Bahrain Grand Prix - Lewis Hamilton wins again ... eleventh of the 2020 season


 

Sakhir, 29 November, 2020

Weather: clear night, 25.5-24.4°C air, 28.7-25.9°C track

  • Lewis secured his 95th F1 victory today – his fourth in Bahrain and eleventh of the 2020 season
  • Valtteri suffered a puncture at the race restart, but fought through the field to finish P8
  • Today’s result marks the 150th race led in the 225th race start for the Mercedes works team in F1
  • Lewis (332 points) leads the Drivers’ Championship by 131 points from Valtteri (201 points)
  • The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team (533 points) leads Red Bull Racing (274 points) by 259 points in the Constructors’ Championship
  • Richard Warrington, no. 2 mechanic on car #77, accepted the Constructors’ trophy on behalf of the team



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Lewis Hamilton #44
F1 W11 EQ Performance /01

Today is a reminder for all of us that this is a dangerous sport. It was shocking to see Romain’s accident and I’m just so grateful that the Halo did its job and credit to the FIA medical team who were straight on the scene. For Romain to be able to walk away from an accident like that just shows what an incredible job F1 and the FIA have done in their quest for safety. Physically it was such a demanding race. Max pushed me all the way and he had a lot of speed today. I was struggling a little bit with the car sliding around, but I just had enough to be able to respond to Max’s quick laps when it mattered. I was a little cautious how it would play out at the end of the race once Max pitted, but I’m so thankful to my team because they made the right calls all day on the strategy. What a privilege it is to be able to get another result like this.

Valtteri Bottas #77
F1 W11 EQ Performance /03

I’m so glad that Romain is ok – that’s really the most important thing today and I’m very relieved he was able to escape such a big accident. I had a puncture at the restart of the race; I don’t think there was any contact and I didn’t see any debris either, so I’m not quite sure what caused it. I tried fighting my way through the field, but we had a bigger wing than most of the others, so it wasn’t easy to get through the train of cars. At the very end, I had yet another puncture, but fortunately that was under the Safety Car and I didn’t lose any more positions. I’ll need to look at what I can do better next week; the track layout will be different, but a lot of the characteristics will also stay the same, so there’s certainly a lot to learn from this week. Hopefully, I’ll have better luck next weekend.

Toto Wolff
First of all, I want to say thank you to the FIA and F1 for having given us these incredibly safe racing cars. Today’s events show that the introduction of the Halo was tremendously important. I also want to thank the marshals as well as Dr. Ian Roberts and Alan van der Merwe who helped Romain escape the scene. As far as I know, Romain is ok, and I wish him the best possible recovery and I hope his family is alright despite having to witness these awful pictures. For our team, it was another bittersweet race; on the one hand, I’m very happy for the team and Lewis. The car showed strong performance today and the strategy team was on its A game. Unfortunately, Valtteri had more bad luck this weekend with his puncture. We need to find a way to break the pattern of him losing races for reasons that are beyond his control. Valtteri could have won a few more races this year and it’s just a shame that he needs to cope with these results. But it will make him stronger and now he just needs to give his best in these last two races and secure P2 in the championship. I have no doubt that next year will be very strong for him. I’m also sorry for the disappointment of Racing Point, but happy that Lance escaped unhurt. We need to analyse what happened on Sergio’s car and investigate to make sure we can avoid these DNFs in the future.

Andrew Shovlin
It was a huge relief to see that Romain was ok. The incident looked terrifying, but thankfully he was able to get out safely. It’s good that the FIA will review all areas to find out what lessons can be learnt. Well done also to Alan and Ian in the medical car along with the marshals, it was a very rapid and brave response from all of them. Congratulations to Lewis, he managed the race brilliantly and was just about able to keep it under control, but the extra Hard tyre that Red Bull carried into the race left us with a bit of a weakness. The final stint was a bit awkward as there were moments in the race where a Safety Car would have been difficult to manage; however, by the time the Safety Car did come towards the end, we knew the race wouldn’t restart so we kept Lewis out on his old tyres. Valtteri had more than his fair share of bad luck; he had a poor getaway from the grid which just looks like it was low grip on the P2 spot, there wasn’t anything obviously wrong with the start itself. He then picked up a front right puncture on the opening lap after the restart, so we had no choice but to stop and that dropped him to the back. The recovery from there was a bit difficult, we’re clearly carrying a bigger wing than most and it was tricky to get through the cars quickly. To top his day off, he picked up another puncture towards the end of the race, so he’ll no doubt be looking forward to a less eventful race next week. We’ve got the short circuit to contend with and a few areas that we need to be looking to improve, but it should be an interesting challenge.

Scuderia Ferrari

The most important news to emerge from today’s 16th Bahrain Grand Prix at the Sakhir circuit is that Romain Grosjean escaped with only minor injuries from a terrible accident in which his Haas went through a barrier and caught fire. The halo, the car’s survival cell, the speedy reaction from the marshals and the immediate intervention of the Medical Car crew all played their part as did the driver’s ability to emerge from the car unaided. The incident confirmed yet again the very high safety levels of current Formula 1 cars, which is mainly down to the efforts of the FIA.

One point
It was a disappointing race for Scuderia Ferrari, which brought home just a single point thanks to a tenth place finish for Charles Leclerc. Sebastian Vettel was 13th, having been forced to spend most of the race towards the back of the field.

The race
The race was stopped for over an hour while the barriers were replaced. At the restart, Charles got away well to move up to seventh. He then lost a few places and found himself fighting around tenth place, which is where he eventually finished, having struggled to find a good pace especially in the early stages. Sebastian ended up towards the back of the pack, due to the fact he had to avoid Lance Stroll’s overturned car on the opening lap and spent his race in the lower half of the field, unable to move up into the points.

