Ocon Holds Off Vettel To Take Maiden F1 Win

Calum Gill 16:38 01/08/2021

Esteban Ocon of Alpine delivered a stunning drive to hold off four time world champion Sebastian Vettel, and take his maiden win in Formula 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Frenchman, in his fourth full season in Formula 1, took advantage of two separate multiple car shunts at the wet start down at turn 1, that eliminated Sergio Perez, Lando Norris and Valtteri Bottas in one, and Charles Leclerc and Lance Stroll in the other. Ocon subsequently was 2nd when the red flag was called for debris on the track where the incidents happened.

After the cars left the pit lane following the red flag, the track was significantly drier, resulting in every car - apart from polesitter Lewis Hamilton - pulling into the pits at the end of the formation lap. This meant when Hamilton put the slicks on, he was demoted to last. This left Ocon and Aston Martin driver Vettel to dice it out at the front for the remaining 64 laps, and it was the 24-year-old Frenchman who prevailed. Vettel was later disqualified bumping up everyone below by one position.

Hamilton - who now leads the drivers championship - recovered to finish third, after battling past Spanish pair Carlos Sainz of Ferrari and Ocon's teammate Fernando Alonso in the latter laps of the Grand Prix. Pierre Gasly took sixth place and the point for fastest lap, ahead of his AlphaTauri teammate Yuki Tsunoda in seventh. Williams secured their first points since Germany 2019 with eighth for Nicholas Latifi and ninth for George Russell. Pre-race championship leader Max Verstappen got caught up in the first lap shunt, and could only manage tenth place after losing his right bargeboard at the start.

-Full weekend results

What happened at turn 1?

(Image credit: F1)

A race that will go down as one of the most remarkable ever seen was gripping from start to finish, and the action was caused by rain which started about half an hour before the race. At the start on a wet track, Hamilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas misjudged his braking point and cannoned into McLaren's Lando Norris, who was pushed into Verstappen. Bottas also then took out the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez.

The Finn has been given a five-place grid penalty at the next race in Belgium on the last weekend in August. Ferrari's Charles Leclerc was briefly looking at second place behind Hamilton, only for Aston Martin's Lance Stroll to make a mistake, brake too late, slide onto the grass and smash into the Ferrari, which then tipped McLaren's Daniel Ricciardo into a spin.

With debris all over the track, the red flag was thrown and the cars returned to the pits, where Red Bull set about trying to repair Verstappen's car. The damage was extensive, with chunks missing from the floor and his entire right-hand barge-board gone, causing significant amounts of lost downforce. Verstappen took the restart in 13th place and was faced with a long afternoon battling a car with no balance and lacking a lot of grip. But he fought valiantly and managed to separate Ricciardo from the final points place in the closing stages. 

Hamilton's dramatic drop down the order

(Image credit: F1)

By the time the race restarted, the rain had stopped and the sun was out, but all the drivers were on intermediate tyres when they set off on the formation lap for another standing start. Hamilton was telling his team the track was ready for slicks but he did not come in - whereas everyone else did. That created the surreal sight of just one car on the grid for the start of the race.

The extra pace the slick tyres gave the rest of the field meant when Hamilton pitted for his own slicks next time around, he was shunted to the back in 14th place after six cars had retired. The question became how much ground he could recover on a track on which overtaking is notoriously difficult. He had made three places when he pitted on lap 19 for fresh tyres, the idea being to run in clear air and then make up places on those on older tyres in front of him.

By lap 46, Hamilton was up to fourth place behind Ocon, Vettel and Sainz when he pitted again for fresh tyres.The move dropped him a further place behind Alonso, but the hope was he could pass all the cars in front to take an unlikely win. But Alonso, who was showing strong pace himself and had closed up to the back of Sainz, had other ideas, and in one of the greatest displays of defensive driving for years held off the much faster Mercedes for 10 nail-biting laps, before he ran a little too deep into Turn One with five laps to go, giving Hamilton the chance to pass into Turn Two. 

Ocon delivers drive of his life

Before this weekend, Ocon's best ever finish in Formula 1 was a second place finish at last year's Sakhir Grand Prix. But the Alpine driver drove with a maturity and level of control far beyond his years of experience. Ocon led the race from Hamilton's first stop, after he was the first of the field to pit for dry tyres on the formation lap after the red flag. Vettel had more pace, but Ocon drove with great maturity to fend off the German for the entire race.

A slow pit stop by Vettel and Aston Martin mid-race gave Ocon breathing space to come in next time around without too much pressure and retain the lead. In the remaining laps, Vettel got close on a couple of occasions but Ocon was always just out of reach and held on for his first win. It was the team's first victory in its new guise of Alpine and the first since Kimi Raikkonen won the 2013 Australian Grand Prix, when they were known as Lotus.

The rest of the field

Kimi Raikkonen came home eleventh for the Alfa-Romeo team, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo who struggled to make up ground after being turned around in the first corner chaos, the McLaren driver coming home twelfth. Haas' Mick Schumacher battled valiantly in the early part of the race defending tenth position, but the German dropped back to thirteenth at the chequered flag, ahead of the other Alfa-Romeo of Antonio Giovinazzi. Nikita Mazepin was the other retirement along with the first corner shunt victims, the Russian suffering terminal suspension damage after contact in the pit lane with Raikkonen, for which the latter was given a 10-second time penalty.

2021 Hungarian Grand Prix Classification