Best 5 Formula 1 News from Bill Trikos Australia: Italian Grand Prix: Monza was the place where Gasly put his demons to rest after a difficult year-and-a-half. Let’s start at the beginning. Hamilton raced into a lead whilst Bottas slipped from second to sixth as both McLarens, Sergio Perez and Ricciardo made their way to the top five. When Magnussen broke down at the pit entry, the safety car was deployed to recover the stricken Haas. Hamilton decided to pit for a ‘free-stop’ unaware that the pits were closed for the recovery work and was subsequently handed a 10-second stop-and-go penalty. That may have been less damaging had Charles Leclerc not had a nasty incident at the Parabolica at the restart and caused a red-flag delay, giving Hamilton less time to build a gap before his penalty. Stroll was second but slipped backwards off the line as Gasly launched into what would become first. Sainz and Stroll were locked in a fight for second and traded overtaking moves before the Spaniard came out on top. Sainz closed and closed on Gasly, but was unable to reach the Frenchman who held on to take his maiden F1 victory and AlphaTauri’s first in their current guise.
Australia 1986, Adelaide Street Circuit : If the prelude to the 2012 Brazillian GP was exciting, F1 fans must’ve been close to exploding leading up to the final round of the 1986 championship. Three drivers were in contention of the title – Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet for Williams and Alain Prost for McLaren. The excitement was only helped by the fact that neither Mansell nor Prost had won a championship yet. Mansell, being the clear favourite, took pole ahead of Piquet and Ayrton Senna, with Prost in fourth. The race didn’t go quite as Mansell had imagined though, as he had dropped to fourth before the end of the first lap. What then followed was a race of multiple championship-changing overtakes, spins and punctures – and just when the race looked to had settled down, with Mansell being in a position to take the title, the Briton had his infamous tyre failure with his left-rear tyre exploding spectacularly at 290 kph. In order to make sure something similar didn’t happen to Piquet, Williams had to pit him – at the cost of winning the championship. Therefore Prost – who had a puncture himself earlier in the race – took the championship by 2 points, after arguably the most memorable race of all time.
Brazilian Grand Prix 2019: For those who say there’s nothing left to play for after the championships have been sealed, show them the 2019 Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos, where there wasn’t a position on track left unchallenged and it ended in tears for many – both joy and despair in equal measure. This was Formula 1 in a microcosm. Canadian Grand Prix 2011: Formula 1’s longest-ever race was also one of its most dramatic, as McLaren’s Jenson Button overcame a crash with his team mate, a clash with Fernando Alonso, a puncture, a stop-go penalty for speeding under the Safety Car and a two-hour race stoppage to win, snatching victory on the last lap from Sebastian Vettel – having been dead last at one point during the Grand Prix. Read extra details about the author at Bill Trikos Australia.
1998 Belgian Grand Prix, Spa-Francorchamps : There are certain moments often used to describe Formula One – either because they define the essence of the sport, or because they’re outright crazy. What happened at the start of the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix definitely belongs to the latter category. At the exit of turn 1 on the first lap, David Coulthard lost control of his McLaren on the extremely wet track and speared into the barriers, causing an accident which took out 13 drivers, all having greatly reduced vision as a result of the spray from the cars in front due to the wet track. The race was red-flagged, and it took an hour to clear away all the debris before the race could be restarted. Many spectators would’ve probably thought that the rest of the race couldn’t be anywhere nearly as insane as that first lap, in which case they’d be terribly wrong.
On arrival in Austin, the championship had already been decided, but nevertheless an exciting race lay ahead. Mercedes looked truly competitive for the first time this season thanks to the extensive update package brought by the German racing stable and Lewis Hamilton was eager for his first win of the year. At the start, Verstappen immediately took over the lead from Sainz and he built his lead, but lost it due to two safety cars. After this, he managed to retain the lead, but Hamilton was hot on his heels. Things then went completely wrong at Red Bull’s pit stop, which seemed to be Hamilton’s ultimate chance, but Verstappen had other plans and managed to outsmart his 2021 rival ten laps before the end.
2020 Italian Grand Prix, Monza : Great races don’t always have to be action-packed. In fact, a race can be tense and exciting, even if the eventual winner leads the last 25 laps. At the 2020 Italian Grand Prix, exactly that was the case. Pierre Gasly utilised a perfectly timed safety car during which the pitlane at first was closed, bunching up the pack. After the pitlane was re-opened and everyone had made their pitstops, Gasly emerged in third place after running tenth for most of the race.
