The race was halted shortly after the start this afternoon, due to a serious crash in which driver Guanyu Zhou shoved upside down tens of meters over the asphalt. It flipped over a pile of tires at high speed and came to a stop.
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It took a while before emergency services were able to free the Chinese from the wreckage, which was wedged between the pile of tires and the fencing. The halo, the protective bar on the cockpit, presumably saved his life. Miraculously, Zhou turned out to be unharmed.
Puncture
The crash meant that the race was stopped immediately after the start and could be resumed almost an hour later. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) started in the lead, but after more than 13 minutes Verstappen was able to overtake him and extend his lead.
But Verstappen’s success was short-lived: he drove over debris and suffered a flat tire. It later emerged that there was also ‘aerodynamic damage’ to his car. It caused Verstappen to sink further and further, eventually finishing seventh.
Blood-curdling
The battle for the win remained tense until the last laps: Sainz, Perez, Leclerc and Hamilton fought until the last gasp for the lead. After a blood-curdling final phase, Sainz finally won. It is his first win in Formula 1.
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Verstappen saw his lead on his attacker Leclerc shrink from 49 to 43 points. After the game, in front of Viaplay’s camera, he was not dissatisfied that he had still scored six points.
Step out
Afterwards it turned out that the Dutchman had driven a large part of the race with a broken car: “When I got out I looked under the floor and everything was missing. The left side was completely torn. In these cars the floor is extremely important for the downward pressure. With such a crack you no longer have balance and you lose a lot of time.”
In the run-up to the British GP, Verstappen was booed by the public because his father-in-law Nelson Piquet had used racist language when talking about Mercedes driver Hamilton. You can see more about that in this video:
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