The five factors behind Sainz winning a British GP he’d twice lost

For the first time, he was on pole. His big chance awaited, but it all went wrong when the Silverstone lights went out. He bogged down and the dominant points leader surged ahead.

But Carlos Sainz had a second chance and seized it. Amazingly, this doesn’t just apply to the 2022 British Grand Prix, where Sainz claimed a maiden Formula 1 triumph in his 150th start. It also happened 12 years earlier in the Formula BMW Europe round supporting the 2010 British GP when, as a 15-year-old, he scored his breakthrough win in that series.

Last weekend, Sainz’s Ferrari squad emerged victorious for the first time since the Australian GP in April. But while there was supposed to be a second start in 2010, following Jack Harvey’s win in race one, there should have been just one last Sunday.

When the lights went out at the scheduled start, Sainz did indeed get away slower than fellow front row starter Max Verstappen, who reaped the reward of running soft tyres against the Ferrari’s mediums to shoot ahead. As they shot through Abbey chased by the fast-staring Lewis Hamilton, who had quickly roared between Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez, chaos and frightening drama unfolded in the pack behind.

As they ran towards the fast right-hand first corner, the slow-starting George Russell and Zhou Guanyu had seen Williams qualifying star Nicholas Latifi nip between them. Then, as Pierre Gasly tried to do the same, Russell drifted slightly left. Their contact sent Russell sideways at high speed into the Alfa Romeo, which was instantly flipped upside down and put careering into the Abbey gravel supported only by its halo.

Zhou was shockingly bounced over the tyre barrier after hitting it and was trapped between that structure and the catch fence protecting the grandstand beyond. Fortunately, Zhou emerged unharmed after several minutes work from the FIA’s extraction team, with Russell out too after climbing from his Mercedes to run to reach his stricken peer.

Zhou is flipped in a dramatic start to the British GP, while further back Albon is sent into the pitwall

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Zhou was transferred to the Silverstone medical centre, where he was joined by Alex Albon. The second Williams had been caught up in the mess that followed the initial massive crash, which was triggered by Valtteri Bottas braking under a shower of carbonfibre.

Albon was quickly upon Bottas and he braked hard too, which left Sebastian Vettel with no chance to react in time. This resulting slam sent Albon hard into the pitwall and his smashed car then bounced across the track and struck Esteban Ocon and, because of that contact, also wiped off Yuki Tsunoda’s front wing. Albon was taken to Coventry hospital for additional checks before later also being cleared.

The red flags were flying just as the leaders reached Aintree, after which Sainz spotted “three guys running towards me” down the Hangar Straight. These were three of seven later arrested from a Just Stop Oil-backed protest.

A delay of 53 minutes followed, with Sainz opting “not to see [replays of] the accident” during that stoppage. Instead, he was concentrating on not blowing his second chance to win from pole, much as he had 12 years earlier.

Because Ocon and Tsunoda were still yet to cross this as they crawled with their considerable damage when the red flags came, the FIA had no choice but to refer to the original starting grid

This was because even though Verstappen had surged ahead, Sainz would take the restart back on pole thanks to a key FIA rule. This is that after a red flag, the officials must take the restart order from the last point at which it is possible to determine the full order – minus any retirees. In this instance, that could have been the safety car line at the end of Silverstone’s long pit exit. But because Ocon and Tsunoda were still yet to cross this as they crawled with their considerable damage when the red flags came, the FIA had no choice but to refer to the original starting grid.

At the second start, Verstappen lined up on mediums – putting him in line with the two Ferraris either side of his Red Bull (Leclerc gaining back the third place he’d been fighting Hamilton for at the Loop when the race was stopped). Again, the world champion made the better getaway, but this time Sainz could make a fight of it. He squeezed Verstappen firmly against the pitwall and, with the Dutchman pinched on the inside Abbey kerbs, Sainz’s move braving things out around the outside was eased. He stayed ahead and led through the rest of the opening turns, where Leclerc was again in the wars.

