Verstappen masters race track and rule book with satisfying Qatar victory · RaceFans

“As stewards, we are not here to inflict pain on drivers,” insisted the FIA’s chairman of Formula 1 stewards Garry Connelly after a rare meeting between the stewards and drivers in Qatar.

“We’re here to provide a level playing field. It’s not us against the drivers, it’s the drivers against the drivers and we’re here to make sure everyone gets a fair go.”

Noble and agreeable sentiments, sure. How long would harmony reign between those who race and those who must apply the rules of racing? Two days.

Max Verstappen’s one-place grid penalty for ‘driving unnecessarily slowly’ in front of George Russell at the end of Q3 was the latest contentious decision by the FIA’s appointed panel of stewards in a season filled with contentious decisions. That it just so happened to hand pole position to the driver he was accused of impeding only amplified Verstappen’s disgust.

So the newly-crowned world champion could only sit and stew as Russell was wheeled into ‘his’ pole position grid slot. The Mercedes driver looked to win on back-to-back grand prix Sundays, while Verstappen wanted to celebrate his fourth world title in style, and, more importantly, metaphorically stick it to Russell and the stewards at the same time.

Starting on the unfancied right side of the grid on the front row against a driver who held a perfect record of converting his poles into the lead on the opening lap, Verstappen would have a tough time getting ahead of the Mercedes at the start. But when the lights went out, the Red Bull jumped off the line as if powered by pure spite.

Russell failed to cut across to block Verstappen, who promptly claimed ownership of the inside line. Verstappen braked deeper than the Mercedes, easing Russell wider into the long right-hand opening turn than the Mercedes would have wanted, robbing him of a chance to come back to the inside of turn two. That left a McLaren-sized space to Verstappen’s inside that Lando Norris hastily filled, but despite being ahead for a matter of metres exiting the corner, Verstappen had the superior position heading into turn two and could sweep around it into the lead.

Russell fell to third ahead of Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz Jnr. Sergio Perez emerged from the midfield melee in seventh, with Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton behind. But before they could begin to settle into a rhythm, the Safety Car was deployed due to a first corner melee which had put Franco Colapinto and Esteban Ocon out of the race.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Once that was cleared, Verstappen offered no sniff of an opportunity to Norris at the restart on lap five to ensure he would remain in the lead of the race. Behind, Piastri picked up fourth on Leclerc, by simply driving past the Ferrari along the pit straight at the green flag.

As he so often does when out front, Verstappen immediately pulled out an advantage of more than a second over Norris to break out of DRS range of the McLaren driver. But Norris had no interest in letting the Red Bull creep away from him. For lap after lap, Norris remained within two seconds of the leader, never once getting within DRS range but also never letting Verstappen’s advantage grow to two seconds either.

Pirelli’s pre-race prediction that the mediums would last until around lap 20 before teams chose to switch to the hard tyres proved wide of the mark when lap 25 came and went but only two of the 19 medium-shod cars had changed rubber: those of George Russell and Valtteri Bottas. A careful touch with the heavily-stressed left-front tyres was allowing drivers to continue to run consistent lap times even on rubber that was approaching half distance in age.

With the pit stop window approaching, Verstappen was encouraged to reduce his tyre management and push harder. But as his lap times reduced, Norris was more than able to follow suit, continuing to never get more than two seconds away from the leader.

On the 29th lap, Alexander Albon in 13th place was watching his mirrors to keep an eye on the pursuing Nico Hulkenberg behind him when, heading down the pit straight, that same mirror inexplicably jettisoned itself from his Williams, landing in the middle of the track. The trackside marshals spotted the hazard and marked with double waved yellow flags, which Verstappen came across soon after.

The leader lifted entirely off the throttle as he passed the seen, fulfilling his obligations under the rules in a manner that the stewards would have no way of denying. But Norris, handed DRS along the straight thanks to Bottas’s lapped Sauber, suddenly gained from 1.8 seconds before the pit straight to just a second as they rounded turn two.

Verstappen instinctively pressed the radio button to ask Red Bull to check if Norris had obeyed the yellow flags – after all, how else could he have gained so much time? By the time Perez had arrived at the scene, the yellow flags were removed, replaced with just a static yellow light on the marshals board.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

FIA F1 race director Rui Marques, in just his second weekend in the role, would have been aware that Albon’s lost mirror was still on the circuit, yet for reasons only known to him, the local yellow flag zone approaching the first corner was rescinded on the race control system. Drivers were expected to race at 300kph with a significant chunk of carbon fibre just sitting on the circuit. And they did, for the next two laps.

Eventually, the inevitable occurred when Bottas pulled to the middle of the circuit to obey blue flags for Leclerc behind him, running over the mirror to bring even more debris over the pit straight as well as curse him to seven years of bad luck. Coincidentally, just before passing by the smash zone, both Sainz and Hamilton had reported left-front punctures to their respective teams. Sainz recovered to the pit lane for new tyres, but as he left the pits and Hamilton entered it, the Safety Car was deployed for a second time in the race.

