The unseen mistake that nearly cost Perez victory in Russell's race

At the inaugural Sakhir Grand Prix, Formula 1 got a glimpse of what things could look like without Lewis Hamilton. The world champion had been forced out of the race by a positive COVID-19 test, and while that misfortune ended his streak of 265 consecutive grand prix races, it gave the rest of the field a golden chance to shine.

And they took it. The weekend had been set-up as a duel between the new Mercedes line-up, with George Russell going up against Valtteri Bottas. But the pulsating battle between the duo didn't end with one picking up critical momentum for Mercedes' 2022 driver line-up decision. Instead, Sergio Perez and Racing Point came away with victory in what will surely go down as a famous grand prix thriller, which was defined by two starring drives and one calamitous pitstop.

The Mercedes duel

After Russell couldn't quite best Bottas in qualifying, but still lined up alongside him on the front row, there was intense focus on the race start. It was loaded with uncertainty given Bottas has had a season littered with poor getaways, including one seven days earlier, and Russell has a similar record for Williams. Plus, an afternoon sandstorm near the venue had created a blustery, dusty atmosphere as night rolled in, with the field making extra practice starts on the laps to the grid.

Russell's start "was the phase of the race that I was most nervous about all weekend" as he had to contend with his fingers being too big for clutch paddles that were moulded to Hamilton's hands, but he aced it. Bottas also launched well, but "suddenly had a spike of wheelspin" as he shifted into second gear and he lost impetus. This meant the Mercedes pair went side-by-side towards Turn 1, pinching together and warding off Max Verstappen.

Russell sealed the lead on the inside at the right-hander and scampered clear while Bottas "had a bit of a snap being in the dirty air [behind Russell] and with the tailwind" in Turn 2. This cost the Finn momentum and meant the following cars - including Perez, who had shot off from fifth on the grid and was nearly into third on the outside at Turn 1, plus Verstappen and Charles Leclerc - were quickly on top of him.

Russell was gone, but in his wake at the Turn 4 right-hander it all got messy. Verstappen braked early as the pack swamped Bottas, who locked up, while Perez went around the Red Bull and swung into the apex as the Mercedes went deep. But Leclerc was also locked up on the inside and he clattered into Perez, spinning him into the runoff, but crucially not into the gravel.

Leclerc was out on the spot with a broken left-front, while Verstappen, who had been forced off too but not hit, ended up out as well having carried too much speed into the gravel and been unable to avoid sliding into the wall.

The safety car appeared as Perez dropped to the back of the pack in 18th, stopping to switch his softs for mediums. The race was neutralised for the next six laps of 87, after which Russell nailed the restart and set about building a gap over Bottas, who ran second after briefly being passed by McLaren's Carlos Sainz Jr at Turn 1, with the Spaniard then slipping off the road at the Turn 3 kink and falling behind.

This aberration put Russell well out of DRS range, 1.6 seconds to the good at the end of lap eight, and he continued to pull away as the two Mercedes drivers lapped in the low 58s or high 57s, with the rest at least half a second further back each time. This quickly pulled them clear of Sainz, and the race became about the Black Arrows trading times for the rest of the long first stint. Bottas was able to close on occasion, but never looked like he had enough pace to simply surge back up to Russell.

"As the safety car came out, we were calling for the crew to be ready, and for the tyres for each car to come into the pitlane. At the time that message was going out, another radio message for a very brief period prevented one of the key messages getting through to one set of tyre collectors" Andrew Shovlin

"The first stint was quite understeery for me," explained Bottas. "I'd decided to go with less front flap for the first stint, but I think it was not ideal. It seemed to be a difficult track to follow once you were within three seconds, you were always drifting in the corners."

And so, the first stint for the Mercedes cars became one of ebb and flow between the pair as they pulled clear of the pack - Sainz was 14.4s behind before he stopped on lap 28 - the team happy to run longer thanks to the cool conditions (around five degrees lower than in the Bahrain GP) reducing tyre degradation. The early safety car also helped the tyres as the drivers were not pushing while full of fuel, which would have worked the rubber harder.

Russell came in to take hards, with Mercedes set for a one-stopper, on lap 45. Bottas was left out for a further four laps, during which Russell reported possible power problems while setting rapid lap times, such was the advantage of fresh rubber.

