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W Series drivers will again be writing regular Formula 1 columns on The Race through the 2021 season. Alice Powell has plenty of controversy to tackle after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
I was worried that the thrilling 2021 Formula 1 season-opener in Bahrain may have proved to be the peak of the season, but I didn’t need to worry, Imola was just as exciting, if not even better!
When I first saw the collision between George Russell and Valtteri Bottas, I thought Bottas moved across to the right-hand side of the track into George.
But with the benefit of watching the incident in slow-motion since – an option of course the drivers do not having while racing and making their decisions in real-time – it looked like George just didn’t expect Valtteri to make his ever-so-slight move.
George overreacted to Valtteri’s movement a little bit and dropped a wheel on the white line, which spun his rears up and spat him left into the Mercedes.
It’s very easy for me or anybody to sit here and say what they should have done, but when the closing speeds are so great and you’re travelling at such high speeds in some of the most difficult conditions that you can get, it’s understandable that there will be misjudgements.
If it was bone dry, that wouldn’t have happened. They were racing in tricky conditions where if you make one small error by going slightly off-line – especially at the speeds they’re travelling at – the price of mistakes can be massive.
Bottas knew Russell’s closing speed with the DRS was quite great and then George would have probably made his mind up, he knew Valtteri was going left, so he went right, which was the obvious decision to make. He would have planned that move quite quickly.
These drivers are so experienced and have done so much racing, you sort of already know what you’re going to do before the situation happens sometimes. You know where you want to place the car and what would be the best position to overtake in that corner. But Bottas was always going to defend it.
Both drivers’ fury understandable
In either of their positions, I’d be fuming. Your adrenaline is running so hard and so fast in that situation. That was a big impact, you could hear that Bottas was slightly winded because he did hit the wall really hard. Russell was even angrier because he was in a really good position for a Williams.
This crash hasn’t just got people talking because it was so big, but also because of who it involved and the future driver market situation around them.
Come the end of the season, maybe Mercedes might look back on this incident and say ‘well this happened and the decision-making wasn’t great’
I don’t think Bottas did anything different because it was Russell attacking him. He would have wanted to defend that position regardless of who it was. His team-mate Lewis Hamilton had been fighting for the lead, he was down in ninth – he just didn’t want to fall any further down the pack in what should be a race-winning car.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff certainly didn’t sound happy with Russell on Sunday night.
But ultimately, Mercedes will want to take the drivers that it feels can help win championships.
The mistakes made by both Bottas and Russell will be assessed. But we’re still only in the second race of a 23-race season, there’s a long way to go.
Russell was putting on a brilliant performance to get into the points in the Williams. Will the crash have further ramifications that affect his chances of a future Mercedes deal? I don’t think so.
The 2022 driver decision facing Mercedes is extremely tough. Come the end of the season, maybe they might look back on this incident and say ‘well this happened and the decision-making wasn’t great’.
But all racing drivers make mistakes. Reigning champion Hamilton went into the gravel, winner Max Verstappen almost spun on the safety car restart. The conditions were tricky and I really can’t see that a one-off incident like the Russell/Bottas collision will decide the fate of either of these two when Mercedes picks the drivers it will be running next year.
Desperation but no panic – Hamilton’s Tosa error
Of course Russell had also had a role in Hamilton’s crash under a lap earlier, as it was the Williams that the Mercedes was lapping when it slid into the Tosa barrier.
In hindsight, Hamilton should have waited to get him on the exit, though Mercedes might say to Russell, ‘well you should have moved over and let Lewis through.’
It was unfortunate for Hamilton because in any other conditions this would not have happened. But it was the fact that they hadn’t long been on slicks, it was slightly wet off-line and that’s exactly where Hamilton went to pass Russell because he didn’t want to lose the gap to Verstappen.
When you make a mistake like this, you just feel desperation. But it’s important not to panic, and yes, though Hamilton initially did just drive into the wall in a situation where he’d have hoped he had enough steering lock to get out, he stayed calm.
He used quick thinking and his experience of similar experiences in the past. He did the correct thing by not lighting the rears up because that can dig a hole in the gravel trap and you end up getting beached.
The conditions were so difficult, especially on the surface that Imola has – which is different to most others – and given it was in the crossover period around changing from wets to slicks.
Hamilton did a brilliant recovery from there, but Verstappen was obviously out of reach.
Hamilton might have some lap one regrets
Right at the start, they’d got extremely close. Max made a fantastic race start by using second gear to reduce the wheelspin and he got the better of Lewis down into the first corner and made it stick.
Hamilton was probably a bit too eager to go around the outside of Verstappen, the door was always going to close there because Max wasn’t going to give him an inch of space.
Hamilton will look back at the incident and wish he backed out of it and tried to get the run on Max a few corners later because Max was already on a very tight inside line anyway, his corner was already slightly compromised.
It’s just one of those first lap dashes where Hamilton was understandably desperate to not lose a position to Verstappen because he knew that the Red Bulls were fast. But their touch was a racing incident, and it was right that no action was taken.
Overall this season is shaping up brilliantly. There were great drives throughout the field, I’m really happy that Lando Norris got another podium because he was on absolute fire in the race, in fact, he was on fire all weekend. It was a great result for Carlos Sainz Jr and Charles Leclerc in the Ferraris too, it’s great for them to be back near the front. I really think that we’re in for an absolutely fantastic season.
