Lewis Hamilton finished third, with Max Verstappen picking up damage that dropped him out of the lead fight early in the restarted race, which was stopped after just a few corners due to the Turn 1 incident.
At the start of the race, Verstappen used the grip advantage of soft tyres against the mediums on pole-sitting Sainz’s Ferrari to get alongside off the line and steal ahead into Abbey to immediately wrestle the lead from second on the grid, while Hamilton rocketed past Perez and Leclerc to take third from fifth.
As Leclerc was making an attempt to get back ahead of the Mercedes through Village and the Loop a couple of corners later, the race was red-flagged due to the multi-car pile-up behind the leaders at Abbey.
On the approach to the rapid right first corner, contact between Pierre Gasly and George Russell to speared the Mercedes into the side of the Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu, which flipped it over.
Zhou slid at high speed into the gravel upside down and in horrifying scenes bounced over the tyre barrier beyond, with the Chinese driver’s wrecked car coming to rest between the catch fence protecting the grandstand just behind and the back of the barrier.
It took several minutes to get Zhou out, but fortunately he was conscious and taken to the track medical centre.
Williams driver Alex Albon was also transported there as he was the first driver to be caught up in a secondary incident after Zhou and Russell were eliminated. Gasly was able to carry on relatively unscathed.
As the following Valtteri Bottas slowed, his car being showered with debris, Albon braked hard too and was rear-ended by Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin, which spun the Williams into the wall and he then hit the front-right of Alpine driver Esteban Ocon and then as a result of that third impact struck Yuki Tsunoda in the other AlphaTauri.
All of those drivers bar Albon were able to recover to the pits for repairs, with the race suspended for 53 minutes, during which it was announced that several protesters had invaded the track shortly down the Wellington straight at the same time as the original start before quickly being removed.
When it did resume, the order – other the three cars that did not take the restart – was the same as the initial grid.
This was because the pack had not passed the second safety car line at the end of lengthy pit lane exit by the time the race was stopped and in such circumstances the FIA must take the order from last point it can determine…
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