George Russell is a winner at last in Formula 1, although the hard work is still to come on Sunday.
Russell followed Max Verstappen past pole-getter Kevin Magnussen early in the sprint to set up a private duel for first place in the 100-kilometre dash, and after biding his time, he began his siege on the lead.
Twice he tried around Verstappen’s outside at the first turn but was rebuffed.
The third time he borrowed a move from Lewis Hamilton’s playbook.
In a similar probing of Verstappen’s weaknesses to that undertaken by Hamilton to win last year’s grand prix in Interlagos, Russell forced the Dutchman into a tight compromise line through the esses while taking the wider line.
It gave him an excellent exit from turn 3 and put him into the lead well before the braking zone at turn 4.
He didn’t look back after that astute bit of driving, charging to a four-second victory, his first of any description in Formula 1.
But it’s not a grand prix win. The history books do not yet reflect him as a winner.
After an unexpectedly thrilling sprint — comfortably the best one of the six so far — the question is whether Russell can convert his Saturday win into the real thing on Sunday.
IS THIS MERCEDES’ LATEST LAST BEST CHANCE TO WIN?
Several times this year Mercedes has lamented losing its last best chance to win a grand prix only to turn up at the following race and be similarly competitive.
After throwing away what looked like a real chance to challenge for victory in Mexico City, the team arrived in Brazil unconvinced that it could access that level of performance again.
But it will line up in one-two formation on the grid for the São Paulo Grand Prix, the team’s first front-row lockout of the year, having beaten both Red Bull Racing cars on pure pace in the sprint.
The lack of representative practice time and the rain-affected qualifying hour meant we didn’t have a clear picture of pure performance until late on Saturday, and the Mercedes W13 was surprisingly competitive.
It’s tempting to say it’s a major caveat that Red Bull Racing decided to put Verstappen on the medium tyre rather than the soft, but it’s not significant enough to question the result.
In the cooling late-afternoon conditions the soft tyre was more than good enough to last the distance, as Russell so aptly demonstrated, but even so RBR didn’t believe its car could get to the end of the 100 kilometres.
That alone is a potential tell that this wasn’t so much an error as a weakness with the car’s set-up this weekend. And the fact that the RB18 also couldn’t get any decent pace from the medium tyre even late in the race, by which time it should’ve had a degradation advantage relative to the soft, is also an interesting question ahead of Sunday’s race.
“It was way more difficult than we expected it somehow,” said Verstappen. “I didn’t expect to have [such bad degradation].
“Even on the soft we wouldn’t have been fast enough, so we are clearly struggling on keeping the tyres alive.
“At the moment [Mercedes] look unbeatable, but we will analyse everything.”
The forecast is for dry running in the warmest conditions of the weekend so far. If the RB18 struggled in the cooler evening weather on Saturday, it could have some serious problems ahead of it on grand prix day.
And Mercedes, which has typically had the best tyre wear rate of the top three teams all season, might be looking at its latest last best chance to win a race this year.
HOW COMMITTED IS RED BULL RACING TO PEREZ’S SECOND PLACE?
Verstappen’s charge faded badly late in the race in part thanks to damage his car picked up in a clash with Carlos Sainz for second, though he said his tyre troubles meant fourth was on the cards for him either way.
Fourth place was just head of teammate Sergio Perez, who was recovering from ninth ahead of Charles Leclerc.
With both championships sewn up, Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen have stated their aim is to see Perez finish second in the championship standings. Perez started the weekend five points ahead of Charles Leclerc, and Red Bull Racing has never recorded a one-two drivers championship finish.
With this in mind, late in the race Perez asked if Verstappen would let him by to earn him an extra point in the battle with Leclerc.
The team took no action.
Perez still finished ahead of Leclerc to stretch his advantage to six points, but given the number of times Perez has played the team game to Verstappen’s benefit in the last two seasons, the Mexican would have reason to feel a little bit aggrieved that he’s not having the favour returned now there’s nothing on the line for his teammate.
If second place is decided against Perez by the barest points margin, he could fairly point to this result as playing a role in it.
ALPINE DRIVERS BREAK THE GOLDEN RULE
The number one rule of motor racing is to never hit your teammate. The Alpine drivers crashed twice in just a couple of minutes in the sprint.
They came close to blows in turns 2 and 3, Alonso oversteered into Ocon’s side exiting turn 4 and then the Spaniard rear-ended the Frenchman on the start-finish straight in his hesitation picking a side to overtake on.