"From the power perspective, it was just sort of coming in and out," he explained. "Nothing too concerning from the data, but just from within it didn't feel quite right, so we just had to change a few settings and then everything was fine in the end."

By the time Bottas rejoined, Russell's lead was up to 8.5s, but that quickly came down - in the period when Mercedes warned its drivers to be careful with their left fronts at the bumpy outer loop chicane. Bottas gained three seconds as the leaders got back up to speed at the end of a brief virtual safety car called for Nicholas Latifi retiring on the inside of Turn 8 on lap 54, and generally looked to be catching Russell until the point when the race was completely turned on its head.

On the leader's 61st lap, Russell's replacement at Williams, Jack Aitken, "took a little bit of a chance by keeping my foot in on the dust and it bit me pretty hard" as he spun on the exit of the final corner and wiped his front wing off. The FIA initially looked to cover the debris recovery with another VSC, which was soon upgraded to a full safety car. Mercedes had a 37.5s gap behind Bottas on the lap Aitken crashed, and so opted to bring its cars in for a double-stack stop that will go down in F1 history for its shambolic results.

The Mercedes pitstop catastrophe

Russell stopped to take what should have been a free pitstop for Mercedes and go back to the mediums. The problem was that he exited with Bottas's designated mediums fitted. Another stop had to follow immediately, after Bottas had been sent back into the train still on the hards he had taken back on lap 49.

"The pitstop issues were linked to the way our radio system handles the priorities of messages, which caught us out in a big way," explained Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. "As the safety car came out, we were calling for the crew to be ready, and for the tyres for each car to come into the pitlane.

"At the time that message was going out, another radio message for a very brief period prevented one of the key messages getting through to one set of tyre collectors [Russell's]. It's something that's been lurking in there and could have caught us out at any time over the past few seasons."

As a result of the disaster, Mercedes' comfortable 1-2 had turned into fourth and fifth by the time the race restarted on lap 69. The leader, sensationally, was Perez.

The Perez recovery

"I thought the race was over," Perez would later say of his lap one spin following the Leclerc contact, for which the Ferrari driver was handed a three-place grid penalty for this weekend's Abu Dhabi GP following a post-race investigation.

The Mexican was right at the rear of the field under the first safety car, but had at least been able to switch to the mediums - which would prove very handy in his resulting strategy. But this was nearly ruined by an unseen, and seemingly innocuous, slip as he toured around to catch Kimi Raikkonen at the back of the safety car snake.

A further round of deliberations over coming in again under the safety car and taking the hards was discussed, but the imminent race restart essentially took this option away

At the start of the third lap after his initial stop, Perez snatched his front left brake as he exited the Turn 3 kink and flat-spotted the tyre. He quickly called for Racing Point to assess the vibrations he was immediately feeling.

The team asked him to shoot back to the highest speed he could under the safety car, which briefly took him past Raikkonen, after which they decided the vibrations were acceptable. A further round of deliberations over coming in again under the safety car and taking the hards was discussed, but the imminent race restart essentially took this option away.

Perez was ruthless at the restart. He immediately dispatched Raikkonen on the run into Turn 1 with a late dive to mug F1's most experienced driver (who to be fair had no need to fight a much quicker car) and breezed by Pietro Fittipaldi's Haas into the final corner, still on the first lap back at racing speed.

Aitken was easily overcome on the pitstraight that followed, before he repeated the simple final corner move on Antonio Giovinazzi and then dispatched Nicholas Latifi and Kevin Magnussen with ease on the following two tours.

This put Perez in 12th on lap 10, now chasing Alex Albon - who was also on a one-stopper (which became two when Red Bull gambled on a switch to softs at the Aitken-triggered safety car). Perez gained another spot when Sebastian Vettel made a mistake, but followed Albon for 11 laps, before hanging on to get by around the outside of Turn 4 on lap 21. That came after he had followed Albon past Lando Norris, when the McLaren driver was slow through Turn 5 having been bested by the Red Bull.

Racing Point had warned Perez while he was chasing Albon that his race would be "all about managing the left front" and its vibrations, which Perez said had got so severe that "it was hard to keep the steering wheel tight [in my hands]".

