How Hamilton's critical changes decided a Turkish GP "that wasn’t his race to win"

"If we're honest, it wasn't his race to win and he still won it. Once again he managed to pull out something special out of that bag."

From one world champion, to another. Back in 2018, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton had duked it out for the crown and the honour of becoming Formula 1's third five-time world champion. Now, following his victory in last weekend's Turkish Grand Prix, Hamilton is three clear of his long-time rival, level with Michael Schumacher as the championship's two seven-time title winners.

But, as Vettel says, the Turkish Grand Prix at Istanbul really wasn't Hamilton's to win.

There can be no doubt that Mercedes was unusually flummoxed by the fresh, controversially low-grip asphalt it found when it rocked up in Turkey - the resurfacing work having only been completed less than two weeks earlier. It was open about its struggles to generate the necessary tyre temperature needed to get anywhere near excelling in the dry Friday practice sessions, but, unusually, it did not kick on as it has done on so many previous occasions - finding rear tyre temperature was the particular problem. Hamilton would therefore start the race sixth, Valtteri Bottas in ninth.

It was Lance Stroll and Racing Point that had been the stars of qualifying, enraging Max Verstappen by pipping him to pole. And such was Stroll's pace, alongside his team-mate Sergio Perez, and Verstappen's form in taking a clean sweep of the practice sessions, it seemed as if a new band of protagonists would fight it out for victory. This sense only increased when rain fell heavily in the hour before the race, which would keep the track cooler throughout, and test Mercedes' inevitable attempts to improve its tyre temperature generation.

But, while Stroll and Perez were able to skate away from pole and P3, Verstappen churned away very slowly from second - his team-mate, Alex Albon doing likewise in his wake from fourth. They were swamped by the Renaults, which were closely followed by F1's usual front men in black.

Hamilton's 85-point advantage coming into the weekend had earned him the chance to take more risk than Bottas, and he certainly did not back away from an opportunity at Turn 1.

He thrust his W11 alongside Daniel Ricciardo's Renault, and the Australian jinked right to avoid a collision. But this caused him to have one with another driver - his team-mate, Esteban Ocon, who went looping around just as Bottas had tucked in behind on the outside line. Bottas had to take avoiding action and in doing so went around in turn, falling to the back of the pack (minus the two Williams cars that were yet to exit the pitlane, boldly, on intermediate tyres).

But this was of no concern to Hamilton, who was clear in third. But he did soon have a familiar problem from earlier in the weekend, as Stroll and Perez simply romped clear having fired up their extreme wet rubber much better. Hamilton was struggling to the extent he slid off at the first time through the Turn 9 left-hander that feeds onto Istanbul's main straights. This cost him time and momentum, and allowed Vettel - who had shot up the order from 11th on the grid, aided by not being "one of the ones who tried everything into Turn 1" - Verstappen and Albon through, leaving Hamilton sixth.

The change to inters obviously introduced a new phase of the race, but it was more significant than just the rubber changing because, unlike in qualifying, switching to inters aided Red Bull

Despite the difficulty on the still soaking track and its gripless asphalt, the race at the front settled down in the early stages, which were all about the Racing Point cars. Hamilton was clearly not enjoying his time on the extreme wets, as he slipped back from Stroll's lead at a rate of 1.28 seconds per lap between the end of lap one of 58 (when he was already a whopping 11.931s adrift) and the start of the eighth tour, the lap he pitted for intermediates.

The first round of stops had been triggered by Charles Leclerc coming in at the end of lap six to switch to the intermediates, on which he immediately found time, keen to recover from a dire start. Stroll had a 4.715s lead over Perez the tour before he came in to take the green-walled tyres on lap 10, which ballooned to 9.951s by the time the stops had shaken out due to Perez's slower service.

The change to inters obviously introduced a new phase of the race, but it was more significant than just the rubber changing because, unlike in qualifying, switching to inters aided Red Bull.

Verstappen stayed out until lap 11, unleashing his pace in free air once Vettel stopped on lap eight to post a string of then fastest laps. Despite the benefit of Vettel's inters, Verstappen nevertheless was able to overcut Red Bull's former talisman to seize third, and nearly second, thanks to Perez's time lost to a slow right-front change.

Verstappen flirted with danger coming around the pitlane exit, getting perilously close to the line that must not be crossed as he booted his RB16 back up to speed. But he escaped sanction as the stewards were "unable to find conclusive evidence" he'd definitely erred.

