Three things we learned from the British Grand Prix

Not for the first time a Formula One race director decided, controversially it seemed, to end a Grand Prix with a slow procession rather than a thrilling high-speed contest.

The decision to keep the safety car out at Silverstone on Sunday left many in a sellout 175 000 crowd feeling short-changed as they anticipated a last-gasp race to the flag with home hero Lewis Hamilton fighting for second behind Ferrari team-mate and eventual victor Charles Leclerc or, possibly, a record 10th home race win.

It was a complex, provocative and unsatisfactory ending.

AFP Sport looks at three things we learned from an action-packed British Grand Prix:

‘Regulations have been followed’ 

The rule book prevailed, and it diminished a potentially spectacular finish.

Michael Masi lost his job as race director after misinterpreting the safety car regulations at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, on fresh tyres, won his first title by passing Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes to win on the final lap.

Masi allowed a desire for ‘the show’ to outweigh the rules in an intensely-regulated sport decided by fractions of tyre-wear and milliseconds. He provoked anger, acrimony and controversy.

On Sunday, race control chose to go by the book, even if a software glitch briefly produced a message that the Safety Car was coming in before the final lap.

That was overruled within nine seconds and a showdown between the two Ferraris, on new soft tyres, and Mercedes’ George Russell, on old mediums, became a never-to-be illusion.

It was not popular, but the procedure was correctly followed after six laps of safety car trundling as Verstappen’s Red Bull was recovered at Stowe and lapped cars were waved through to unlap themselves.

That done, the rules require one more lap before the action resumes — but that had been the final lap. If this had happened in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton would have become an eight-time champion.

His former boss, Mercedes team chief Toto Wolff, who had led the protests in 2021, admitted on Sunday: “I would have preferred for this to happen in ’21. That was more important. It’s good that the regulations have been followed if sometimes it doesn’t give the most exciting final.

“But this is a sport. And the show follows sport, not the other way around.”

It was ironic that it was Hamilton who again missed out in a last-lap fiasco. Yet he was unmoved.

Ferrari the real deal 

Two wins in three races, one for each driver, have confirmed Ferrari’s renaissance is real, even if the team departed Silverstone pinching themselves as they sought to understand how they found their pace.

“It’s too early to say,” Leclerc said, when asked if the team were capable of competing with Mercedes again.

“This weekend was a particularly big surprise for the whole team. Not the win today, just the overall performance. We were a lot faster than we expected to be so we need to analyse it!”

Hamilton, third behind Russell, said the result was “special” for the team “at this sort of circuit”, agreeing that Ferrari believed their straight-line speed and power output were inferior to their rivals.

Reliability tells 

Ferrari’s success owed much to their reliability. Mercedes and Red Bull each had one driver fail to score. McLaren, back at a track where they excelled last year, were unable to find the pace to compete.

Russell survived a slow puncture and made the most of the late safety car to grab a lucky second and a first podium finish in his home race.

But his Mercedes team-mate and championship leader Kimi Antonelli finished pointless for a second time since his run of five straight wins lifted him atop the title race. A bodywork failure wrecked his race three weeks after retiring in Spain with an electrical problems.

Verstappen crashed and left Silverstone cursing his dangerous Red Bull as speculation swirled about his future.

With the teams locked in an intense updates race, reliability could prove to be invaluable.

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