Chapter 460 - 2021 French Grand Prix | Race V

{Take him with you if you can; he can protect us against Verstappen,} Bono, Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer, said on the radio as they arrived at the start-finish straight.

Fatih, currently behind Hamilton, opened the DRS flap on the start-finish straight but didn’t attempt to break to the side at all. He remained in Hamilton’s slipstream to gain the maximum advantage, as Verstappen behind him also had DRS and was coming down on him very rapidly.

{I will do my best, but if he is slowing me down, I will leave him,} Hamilton said as he arrived at the end of the straight while looking in his rear-view mirror.

{At your discretion,} Bono said, leaving the decision for when to open a gap up to Hamilton.

......

David Croft: "And Mercedes is now playing a long game to keep Verstappen in check, using Red Bull’s sister team. I wonder if AlphaTauri will give out team orders for Fatih to let Verstappen through?"

Martin Brundle: "That would be foolish, and I don’t think Fatih is going to follow those team orders in the first place since he sees a chance for P2 is still in effect." Just as he finished saying that, the TV director played the radio conversation between Fatih and his race engineer.

{Hamilton has been told to drag you with him, so try keeping up with him to cover Verstappen,} James’s voice was heard on the radio.

{I’m already doing that, so how about you give me more power?} Fatih answered, asking for a more powerful strat mode to get more power from the engine.

{Still negative on that end,} James answered, conveying the performance engineer’s response to his request.

David Croft: "Drivers and their hunger for more power," he said as he chuckled.

Martin Brundle: "It is something we always need, and more so when you know that it is there, but you are not being given access to it. AlphaTauri is now trying to keep that position and is not moving aside for Verstappen; I’m sure Horner is not happy about that at all," as the feed changed to showing the Red Bull pit wall with Horner and Adrian Newey as the main focus, the camera slowly zooming in on the two of them.

David Croft: "But how long can the two of them keep following Hamilton that closely, as the top three are at the moment all within less than a second?"

Martin Brundle: "They will try to do so as long as possible, but it has got to be brutal on their tires in the dirty air. At the moment, thanks to Hamilton at the front with clear air who can push while the two following him are in the slipstream and have DRS, the group is now increasing their gap to all the other drivers. All of them are pushing to the limit again and again, and I wonder how long they can keep up with it, as they are rapidly eating into Sergio Perez’s lead, lap after lap.

They took three seconds in a single lap out of Perez, and the trouble for Sergio is that by the time they pit him, he is going to be nearly a full pit stop behind this group."

David Croft: "But he is going to have very fast tires as the gap to the current race leader now drops down to five seconds as they get onto the long Mistral Straight....."

.......

Fatih reached for his visor and pulled off a dirty tear-off strip before moving his hand to the side of the cockpit and releasing it. He got back to holding the steering wheel and focusing on keeping up with Hamilton, since it was taking a lot of focus to do that.

The slipstream was so powerful to the point that in some corners that were normally full throttle, he had to lift off lest he crash into Hamilton. The same went for Verstappen, who was not in the least bit happy being forced to stay behind two cars as it was killing his tires, but he had no choice but to remain stuck behind them and bide his time for an opportunity to arise.

By lap 24, the gap to Perez was now down to 3 seconds, and he could see him through the final sector. It seemed Red Bull had finally made their decision, and when he exited turn 13, he immediately entered the pit lane, finally called in for a pit stop.

At the same time, Bottas was now 4 seconds behind the now-leading trio, seeming to be biding his time, or perhaps he just couldn’t keep up with the three who were pushing one another to go faster and faster each lap.

...

Marco Perrone was silently watching the leading trio pushing as they gained time against nearly everyone on the track, other than Perez, who had fresher tires and was pretty fast.

His focus at the moment was on Fatih, who was now driving different racing lines. On the long straights, he was coming out of the slipstream to try and bring cold air into the radiators to help the car cool down and prevent the engine from overheating and having to be throttled down to prevent damage, while also cooling down the brakes to prevent them from overheating and losing braking effectiveness.

Fatih was doing this without the team even asking him to, showing he still had enough mental bandwidth to think about these things while being flanked by the two championship contenders and using the DRS and slipstream to his full advantage to counter the pace deficit he would have had without the DRS aid.

{We cannot keep this up until the end of the race, that’s for sure,} Max Verstappen’s radio was played on the live feed, bringing Marco Perrone back to the present as he started wondering if Fatih had predicted all of this when he asked for a two-stop strategy.

A few seconds later, he just shook his head, knowing that he was needlessly thinking too much, though the two-stop strategy now made sense because the way the trio was pushing, it was going to be difficult to go to the end of the race at this pace.

He immediately looked at the gaps between cars, trying to see where Fatih would be if he came in for a second pit stop. It looked like he would come out in P5 behind Perez, as Vettel, who was in P6 at the moment, was already 24 seconds behind the race leader.

This would leave Fatih with four cars to overtake to take the race lead and win the race, if that was even possible. With that set in stone, he was now looking at what lap would be as late as possible while still giving Fatih enough time to close the gap and make an overtake before it was too late in the race.

....

{Okay, Lewis, Verstappen doesn’t think these tires will last to the end. Keep this pace up,} Bono updated Lewis on Verstappen’s complaints.

{I agree. Let’s make sure we undercut them this time,} Hamilton answered while the feed was showing a four-way battle between Sainz, Leclerc, Norris, and Gasly.

David Croft: "Are they all thinking then of a two-stop? Is this where Mercedes does it once again and runs medium, hard, medium as they did in Barcelona to such great effect?

Here goes Lando Norris on the Ferrari of Leclerc; we said he was struggling a bit. He was the first of the point-scoring positions to come in and pit, and he’s now starting to lose places."

Martin Brundle: "But that’s indicative, isn’t it? He pitted on lap 14, and 16 laps later, the Ferrari has burned out its hard tires. That’s useful information for the trio ahead."

David Croft: "There goes Pierre Gasly on Charles Leclerc; he even locks up as Gasly goes past him into turn one, as Leclerc is really starting to struggle."

.....

{There is no way we are gonna make it to the end if we keep pushing like this,} Bottas complained on the radio, but James Vowles was at the moment fully focused on Hamilton’s side of the situation.

The race was on lap 30, and the trio was still within two seconds of one another, managing to stick together and retain DRS on one another throughout the entire period.

Vowles was at the moment thinking about the options he had on hand: either the three remain like that and go to the end of the race, or one of them pulls the trigger for a two-stop, and the others stay out, making a two-way gamble.

One goes for the faster and fresher tires while the others go for track position, since track position is king anywhere, and there is a chance that the pace will not be fast enough to close back up and still have enough in it for an overtake.

It was a dilemma, and at the moment, he was leaning toward the staying-out option if someone pitted because, of the three, Hamilton’s tires were the ones in the best condition, since he didn’t have dirty air to contend with and kill his downforce.

{Fatih is going for a two-stop,} Vowles had his line of thought interrupted when one of the strategists at the home base radioed to tell him that AlphaTauri was calling Fatih in for a second stop at the end of lap 31, with 22 laps to go in the race.

He immediately turned back to see AlphaTauri mechanics rushing out with brand-new medium compound tires as Fatih dived into the pit lane a few seconds later.

One of the trio had pulled the trigger early, and the remainder of the race would decide whether it was a foolish gamble or not.