Verstappen was spared that by a red flag half-way through the race, as Kevin Magnussen had crashed his Haas heavily at Turn 9 from a suspected rear suspension breakage. Before the red flag, there was a safety car and at the much-reduced loss to the field a pitstop costs then, Verstappen was able to pit for his second set of new hards and exit still leading. The red flag made this smart move superfluous, as everyone was allowed to change tyres anyway. What it also did was destroy the strategy battle. Everyone would restart on what they considered their best available tyres and run to the end on them. So Verstappen simply disappeared into the distance without having to worry about anything strategic.
For the restart, Mercedes decided to fit Lewis Hamilton (starting third, having undercut past Carlos Sainz in the first stint) and George Russell (starting seventh) with mediums while Ferrari opted for hards for Leclerc and Sainz. Logically, the hard was the better tyre over a 36-lap stint, calculated to be faster after five laps and more than making up its initial loss. There was also a wear concern about getting the medium to run that long. It was a gamble. But as it turned out, the medium was all upside, faster initially and faster over the stint. It allowed Hamilton to track and pass Leclerc – with a committed one wheel on the grass move — and pull out a distance on him. It allowed Russell to pass Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri off the restart grid and apply pressure to Sainz. Everyone’s pace was so constrained by keeping the brakes and power units from overheating – drivers were lift-and-coasting up to 200 metres before the corners – that the tyre temperatures ended up not being the limiting factor. Especially as the track began to steadily cool in the late afternoon.
Despite qualifying behind, superior race pace and strategy saw Hamilton pass and finish ahead of both Ferraris
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Well, almost everyone. Piastri is still struggling to master the art of tyre conservation in his rookie season and he took too much out of them initially. It was McLaren teammate Lando Norris – who’d started 18th and restarted from 15th, having pitted just before the K-Mag crash – who was about to star. In a race where everyone was struggling to keep their brakes from overheating, he proceeded to pick off nine cars plus Piastri who allowed him past under team orders. He forced Russell wide out of Turn 5 and dived ahead into the next turn to take fifth place, running out of laps to catch Sainz. It was an incredible performance, one which suggested he’d have been racing with Hamilton had he not made an error in qualifying which saw him go out in Q1. Piastri was a subdued eighth, from Alex Albon’s Williams and Esteban Ocon’s Alpine.
