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Sergio Pérez goes from last to 2nd in a British Grand Prix thriller
The Mexican rises from the depths of despair to snatch silverware on a dramatic day for Oracle Red Bull Racing at Silverstone, while Max Verstappen's winning F1 run comes to an unlucky end.
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Four laps into Sunday's British Grand Prix at Silverstone and things couldn't have looked a lot worse for Sergio Pérez. The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver was an innocent victim in a first-lap skirmish at the front of the field and with a damaged front wing, he was in the pits for a replacement and dropped to last place. It was a predicament that would have deterred a lesser driver, but the Pérez of 2022 is in career-best form and has the grit to match his prodigious pace.
This year's British Grand Prix had all manner of twists and turns – we'll get to those – but after 52 breathless laps of the circuit where the first world championship Formula One race was held 72 years ago, Pérez's second-place salvage job was just one story in a race with more drama than some entire seasons.
The race, delayed by almost an hour after a first-lap crash that affected a quarter of the 20-car field, was won by Ferrari's Carlos Sainz – the Spaniard taking his maiden F1 win from his maiden F1 pole in his 150th F1 start. It sounds straightforward, but round 10 of the season was anything but.
Pérez took his 6th podium of 2022 to set a new benchmark
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Joining Sainz and Pérez on the podium was Mercedes's home hero Lewis Hamilton, while reigning world champion Max Verstappen battled with a battered Red Bull for much of the race and soldiered to seventh place, snaring six world championship points and maintaining a healthy lead of 34 points atop the Drivers' Standings.
Sainz's victory broke a run of six straight wins for Red Bull Racing – the longest streak for the team since Sebastian Vettel won the final nine races of 2013 – and extended the team's curious British Grand Prix drought to a full decade since Mark Webber won for Red Bull Racing for a second time at Silverstone in 2012.
Here's how a dramatic afternoon played out in the English summer sun at Silverstone.
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There's no quit in Checo
Sergio Pérez loves Silverstone; problem was, until Sunday at least, Silverstone hasn't loved him back. In 10 previous races at the circuit that's laid out at an old World War II airfield, the Mexican had a best result of just sixth place… but that was the Pérez of pre-2022.
From fourth on the grid, Pérez made such a good start that he was right with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in the opening sequence of corners, but the two rivals tagged. The Mexican's front wing came off second-best and with so long left in the race, the decision was made to pit early, take the pain and make gains later. Pérez's famed tyre management and a sliver of good fortune made that gamble pay off handsomely.
On medium-compound tyres and back in 17th, Pérez eked out the life in his Pirelli rubber and stealthily made his way up the order until luck swung back his way on Lap 39, when Esteban Ocon's expired Alpine caused a safety car. This allowed Pérez to pit with the field neutralised. After the restart, with Sainz escaping up front, Pérez found himself in a massive fight for the final two podium places with Leclerc and Hamilton, the trio fighting ferociously wheel-to-wheel as the crowd roared.
Pérez came out on top, finishing 3.8 seconds behind Sainz and banked his sixth podium in 10 races – one more than his best haul for an entire season before 2022. With 147 points for the season, he's played a significant part in Oracle Red Bull Racing keeping Ferrari 63 points behind in the Constructors' Championship.
With nothing to lose, Pérez gritted his teeth and was rewarded
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"It was a great comeback, we didn’t give up and we kept pushing," Pérez said after being voted as Driver of the Day by the sport's fans. "The opportunity came there at the end and we just took it. It was a great fight with Charles and then with Lewis… it was just an epic final laps, but it was a good fight between us."
Finishing second was the furthest thing from his mind after the first lap, he admitted: "I just got squeezed, I had nowhere to go. Charles was on the inside, Max was on the outside and my front wing got damaged pretty badly. I had to pit to change it, went to last place and recovered from there."
Verstappen battles on
There's not too many gaps in Max Verstappen's glittering F1 career record, but the British Grand Prix remains a mystery for a driver who's made most other posts a winner ever since he joined the team in 2016. All weekend, the Dutchman looked a strong chance to win a third straight race for the second time this season, after his victories in Azerbaijan and Canada over the past three weeks. However, the only luck he had at Silverstone continued to be bad.
