Lewis Hamilton took control back of the 2021 F1 season as he cruised to victory in the Portuguese Grand Prix. To find out more than you probably need about the 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix Result our review attempts to cover as much of that as possible, and we hand out the titles of Great and Grape for the achievers and under achievers.
This bite sized review takes a look through the laps that mattered, the quickest way to relive the best bits without watching anything.
Then there are our ratings of the race itself, the drivers, and finish off with a bunch of graphs that are just interesting enough.
Talking of bunches, we nominate our best and worst into the great and grape. Great being good, and grape being bad for reasons we won’t bore you with.
Stuff happened and we try and cover most of the stuff with our 2021 Portuguese Grand Prix Result
2021 Portuguese Grand Prix Result – THE LAPS THAT MATTERED
Didn’t see the race live? Don’t have time to watch the whole race? Well here are the top laps where stuff happened. Normally it is five or ten, so you know it was a good race if there’s more than ten.
We write these live as we go, sort of like a minute by minute for the football.
Lap 1 – Top three remain as is from the start and there appears to be mostly orderly conduct throughout the field. Ocon and Norris provide some early lap one entertainment swapping places. Fans of on track boobery will be happy to know that Nikita Mazepin made it through the first lap without incident.
Lap 2 – After a clean first lap a piece of bodywork flies in the air. It appears to be Kimi Raikkonen’s front wing that goes flying in a shower of saprks, and replays show it was after he had run into the back of his team mate Giovinazzi. This brings out the Safety Car and ends Kimi’s race. For fans of Ricciardo he is up to 13th from 16th and is the first lap’s biggest winner.
FULL SAFETY CAR
ORDER – BOT HAM VER SAI PER NOR OCO LEC GAS VET
SAFETY CAR IN
Lap 7 – Verstappen nails Hamilton into the first corner from the restart, not helped by his leading team mate safety car restarting. Further back the upper midfield were getting plenty excited with some exciting overtaking. Norris the big winner moving from sixth to fourth. Well, apart from Max moving from third to second.
Lap 10 – Max Verstappen in second creeping away from Lewis Hamilton and the Dutchman is right on Bottas’ tail for the lead, and look an inevitable lead change coming soon.
ORDER – BOT VER HAM NOR PER SAI LEC OCO GAS VET
Lap 11 – What the —- do we know? Lewis Hamilton overtakes Max Verstappen for second down the pit straight with real ease. One would think they have a long standing engine advantage.
Lap 14 – This midnight kick off at 12am for F1 fans in Australia is a real punisher if there’s no on track action. Which appears to be the case.
Lap 18 – Perez snatches 4th off Lando Norris and his team mate Daniel Ricciardo has made it past Seb Vettel for 10th. As former fans of Mark Webber there’s no great sympathy for Vettel’s plight in the last few seasons.
Lap 20 – Woof! What a great move from Lewis Hamilton on Valtteri Bottas for the lead! The shenanigans brings Verstappen closer to the front two.
ORDER HAM BOT VER PER NOR SAI LEC OCO GAS RIC
Lap 22 – Carlos Sainz is the first front running car to pit. Drops from 6th to 15th. Tough crowd. Norris follows but ends up just in front of Sainz.
Lap 26 – Verstappen continues to chose in on now 2nd place Bottas.
Lap 35 – Max Verstappen pits and drops from third to fourth. Two laps later Bottas pits. He stays in front of Verstappen for a few corners, but Verstappen tyres are hotter ad he gets past the Finn to take a net second. Hamilton pits a lap later and retains the net lead. Perez is still out in front but will pit soon and resume his slightly anonymous fourth place.
Lap 52 – The odd midfield pitstop and not much else happening really.
ORDER – HAM VER BOT PER NOR LEC OCO SAI ALO RIC
Lap 55 – Bottas breaks the pattern of the race and does something interesting as he runs wide at one of the corners. In other news Ricciardo has made it as far as 10th. Mick Schumacher is trying his hardest to pass a car (Latifi – which he eventually does on lap 63). Mazepin is a full minute behind his team mate.
