But why was the mirror left there? “I didn’t even know it was a mirror,” said Verstappen. “Of course, I saw [it] but we have done more races where there has been a bit of debris offline. So I guess it’s a bit of a tough call to make.”
“I think the right thing to do would have been a VSC or a safety car pretty much straight away,” said Piastri. “I didn’t really know where the mirror was, but after seeing it on the big screen, being basically in the braking zone for Turn 1 when you’re trying to overtake, I don’t really know what we were going to do until someone hit it, because I think having it sit there for 30 laps of the race would have been not very smart. So I think, yes, probably should have been a bit earlier because at racing speeds, especially in that part of the track, you can’t have a marshal run on and just simply pick it up. So maybe we could have been a bit quicker with that.”
“You can’t put a VSC out because the cars are not evenly spaced around the track,” said Russell, “And a safety car would perhaps been a bit too extreme. Not an easy decision.”
Hamilton received multiple doses of bad luck on Sunday — his late puncture arguably being the most critical
Getty Images
The timing of the rogue mirror was unfortunate. It came as almost everyone was still on their original tyres (but not the tyre-eating Mercs), which by then were very worn. Hence the punctures. Pirelli’s Mario Isola gave further background to this. “This track has some peculiar characteristics. It’s very severe in terms of the energy exerted on the tyres and in terms of tread wear not leading to a drop in performance. This can create a situation in which wear levels reach their limit as the teams try to lengthen their stint as long as possible. Even in the sprint we saw some cars had 100% wear despite starting on a fuel load about a third of that in the Grand Prix. The left front is the most loaded tyre and it’s no coincidence both punctures were on this tyre. When you reach a certain level [of wear] even the smallest piece of debris can cause a situation like this.”
The incident altered the race’s outcome – good or bad – for everyone. Except Verstappen. Who was supreme throughout. “Max was just incredible in how he controlled Lando,” said an admiring Christian Horner. “All the time Lando was taking out of him was in the high-speed Turn 12, 13, 14 corners. Max was managing his tyres extremely well there which gave him the longevity and of the first four cars he was definitely in the best place with his tyres. The way he was keeping Lando out of DRS range despite managing the tyres was incredible. He had to get the gap at a certain point in the middle sector [to be safe at the detection point] and he hit that within 0.1sec every lap. The precision was unbelievable. That’s Max, he’s just the complete package.”