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Tyre tactics proved to be key in last Sunday’s 70th Anniversary Grand Prix held at the Silverstone Circuit, as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen edged out the Mercedes drivers to snag first position.
The second of the double header races at Silverstone revolved even more around effective tyre management than last week, as it cost championship leaders Mercedes a 1-2 podium finish.
Lewis Hamilton edged out team mate Valtteri Bottas in the 50th lap to take second place and snag an extra point for the fastest lap, with Bottas coming in third, after the two drivers tried to stay on top of quickly-withering tyres throughout the race.
Verstappen said after the race: “I didn’t see it coming! But after the first stint, it seemed like we were really good on tyres. Of course, then there was a question mark: ‘How are Mercedes going to go on that hard tyre?’ But we had a lot of pace in the car, I didn’t really have a lot of tyre issues, we just kept pushing. An incredible result to win here, we had a great day, everything worked out well, we had the right strategy, everything was running smooth and I’m incredibly happy to win.”
Verstappen started the race on hard tyres, thumbing his nose at the strategy of most of the other drivers, a tactic that proved beneficial as Bottas started raising concerns about the temperature of his medium tyres as early as the sixth lap.
Meanwhile, Verstappen, who started in fourth before quickly moving to third behind Hamilton and Bottas, was laser-focussed on keeping up the pressure on the Mercedes duo, much to the annoyance of his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, who told the racing Dutchman to take it slow and preserve his tyres in Lap 11. Verstappen’s instant response was: “Mate, this is my only chance of getting the Mercedes. I’m not just sitting around like a grandma.”
Verstappen’s gambit proved successful a few laps later as he took the lead from Hamilton and Bottas after they pitted in laps 14 and 15. He then lengthened this to 19 seconds by the 26th lap but the team botched the pit stop letting Bottas pull ahead.
By the 50th lap, it was a Verstappen-Bottas-Hamilton lead, until Hamilton overtook his team mate Bottas, who had started at pole position on the same day that his contract with the team was renewed.
Hamilton said, after the race: “It was a really challenging race out there. Fair play to Max on the win, Red Bull didn’t seem to have the same tyre issues we encountered. I’m just grateful that we managed to bring it home in P2 and score some good points. We didn’t expect to struggle with the blistering to the extent we experienced it. The first stint was difficult, in the second stint I was managing the tyres like you cannot believe. I was doing everything I could to nurse the tyres, but it made no difference to the blistering. I was pushing so hard in those final laps to pass Charles and Valtteri that it felt like I was racing with half a tyre at the end.”
This week’s result pushed Verstappen into second place in the overall championship standings, four points ahead of Bottas and 30 points shy of Hamilton. Mercedes leads the constructors championship ranks with 180, followed by Red Bull and Ferrari.
The next race takes place on Sunday in Spain.