Lap 64 – Bottas pits for new tyres in an attempt to get fastest lap. Yawn. Which he does a lap later. Yawn. Then Verstappen grabs it back on the last lap. Yawn.
Lap 66 – Lewis Hamilton wins the Portuguese Grand Prix. Cue the standard boring radio communication.
FINAL ORDER – HAM VER BOT PER NOR LEC OCO ALO RIC GAS
2021 Portuguese Grand Prix Result – RACE RATING
We rate the big race itself so we know which races to go back and watch in the off season or one to simply remember the winner for the post season quiz nights.
SEASON IMPORTANCE – 6/10
Is this where Mercedes took back the upper hand from Mercedes, or is it just plain bad luck on the day for Red Bull. This race didn’t answer too many other questions down the field. Other than is a better driver in a worse car better than the reverse (Mick Schumacher v Nichols Latifi).
ON TRACK ACTION – 2 /10
Quite dull for a track with so much imagination. Even the excitable boy commentator David Croft wasn’t that excited when Hamilton crossed the line.
ENDING 1 / 10
Fastest lap and a pass for 10th / 18th were the late race highlights.
OVERALL RATING 9 / 30
Not a classic, and one that won’t be remembered by the end of this season or any other.
2021 SEASON RACE RANKINGS
Bahrain GP – 25/30
Emilia-Romagna – 17/30
2021 Portuguese Grand Prix Result – Great & Grape
Here we go through the field and highlight the three drivers we think deserve a little extra love, and one driver whose had the grapest weekend of all.
These points get added to our Driver of the Season scores. Five points for a great nomination, and -10 for the worst or grapest driver in the pack. Then it is +2 / -2 for honourable or dishonourable mentions.
It used to be called the good, bad and ugly, but everyone is using that now. And who doesn’t like grapes.
THE GREAT-EST – LEWIS HAMILTON
Another win, seeing off both the pole sitting team mate Bottas, and his main title rival Verstappen after a decent early race battle.
THE GREAT – LANDO NORRIS
Flogged his team mate and best of the non Ferrari and Red Bull drivers.
THE GREAT – FERNANDO ALONSO
The Alpine looked reasonably quick this weekend and Alonso looked quite racey on the Sunday. No, not that kind of racy. Pity he underperformed a little in qualifying.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
ESTABAN OCON – Great qualifying putting Alonso in his place, and not too bad a race either.
CHARLES LECLERC – Ferrari appear to be turning things around and Leclerc looks to be getting close to the maximum out of it.
MICK SCHUMACHER – Beat home Latifi with a late race move, and easily saw off his lacklustre team mate.
THE GRAPE-EST – DANIEL RICCIARDO
He may have recovered to 9th by the end of the race, but he is struggling at McLaren and getting well beaten by the excellent Lando Norris.
There can’t be too many more Q1 exits with Landon Norris in his great form.
DIS-HONOURABLE MENTIONS
VALTTERI BOTTAS – Turned pole into third. Not bad overall in the grand scheme of things, but poor if you want to be included in the sniff for a genuine F1 drivers crowds.
GEORGE RUSSELL – It’s a great stat to have out-qualified your team mate all the time, but if you don’t score points does it really matter? Mercedes already have a slightly nude number two who fades on raceday.
NIKITIA MAZEPIN – Avoided an early, crash-filled exit but was a minute behind his team mate late in the race. So around a second a lap slower.
2021 Portuguese Grand Prix Result – Quick Stats
Here are the quickest and more interesting stats from the weekend. Of course this will build as the season progresses and there’s more interesting stats to share.
It’s mainly qualifying stats here, and stand by for our F1 Power Rankings and Driver of the Year article to follow,
QUALIFYING
1st LAP PROGRESS
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