Sainz reacts, passes Leclerc and wins British GP marked by Zhou's accident

The British GP on Sunday (3) took a while to really start. Even without rain, the original start had an accident and a red flag. Such was the concern that it was hard to remember that Max Verstappen overtook Carlos Sainz and took the lead at the first corner. Only the red flag at the very beginning of the opening lap caused the race direction to reinstate the original order for the restart. It was only the first time that Sainz was overtaken. But no matter how many times he fell, he resisted. Like John McClane from 'Die Hard', Sainz kept coming back and coming back. Thus, he won the British GP and became a Formula One race winner.

Sainz lost position at the cancelled start, came back to take pole for a reload. Then he made a mistake when under pressure and allowed Verstappen to take the lead. When the Dutchman was no longer a concern, he led again. He stopped in the pits before Charles Leclerc and came back in front, but he was slower and Lewis Hamilton became a real threat for the win, opening in front before he pit-stopped. A team order then caused Leclerc to overtake. But there was a safety car caused by Esteban Ocon, and at the restart Sainz passed and again became the leader, never to lose again.

The start was a moment of grave concern. An accident initiated by Pierre Gasly's attempt to gain positions ended in a collision with George Russell, who took a swing at Guanyu Zhou. More people were involved: Alexander Albon hit the brakes to avoid the rear of Valtteri Bottas, just behind the incident, spun and was hit by Esteban Ocon, who suffered a flat tire and a broken front axle.

But the concern was really with Zhou, who took off, slid upside down, spun over the tire barrier and stopped on the wire fence, falling sideways. As the race was interrupted, it took ten minutes before he was pulled out of the car. Fortunately, he was conscious and moving on his own.

Even though his first place at the start was cancelled because of the red flag, Verstappen took the lead on lap 10, after a mistake by Sainz. It lasted less than two laps. Max lost power and warned about some problem in the car, which Red Bull would later confirm was in the bodywork. The Dutchman had to stop in the pits after overtaking the two Ferrari cars. The #1 car stayed in the race, but without the slightest pace to fight at the front: the goal became to score any possible points and mitigate the damage. Meanwhile, Hamilton was closing in on the red cars.

Leclerc was faster and wanted a team order, since Hamilton was better than both of them. The order, however, only came after Sainz and Leclerc changed tires, with a five lap gap between the two, and even then the Monegasque was ahead. Hamilton had not yet stopped and was getting further away. When the seven-time champion stopped, he was back behind the Ferrari duo. Only the race would have another surprise: a retirement for Ocon, who stopped his car on the track after losing power. Safety-car. Ferrari was up to two things: they called only Sainz to put on soft tires for the last 12 laps, but left Leclerc on the hard tires. Hamilton and Sergio Pérez also changed tires. At the restart, Charles became the bait. Sainz passed, and so did Pérez and Hamilton. And Sainz set off for his first victory in Formula One.

Behind Sainz, Pérez and Hamilton went to the podium, while Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris, Verstappen, Mick Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, and Kevin Magnussen went to the points. Hamilton had the fastest lap. About Schumacher: his first points in Formula 1.

Formula 1 follows the 2022 season next weekend, 8-11, with the French GP at Paul Ricard.

Check out how the British GP went:

Although the rain made its appearance in the paddock and at turn one with just under 50 minutes to go, it was weak and only lasted a short time. So as the cars lined up on the grid for the start, everything was fine on the track. Air temperature was 18°C and 27°C on the track. The heavy clouds appeared, but the FIA treated it as only a 20% chance of light rain again during the race.

With no reason to delay, the start happened precisely at the scheduled time. And with serious confusion. A crash between many cars was complex. Pierre Gasly, who started 11th, passes Nicholas Latifi and tries to get between George Russell and Guanyu Zhou. The three ended up touching: Gasly leaned on Russell, who lost control and hit the rookie. The Alfa Romeo was catapulted and stopped on its side.

Besides the three, Alexander Albon also ended up involved and destroyed the front of his car, while Esteban Ocon had a flat tire. The race management immediately brought out the red flag. Zhou did not get out of the car at the first moment. As the car was on its side between the track and the protective barrier, it took about ten minutes before the extraction team was able to get the driver out of the car. The situation was worrying, but it was only then that Alfa Romeo reported that the driver was fine. He came out on a stretcher, but conscious and moving on his own. The FIA, however, understood that it was a racing accident and no one would be punished.

Only later, with the confirmation that Zhou was fine, did the official broadcast show footage of what had happened. After taking off with Russell's touch, Zhou took off, slid upside down across the track and gravel to the tire barrier, when he flew back over it and came to a stop with the cockpit part hitting the railing. The car was between the barrier and the wire mesh, so it was difficult to extract it.

