Labels

🇭🇺 Formula 1 2021: R11 – Everyone wakes up and chooses chaos

(c) Alpine F1 on Twitter


Chaos at turn 1.

Valtteri Bottas slamming into cars sparked a chain reaction in the Hungarian rain that eventually took out a third of the grid, including himself. It was the first race since Tuscany 2020 where six or more cars failed to finish. As a footnote, Bottas got himself a five-place grid penalty for Belgium after the summer break, while the calibre of drivers taken out meant that there were going to be some weird results out there.
And then somehow, things got weirder. Teams aren’t allowed to speak to their drivers on the formation lap, meaning drivers are speaking into the ether as the track dried during the red flag period. Lewis Hamilton continued on, every single other driver hit the pit lane to change onto slicks, giving a global audience the bizarre spectacle of the world champion being the only driver to start the race from his grid slot, with the other drivers emerging from the pit lane. It looked a bit like USA 2005. 

But as the mayhem unfolded, a couple of drivers were able to keep their heads and massively improve their positions - none more so than Esteban Ocon, who inherited the lead after Hamilton belatedly pitted and never relinquished it. It was Ocon’s first win in F1 and his personal best result since Sakhir 2020, in a very under-the-radar second place. 

It’s easy to forget that the French driver sat out a year in 2019, being the odd one out after the game of musical chairs, before joining Renault, now Alpine. But looking at the data, he must have felt incredibly aggrieved, as this graph shows throughout his career. 

Ocon disco!

The graph takes out retirements and his first half-year in an uncompetitive Manor car is a write-off anyway, but the grouping at Force India shows that he was able to to pilot the car into the points more often than not, finishing in the top six more than 10 times with the outfit that is now Aston Martin. After moving to Renault, you can again see that he’s able to get into the points, with the outliers heading to the left (higher positions, like the second in Sakhir). Ocon has pulled another outlier, becoming just the fourth winner this season and the 11th winner in the hybrid era. It’s an amazing result, but he owes so much to his teammate, Fernando Alonso.
Alonso held back Hamilton for so many laps, stopping the British driver from charging through Sainz, Vettel and Ocon for the win. And although Hamilton eventually sliced his way to third, the backup job Alonso did on his former teammate probably gave his teammate the win. I’ve written in the past about the importance of a great second driver, and Alonso showed every ounce of the experience that caused Alpine to take a chance on the former two-time world champion, despite having some quality drivers in their academy. 

EDIT: After publication, Aston Martin's Sebastian Vettel was disqualified, pushing Hamilton to second and Sainz to third.
I’d love to see what the likes of Guanyu Zhou, Christian Lundgaard and Oscar Piastri thought of the performance from the veteran. The driver of the day honours are well-deserved and shows how knowledgeable the F1 audience is. It would have been easy to nominate Ocon, or even Hamilton, after his fightback, but F1 fans chose an ultimately unsuccessful hold up from Alonso, because they could see the bigger picture.

And what of that picture? This rare win gives Alpine something they can hang their hat on in the future. A first win since the rebrand, and a win on merit, despite the change of plans, Ocon still had to hold off Sebastian Vettel, keeping up their fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship. The third division of the teams’ standings is a fascinating fight, with Alpine, Aston and Alpha Tauri all competing for fifth.  

And speaking of pictures, this is the Alpine graphic for Ocon’s win. I’ve no idea if this is something they made during the race or if it was pre-prepared (although I think it’s the latter EDIT: After publication, I found out that it is pre-prepared) but it shows that media managers in F1 (and sports in general) have to be super-prepared for everything. There’s a chance these graphics were made knowing that they would never be used, and somewhere there’s a graphic designer who has had a very small and unheralded part of this shock win.

And Ocon makes it 11 Hybrid era winners

As the summer break comes up, I thought it would be a good time to revisit four odd predictions I made at the start of the season:

❓  Five+ winners: So far: Four (Hamilton, Verstappen, Perez, Ocon)
🎉Williams not last: So far: 10 points after the DQ for Vettel and eighth
🔺Ferrari top four: So far: Yep!
❌Mick Schumacher 10+ points: Nope, and if he can’t get points here, then when is he likely to?

PREVIOUSLY THIS SEASON: POST-RACE

Labels:

Most-read posts