The hidden factors that thwarted Hamilton's bid for shock Turkish GP glory

What a difference nearly 11 months makes.

In Valtteri Bottas’s case, that and several other critical factors were enough to have him go from “probably the worst race of my career” in the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix, to a dominant “one of the best” victory in similarly damp conditions in 2021 at Istanbul Park.

This time around, he was starting from an inherited pole. And he was sharing the front row with one of Formula 1’s best wet-weather drivers: Max Verstappen. The pre-race signs did not look good.

But he confounded the form book and snarky expectations with a dazzling and dominant display to take a famous victory ahead of Verstappen – in the process aiding the title ambitions of team-mate Lewis Hamilton. These three drivers were, once again, the central figures.

Victory for Bottas was his first since Russia 2020

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Bottas’s boom

Sunday had started grey and gloomy, with the 3.3 miles of track wet throughout. Conditions were the coldest of the weekend when the race started, intermittent drizzle keeping the circuit damp in the run-up with few patches of standing water.

There was no danger of a delayed or safety car start – race director Michael Masi later explaining he did “not at all” consider such a move at any point – and so Bottas led the pack around to the grid on intermediate tyres. When the lights went out, he, Verstappen and the third-place-starting Charles Leclerc made near identical reactions, with the Ferrari making the most ground as Verstappen started away from the racing line.

At the first corner, the scene of his first of six spins here last season, Bottas swept ahead. That rather set the tone and by the end of the first tour he was 1.3 seconds to the good over Verstappen, Leclerc 1.4s further back and soon a chunk away from the Red Bull.

"The key thing today was the tyre management and not to kill the tyres at the beginning of the stint – trying to play the long game" Valtteri Bottas

The main action at the start centred on Fernando Alonso, who was tapped into a spin by Pierre Gasly as the Alpine tried to surge around the outside of Turn 1. The stewards’ later felt Gasly was “wholly” to blame for the clash and so he was given a five-second penalty – harsh considering he had the fast-starting Sergio Perez glued to his inside.

On lap two, Alonso was involved in another small crash – this time the double world champion more at fault when a lunge to Mick Schumacher’s inside at Turn 4 ended with the Haas spun around and Alonso later handed the same punishment as Gasly.

In the race’s opening segment, the gap between Bottas and Verstappen remained pretty steady around the 1.5s mark as they lapped in the mid-1m34s – “driving under the tyre,” per Verstappen.

“The key thing today was the tyre management,” Bottas later explained, “and not to kill the tyres at the beginning of the stint – trying to play the long game.”

Bottas took the initiative from the start, leading Verstappen and Leclerc while behind, Alonso and Gasly were on a collision course

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Taking the demanding Turns 1 and 8 as easy as possible while remaining fast was the important balance to avoid over stressing the inters early, which would bite drivers back late on.

The Finn’s approach to this phase of tyre management brought him to 2.1s ahead by the end of lap seven of 58 and over the next seven laps he built that lead to 3.7s. Here, Red Bull urged Verstappen to lift his pace, which he did – moving into the 1m33s for the first time and only leaving that range once over the next 16 laps.

But Bottas matched Verstappen’s metronomic times – covering off the Red Bull’s surge with ease. On lap 19, he made what he called his “only” mistake of the race – “a bit of a snap in Turn 1 on the exit” – which cost him 0.5s sliding around and Verstappen was able to close to 2.6s.

But, again, the gap held steady before Bottas could pull away again – going over 3s once more at the end of lap 27 and then climbing significantly as Verstappen slipped back up the 1m33s, to the 1m34s and even once reaching 1m35.0s.

By the halfway point, the teams were agonising over when to call their drivers in for fresh inters. Or, risk leaving them out as they wore down in a bid to save a stop before pitting for slicks. Or, seeing if one set of inters would do the trick as it did for Hamilton in 2020 (albeit after starting that event on the full wets).

McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo had been an early guinea pig with his lap 21 stop for more inters, but his pace was not any faster with the tread replaced. Sebastian Vettel would be the only driver to try slicks with Aston Martin’s lap 36 gamble to take mediums, but that badly backfired – the wet patches and low temperatures costing critical tyre heat.

Now, Verstappen “at one point said the tyres are pretty good” because they were “completely worn to slicks, very tricky out there when the track is like it was”. As a result, Red Bull called him in at the end of lap 36, with the Dutchman now nearly six seconds behind Bottas.

Bottas never came under a true threat from Verstappen and managed his tyres well to keep himself out of range

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The Finn “didn’t consider going through the whole race with one set [of inters]” because “at some point I started to feel a bit of vibration from the tyres”. “They were like slicks,” he explained, “and eventually you would get the canvas.”

Bottas “always had it in my mind that we would be stopping at some point” so when Red Bull pulled the trigger and replaced Verstappen’s inters - because there was a big enough gap to Perez’s fourth place that he could rejoin ahead of his team-mate - it was simple enough for Mercedes to bring Bottas in immediately and cover off any threat from behind.

