In addition to the warnings to Sainz, Vettel and Mazepin for not following the instructions given by the race director when starting practice in FP2, the FIA penalized Russell for colliding with Sainz.
The change of formate premiered at Silverstone, which will be repeated in Monza and probably in Brazil if COVID-19 allows it, slightly shaken the established order, thus converting the classification to sprint a hit according to Ross Brawn himself and the fans.
After being overtaken by Lewis Hamilton in the classification held on Friday, Max Verstappen did not miss the opportunity to return it to him in the first of the 17 rounds of this new experiment, subsequently conserving the first pole position which is awarded after a small race has been contested, contrary to what happened to date to, in the words of the FIA, “not cannibalize the statistics.”
With Valtteri Bottas and Charles Leclerc as champions of stability By maintaining their original starting positions, despite the fact that Mercedes equipped # 77 with soft tires (although used) to try to protect the current champion, it was Sergio Pérez who suffered the first setback: a spin left him out of the game, getting to roll in the last positions before ending up abandoning so as not to damage his car.
Consequences of the experiment
Several were the pilots who promised to go out with the knife between their teeth to qualify at sprint having nothing to lose, although the result was uneven in this sense: while Fernando Alonso squeezed his soft tires to climb up to 5th place, George Russell lost control of his FW43B and caused an incident worthy of sanction.
Precisely the other Spanish driver on the grid, Carlos Sainz, was the most affected by this, forced to come back from the back of the grid when he was hit by Williams at the first change.
At the moment this is the weekend in which Daniel Ricciardo has stayed closer to Lando Norris, securing McLaren as fourth team, while Esteban Ocon will seek to recover the lost sensations with a new chassis and engine.