I have been trying not to dwell on the controversial lap-one contact in the British Grand Prix today, given the inevitable waterfall of knee-jerk shit-flinging that’s still plastering the walls of social media and has been from the minute it happened… but if I can’t stop views and justifications and upset from swirling around my head then maybe I should try to write it out of my system.
While I can’t speak from a position of having driven these
cars or raced hard for real, it looks to me like both drivers committed to the
entry of Copse corner in a way that relied heavily on the other
driver yielding and dropping behind… and since neither of them did yield, they
met in the middle and there was a dramatic collision. Two unstoppable forces
bounced off each other. The right-rear wheel rim of the Red Bull shattered on
impact and Max Verstappen was instantly a passenger from there to the tyre wall. He
seems to be uninjured and not concussed, which is great news if so given the forces involved.
If the collision had been less severe and one of the drivers
hadn’t been taken out of the race, then it probably would’ve been deemed a racing
incident and we’d have had the two championship protagonists duking it out for
a little while longer before turbulent wake and tyre preservation consigned
them to running in single file and trying to outfox each other on strategy
instead. What actually happened is that the stewards leaned towards penalising
Lewis Hamilton, which was predictable because it’s in line with how they viewed somewhat
similar incidents in Austria with regards to putting more weight of responsibility
onto the driver holding the inside line not to run the other guy off-track.
Lewis – having just been squeezed to within an inch
of the concrete pit wall following a late dart to the inside line – found
himself having to commit to a very shallow angle of entry into a very fast
corner. It turned out to be too much for the front tyres to facilitate, so it
looks, and he consequently missed the apex. At the same time, Max sent it in
seemingly on the assumption that Lewis wasn’t going to be there by the time he
reached said apex (or got closer to it) for himself. But, perhaps conscious of
how the new Sprint Qualifying had gone wherein the lead was basically out of his grasp
after the first lap, Lewis was in no mind to back down until it was too late.
They were side-by-side just before the turn-in point, but the Red Bull could
carry more speed from the outside and by the time they met in the middle the
Mercedes was only at front-tyre-to-rear-tyre level, pitching Verstappen into
the spin.
As tensions exploded, Red Bull’s bosses started stirring the
pot at every opportunity they were given, of which there were many. I’m not interested in
handbags, but I will say that Christian Horner’s assertion that you “can’t” pass on the
inside of Copse (ordinarily a ~180mph corner with one usable line) was put to
bed later that same race, when Hamilton finally did take the lead with three
laps to go by trying the same move again. Granted, Charles Leclerc isn’t fighting for the title like Verstappen is, but this could yet prove to be the best chance of a win he gets
all year and I really don’t think he was planning to wave Hamilton past and say
“ah, forget about it.” In the overhead replay shot he seems to get a mild slide
on throughout the corner on the outside line, where a less-used area of tarmac
probably held less grip for his Ferrari. Correcting it took him wide over the kerb and that
was that. Furthermore, back
in 2019, Valtteri Bottas even pulled the inside move on Hamilton himself as
they slugged it out in the early stages of that British GP. Again, there’s a
caveat to give – this time because they’re teammates – but the point remains
that, when drivers allow 'racing room', it very much is possible to pass cleanly at Copse after you’ve had a strong enough exit
out of Luffield to draw alongside by the turn-in point.
Channel 4’s commentators were quick to wonder if the context
of it being Hamilton’s home race affected his decision making. Only he can
answer that. I’d be minded to suggest it was more about the distinct likelihood
of him not getting another opportunity to take the lead for the rest of the
race, as previewed in the Saturday Sprint. The Mercedes car has, for a long time now, suffered
noticeably in traffic because (just like the V8-era Red Bulls, ironically) it’s been designed to qualify on pole and drive off into the distance. I don’t know how
true that is of the 2021 car specifically, but it’s observable that Lewis didn’t exactly
sail past Leclerc’s ostensibly second-class Ferrari after the restart. In fact
he sat around two seconds behind Leclerc and started playing to strategy
instead (until his penalty-extended pit stop), as we very often see happen on circuits
like Silverstone – especially a baking hot Silverstone – where turbulent wake
is a strong factor and tyre degradation is always high. In the final phase, he instead put
in the sort of flawlessly flat-out power stint that Michael Schumacher would admire, to reel-in the Ferrari from much further back and win his home race after all.