Up front, Stroll's lead over Perez initially fluctuated as they got used to the inters, but steadily grew again and he had established a 10.425s advantage by the end of lap 18. However, over the next 10 laps it shrank by 0.734s per lap, with the leader struggling with "so much graining" as the track finally started to dry and the inters began to wear. Stroll did appear as if he had stemmed the tide for a while, but at the end of lap 34 Perez was just 1.4s adrift.

And yet, despite the early stages of the inters phase being mostly about Red Bull's speed, it was Hamilton's unfancied Mercedes (a rare sentence for 2020!) that was following the Mexican.

The reasons why it was not a Red Bull making it a three-way fight for the lead were entirely self-inflicted.

Over the two laps after Verstappen rejoined and the virtual safety car was called for Antonio Giovinazzi's Alfa Romeo needing to be pushed behind the barriers on the approach to Turn 9, he and Perez had rapidly pulled clear of Vettel and Hamilton, before they were in turn passed by Albon.

The Ferrari and Mercedes had scrapped over fourth entering the final turns on lap 15 after the VSC ended, with Hamilton stealing to the inside of Turn 12 and then going off after locking his right front, which allowed the second Red Bull by. Albon then passed Vettel with an opportunistic lunge at Turn 7 on the following tour and took off after Verstappen.

But on the lap that marked a high point for Stroll's lead on the inters, Verstappen's chances evaporated.

Perez went deep at Turn 9 on lap 18, although not off the road, and was vulnerable on the long run to Turn 12 - Istanbul's main passing point. Verstappen tucked in and closed, then nipped to the inside of the Turn 11 kink, then jinked to the outside as the pair headed left on the exit - not a place with good history for Red Bull drivers... (please see the 2010 Turkish GP!) Verstappen lost control on the still saturated kerbs and spun around at high speed, damaging his tyres and falling to sixth, from where he immediately pitted.

It was then Albon's turn to close on Perez, but a 0.459s gap on lap 23 was as good as it got. On lap 34, having fallen back to 4.485s and reported his front inters were "gone", the rear of Albon's car went too fast through the downhill right of Turn 4 and he spun out of third, pitting at the end of the lap.

That gave Hamilton third, as Vettel had pitted out of his way, again mirroring Leclerc, who had sparked a second round of stops for inters on lap 30. After his trip off the road, Hamilton had initially fallen away from his old rival's Ferrari, but by the time Vettel came in on lap 33 he had been just over a second adrift.

"I was like, '[Vettel] is doing so good, but dammit, he's in the way, the guys up ahead are getting away!' And then he started pulling away from me and I think at that point I could definitely see the win seeping away" Lewis Hamilton

"I was thinking, 'Seb has had the toughest year, I would say arguably perhaps in his whole career' and I just thought he was driving so well," Hamilton said of his fight with Vettel, referencing his thoughts after slipping off the road following his failed attack.

"But at the same time, I was like, 'He's doing so good, but dammit, he's in the way, the guys up ahead are getting away!' And then he started pulling away from me and I think at that point I could definitely see the win seeping away."

But Hamilton found ways to reverse his destiny at Istanbul. Several, in fact.

In the laps leading up to Vettel coming in again, he and Hamilton had been the fastest runners in the top five, regularly able to put in 1m42s, where the Racing Points and Albon were in the 1m44s. Just as the wearing inters were doing for Stroll's lead, they were making Hamilton's race.

He adopted four critical approaches to his driving that helped him keep his tyres alive, which had the added benefit of keeping them in the critical temperature working range. Only on the inters, which were significantly better at retaining heat than the other wet compound, did Hamilton truly look in command.

"I was having to save the tyres through the high speed, trying to not kill them," he explained. "Keeping temperature up was really key. So that's brake balance, that's how you use [the tyres] on the exit of the corners. It's the lines that you have to navigate. There was a lot of wet patches still out there, and as soon as you touch that, you're off. The key today was really just keeping my wits about me."

And this is the fifth and final change Hamilton made that led to one of his most-famous victories, and his 16th rain-effected F1 triumph. He changed the look of the best strategy by staying on tyres that had been through the graining stage and would wear down in line with the drying track. The image of his inters' smooth circumferences in parc ferme after the race, the contact patch rubber burned down to effective slicks, will live forever as the image of Hamilton's 94th grand prix triumph.

Racing Point's call to pit Stroll on lap 36 was correct on paper. Leclerc and Vettel were flying on their fresh inters and Hamilton was coming at the two pink cars fast. From a gap of 24.063s on lap 18, he was just 1.334s off P1 when the long-time leader came in for a second time, and Hamilton seized the lead he would not lose using the blast of DRS on the approach to Turn 12 to sail past Perez on lap 37.

