2024-03-10 02:29:52
Max Verstappen won the second Formula 1 race of the year. At the circuit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Red Bull team also scored the second double of the year.
“It was a fantastic weekend for the whole team and for me. I felt really good in the car and I had the same feeling in the race. The drive on the hard tires was longer than we would have liked, but with the safety car on the track we had to pit . So the last couple of laps it was slipping a bit, but we had a good pace and managed everything,” said Verstappen, who today became the seventh driver in F1 history to claim his 100th podium finish.
The Dutchman beat teammate Sergio Pérez by more than 13 seconds in one of the fastest races of the season.
Even the penalty he received during the race did not deprive the Mexican of second place. Just like a week ago at Sachiro, third was Ferrari, but this time it was driven by Charles Leclerc.
Defending champion Verstappen held onto the lead at the first corner. Behind him, the battle between Pérez and Leclerc flared up, in which the Ferrari pilot finally celebrated his success. But it took just four laps for the Mexican to overtake the Monaco driver to take over second place.
Lance Stroll made a mistake on the seventh lap, after which his Aston Martin crashed into the barriers.
Therefore, the safety car came out and the mechanics began to work feverishly in the pits to change the tires. Instead, Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton remained on track, with the McLaren driver taking the lead. Norris thus became only the second driver who was at the head of an F1 company this season.
The exit from the pit stop didn’t quite work out for the Red Bull team at Pérez, as the Mexican was released into the path of Fernando Alonso. There was a five-second penalty for that.
In the 13th circuit, everything returned to the old track, Verstappen, who has been dominant in recent years, took the first position again.
Rookie Oliver Bearman, who replaced Carlos Sainz Jr. at the wheel of Ferrari, scored six points for seventh place in the premiere. In the very end, he kept Norris and Hamilton behind him.
Only yesterday, shortly before the third practice and qualifying, the 18-year-old Brit replaced the Spanish rider, who suffered from acute appendicitis and had to undergo surgery.
Bearman recalled the debut race of Nyck de Vries in Williams, who took ninth position in the 2022 Italian GP.
The World Championship continues on March 24 in Melbourne, Australia. According to tradition, that will be on Sunday. The first two races were held on Saturday due to the fact that the Muslim holiday of Ramadan begins on March 10.
Because of this, the Saudi Arabian organizers moved the race to today. And since there must be a week gap between the F1 Grand Prix, it was already a week ago in Bahrain on Saturday.