After getting in the lead through the pit stop phase, Max Verstappen looked like a safe bet for the win, with almost a 7 seconds gap to his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez behind. He was heading the 2021 Formula 1 Championship already by 4 points, and his closest rival, Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes, was stuck behind Perez in third. On lap 31, Lance Stroll crashed his Aston Martin into the wall at the start of the pit straight, after his rear-left tire blew up seemingly on its own. He was the only driver to start on the hard tires, and tried to go long in a bid to recover from the last row after a crash in qualifying. His crash brought out the safety car and due to the position of his car, the pit entry was closed. This meant no opportunistic alternative tire strategy was possible without loosing a lot of track position. So after green flag running resumed, Max again slowly increased his lead over Perez and Hamilton could nothing but sit behind. On Lap 46, the leading trio and more than half the grid actually, where all on 30+ lap old hard tires. They where still looking in good shape with Verstappen even setting the fastest lap of the race one lap earlier. But this proved short-lived as he too got a rear left tire blow-out on the main straight. It left Max spinning into the wall, but the angle he came in was shallow and his car came relatively gently to a rest. The accident lead to a red flag, and surprisingly a restart was announced starting with lap 49/51. There Hamilton looked to take the lead from the standing start, but he went on to finish last after he went straight-on at turn 1. This gave Perez the victory, and the point gap remained unchanged at the top of the championship.
Aftermath
After the crash, tire supplier Pirelli was quick to blame debris as the root cause for the tire failures. Later the following week, they adjusted their verdict as they found no evidence of debris and that their tires had “no production or quality defect”. Rather, they said that the “circumferential break on the inner sidewall” , was related to the “running conditions of the tire”, without putting blame at the teams, as they made clear Red Bull and Aston Martin, both followed the mandated starting parameters of the tire. These findings and the vague clarification caused the teams to question Pirelli’s investigation. Furthermore, multiple reporters, and even Max Verstappen himself, noted that if the Red bull had spun the other way round, he could have been hitting the pit wall angled more perpendicular to Verstappen’s trajectory. Ironically, 2016 World Champion Nico Rosberg mentioned in his pre-race virtual track guide how he was fearful of the pit entry when racing at the track in 2016 and that breaking something at full speed there could mean “there is no more you”. So, how dangerous is the pit entry there? Could Max have hit the wall at a dangerous angle? I started recreating Verstappen’s actual accident and propose mirroring its path to see what could have happened. I was surprised myself to find out just how badly the crash could have been!