Starting from second on the grid, Verstappen struck the front on Lap 10 when Sainz ran wide, but had to relinquish the lead two laps later with an unscheduled pit stop. A new set of tyres didn't alleviate his problems, though, with the team reporting right rear bodywork and floor damage that although not terminal, would reduce his peak performance.
Verstappen fought on as best he could with a damaged car
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"I'd just got into the lead because of Carlos's error and then a few corners later there was a piece of debris on the racing line and I couldn't drastically turn left or right. It went in my floor and completely destroyed the left-hand side of my floor," he explained. "Within two corners, I felt like the car was falling apart. To finish seventh in that car… it's better than zero points, that's for sure."
Making the best of a bad hand saw Verstappen hang around in the lower reaches of the top 10 for much of the rest of the race and he had a spirited fight with Mick Schumacher (Haas) over the final laps, edging the German by just 0.2s at the chequered flag as Schumacher scored his first F1 points.
The seventh place continues a curious run for Verstappen at Silverstone; he's yet to win the British Grand Prix despite two F1 victories at Silverstone. How? He won the 2020 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, the second of two races held at Silverstone as part of a compromised calendar that season, and also won the Sprint Race at the circuit last year to set the grid for the race proper, but retired on the opening lap.
Zhou's lucky escape after first-lap chaos
The one-hour delay to the race we mentioned earlier? The race was red-flagged seconds after the lights went out, with two frightening incidents seeing Alfa Romeo rookie Zhou Guanyu counting his lucky stars after a dramatic crash that left him, remarkably, more shaken than injured.
Starting from eighth on the grid, Mercedes's George Russell made a slow getaway and Zhou slithered down the outside as the field thundered towards Turn 1. Pierre Gasly of Scuderia AlphaTauri spied a gap between Russell and Zhou, but three cars arrowed into a space big enough for just two, Russell clipping Zhou and flipping the Alfa Romeo over. Zhou skated through the gravel trap upside down, flipped over the tyre wall and clattered into the fence. Fortunately, the Chinese driver was able to return to the paddock by the end of the race after he was released from the medical centre, declared fit.
The chaos kicked off a second incident further down the field, as Alex Albon (Williams) braked to avoid the incident and was nudged into the wall by Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin, with Ocon's Alpine also getting caught up in the carnage. Fortunately, there were no injuries from one of the more dramatic first laps we've seen in F1 for some time.
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One to forget for Gasly and Tsunoda
Gasly's team-mate Yuki Tsunoda was an unlucky victim in the first-lap incident, limping back to the pits with an extensively damaged AT03 machine after being cannoned into by cars going left and right. The first lap defined AlphaTauri's race and Tsunoda was the only one of its entries still running at the finish, ending up in 14th as the final car classified.
Gasly and Tsunoda came to blows on Lap 10, with Tsunoda penalised five seconds for sending both cars into a spin, while Gasly eventually retired after 20 frustrating laps.
Gasly's frustrating afternoon ended early for AlphaTauri
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The one good bit of news for the Frenchman since the last Grand Prix in Canada? Gasly re-signed with the team for the 2023 season after Montreal and he maintained 11th place in the Drivers' Standings with 16 points after his second non-score in succession. Tsunoda, who hasn't scored since Spain at round six, is 15th overall on 11 points.
In the starting blocks for a Styrian sprint
From Silverstone comes a quick stop at the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian Grand Prix on July 10 and the second of three scheduled Sprint Qualifying sessions this season to set the grid for Sunday's 71-lap race proper at the spectacular track sitting in the foreground of the Styrian Alps.
More races at the Ring is something Verstappen is surely licking his lips for; the reigning world champion led all 71 laps in both the Styrian and Austrian Grands Prix held at the circuit a year ago, both from pole position. So dominant was the Dutchman in the 2021 Austrian GP that he took his first 'grand chelem', where a driver leads every lap from pole position while winning the race and taking fastest lap (he duplicated the dose at this year's Emilia Romagna GP). No wonder the hills are alive with the cheering sounds of orange-clad fans; Verstappen won in Austria in 2018 and 2019, too.
Most modern-day drivers have a more modest record at the Red Bull Ring than Verstappen and team-mate Pérez is no exception. Fourth in the Styrian GP is the best the Mexican has managed so far from 10 starts, while if it's consistency you're after, he's managed to finish sixth on four previous occasions.
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