Both races were ruined, with Alonso dropping down the order after repairs and Ocon hampered by sidepod damage.
Ocon was classified 17th ahead of Alonso in 18th after the Spaniard was penalised for the second of the two crashes. Esteban’s car then caught fire with a suspected fuel leak in parc fermé, just to compound matters.
Meanwhile, Lando Norris, the sole pointscoring McLaren, finished seventh to shrink the gap between the team teams to just five points.
Team principal Otmar Szafnauer was understandably furious.
“We are extremely disappointed,” he said. “Frankly, both Esteban and Fernando must do a better job to compliment the fantastic efforts of everyone in the team by avoiding on-track incidents and compromising the entire team’s performance.
“Today both drivers have let the team down. I expect more from them tomorrow.”
But despite being clearly in the wrong in the second crash and sharing some blame for the first, Alonso pinned responsibility on his teammate.
“It’s one more race and then it’s over — finally,” Alonso said. “It’s been a little like that all year long.
“I was very close to the wall in Jeddah with him, close to the wall in Budapest, today in turn 4, now here.
“It happened to him with Perez, with Verstappen here unlapping himself.
“It’s one more race.”
Ocon at least toed the party line.
“We’ll need to pull together as a team to fight our way through the field tomorrow and get back into the points.”
But with Norris and Daniel Ricciardo starting sixth and 11th, the damage may have already been done. The goal is open for McLaren to take back the lead for fourth ahead of the final race.
All because the golden rule was broken.
STROLL COPS BIG PENALTY FOR FRIGHTENING NEAR MISS
If Alonso is unhappy with Ocon’s driving standards — a stance on which the stewards clearly don’t agree, at least in this case — one can only imagine what he’s thinking about joining Lance Stroll at Aston Martin next year.
For the second time in three races the Canadian has been severely punished for a shockingly dangerous defensive manoeuvre.
In Austin he swept across the track in a late defence against Alonso himself at one of the fastest points of the circuit, sending the Alpine airborne. While there was an argument to be made there that both drivers moved at the same time, Stroll bore more responsibility for the sudden and late movement.
In Sao Paulo it was even clearer cut. Sebastian Vettel got a much better exit from turn 3 and pulled out of the slipstream to try to take Stroll down the inside on the run to turn 4.
Stroll saw him move and speared to the left, forcing his teammate onto the grass and centimetres from the wall.
Vettel was forced to back out. He took the position with another slipstream move shortly afterwards.
The stewards quickly slapped Stroll with a 10-second penalty, and after the race they added three penalty points to his superlicence to reflect the seriousness of the incident.
Stroll completely rebuffed questions about the incident after the session, while Vettel played down what could have been a serious crash. The team made no reference to it in the post-session press release.
Vettel is a slick operator with no desire to rock the boat in the twilight of his career.
Alonso will arrive at the team knowing it’s the son of the owner in the opposite garage. But as his strained relationship with Ocon has shown — as indeed has so much of his career — there’s a limit to his patience.
HAAS BACK DOWN TO EARTH BUT STILL TARGETING POINTS
Kevin Magnussen had precious few moments to enjoy leading the sprint before Verstappen swept past him and he was swallowed up by the field, but the Dane knew it was coming.
The Haas car was never going to be good enough to charge to victory without some wacky circumstances or the wet weather that’s since evacuated the radar. Eighth was his pre-race expectation and eighth is what he got.
“I didn’t really expect [to win], so I wasn’t really thinking about it,” he said.
“We weren’t fooling ourselves; we knew that in dry conditions we weren’t going to be able to hang onto it.
“I knew we had a battle to fight further down the field, around P7, P8.
“I got a point, which is very important at this stage in the year against AlphaTauri for P8.”
Haas started the weekend just one point ahead of AlphaTauri and has doubled that advantage to two points with Magnussen’s eighth place in the sprint.
It was a good day for both sides of the Haas garage too. Mick Schumacher started last, but the under-pressure German made up eight places to put himself 12th on the grid tomorrow, just four places behind his teammate.
He’s also just two places behind Pierre Gasly in the best places AlphaTauri car. Yuki Tsunoda will start 15th.
While Sunday won’t reach the heady highs of qualifying, the team still has the chance to turn this into a profitable weekend by its own midfield standards and perhaps its first double-points finish since July.