There was actually briefly a menace, but not from Verstappen.

Leclerc had only fallen to a maximum of 8.3s back from the lead during the race’s opening stint but hadn’t been dropped completely. When Verstappen and Bottas pitted he cycled into the lead from third and was soon asking Ferrari if he could make it to the end without stopping, his advantage 6.8s at the end of Bottas’s out-lap. It would have been bigger had he not locked up and gone off at Turn 12 on the previous tour, costing nearly three seconds.

“For the first five/six laps we were actually more or less in line with the pace,” Leclerc said of his audacious bid to steal Bottas’s race. “For me it was clear that it was not just rolling the dice. I was quick and we were all confident with that choice.”

Ferrari brought Leclerc in at the end of lap 47 as his pace was now erratic and tumbling, the Monegasque driver nevertheless left with "no regrets" about taking the course that he did

For nine laps the Ferrari held on to first – the team encouraged that Leclerc’s gamble might just pay by the state of Carlos Sainz Jr’s tyres when he pitted for what would be delayed stop, caused by the signal to release the car not going to the gantry lights as expected.

Bottas was steadily chipping into Leclerc’s advantage, but it wasn’t totally clear what would happen when he arrived because of a phenomenon that was impacting almost all the drivers. Those that had stopped earlier found the inters began to grain as they wore down on the drying line and Bottas encountered this as he reached Leclerc’s rear.

But as he grappled with the changing rubber, Bottas’s second set of inters “grained to the point that they were slicks again and then they were fine”. He was within one second of the lead on lap 45. Just over one tour later he was back in front, having surged to the inside of Turn 1 to take the lead – the wetter track no problem on his less worn tyres.

Leclerc eventually elected to give up his starting set of inters after being usurped by Bottas

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Ferrari brought Leclerc in at the end of lap 47 as his pace was now erratic and tumbling, the Monegasque driver nevertheless left with “no regrets” about taking the course that he did. From there, Bottas checked out to the finish – coming home 14.6s to the good and with the bonus point for the fastest lap as an added bounty, his 1m30.432s set on the final tour.

“[Victory feels] very sweet, actually,” Bottas said afterwards. “Overall, I think it was one of my best races in terms of how it went from beginning to the end.”

One of the key differences between Bottas’s disastrous 2020 performance here and his dominance last weekend concerned the track surface. It had been much discussed in the build up after the FIA-mandated water-blasting had reset the asphalt – the black stuff coarser now, its stones visible and the surface bitumen oils forcibly removed.

Even in the wet, the winner felt the track was “quite grippy” and keeping heat in the inters was no problem: “It was like night and day to last year.”

Verstappen’s doom

Once Leclerc had pitted, Verstappen was again Bottas’s closet challenger, but the winner was left “surprised by the pace difference” between the pair over the second stint. There was a clear reason for this – Verstappen had opted to “bring it home”, aware he lacked the pace to mount a victory challenge.

Verstappen had made a go of the race during the early stages, the call to up his pace made as he and Red Bull felt conditions were drying. But it was clear Bottas always had an answer and Verstappen knew “there was no point where I would attack Valtteri”.

Red Bull’s strategic options therefore narrowed and it chose to pit Verstappen when it did because the tyres “had to go through a phase [where] you had to almost machine them down to get to that slick [and] it was about not beasting them up too early,” according to Christian Horner.

But Bottas’s tyre management in stint two also prevailed, while Verstappen also had to contend with his steering wheel being “a bit left-hand-down” as the race’s final third unfolded. He insisted this was because “the tyres are wearing so you get a bit of an uneven platform” that he “could feel already from the start” and said it wasn’t “performance limiting”. Neither was the error message he was seeing alongside his gearshift dashboard lights in the early laps – a problem solved by Verstappen changing one steering wheel rotary “and it was fine”.

Verstappen never had the pace to challenge Bottas, but had the consolation of regaining the points lead

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

He left Turkey back in the points lead, but it was clear from early last Friday that Mercedes had an edge. Then, Red Bull’s engine was turned down as it usually is in practice, but it’s typical gains did not fully come as Verstappen struggled with understeer and balance problems in qualifying.

This all stemmed from Red Bull being “a bit out the window”, per Horner, on car set-up for the new track surface. Mercedes, on the other hand, “did good preparation coming here and the car has been in the right window”, according to its director of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin.

The teams had been provided with measurements of the roughness of the reworked track surface and so could trial various grip levels accordingly in their pre-event simulations in a bid to find suitable set-ups from the off. Mercedes nailed this, whereas Red Bull had to play catch up.

Perez nipped behind the pitlane entry bollard in a move Masi "had a look at" but decided not to raise to the stewards because it was "good, hard racing"

Although it did make progress – former Toro Rosso driver Sebastien Buemi putting in the hours on the simulator back at its factory – this was a crucial difference in Verstappen’s battle with the Mercedes cars in the sessions that mattered.