Albon, on the other hand, had problems because he slammed on the brakes to avoid splitting the rear of Valtteri Bottas, the slowest just behind the incident. The Williams car spun. A few cars touched Albon, including Yuki Tsunoda and Ocon, who had a flat tire. Yuki also had damage. In addition to Zhou, Albon was also taken to the track's medical center. Later, the Thai had to be taken by helicopter to the hospital for what Williams called a "precautionary check."

The situation centered attention for obvious reasons, but other things happened. Max Verstappen took the lead from Carlos Sainz just before turn 1 and took the race lead. Lewis Hamilton attacked and left Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc behind. The top-10 was Verstappen, Sainz, Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Pérez, Lando Norris, Latifi, Bottas, and Daniel Ricciardo.

In addition, the English TV network BBC reported that after the red flag, a group of people were caught trying to break into the Silverstone track and were eventually detained by local authorities. On Friday, the police in Northamptonshire, the county where Silverstone is located, had announced that they knew of "concrete information" of a plan to storm the track during the race to conduct a protest.

AlphaTauri and Alpine were able to adjust the cars of Tsunoda and Ocon during the long interruption and were available to continue in the race. Russell, who got out of his car immediately after the accident and went to Zhou to check on his colleague, did not make it. His car had to be towed into the pit-lane.

The FIA decided that the start would be stopped and would have the original starting order. The qualifying order, therefore, excluding those who had abandoned the race: Zhou, Albon and Russell. Therefore, everything that happened in the first positions at the start was erased. Verstappen was back behind leader Sainz. Hamilton was fifth, behind Leclerc and Perez. The reason was that, because of the red flag, almost no cars reached the second row of the so-called safety-car zone.

The new start happened exactly at 12:00 noon. Verstappen tried to attack again, but Sainz resisted. Pérez came over Leclerc, and the two dueled. At one point, during the first hardest brake, the four even split the corner in a four-wide. Hamilton took the worst of it this time and fell behind Norris, while Alonso lost position to Gasly. The new top-10 had Sainz, Verstappen, Leclerc, Pérez, Norris, Hamilton, Gasly, Alonso, Tsunoda, and Ocon. The top six had medium tires. In fact, only Gasly, Tsunoda, Ocon, Latifi and Vettel had soft tires. As Verstappen had started on soft tires, in theory he could ride the rest of the race without stopping again, but it was clear that it would not be possible to do 50 laps on the same set of tires.

The interruption at the start was detrimental to Pérez, who, in addition to being overtaken, had damage to his front wing and lost ground to Norris and Hamilton. The replay of the start showed that Pérez threw himself into the corner to prevent Leclerc from passing Verstappen. A collective move by the Mexican. At the end of the fifth lap, he went to the pits to fix the problem and dropped to last. Hamilton took advantage and overtook Norris to take fourth place.

The next to stop was Vettel, who took off the soft tyres and put on the medium ones. On the track, the feeling was that Verstappen had better pace than Sainz. The Spaniard had the same impression. "He's a little bit faster," he said on the radio. Before he had a chance to open the DRS on the straight, however, the Dutchman went too wide and touched the gravel lightly, losing time. In the middle of the next lap, however, Sainz went off track at the Becketts exit and opened the way for Verstappen to regain the 0s8 lead and take the top spot. More than that, Leclerc stuck with chances to open the DRS.

Next, Tsunoda went for a Formula 3 move. With both AlphaTauri cars well positioned in positions seven and eight, he tried to dive on the inside at Silverstone's turn three, a slow elbow, and yielded a collision that sent both cars spinning and off the track and out of the points zone.

But the race would really change next. Lap 12 was coming to an end with Verstappen in control of the situation when his car came up short of power. Sainz and Leclerc passed easily, and it remained to take Red Bull to the pits. Verstappen returned, but lamented on the radio. "The car is 100% broken," while the team confirmed it was bodywork damage. Despite returning to the track in sixth, he was still slow - less than before, but still far from any further aspiration. The middle section of the track was a nightmare for the reigning world champion.

Leclerc had a broken front wing endplate, the end of the wing, but was still putting pressure on Sainz. The point was that Hamilton, already with the best lap, narrowed the gap to the two by less than 5s. A very interesting battle for victory was beginning to unfold. And Latifi was eighth!

On the Ferrari radio, Leclerc claimed that he no longer knew what to do about Sainz and was "fucking up the race". His words, not ours. In short, Charles wanted a change of position order, but Ferrari still didn't seem willing to do it. Ferrari was ordering Sainz to go faster. And Hamilton was 4s ahead at the end of lap 19 of 52.