"There were times when I told the team that we should box [because] I was losing lap time - but still the pace was strong," he added.

Pitting for a second time at this stage could have been disastrous for Perez's recovery and changing to a conventional 'two-stopper' (in his case a third stop overall) would have certainly prevented the outcome the Sakhir GP eventually got.

He did come in again on lap 47 to finally take hards, six and five laps after Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll respectively - the duo he had been chasing after passing Albon. Perez later felt what "really made our race was to be able to go a bit longer than these two guys and build up a bit of a tyre delta".

After asking to be let past Stroll for the sake of Racing Point's ongoing, intense battle for third in the constructors' championship, he got by with a different kind of assistance on lap 56 when the Canadian outbraked himself into Turn 4 and slid deep, with Perez nipping by and heading after Ocon. He caught and passed the Renault, which had earlier run strongly behind Stroll and got by thanks to the undercut effect putting him within DRS striking distance of the Racing Point when it rejoined from its only stop of the race (Stroll having put in a brilliant 42 lap first stint on the softs as he rose from 10th on the grid).

Perez's pass on Ocon was for sixth, but this became the net lead thanks to the Mercedes pitstop calamity, which followed Daniil Kvyat pitting in an attempt to attack Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo just before the first VSC. Sainz and Ricciardo then came in a fraction after that neutralisation was ended, which cost them critical track position to the one-stoppers even if the timing made sense given their two-stop strategy.

And so, Perez suddenly had the lead, with Racing Point committed to leaving him out during the second safety car (as it did not do at Imola, to its cost) because it was satisfied with both the degradation on the hards and that tyre warm up at the restart would not be an issue. But things weren't over for Mercedes just yet.

The race to the finish

Russell was on used mediums, but crucially his own, following his third trip to the pits, but Mercedes insisted he'd have the advantage with that rubber versus Bottas and his twice-fitted hards, and the one-stoppers occupying the podium places.

While Perez scampered clear out front when the race restarted for the final time - his pace over the final 18 laps good enough to take him 10.518s clear of Ocon - Russell harried his team-mate. Bottas made a critical slip deep at Turn 4 the lap after the restart and Russell didn't think twice - diving to the inside of the first part of the Turn 7/8 chicane and forcefully stealing fourth. He then overcame Stroll and Ocon in successive laps, which set the race up for a grandstand finish of which it was ultimately robbed.

"It was going be close but I think I was going to be able to hold [Russell] back, because we had good pace" Sergio Perez

At the end of lap 73, Perez's lead was 3.4s, which Russell eroded over the following four laps before disaster struck again. Mercedes had detected a slow left-rear puncture and had to bring Russell in for a fourth time. Although he was able to tear back from 14th to finish ninth - just behind Bottas, who was defenceless in the pack with his fading hards - and take his first F1 points, that was not the prize he'd desired.

"I've had races in my past where they've been taken away from me - but twice?" said an initially shocked Russell, who could have been disqualified for the lap he did on Bottas's mediums, had the stewards not opted to impose a €20,000 fine to Mercedes due to the mitigating circumstances around the pitstop disaster. "I just couldn't believe my luck."

There will forever remain two unanswered questions to the Sakhir GP. Could Bottas have battled back against Russell if Mercedes' second stint had run to the end as expected? He felt he could, saying "I was catching him at a pretty decent rate, so I knew everything was going to be open and most likely we'd have a good battle".

Could Perez have held on without Russell's puncture? He felt he could too. One insistence, at least, came with the certainty of victory.

"It was going be close but I think I was going to be able to hold him back, because we had good pace," said Perez. "Given the age of my tyres, given the pace I had towards the end, the pace I had in hand, I was going to be able to hold him back to the end."

Ocon was a fine second, with Stroll third - completing a tumultuous seven days for Racing Point, which had come away from the first Bahrain race with no points after Perez's fiery retirement while running in third and Stroll flipped following the red flag.

F1's first Sakhir GP was a thriller, but as so often in sport it will be the emotions that stay in the memory. Hamilton's absence, Russell's heartbreak (twice), Bottas's defiance and Perez's joy.

"I'm a bit speechless," the winner said after climbing from his RP20. "I hope I'm not dreaming, because I've dreamed for so many years of being in this moment. Ten years it took me. Incredible..."