He’d made a second poor start and had been passed by Sergio Perez immediately off the line. But at the Loop, Leclerc shoved his Ferrari onto the kerbs and alongside the Red Bull – forcing his way by even though it meant damaging his right-front wing endplate. On Leclerc’s right, Perez had come across so far in defence he actually appeared to clip Sainz’s left-rear, with Verstappen just ahead in close proximity too. And so Perez also picked up similar wing damage.

Both Red Bulls and Ferraris almost went four-wide in the thrilling restart, resulting in both Leclerc and Perez picking up damage

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

As the pack charged towards Copse a few moments later, Leclerc’s damaged endplate came off and struck Perez’s nose, but did not do additional damage to his endplate, which was already hanging off.

This followed Leclerc getting such a good run down the Wellington Straight he’d been able to challenge Verstappen at Brooklands in Sainz’s wake. There, Verstappen forcefully obliged his title rival to take the outside line and then to the runoff in a move the stewards reviewed but decided warranted no further scrutiny.

An old problem hurts Sainz against Verstappen

Sainz ended the first real racing lap with a one-second lead over Verstappen, with Perez having to pit three laps later to change his front wing, dropping to last and seemingly out of contention. Red Bull was also forced to put him onto the used mediums with which he’d taken the first start.

By this stage, Sainz’s lead was only hovering at just above one-second. Now, Verstappen charged – DRS finally activated – and a three-way fight for the lead unfolded as Leclerc chased on too.

Sainz was under huge pressure and feeling he “wasn't completely comfortable with the car” even at this early stage. There was an important reason why, which took the Spaniard back 28 hours.

In FP3, Autosport noted Sainz’s F1-75 was corner-porpoising (what the drivers call ‘hopping’) through Becketts at a much higher frequency to how Leclerc’s car was bouncing. Sainz said this was down to “some issues with the car that we had to correct” and, while Ferrari thought it had ahead of qualifying, the wet weather had masked things.

Now, Sainz was feeling the bouncing in much the same way to FP3 and so “felt like I lost quite a bit of pace”. Having to cope with the rear instability of the corner hopping and leaning on the mediums even further to try and stay out of Verstappen’s reach, this meant Sainz was “struggling a lot with understeer in the high-speed corners – opening the front-left tyre a lot”.

On lap 10, his various issues resulted in an oversteer snap at Becketts, spearing suddenly left and through the runoff. Verstappen seized his chance and shot by the momentum-less Ferrari down the Hangar Straight.

Tsunoda's latest gaffe costs Verstappen dearly

The world champion was now the comfortable favourite to win given his strong long-run pace generally throughout 2022 so far compared to Ferrari, which was apparent again in FP2 last Friday. But his grip on Sunday’s race lead lasted only a lap and a half. And it came loose thanks to a spectacular bit of intra-Red Bull/AlphaTauri friendly fire.

Tsunoda tangles with Gasly, a battle which would have unintended consequences for Verstappen

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Tsunoda and Gasly – their cars having been repaired and checked over during the red flag, as was the case of Vettel and Ocon too – were scrapping over seventh on lap 11. But when Tsunoda sent a move to Gasly’s inside at Village, he lost his rear and spun – taking his team-mate around too with a small tap left-rear-to-right-rear.

But it damaged Gasly’s rear wing, with an “endplate”, per Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, knocked off. This was lying on the approach to the Loop the next time Verstappen came by and he later said he “couldn’t move drastically left or right” so “just tried to hit it head on”. But the part, Horner explained, got “stuck under the bottom of the car”, robbing Verstappen of approximately 20% of his car’s overall downforce.

Verstappen naturally felt his car handling change almost instantly, but misdiagnosed the problem. Having seen the carbonfibre, he thought hitting it had caused a puncture, which meant he slowed and the Ferraris caught back up through Maggotts/Becketts.

With Sainz having already shot back ahead, Verstappen dived for the pits even though Red Bull “couldn't see [a puncture] on the data”, according to Horner. But with just seconds of the lap remaining and something clearly wrong, it backed Verstappen’s call – sending him back out on the remaining set of new mediums eschewed at the original start.

Ferrari’s team orders calls backfire

Things suddenly looked very good for Ferrari, but this was also short-lived.

