A NEW entry onto the F1 calendar always brings great unknowns and great opportunities. The last-minute edition of Qatar to the 2021 season infused those unknowns into what has already been an exhilarating fight for the world championship title.
Lewis Hamilton seemed to pick up from where he left off in Brazil last weekend. A stunning, and frankly untouchable, qualifying lap saw him take the 102nd pole position of his career. Though Max Verstappen was second quickest, he had no answer for the pace of the Mercedes.
The Red Bull driver’s task of beating Hamilton would be made all the more difficult after he was given a five-place grade penalty for ignoring double waved yellow flags at the end of the Q3 session. As it turns out a bit of chaos reigned at the end of qualifying as Pierre Gasly’s Alpha Tauri came to a stop on the start/finish strait after suffering a right-front tyre delamination.
Verstappen wasn’t the only driver hit with a penalty, as Valtteri Bottas, too, was forced to drop three places on the grid for the same ‘offence’.
This left Hamilton in pole position but on the slower medium tyre for the first start of the race. Starting alongside Hamilton on the front-row was Gasly, with Fernando Alonso in third.
Despite starting on the red side-walled soft tyres, neither Gasly nor Alonso was able to make inroads on Hamilton who rocketed off the line as the lights went out.
Starting in seventh, an aggressive Verstappen scythed through the field to run fourth by the end of the second lap. He made short work of Gasly and Alonso and ran second by lap five, roughly five to six seconds behind race leader Hamilton.
It became clear fairly quickly, however, that the Merc driver not only had better pace than Verstappen but was also well in control with some pace in hand, should it be needed.
Without any real ability to catch and pass Hamilton, Red Bull pulled the trigger early with Verstappen‘s first stop, which was easily covered by Mercedes.
Tyre degradation would become a much bigger story as the race progressed with several drivers, including Bottas, Nicholas Latifi, George Russell and Lando Norris, all suffering punctures.
For Bottas, it eventually proved terminal, as it did for Latifi; the latter forcing the deployment of the virtual safety car (VSC) near the end of the race.
Although it hasn’t been conclusively proven yet, the teams obviously pushed the envelope on tyre life after Pirelli had given a clear instruction that the hard compound would last for a maximum of 30 laps.
To say that Hamilton and Verstappen were in a league of their own would be understatement, as the pair was more than 50 seconds up the road from third place. As in Brazil, Hamilton proved untouchable in Qatar, which is an ominous sign for the two remaining races.
Nevertheless, a late pitstop for fresh tyres enabled Verstappen to score an extra point for fastest lap.
As impressive as the championship protagonists were, the driver of the day was unquestionably Alonso.
The Spaniard made the most of a one-stop strategy and scored a brilliant third-place finish. It was Alonso’s first podium since the 2014 Hungarian Grand Prix, which equates to a staggering 2 674 days and that at the age of 40. Checo Perez secured fourth after his charge towards third was scuppered by the VSC.
Esteban Ocon capped a fine day for Alpine in fifth, ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll in sixth. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz and teammate Charles Leclerc were seventh and eighth. Norris, after suffering his own puncture, recovered to ninth ahead of Seb Vettel in tenth.
Red Bull’s double point score has closed the gap to Mercedes to five points in the constructors’ standings. However, Hamilton’s win has brought him within eight points of Verstappen. The next race in Saudi Arabia, a night-time street race, holds its own unknowns.
Should Hamilton win and score fastest lap here with Verstappen in second the pair of them would go to the season finale in Abu Dhabi dead even on points. What a prospect!
