérez and the double podium of Racing Point, but the true hero of this race is George Russell.
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