Sainz had ended the lap Verstappen pitted with a one-second lead over Leclerc, but the next time by this was under the DRS-activation mark and so Leclerc was soon calling for the Scuderia to intervene.

"Our two cars were too close to stop both of them. If we would have stopped [Leclerc], maybe the other ones may have stayed out, and he would have maybe been fourth on soft tyres with other cars ahead of him. Would he have recovered the positions? I’m not sure" Mattia Binotto

Even with his front wing damage, Leclerc was pressuring his team-mate. He’d “felt in the first few laps there was quite a bit more understeer” with the damage but after making bias switch changes felt this got better and he was able to remain within DRS range. Leclerc felt he could go quicker, but Ferrari, as well as trying to placate its frustrated drivers, was keenly aware of a new secondary threat.

Hamilton had gone wide as the leaders clashed through the Loop at the second start and so dropped behind Lando Norris, before battling his way past his fellow Briton with a simple DRS-assisted pass into Brooklands just after Perez pitted out of their way on lap five.

Then, while the attention was focused on Verstappen and Leclerc chasing Sainz, he’d quietly closed a gap of nearly 8s to 6s. For the seven laps between the Red Bulls pitting, Hamilton’s pace was a 1m33.690s average compared to 1m33.941s for Sainz and 1m33.641s for Leclerc.

“Do something!” Leclerc insisted, as he tried to save his tyre life running behind his team-mate. Ferrari initially just tried ordering Sainz to go faster, but then acted on lap 20 – bringing him in to switch to the hards. Leclerc was unleashed, but over the next four tours actually lost 1.1s to the charging Hamilton, who, as Sainz noted, was “having one of his special days”.

As Ferrari fumbled its strategy, Hamilton came into play for the win

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

On lap 25, Ferrari called Leclerc in for his own hards, with his 0.3s longer stop and Sainz’s pace on fresh rubber combining to give Leclerc a 2.2s deficit when he rejoined in third – the leading trio’s pace so strong over the first half they were by now already a pitstop clear of Norris.

With Ferrari having been able to make front wing adjustments to aid Leclerc’s downforce loss with his damage, he took just three laps to get back within DRS range. The hard tyres were tricky to switch on thanks to the comparatively cool conditions versus previous editions of this event. But once through this stage Leclerc hounded Sainz again.

And, again, Ferrari seemed to dither when it came to the team orders Leclerc was soon requesting. With Mercedes leaving Hamilton out to “offset myself as much as I could” against the red cars, Ferrari told Sainz to match the Briton’s pace or he’d have to let Leclerc by. But if the second car had been able to mount a move, the pair were free to race.

Sainz couldn’t reach the 1m32.1s target Ferrari wanted and so on lap 31 he dutifully let Leclerc go by on the Wellington Straight. Two laps later, with Leclerc having shaved half a second from Hamilton’s near 19s advantage (the critical threshold to pit and retain a place), Mercedes called Hamilton in.

But the stop ended up being 4.3s as the left-front was slow coming off – meaning Hamilton rejoined in third behind Sainz.

Ferrari’s Leclerc safety car call mistake

Now Leclerc seemingly had the race to lose – particularly because Sainz “suddenly had to start managing fuel a lot” through major lift-and-coast tactics. Indeed, from a 4.4s gap after Hamilton had stopped and was getting through the tough tyre warm-up, Sainz’s advantage shrank to 1.9s over the next five tours.

But then a further twist massively altered the race. On lap 39, shortly after passing Verstappen – even more unhappy with his car balance on the hard tyres he’d been put on with a lap 23 second stop because “we thought that was our best way of finishing P7”, per Horner – Ocon stopped on the National Pits straight. The Alpine was out with a suspected fuel pump problem and its position ahead of Copse meant the safety car was called out so it could be safely retrieved.

The race suspension was called with Leclerc at Stowe, but engineer Xavier Marcos declared his safety car window “closed”. Sainz, however, was pitted – as was Hamilton and the two cars next behind (Perez and Fernando Alonso).

“Our two cars were too close to stop both of them,” Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto later claimed. “If we would have stopped [Leclerc], maybe the other ones may have stayed out, and he would have maybe been fourth on soft tyres with other cars ahead of him. Would he have recovered the positions? I’m not sure.”

