Valteri Bottas won the Turkish Grand Prix on the rain and steadily defeated the Red Bull opponent Max Verstappen, breaking his personal year-long victory drought.
All drivers start the race on semi-rain tires. Bottas, who started from pole position, started smoothly, leading steadily into the first turn, with Max Verstappen in second place. Behind them, Alonso, who was fifth on the grid, had a slight collision with Gasly in the first turn, and his position fell after the turn. The Frenchman was fined 5 seconds later. The Spaniard fell to the bottom of the rankings and had an accident with Mick Schumacher when he returned to the track, and was fined 5 seconds for this.
Since then, the track conditions have remained the same, and most of the experienced drivers insisted on not pitting. Only Daniel Ricciardo became the first driver to pit on the 21st lap and changed a set of semi-rain tires.
On lap 34, Hamilton caught up with Perez and attacked in the last two corners, but was on the outside on the straight and had no chance.
The leading group remained motionless until lap 37 when Verstappen pitted for a new semi-rain tire. Then Bottas also pitted and returned to the track to continue to lead Verstappen. At this time, Charles Leckler, who started from third, rose to third. But Bottas, with new tires, kept catching up and overtook the Monaco on lap 47, returning to the first position. At this time, the Finn had a huge advantage over Verstappen, and finally won the first personal victory of the season with a 14-second advantage, ending the personal victory drought after the Russian Grand Prix last year. Not only that, he made the fastest lap in the game on the last lap of the game.
Subsequently, Ferrari let the Monaco pit into the station, and an efficient tire change allowed him to guard in front of Sergio Perez after leaving the station. But two laps later, the Mexican passed the Ferrari and entered the top three. Lake Luck is in fourth place.
Hamilton, who started from 11th, came to the longest at the end of the first lap. On the rainy ground, the problem of following the car was slightly alleviated. The British surpassed Kakuda Yuyi, Lance Stroll, Lando Norris, Gasley, and rose to sixth on lap 20.
Mercedes originally called Hamilton to pit on the 41st lap, but the British felt that it would be a better choice to stay on the track, because there is no mandatory pit stop for rainy games. However, after 9 laps, the team worried that his tire performance was not as good as that of the car behind him, and told him that this was the last window to guarantee the top five. The British also pitted and replaced the tires. After leaving the station, they inevitably fell to Perez and Lake. After Luck.
Hamilton once approached the Ferrari car, but then was overtaken by Gasley behind him. Obviously he was not happy with the team’s decision to let him in the pits. The British finally held the position of the Frenchman, but the result of fifth place meant that he was overtaken by Verstappen in the standings. Gasley finished sixth after overcoming the penalty.
McLaren had a tough game. In addition to being overtaken by Hamilton, Norris was almost invisible throughout the game, finishing the game in seventh place.
Carlos Sainz, who started from the last starter because of the activation of a full set of additional power units, climbed up a lot on the wet track and entered the scoring zone less than halfway through. Although he had a good time of 8.1 seconds when pitting and changing tires, he finished the race in eighth place.
Alpine driver Esteban O’Connell became the only driver who did not pit in the race, but it also meant that he was slow at the last minute and was continuously overtaken by Sainz and Stroll. The Canadian rose to ninth and finished the race, and the French driver got the last point in the scoring zone.
The two Alfa Romeo drivers missed the points zone, and Antonio Giovinaz and Kimi Raikkonen ranked 11th and 12th respectively. Ricardo’s early pitting efforts did not have a particularly big effect, and in the end he could only accept the 13th place result. Kakuda Yuyi fell out of the scoring zone and finished in 14th place.
After the accident on the first lap, Alonso failed to return to the scoring zone and fell to 16th, behind George Russell. Another Williams driver Nicolas Latifi finished the race behind the Spaniard.
Sebastian Vettel gambled on dry tyres during his pit stop, but it didn’t work. The car was struggling and almost hit the wall when he returned to the pit lane. Fortunately, he avoided hitting the wall in time. But this erroneous pit stop put Germany in the bottom third, just before the two Haas cars.
It is worth mentioning that, despite the race on the rainy ground, no cars retired in this race. After the game, Verstappen returned to the top of the standings, leading Hamilton by 6 points. However, Mercedes has a 36-point advantage over Red Bull.
