15/11/2020
NEWS STORY
Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was crowned world champion for a record-equalling seventh time, his fourth title in a row, after winning an incredibly tricky Turkish Grand Prix. Hamilton used the Cinturato Blue full wet tyres for eight laps followed by the Cinturato Green intermediates for 50 laps - one of only three drivers (with Racing Point's Sergio Perez and AlphaTauri's Daniil Kvyat) to stop just once.
The entire field started on the Cinturato Blue full wet tyres, apart from the two Williams cars, which started on the Cinturato Green intermediate.
The crossover point - at which time it became faster to switch to the intermediates - was reached within 10 laps of the race start, prompting a flurry of pit stops onto the intermediate. Most drivers then stopped again, for fresh intermediates.
Williams driver George Russell completed the longest first stint on his starting set of intermediates, running them for 32 laps. Hamilton ran his second stint on the intermediates for 50 laps in the race, Perez for 48.
The weather remained cool all day, with track and ambient temperatures in the region of 13 degrees centigrade, and rain before the race start. Conditions dried out throughout the race, but nobody decided to use the slicks - due to a slippery track and with a risk of rain predicted for the end of the race that never quite materialised.
Mario Isola: "Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton for an incredible seventh world title taken in real style from sixth on the grid, where managing his tyres brilliantly was paramount to ensure his place in history. He made just one stop and effectively turned his intermediate tyres into slicks by the end of the race, to extract the very maximum from them. From the beginning it was clear that this was going to be a very complicated race where managing the start in the wet and subsequently dealing with uncertain conditions on a drying track would be crucial, and this proved to be exactly the case. Judging the crossover point was key, both from wets to inters after the start, and then - in the second half of the race - working out whether or not the surface would provide enough grip to switch to slicks, or if the best option was another set of intermediates for the second stint. Assessing the crossover point from wets to intermediate was relatively straightforward using the data from yesterday; however deciding what to do for the second stop was much more complicated in these very unusual conditions".
Check out our Sunday gallery from Istanbul, here.