Sainz was able to pit under the safety car, swinging the race in his favour

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Binotto said Ferrari felt Leclerc would have better tyre degradation on 14-lap old hards compared to new softs – even if the white-walled rubber had to be worked back to temperature.

Sainz’s restart team order defiance proves correct

The Scuderia also wanted Sainz to drop back and use the grip from his softs to ward off the chasers, while Leclerc pushed to escape. But Sainz overruled his squad, fearing “if [Hamilton] passes me, then Charles is going to be dead meat also, so my decision [was] to get in the lead as soon as possible”.

Therefore, at the lap 43 restart, Sainz wasted little time. He used his grip advantage to silkily dance ahead going through Aintree and then rebuffed Leclerc’s rebound move to Brooklands’ outside. In clear air, he shot to a 3.8s winning margin over the final nine laps.

Behind him came the finest and fiercest racing witnessed this F1 season so far, as Leclerc sought to rescue a seemingly impossible podium result against Hamilton and the recovering Perez.

At the restart, Perez, who had lapped at a strong 1m33.294s average while completing a 34-lap stint on the mediums following his early stop, all while making his way through backmarkers (and having several rivals pit out of his way), pounced on Hamilton. He did so through Aintree, having made a cutback move at the Loop as the Mercedes struggled to fire up the softs – something Hamilton’s team had noted in practice. And then Perez was all over Leclerc.

The Ferrari’s power punch kept Leclerc in the hunt and with the new ground-effects cars superbly allowing the close racing F1 hoped they would at tracks such as this year, he put in the move of the season so far

On lap 45, with Leclerc sliding everywhere, Perez sent a thrillingly late move down Stowe’s inside line. But Leclerc held on around the outside – indeed fully over the exit kerb’s white line – and they then went side-by-side through all three Club apexes. But with Perez sent off-track at the first, he cut back across Leclerc’s bows in the second and so pushed the Ferrari off before the third apex that feeds onto the pitstraight.

That meant Hamilton shot past both as he roared onto the part of Silverstone that officially bears his name, but Perez wasn’t done. He immediately put another bold move in at Village the next time by, with Hamilton now forced off track – the stewards later opting against investigating any of the shoving. Leclerc was also able to sneak back past the momentum-robbed Mercedes on the outside line through the Loop and Aintree.

Two laps later, with Perez already gone by 1.9s, Hamilton used his grippier and surprisingly-low-degrading softs to outdrag Leclerc around Luffield’s outside. But the Ferrari’s power punch kept Leclerc in the hunt and with the new ground-effects cars superbly allowing the close racing F1 hoped they would at tracks such as this year, he put in the move of the season so far.

Leclerc and Hamilton, along with Perez, engaged in some of the best F1 racing in the new era

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Trusting Hamilton not to send him off into the Copse barriers, Leclerc brilliantly swept around the outside to move back to third. “It was quite on the limit,” he reflected later. “As soon as I passed the corner, I looked in my mirror and I had a flashback of last year but luckily nothing bad happened.”

But Leclerc’s sterling defence came to nought as Hamilton’s DRS opening on the subsequent Hangar Straight meant he powered by and beat a Ferrari he thought he “would have been able to battle” without the safety car on hard tyre pace alone. Leclerc then defied the chasing Alonso and Norris to the flag – gaining six points on Verstappen, who ended up seventh after some questionably aggressive defending late on versus Mick Schumacher.

Breathless, brilliant and bold stuff throughout – the action left everyone needing to pause for thought and recovery. Sainz recalled his FBMW triumph at his Silverstone “special place” after climbing from his cockpit.

He has made a real recent breakthrough with the F1-75, but, although back in 2010 he scored one more win that year (in the FBMW Pacific series where he’d actually scored his first and second wins in car racing at that related championship’s Sepang meeting eight weeks before heading to Silverstone) Sainz would do well not to dwell on that first-from-pole triumph being his sole one for the rest of that European campaign.

It is, however, a world stage now. And, finally, Sainz is forever a winner on it.

Sainz becomes the second Spanish winner in F1

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images