Sainz was called into the pits at the end of lap 21 and put on the hard tires to try to go to the end of the race - he would have to last another 31 laps. The Spaniard came back in third, while Leclerc had a chance to ride with his face to the wind. Hamilton was still faster, however. The seven-time champion appeared within 2s at the end of lap 22. It was a real threat.

Alfa Romeo's race was coming to an end. After Zhou's accident, Bottas took his car to the pits to leave with a mechanical problem.

After a bad pit-stop by Alpine with Ocon, Red Bull called Verstappen to put on hard tires, something everyone was doing at this point. Max came back to be overtaken on the track by Vettel, who took seventh place. The Dutchman complained: he had no grip and the car was broken. "It's like driving on ice," he said. Latifi and Ocon were getting closer.

Leclerc stopped at the end of lap 25 to change tires and leave Hamilton as the leader of the British GP. Charles came back behind Sainz. It was time for Lewis to accelerate into the wind and create the biggest possible challenge for Ferrari, with perhaps an undercut. Leclerc was doing well on the hard tires and went on to have the fastest lap of the race.

It took a long time, but finally Ocon passed Latifi and took ninth place. Ferrari released the drivers to fight for what was, at that moment, second place. But only for two laps. With Hamilton pulling away and Sainz even slower, the team finally gave the order and made the Spaniard open the door to Leclerc on the Wellington straight. At this point, Hamilton had more than 18s lead and an average tire of 30 laps. Lewis' famed ability to manage tires was on display, but the pit-stop would come at some point.

It was at the end of lap 33, when Hamilton was starting to catch laggards in a row, that Mercedes called and put on hard tires. It was not the best pit-stop in the world. Hamilton was 6s behind Leclerc and 4s behind Sainz. He was third, but had a tire eight laps newer than Leclerc's and 13 in comparison to Sainz. It was, now, a Ferrari capture.

In fact, Pérez was recovering little by little. After falling to the bottom of the table with the stop made after the restart, but now he appeared fourth. The Mexican reached 30 laps on medium tires, just as Hamilton did, and still had 17 more laps to go. Officially, he could go all the way, even though he had only used medium tires in the race, because of the red flag, but it was very difficult to achieve. The same for Vettel, who stopped on the lap following Perez and was seventh.

Without Latifi to hold off the others, Ocon easily caught up and left Verstappen behind on lap 37. Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen, the Haas duo, were next in line. Gasly, meanwhile, dropped out. Ricciardo and Tsunoda followed, but far behind the rest of the pack. Both cars were evidently damaged.

But the next pitstop would not be for either of them. Ocon appeared slow at the entrance to Copse and got worse. The Frenchman stopped his Alpine on the old pit lane, something that forced the safety car into action.

Ferrari's response was confused. It stopped Sainz to put on soft tires, something Hamilton also did, but kept Leclerc on the hard used ones. The changes came on the opening 40th lap. There were 13 laps to go, some of them with a safety car.

McLaren was slow to change Norris' tire, because he had made the last change on the lap before the safety-car, and it cost the Briton a position. Leclerc was leading on hard tires, while Sainz, Hamilton, Pérez, Alonso, and Norris had soft tires. Vettel and Magnussen were on medium, Verstappen, Schumacher and Latifi on soft, Stroll on medium, Ricciardo and Tsunoda on soft.

The restart was a demonstration that, once again, Ferrari took away Leclerc's chance to fight for the win. Sainz passed after a brief defense by the Monegasque. Perez and Hamilton had a hard fight between them. The Czech managed to pass, but Hamilton came back to attack back at the Copse corner.

Pérez pulled over to attack Leclerc, then, because his old tires could no longer handle the pace of the others. Credit to Leclerc, who defended fiercely when it seemed impossible and stopped Pérez from passing at Copse and Vale, but then the two went straight through and Hamilton found a double overtake.

Leclerc kept on bothering Hamilton at Stowe, without success. It was all he could do at that point. Charles chased and threatened as best he could, and the battle continued until the next straight, when Hamilton opened the DRS and pulled away. Perez, by then, had made Red Bull count and regained second place.

Sainz opened wide and was heading for the win, while Pérez was second and Hamilton was third at home. Leclerc had to fend off attacks from Alonso and Norris, something he managed to do bravely.

Further back, Verstappen and Schumacher passed Vettel and his medium tires. The German went inside the championship leader in an attempt to overtake, but Max defended as best he could and held on to seventh place. Anyway, Mick's first points in F1. Vettel and Magnussen rounded out the top-10.

F1 2022, British GP, Silverstone, final result: