HAMILTON STRIKES BACK IN BRAZIL
Max Verstappen’s drive to win the 2021 Mexican Grand Prix was that of a champion. Lewis Hamilton’s subsequent drive to win the main race of Formula 1’s visit to Brazil was that of a seven-time world champion. Consider the stakes with so few races remaining. Consider the pressure all that post-qualifying exclusion controversy created. Consider just how scintillating plenty of those sprint race and Grand Prix passes were. Hamilton lived up to his legend.
But he was almost forgotten about at start of the main Interlagos race, when Verstappen reversed his sprint race loss from pole against Valtteri Bottas. This time the Red Bull made the better getaway from the left-hand side of the grid, Verstappen quickly alongside Bottas as the Finn had an “average” launch with “a bit of clutch slip”. But he made a good fist of trying to wrestle back the lead that was fast departing his hands as the pair shot down through the Turn 1 apex.
Bottas hung on around the outside, but Verstappen shoved him wide and half off the track. The move was very firm, but fair – it just added to Bottas’s “nightmare” first lap because it meant he lost more momentum through the rest of the Senna Esses and soon had Sergio Perez alongside him as they raced down Interlagos’s shorter second straight. At Turn 4, later to be the scene of fireworks, Perez feigned to the outside and Bottas, carrying too much speed on the tighter inside line, slipped off into the runoff and fell behind.
Verstappen had a 1.3-second