Stroll, however, was quickly in trouble, immediately complaining about his new inters - his second new set of the race - graining badly and costing him time. In the end, he lost so much time and confidence he fell to ninth at the flag, losing out in battles with the Ferraris, Albon and the quietly impressive Carlos Sainz Jr, and then dropping behind Lando Norris (recovering from "probably the worst start of everyone's career ever") following a slip off the road at Turn 1 late on.

The victorious team boss put forward a theory about why Stroll struggled after his second stop, while Racing Point later claimed he had picked up damage to the underside of his front wing that caused a loss of front downforce.

"The tyres went through different phases," said Toto Wolff. "You could see that most of the people who bolted on a new set of intermediates and pushed very hard had graining after a couple of laps only, and from then on, the tyre didn't recover. Lance was leading the race solid, and put on the new tyre, which I think at that time was the right strategy, and just dropped back."

There is also another aspect of Hamilton's decision-making to consider. As he struggled on the full wet tyre in the very early laps, he had instructed Peter Bonnington, "don't give me new tyres again", adding "not the right idea". And when he switched to the inters, he was subsequently given a set that had done three laps on Saturday, suggesting he was bolting on a set that would have none or little of the graining others experienced so badly.

Hamilton had to work hard to make it last, the tyre did 50 race laps as well, but his pace held up. In the 20 laps to the end of the penultimate tour, Hamilton surged clear by 1.326s a lap over Perez, eventually winning by 31.633s.

There is no point including Perez's final lap in a pace comparison with Hamilton, because his final tour was simply about survival. Perez had been informed of Stroll's struggles on the second inters, and so he and Racing Point opted to follow Hamilton's lead and stay out to the flag.

Perez initially looked like he had the measure of the cars behind, first Verstappen before he pitted for a third time on lap 43, then the Ferraris, of which Leclerc was the one most on the move, really in the groove after his second stop. He passed Vettel by using DRS to surge ahead on the main straight on lap 40, but didn't appear to have enough to close in on Perez once the Red Bull had been removed from contention again. It was quite the recovery drive from 14th at the end of lap one, after Leclerc had failed to make a good getaway from "the dirty side of the track", a la Norris.

Even if he'd not survived another final lap tyre failure, something he was wary of in the closing stages, Hamilton would still have been champion thanks to Bottas's shockingly bad result

But unlike Hamilton, who Mercedes considered pitting with rain threatening to fall again in the final laps, such was his margin up front, Perez was in trouble by the end.

On the last lap, he lost three seconds compared to the previous tour, and a trip through the Turn 9 runoff gave Leclerc second. But Perez powered after the Ferrari, despite the scarlet car ahead having DRS, and retook second when Leclerc locked his right-front heavily at the final time through Turn 12 and slid deep, also falling behind Vettel - quickly and brutally berating himself for his error. Perez hung on in a drag race to the line, as both he and Vettel collected their first podiums of 2020.

"I think one more lap on those tyres, they would have exploded," said Perez. "The vibrations were extremely bad towards the end. But I think looking after them in the beginning also made our race, [considering] towards the end when we had drying conditions."

Hamilton "burst into tears" crossing the line, understandably overwhelmed to have made history in this year-of-years. But even if he'd not survived another final lap tyre failure, something he was wary of in the closing stages, he'd have been champion thanks to Bottas's shockingly bad result.

After his spin behind Ocon at the first turn, he had then hit the Renault driver when he misjudged his braking point for the first time into Turn 9, where Hamilton had initially gone off. Bottas just careered into Ocon, spinning him again and giving the Frenchman a puncture, as well as damaging his W11's front wing and steering.

"The car was not right," he said of its handling after the contact. "I could feel that the steering wheel was going to the left on a straight line, and then the left, right corners, the car was behaving differently, sliding."

This may have been a considerable factor in Bottas having four further spins by himself across the rest of the race - so six in total - as his title challenge was brutally snuffed out when Hamilton lapped him in the closing stages. He rose as high as 12th, but came home 14th after his travails, having taken a second stop for news inters (his initial race set having also been a scrubbed one).

Because of Bottas's spins, the 2020 Turkish GP evoked memories of another famous Hamilton triumph - Silverstone 2008, the day where then title rival Felipe Massa was the one getting dizzy. But it also called back to China the year before, where a pitlane off on worn intermediates cost Hamilton victory and a rookie title.

Now, he is F1's master, serene in all conditions, and the champion of the world once again.