As for he and the team celebrating afterwards, I think it’s
worth remembering his demeanour during the Red Flag period, when he was a very
different picture of a man. Not somebody who looked impressed with himself at
all, having asked on the radio if Max was OK. I could try to read something into him trying to emphasise the team's success above his own in the post-race interview as well. He’s not here to put people in
hospital, he’s here to out-race them properly. No matter what his haters say.
To me, the celebrating was about how it went from the restart onwards, as well as just taking
the chance to enjoy the most adoring crowd he’ll get all year. The experience
will be very, very different at the Dutch Grand Prix in September…
…which circles me back to the ‘fans’ and the internet.
You need only to have looked at the festival-esque grandstands
in the Red Bull Ring recently to know what kind of following Verstappen has. They’re just
as loud and unfiltered as that when they have something negative or disparaging
to say, too. Given the differences in attitude between the Hamilton-Mercedes
and Verstappen-RBR combos, from who kneels before the anthem and who doesn’t, to
how their bosses handle the public and what their fanbases are like, I felt dread in my
gut when I watched car 33 ricochet off car 44 and out of the race. As a
generalisation, the apparent divisions between them are not just about sport or automotive
brand loyalty. The fallout was always going to be unsavoury. Suffice to say
that when both teams had to put out statements today condemning racist abuse
towards Hamilton I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that it was necessary for
them to do so…
Regardless of which way you lean on what issue*, though, it seems
pretty clear that this rivalry is going to reach levels of intensity and
tribalism to match the days of Senna and Prost by the end of this year,
accelerated by the omnipresence of (anti)social media and the 24/7 global ‘discussion’
it facilitates.
For a long time, pretty much since Schumacher’s first retirement, I’ve increasingly been a neutral F1 fan. I want to see great racing, whether it’s for 1st, 10th or 15th place. Regarding these two, I admired Lewis Hamilton when he arrived with a bang in the late ‘00s, then I went off him for a few years, but recently I can’t help admiring him all over again for the sporting greatness he’s reached and the way he’s using his platform to try doing good things for the world – very much swimming against the surrounding tide in the process. I have equally had to just sit back and watch in awe at some of the performances Max Verstappen has put in, such as the waterproof charge to the podium from 14th at a drenched Interlagos in 2016 that comes to mind so readily. His instant impact and the way he has become a national sensation on such a scale is a rare and special thing for the sport, on its face. I just fear how ugly things may get between tribes as this all rumbles on.
This race is a
trigger point for some big things, both good and bad, for Formula 1. Let’s see
how it goes from here.
*F1’s weaksauce We
Race As One campaign is meant to encompass several different social and environmental
matters in the world, but to clarify where I am on the prevalent “issue”
featured in the public F1 discourse throughout today: racism is fundamentally
indefensible in any circumstance. There is no logic, there is no justification,
there is no excuse. You can be annoyed by a driver’s split-second decision-making
without hurling racial slurs at them. You manage that all the time when sniping
from afar at the white drivers, after all. No, they don’t “ask” for your myopic
shithousery by embracing their own existence or by simply being visible to you at all. No,
a driver’s skin tone isn’t an influence on their driving and so it doesn’t
factor into what happened on Sunday whatsoever. If you are so depressingly low
on tact, intellect or self-control that you can’t stop yourself from going
there then do the rest of us a favour and take your interests somewhere else
until you learn to grow out of it. Motorsport doesn’t need you until then. Nor
does any developed, even half-decent society.
That’s all I have to say. I want to think about other things now.