In a rather eventless race on the last weekend, Hamilton dominated the lead till the end with his teammate Bottas putting up a thrilling battle with Max Verstappen to finish second and keep the lead for the driver’s championship.
At the start, Hamilton lead from pole position, and Verstappen under pressure from McLaren’s Carlos Sainz, unfortunately, he got shot of the first turn and lost momentum causing him to drop places.
The leaders of the race were unbothered by the crash of the two Ferraris’ at the second turn when Seb Vettel was trying to take on Haas’ Kevin Magnussen. After the race, Charles Leclerc took the blame and apologised for his rash driving.
For the majority of the race, Verstappen was lagging behind Lewis Hamilton while Bottas chased the two of them. Alex Albon was left behind by a margin of 30 seconds. This stayed consistent until the last 10 laps when Verstappen had taken some damage to the front wing and Bottas on fresher tyres was approaching closer and finally took the second place just 4 laps before the race finish.
After a disappointing wet qualifying for Checo Perez who started from p17 and in the first 5 laps made it up to p12. A strong race for racing point, while Checo Perez made a wise decision and kept his tyres intact to make a late pitstop on his soft tyres. he was able to move up a lot more positions and for the majority of the end of the race was competing with Alex Albon for 4th position, when he finally made his move on Albon his front wing collided with Albon’s rare tyre. This caused him a lot of damage and positions at the end of the race.
On the other hand, McLaren who had done well in the qualifying and allowed Sainz for a podium opportunity missed out when a pit stop error cost him 11 seconds. However, this didn’t mean the race was over for the other driver, when 20-year-old Lando Norris brought on a beast mode, and was allowed to go past Sainz in 8th place, while Sainz pit and attempted for the fastest lap. Norris was set out on a mission to move up some positions, lance stroll and Daniel Ricciardo were giving each other a tough time and this allowed Norris easily get past Ricciardo when he made a mistake. Pushing up to 7th place, in the last lap he attempted to make a move on lance stroll and he came out on top, breezing past him and catching up on Sergio Perez. Who already had wing damage and couldn’t give Lando any competition from taking home 5th place.
Writer: Vansh Rana
17/07/2020
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