Hamilton’s gloom

Hamilton’s pre-practice internal combustion engine change meant he was forced to start 11th, but he was still a critical factor in last Sunday’s event. And had several hidden factors turned out differently, he might have at least matched Verstappen’s run from down the grid in Sochi to the podium.

At the start, Hamilton kept his nose clean and then imperiously passed Vettel at Turn 12 on the first lap. He then had an immediate look to pass Yuki Tsunoda, but was rebuffed before becoming stuck behind the rookie for six tours. Then, on lap eight, he made the first of two runs to the outside of Turn 3 – blasting by to take eighth while still giving “a lot of space and a lot of room”. This was a tactic the world champion said he deployed all race because everyone bar Verstappen is “not fighting for the same thing that I am [the world title]”.

Lance Stroll and Lando Norris were dispatched in successive laps. Then Hamilton had to reach and pass Gasly, which he did simply on the outside line at the end of the back straight on lap 14 to take fifth. His next target was Perez, who was finding it “pretty hard to manage the tyres” for a change – ruing not “introducing” the inters correctly as he should have in the early stages.

Hamilton's dice with Perez was the battle of the race, but the Mexican just kept him at bay

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

On lap 34 the battle of the race started, with Hamilton initially attacking to Perez’s outside at the end of the back straight. From there at Turn 12 to the first corner of the next lap the pair ran side-by-side, wheel-to-wheel.

Hamilton edged Perez wide at the penultimate turn after sliding getting close to the Turn 13 right’s inside kerbs. That meant the Mexican nipped behind the pitlane entry bollard in a move Masi “had a look at” but decided not to raise to the stewards because it was “good, hard racing” as “our regulations state in the [race director’s] notes you only have to keep to the left of the bollard if you're committed to entering pitlane”.

Perez therefore was able to get back to Hamilton’s side at the final turn and then steam down the inside line at Turn 1 to retake the fourth place he’d briefly lost when Hamilton crossed the start/finish line fractionally ahead.

Here, Red Bull had a choice to make.

Horner explained that his squad “could have left him out to keep holding up Lewis” but decided not to as it was not convinced one set of tyres could make it to the finish. Esteban Ocon’s did, but he haemorrhaged time in the final laps and felt “one more lap I would have got a puncture”. This doubt was also a factor in Red Bull pitting Verstappen when it did, with Perez coming in next time by on lap 37.

Now Mercedes had a choice to make.

“We could have either played it very conservative and pitted him when Verstappen and Perez [did],” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff. “Fight it out on-track, probably come out behind Perez and fight for P4/P3 on-track. The other thing was to try to go long, and either think whether it’s transition [time] to a dry tyre, or just not stop.”

The middle approach is what Hamilton wanted. Mercedes initially did not move to cover Perez as it wanted to “wait and see” which of its three options might become the best course of action – according to Shovlin. Then, on lap 42, Hamilton rebuffed instructions to pit, as he maintained holding onto his first inters in a “hopeful” attempt to “miss a stop” and gain significant time.

Hamilton argued that he should have stayed out, after struggling on his second set of inters

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

“The upside scenarios were a possibility of winning in the dry [with slicks] or P3 if we could make it all that way [on one set of inters],” said Shovlin.

And so, Mercedes waited, but in the end Hamilton’s times collapsed – albeit not as dramatically as Leclerc’s had. He was even at one stage at risk of being passed by Pierre Gasly by the time Perez and Leclerc would theoretically have come through and so Mercedes, after much terse back-and-forth with Hamilton, finally convinced him to come in at the end of lap 50.

He rejoined fifth and shot after Leclerc. But like Bottas earlier, the graining on the new inters bit and he fell back towards Gasly “frustrated” because “I could see second, and then all of a sudden, I’m back in fifth”.

Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola was certain staying on one set of inters would not have worked for Hamilton, but really it was the hope of a late stop for slicks that might have resulted in a shock bid for late glory. But this was thwarted.

"In hindsight now, I would have pitted 10 laps earlier and fought it out on-track" Toto Wolff

Despite the rain never falling heavily at any point during Sunday’s daylight hours, and it coming down only sporadically during the racing laps, the track just never dried enough for slicks. The cloud cover was low and it stayed there, which combined with the cool temperatures and high humidity added up to a greasy surface throughout.

Norris even reported the spray in the early laps “was more like an oily water rather than just water”, although Masi insisted there was no surface dirt “whatsoever”. The overall combination just meant Hamilton’s desired crossover point to take slicks was never reached.

“In hindsight now, I would have pitted 10 laps earlier and fought it out on-track,” Wolff concluded on a day where Hamilton lost the standings lead to Verstappen, his fifth place finish 4s behind Leclerc, who had been overtaken by Perez with seven laps to go in a simple outside run into Turn 12.

“[Lewis probably would have] finished third or fourth. But there was much more to gain from the other more dynamic variant.”

Mercedes believed it had the chance to win with Hamilton if the track had dried a little faster

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images