Portimão’s second hosting of the Portuguese Grand Prix won’t go down as a classic, but it was still an enjoyable race with plenty of action all the way down the grid. Here are the top of the class contenders and struggle bus riders from the Algarve International Circuit:
Top of the class:
Lewis Hamilton – Qualifying: 2nd | Race: 1st
It was far from Lewis’ best performance in an F1 car, but his overtakes on Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and teammate Valtteri Bottas were pretty neat, which allowed him to take his 97th victory in F1.
Qualifying just seven thousandths off Valtteri, Lewis held second at the start but was passed by Verstappen on the safety car restart, a safety car which was triggered by Kimi Räikkönen’s front wing disintegrating after contact on the pit straight on lap 2.
Despite losing second to Verstappen, Hamilton was able to catch the Red Bull and retake the position on lap 11 with a move around the outside of turn 1. Having taken back second, Hamilton set his sights on the lead and was able to storm into the front of the field by sweeping around the outside of his Mercedes teammate into turn one on lap 20.
From there, Lewis would pit on lap 38 and would breeze by a late stopping Red Bull of Serio Perez into turn 1 on lap 51 to take a comfortable victory, which is his second at Portimão, extending his Championship lead to 8 points.
His victory was down to his significantly better tyre management than Bottas, but he still had to pull off some decent overtakes on his way. Considering that Hamilton spent a number of laps following Max and Valtteri, Lewis’ performance has highlighted that Mercedes may have finally overcome their struggles of running in traffic. It once again re-emphasised why Lewis is still the man to beat in 2021.
Lando Norris – Qualifying: 7th | Race: 5th
It’s been an exceptional start to the season for Lando Norris, and he had another great performance at Portimão. He was over a second quicker than Daniel Ricciardo in qualifying and lined up nine places above his teammate. McLaren may not have the best qualifying car in the midfield runners, but they certainly have the third-best car in race trim mode.
Norris was up to P6 on lap 1 and would dispatch Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez for fifth on lap two. From there it was largely a lonely race for the McLaren driver, he would be overtaken by Pérez as his soft tyres began to drop off, but he got in front of his former teammate, Carlos Sainz Jr. to remain fifth.
Lando was also the only midfield runner to make the medium tyre work on his second stint, whilst Sainz slipped out of the points and Gasly dropped to 10th, Norris remained where he was with a comfortable margin behind. A third consecutive top 5 finish leaves him 3rd in the Championship and 21 points ahead of Ricciardo.
Esteban Ocon – Qualifying: 6th | Race: 7th
His performance went largely under the radar this weekend, but Ocon had a particularly solid performance at Portimão in the much-improved Alpine. The Frenchman lined up a respectable 6th with only Ferrari’s Sainz beating him to best of the rest. He was also nearly nine-tenths quicker than teammate Fernando Alonso in qualifying.
The race start was not ideal for Ocon as he dropped behind McLaren’s Lando Norris at the start, but he had a clean battle for most of the first lap and briefly retook his place at turn 4 before being overtaken again two corners later. By the end of the first stint, Ocon had slipped down behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc into 8th.
Pitting for hard tyres turned out to be the best strategy, which is exactly what Alpine did. Ocon dropped down to 13th after his stop, but he pulled off some nice moves on Sainz and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly to move back into the points and took the chequered flag ahead of Alonso, who had the advantage of free tyre choice by missing out on Q3.
Ultimately, 7th was probably the best finish Ocon could have achieved, Alpine have made great strides from a pretty anonymous start to the season, but they are not quite on the level of McLaren and Ferrari yet.
Mick Schumacher (and his supportive race engineer) – Qualifying: 19th | Race: 17th
The 2020 Formula 2 Champion has had a difficult start to life in F1 with Haas, which was to be expected because the car is very poor. However, Mick had a stellar Portuguese Grand Prix weekend and deserves some recognition for it.
It is really difficult to gauge the performance of the slowest car on the grid and we’re expecting the Haas duo to be the last two classified finishers as long as they take the chequered flag, but Mick changed that by forcing Williams’ Nicholas Latifi into a mistake at turn 3 on lap 63, taking 17th place as the pair went into turn 4.
Not only did Schumacher overtake a car from a different team on track, but he also finished over a minute in front of teammate Nikita Mazepin. Whilst it’s not battling anywhere near the points, this was a race where Mick really exceeded expectations.
On a side note, find someone that celebrates your little wins like Mick Schumacher’s race engineer, Gary Gannon, did with the German’s overtake on Latifi. This relationship is only going to make Mick a better driver in the future.
The struggle bus:
Kimi Räikkönen – Qualifying: 15th | Race: DNF
Driving the struggle bus out of Portimão is Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Räikkönen. The Finn qualified 15th, nearly six tenths off teammate Antonio Giovinazzi and his race was over pretty much before it got going.
Unable to repeat his first lap heroics from 2020, Kimi was running behind Giovinazzi when he ran into the back of his teammate on the pit straight whilst making adjustments on his steering wheel. Kimi pulled off at turn one with the front wing stuck under his car and was the only retirement from the race, whilst Antonio was lucky to survive with just the paint scratched off his rear left tyre.
A rare error from the veteran, and it could have ended much worse for Alfa Romeo and the drivers behind them with the amount of debris that was sent flying in the incident.
Nikita Mazepin – Qualifying: 20th | Race: 19th
The flagless Haas driver again wasn’t making any friends in qualifying after ruining Latifi’s final lap in Q1, he may also find himself persona non grata with Sergio Pérez after blocking him during the race in spite of being shown the blue flags on five occasions to let the Red Bull driver go.
Apart from that, he crossed the line two laps down and over a minute behind teammate Schumacher for a second consecutive race. Unsurprisingly, he also picked up a five-second penalty and his first penalty point of the season for that incident with Sergio.
Lance Stroll – Qualifying: 17th | Race: 14th
In spite of carrying Aston Martin’s upgrade package, Stroll was knocked out in Q1 whilst Sebastian Vettel made it to Q3 for the first time in 15 races. The gap between the two was over 0.5 seconds.
In the race, Stroll did run a commendable first lap stint on the soft tyres and find himself on the top 10, but he ended up going backwards on the medium tyres to finish behind Vettel. Safe to say Portimão isn’t one of his favourite venues after a forgettable weekend there last season.
Next round sees the paddock hop around the Iberian Peninsula to Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain, for the first double-header of the season. With the track not hosting pre-season testing this year, and being the round most likely to be dropped in favour of the Miami Grand Prix, this could be the venue’s last chance to have a memorable race.