Same place, different track
The Formula 1 World Championship stays in Bahrain for next weekend’s Sakhir Grand Prix which takes place at the same circuit, but on a different track layout, the Outer Track.

Charles Leclerc #16
“After Romain’s crash, I was feeling very bad. It was probably the first time I have felt like this during a race, because I was trying to keep someone behind me and so I saw what happened in my rear view mirrors and when I got to turn 9 I saw the flames, so I was worrying and waiting for news about Romain. I was extremely happy when they told me he was ok, after what seemed like a very long time. Well done to everyone who works on making our cars safe. It’s impressive to see what an incredible job they’ve done! Once I knew Romain was ok I focused on the race again.
It was a difficult one for us today, as we were really not quick enough. I had a very good start but unfortunately after that it was all uphill. P10 was the best we could achieve today. We have two more GPs ahead of us now and we’ll try to get the most out of them.”

Sebastian Vettel #5
“Maybe the only good news of today is the one I received on the radio, confirming to me that Romain was ok. When we stopped in the pitlane and I jumped out of the car I saw the images and it was incredible how he was able to get out of his car. I have to admit I tried not to look at the images too much.
Talking about my race, the first stint was very bad, I didn’t have the pace and I lost quite a lot of ground. The situation improved as the race went on and in free air in the end it was not that bad but all in all it was definitely a difficult race.”

Mattia Binotto Team Principal
“The outcome of today’s race is secondary to the relief we felt when Romain Grosjean got out of his car after that terrifying accident. The fact that he suffered only minor injuries is a testament to the amazing job done by the FIA in terms of safety and the courage and professionalism of all those involved on that front at a Grand Prix. But for the progress made in recent years and above all the introduction of the halo, we might have been commenting on a tragedy.
As for our race, it was disappointing, but we had seen right from Friday that we would struggle this weekend. Now we have a few days in which to analyse all the data carefully and see how we can improve the car’s handling for next weekend. As we stay in Sakhir, the track conditions and temperatures should be the same, but we will be racing on a different layout for the very first time, which could present us with an opportunity. It will be up to us to grasp it and to do better than we did today.”


Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN and CEO Sauber Motorsport AG

“Before any consideration can be made about the sporting result, it’s important to express our relief in seeing Romain Grosjean walk away with relatively little harm from such a terrifying crash. Seeing the images on our TV screens was a breath-taking experience and the outcome of this incident is testament to the great strides made by the FIA and F1 in making our sport safer. There can never be complacency when safety is involved, but it’s heartening to see lessons are being put to good practice. As for the race, it was an unlucky night in which we had any opportunity of a good result taken away from us by a few unfortunate circumstances. Antonio’s great launch was nullified by the red flag and Kimi’s race came undone as he suffered damage in both race starts. It’s been a challenging weekend but all we can do now is focus on next week’s race.”
 
Kimi Räikkönen #7
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C39 (Chassis 05/Ferrari)

“Like everyone, I am happy to see Romain being OK: nobody is used to seeing crashes like that in these days so it’s important to see he was able to walk away. Once the race restarts and you are in the car, though, you just focus on that: sadly my race was compromised early on as I got damage in both starts. I had a hit to the floor in the first start and then to the front wing and to the right side of the floor in the second and that took away a lot of performance. The car was quick in the first laps after the stops, but the damage made the pace fall off quickly. It’s a shame as the car felt pretty good on the way to the grid, but we weren’t able to make that potential pay off.”            
 
Antonio Giovinazzi #99
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN C39 (Chassis 04/Ferrari)

“I was really relieved to see Romain walk away from that huge crash – seeing him get out of the car was the best thing of tonight. I hope his injuries are not too serious and he can be back with us soon. As for the race, I made a great start and made up a lot of positions before the red flag – I was 11th, but was brought back to P14 at the restart. The second launch wasn’t as good and after that I settled into a rhythm: our pace was quite good but I have a feeling our choices for the race didn’t pay off as well as we expected. We chose to stay out on the hard tyres and only stopped when the final safety car came out, but that didn’t work for us in the end. Time to shift our focus to next week and hope it goes better.”

The final two races of the year take place in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

 

 

1

44

Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes-AMG

2:59:47.515

57

2

33

Max Verstappen

Red Bull

+ 1.254

57

3

23

Alexander Albon

Red Bull

+ 8.005

57

4

4

Lando Norris

McLaren

+ 11.337

57

5

55

Carlos Sainz jr.

McLaren

+ 11.787

57

6

10

Pierre Gasly

AlphaTauri

+ 11.942

57

7

3

Daniel Ricciardo

Renault

+ 19.368

57

8

77

Valtteri Bottas

Mercedes-AMG

+ 19.680

57

9

31

Esteban Ocon

Renault

+ 22.803

57

10

16

Charles Leclerc

Ferrari

+ 1 lap

56

11

26

Daniil Kvyat

AlphaTauri

+ 1 lap

56

12

63

George Russell

Williams

+ 1 lap

56

13

5

Sebastian Vettel

Ferrari

+ 1 lap

56

14

6

Nicholas Latifi

Williams

+ 1 lap

56

15

7

Kimi Räikkönen

Alfa Romeo

+ 1 lap

56

16

99

Antonio Giovinazzi

Alfa Romeo

+ 1 lap

56

17

20

Kevin Magnussen

Haas F1 Team

+ 1 lap

56

3

11

Sergio Pérez *

Racing Point

retired
power unit

53

11

18

Lance Stroll

Racing Point

Start accident
Restart

2

20

8

Romain Grosjean

Haas F1 Team

Start accident

0