Sunday 10th July 2011
Fernando Alonso won the British Grand Prix for Ferrari. It was the ninth race of the 2011 season, and saw the introduction of a ban on off-throttle blown diffusers, the practice of forcing the engine to continue to produce exhaust gasses to generate downforce when drivers are not using the throttle.
The race started under difficult conditions, with a full wet track from the Arena to Chapel, but the remaining sections being dry; as a result of this all of the teams elected to run on intermediate tyres. Before the start Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Pérez slid off the circuit, with Pérez damaging his car’s front wing. At the start Sebastian Vettel beat Webber to the first corner, while Jenson Button passed Felipe Massa. Lewis Hamilton made up four positions on the first lap after starting from tenth. The two Renaults of Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov had a small collision at Vale, nearly taking Vitaly Petrov out of the race. The difficult conditions meant drivers were forced to nurse the intermediate tyres through the dry sections of the circuit to preserve the integrity of the tyres through the wet stretches. This resulted in the drivers having to stay out on the circuit as long as possible until the circuit became dry enough to switch to the dry-compound tyres, or else risk making an extra stop and losing track position.
Vettel started building up a comfortable lead ahead of Webber whilst Jenson Button struggled, first losing fourth place to Massa and then being passed by Hamilton as the 2008 World Champion climbed back up through the field. The Lotuses of Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli became the first retirements of the race, stopping within the first ten laps of the race due to gearbox issues. As the first round of scheduled pit stops approached, Michael Schumacher collided with Kamui Kobayashi at Luffield, spinning the Japanese driver around. Schumacher was forced to replace his front wing and was subsequently given a ten-second stop-go penalty for causing an avoidable accident; as the new pit complex was designed in such a way that drivers would spend a minimal amount of time in the pits, the stewards decided that a stop-go penalty was more appropriate than a drive-through. Kamui Kobayashi was given a similar penalty when he pitted due to an unsafe release that saw him drive over a wheel gun. Kobayashi would then go on to retire from the Grand Prix when his engine expired. Meanwhile, Jaime Alguersuari and Sébastien Buemi were fighting up the order from their poor grid positions, and both successfully passed the struggling Renault of Vitaly Petrov. At Force India, Paul di Resta was delayed in the pits when the team were expecting Adrian Sutil, and thus had Sutil’s tyres ready in a similar incident to a mistake at the 2010 German Grand Prix, forcing di Resta to wait while tyres from his own allocation were found. The error dropped di Resta well down the order, and he eventually made contact with Buemi at Copse, damaging the Swiss driver’s left-rear tyre. Yellow flags were displayed as Buemi tried to limp back to the pits, but his tyre soon disintegrated and he had to retire by the side of the track.[12]
The second round of pit stops saw Vettel and Alonso enter at the same time, but an uncharacteristic mistake from the Red Bull mechanics meant Vettel was delayed and allowing Alonso to take the lead of the race. Vettel emerged in third behind Lewis Hamilton, and struggled to pass the McLaren driver as Alonso increased his lead. Red Bull would eventually pit Vettel for a third time to allow him to run in clear air. Meanwhile, Button pitted for new tyres but retired from the race after the front right wheelnut was not attached, leaving the wheel visibly loose on the exit from the pits and continuing Button’s run of poor results in his home race.
With less than ten laps to go, Hamilton was told to start conserving fuel in order to finish the race. This slowed him to the point where Vettel and Webber were able to pass him and put him in danger of being passed by Felipe Massa. As the race entered the final two laps, Webber was close enough to Vettel to attempt a pass while Massa was visibly faster than Hamilton. Webber was given an order by the team not to pass Vettel, but ignored it. He was ultimately unsuccessful, and finished in third place. Behind them, Massa caught Hamilton on the final lap and attempted a pass into Vale corner. Hamilton, holding a defensive line into the corner, was unable to slow the car down in time and the two made contact. This forced Massa off the racing line through Club corner and across the line; Hamilton prevailed by two hundredths of a second, while Massa ran wide and crossed the finish line on the tarmac run-off on the outside of the corner. The stewards investigated, but no action was taken.
Alonso won the race – Ferrari’s first of the 2011 season – sixteen seconds ahead of Vettel and Webber with Hamilton fourth and Massa fifth. Nico Rosberg finished sixth, five seconds ahead of Sergio Pérez in a career-best finish. Nick Heidfeld salvaged four points for Renault in eighth place and Schumacher recovered from his penalty to place ninth. Vitaly Petrov’s failure to score meant that Mercedes took fourth place in the World Constructors’ Championship. Jaime Alguersuari took the final point-scoring position in tenth, his third successive finish in the points. Daniel Ricciardo was the nineteenth and final classified finisher on his race debut.
