Another start-to-finish win shows Qatar GP could be F1’s most processional race · RaceFans
Car number 63 started the Qatar Grand Prix from pole position but Max Verstappen immediately seized the lead on his way to victory number 63.
He and the other two multiple champions on the grid – Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso – now have 200 grand prix victories between them. Hamilton scored his 105th win earlier this year but over a decade has passed since Alonso’s 32nd career win at the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix.
Speaking of centuries, Alonso officially recorded his 400th grand prix start last weekend, and marked it with a strong run to seventh, Aston Martin’s best result since the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Verstappen led Sunday’s race from start to finish. It’s the second time this year he’s held the lead throughout a race, along with the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, which was also 57 laps. The only other drivers to do the same this year were Charles Leclerc in Monaco and Lando Norris in Singapore.
This was the third Qatar Grand Prix, none of which have seen a change in leader after the first lap. Normally only street circuits produce races with so few changes of lead. The last change of lead in Monaco came in the rain-affected 2022 race.
The only other track on the calendar with no lead changes in its last three events is Singapore. However the last race before that, in 2019, had four different leaders (the 2020 and 2021 races were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
At least on this occasion the Qatar Grand Prix wasn’t won by the pole-winner, though Verstappen would no doubt have something to say about who was the rightful occupant of the pole position spot last weekend. He immediately passed George Russell, who claimed pole due to Verstappen’s grid penalty for holding the Mercedes driver up in qualifying.
This was Verstappen’s second penalty in three qualifying sessions in Qatar. He picked up a five-place grid penalty for failing to slow for double waved yellow flags in 2021: The same infraction he spotted Norris committing during last weekend’s race.
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Russell therefore started from pole position for the sixth time in his grand prix career. This was also the first time he has taken pole in back-to-back races. He now has as many pole positions as rival Carlos Sainz Jnr, as well as Phil Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Alan Jones, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Carlos Reutemann and Ralf Schumacher.
Zhou Guanyu brought delight to Sauber in his penultimate drive for the team by scoring their first points for more than a year. Their last points also came in Qatar, where Zhou finished ninth, one place behind team mate Valtteri Bottas, when the team still competed as Alfa Romeo.
With Sauber on the board, all 10 teams will score points this year, for the third season in a row. Bottas remains the only driver to have started every race without scoring a point, though he at least moved up from last place in the championship last weekend, overtaking Logan Sargeant thanks to his 11th-place finish.
Norris recovered to finish 10th after his penalty. He also picked up the bonus point for fastest lap, which is only paid out to drivers who finish in the top 10. The last time the 10th place finisher scored the fastest lap point was also in the penultimate round, at Las Vegas last year, and the recipient was Norris’s team mate Oscar Piastri. The bonus point for fastest lap won’t be awarded after this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, ending its return after six seasons.
That was the 12th fastest lap of Norris’s career, giving him as many as rival Sergio Perez, along with Alberto Ascari, Jack Brabham, Rene Arnoux and Juan Pablo Montoya. Norris set half of his fastest laps this year, and has twice as many as any other driver in 2024.
The 10-second stop-go penalty he received in the race is uncommon in F1, but has been seen earlier this year: Alexander Albon collected one at Imola after his team failed to fit his front-right wheel correctly. But Verstappen’s one-place grid drop is much more unusual: The last driver to receive that was his current team mate Perez at the Tuscan Grand Prix four years ago.
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Over to you
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