Unexpected tyre deflations bring in drama to British GP race

By Malhaar Khaladkar*

New Delhi, 3 August 2020: Defending champion Lewis Hamilton limped home to a record 7^th British GP victory on three tyres, in the dramatic last few laps. A controlled, dominant victory and 1-2 finish for Hamilton and Mercedes was not on the cards as Valtteri Bottas finished out of points after suffering a similar issue, albeit two laps earlier, and Hamilton scraped through to take the win from the charging Bull of Max Verstappen.

Mercedes have taken pole position at this track since 2013, and this year is no exception. Hamilton started on pole with Bottas lining up second. Behind them were the duo of Verstappen and Leclerc. McLarens started in P5 and P7, Lando Norris out-qualified Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll was sandwiched between them in P6. Renault lined up in P8 & P9. Sebastian Vettel’s miserable weekend continued as he could only manage P10 on the starting grid. Gasly and sister teammate Albon started alongside. F1 returnee Nico Hulkenberg was due to line-up P13 on the grid but didn’t start the race due to drivetrain issues was held up in the garage. George Russel had a 5-place grid penalty for infringement of yellow flags in qualifying starting last, two places behind his teammate. Haas and Alfa Romeo had a miserable qualifying, unable to make it out of Q1.

The predicted and fastest strategy was a one-stop from either the medium or the soft onto the hard tyre to the end of the race. Pirelli predicted the hard tyre could do about 40 laps.

By the end of Lap 1, Safety Car was out as Alex Albon collided with Kevin Magnussen, subsequently, the latter went into the barrier. Safety Car came in on Lap 5 as Normal running resumed. Safety Car was leading the field again on Lap 12 as Daniil Kvyat lost control of his car entering Maggots, the Turn 10. It was suggested according to Alpha Tauri team principal Franz Tost, that the crash happened due to a rear right tyre puncture.

The whole field, barring Romain Grosjean and Alex Albon pitted for hard tyres on Laps 12 and 13 to go till the end. This resulted in Grosjean running in P5 ahead of the likes of McLaren, Renault and the sole Racing Point of Lance Stroll but the gamble failed to yield the expected result. Safety Car came in at the end of Lap 18. Till this point, only half a dozen laps of normal racing had taken place.

As racing got underway Norris made his way past Ricciardo as the McLaren’s overtook Grosjean and running P5 and P6 by Lap 27. Ricciardo followed suit on Lap 36. Grosjean hit the cliff as he pitted on Lap 38 dropping him to P15. Meanwhile, Albon was slapped with a 5-second time penalty for his altercation with Magnussen. He served it when he made a second pitstop on Lap 31. At the front it was relatively smooth sailing for the top 4. Hamilton maintained a 2-second lead over his teammate Bottas while Verstappen was in no-man”s land. Charles Leclerc was 4-seconds ahead of future teammate Sainz.

Stroll started losing pace as he was overtaken by Ocon and eventually Gasly. With that Racing Point’s promising pace faded away in the later stages of the race. Ultimately, Stroll finished in P9. Gasly rubbed salt on the wounds of Vettel as he overtook him on Lap 39, outside of Stowe (Turn 15). Vettel’s weekend plummetted further…

Ten laps to the end, Bottas informed the team of vibrations in his left front tyre. He dropped significantly from the back of his teammate. Sainz had similar issues. Meanwhile, Raikkonen went off track and damaged half of his front wing, leaving debris on track.

It all kicked off on Lap 49 as Bottas’ left front tyre deflated while going through Turn 3. He managed to get back to the pits but lost time and track position due to running on three tyres. Eventually, he finished P11. Thus with P2 assured, Verstappen pitted for soft tyres on Lap 50 to set the Fastest Lap, for that extra point. Sainz too had his left front tyre lose its shape on the penultimate lap, ultimately finishing P13. Hamilton was instructed by his team to back off to preserve tyre integrity. The drama was not finished yet, as Hamilton’s front left tyre deflated on the old start/finish straight. With only half a lap to go, and Verstappen 30 seconds behind and closing fast, Hamilton limped home to a record his 7^th British GP victory. Verstappen finished 5.856s behind and Leclerc got an unexpected podium. Daniel Ricciardo finished P4 and Esteban Ocon P6, earning Renault their best result of the season. Lando Norris finished P5. Albon recovered to P8. Alfa Romeo and Williams were unable to score points but Russell finished an encouraging P12.

Silverstone further cemented the advantage of the Mercedes as they qualified over a second to the nearest car. They are also a class apart as far as race pace is concerned. Red Bull were trying a lot of new pieces on the car to improve the balance. Both drivers commented about the improved race pace compared to leaders Mercedes. Ferrari had a radical approach to this GP as they stripped the car off, of downforce, for gains in straight-line speed, their weakness, and better qualifying performance. It meant they would struggle in the race. Less downforce means less energy going through tyres and difficulty in their warm-up. They were quite off the pace to Mercedes and Red Bull but had enough race pace to hold off the McLaren, in part helped by Grosjean being a mobile chicane behind Leclerc.

Renault has weaker qualifying pace and stronger race pace compared to rivals McLaren who are in a vice versa situation. McLaren had brought new bargeboards to this race for airflow management around the sidepods. They were faster than Racing Point in one-lap but seemed to lose out in the race to Renault.

Racing Point were predicted to be second quickest car before the start of the weekend, owing to a similar design concept to Mercedes. But they underperformed again, in qualifying and lost out in race pace to McLaren, Renault and even Alpha Tauri. Williams showed improved race pace while both Ferrari customers, Haas and Alfa Romeo, struggled through the weekend.

The left-front tyre deflations were unexpected and none of the three cars showed immediate signs apart from vibrations. Pirelli launched an investigation and are still analysing the cause. The left-front tyre is frequently loaded due to a majority of high-speed corners being right-hand turns on this circuit. Abbey (T1), Copse (T9), Stowe (T15) and Club (T18). The left-front tyre had started delaminating on both Mercedes cars. Another reason for the tyres deflating could be due to the debris left on track by Raikkonen’s front wing.

It is surprising that as soon as Bottas suffered the puncture and Verstappen pitted, Mercedes left Hamilton out. Hamilton also commented about pitting on the last lap as they had over a pit stops gap to Verstappen. In hindsight, if Verstappen had not pitted he would have overtaken Hamilton and won. Red Bull later justified their decision to pit, by confirming that they had “no guarantee Verstappen would have got till the end”. The hard tyre that came off of Verstappen’s car had deep grooves and quite a lot of lacerations. It was safer to pit and cement P2 rather than lose everything.

The Emirates Formula 1 – 70th Anniversary Grand Prix 2020, the fifth round will be at the same track in Silverstone next Sunday.

*Malhaar Khaladkar is an intern with INDIAinF1 and will be writing on F1 and technical aspects of the sport. The passionate student is also a keen student of the sport. This is his second article and you can read the first article here. We invite your comments below.