This was the moment Red Bull had been waiting for to pit their leading driver and switch to the hard tyres. Norris followed suit, as did Leclerc, Piastri, Perez, Pierre Gasly and Russell, who had already pitted earlier on lap 23.

On lap 39, race control announced that Safety Car would withdraw at the end of the lap. Verstappen was informed, but the world champion who has made restarts one of his greatest skills as a driver was receiving mixed messages from the Safety Car in front.

“There are still some lights on,” he told his team. “Look! I don’t know what to do!”

Verstappen’s hesitance meant he failed to get his typically excellent restart and instead allowed Norris to slipstream him down the pit straight. Norris looked to the outside at turn one to take the lead, but typically aggressive defending from the Red Bull driver allowed him to hold onto the lead. Behind, Leclerc had to employ similar tactics to keep Piastri from taking third from him.

Before the lap was done, the race was neutralised for the third time. Perez had spun before the restart and suffered a clutch failure which left him stranded on the side of the circuit, while Nico Hulkenberg had also spun out further around the lap.

Although both Verstappen and Norris reported that the lights on the Safety Car were not working as they would usually expect, Verstappen managed to get a much better restart the third time around. Instead, Norris was the one having to defend from Leclerc who was much closer to him than Norris was to Verstappen.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Leclerc repelled, Norris returned his focus to Verstappen in the lead. It was not long before the McLaren was within DRS range with the opportunity to try and attack, but Norris would never get that chance to fight for the win.

On lap 44 – 14 laps after the alleged infringement had occurred – the stewards stunned McLaren by handing Norris a ten second stop-go penalty, confirming Verstappen’s suspicions that his rival had indeed failed to lift under the double yellow flags on lap 30. Suddenly, the brewing fight for victory between the pair was over, with McLaren pitting Norris straight away to serve the penalty, falling to the rear of the field as a result.

Neither Norris nor McLaren argued against the major punishment he had received, the standard penalty for such a serious infringement of the vital regulations in place to guard the lives of drivers and marshals. Leclerc and Piastri were not likely to object either, given they had both been promoted one position as a result of Norris’s misdemeanour and now occupied the two podium places behind Verstappen.

With no Norris breathing down his neck, Verstappen could afford to relax out front. The weekend in Qatar had been anything but relaxing for the world champion, with set-up woes on Friday and stewards killing his mood on Saturday. But aside from championship titles, few things motivate Verstappen more than proving those who doubt and disparage him wrong. Once again, he had channelled those emotions into a grand prix victory.

Verstappen completed the 57th and final lap to take his ninth win of his fourth world championship season and his first in a dry grand prix since June. Red Bull had started sprint weekends less than impressively a few times this season, but even Verstappen had to admit this was quite the turnaround after he barely finished in the points on Saturday.

“It’s probably been one of the biggest,”, Verstappen said of Red Bull’s gains after the sprint race. “When you’re fighting Haas in the sprint to fighting for the win in the main race – it’s been quite a big swing in performance.”

Leclerc came home six seconds back in second place, securing a podium that had not looked likely in the earlier part of the weekend but had crucially kept Ferrari alive in the constructors’ championship fight heading into the final round in Abu Dhabi.

“Finishing second after such a weekend, where the track characteristics are very far off from the optimal of the track characteristics we need for our car, is a surprise,” Leclerc admitted.

“We exceeded our expectations because coming into the weekend, I kind of expected to lose a bit of points compared to McLaren here. However, we recovered some, so that’s good.”

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Piastri had ‘won’ the sprint race, but his pit stop just before the second Safety Car could have ultimately cost him an opportunity to finish higher.

“That’s how racing goes sometimes, unfortunately,” he accepted. “Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. I feel like we’ve had that happen quite a few times this year, but we’ve had our fair share of luck as well.”

Despite a five second time penalty after the race for falling more than twice the allowed distance behind another car under Safety Car, Russell kept the fourth place in which he finished. Pierre Gasly reclaimed sixth in the constructors’ championship with his fifth place ahead of Sainz, who recovered to sixth after his puncture. Fernando Alonso ended Aston Martin’s four race points-less streak, with Zhou Guanyu also ending a points drought for Sauber that was much, much, much longer than four races. In what was likely his penultimate grand prix, Kevin Magnussen scored points in ninth after an intense duel with Alexander Abon, with Norris still coming home with a commiseration point.

Like he so often is, FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem was in parc ferme waiting to congratulate the top three. Perhaps even he could not ignore that a weekend that had started with a concerted effort to try and mend the fractured relationship between the governing body and the drivers of its most elite championship had instead seen all discussion dominated by two major decisions by the stewards and a questionable call by the sport’s newest race director in only his second grand prix weekend.

As the 23rd podium ceremony of the season completed, just a single one still remains for F1’s longest ever season. Abu Dhabi was the scene of the most controversial moment in the last decade of Formula 1 in 2021, but three years later, despite so much about the FIA and its F1 personnel having changed, the problems that remain are too great to be solved in just a single meeting.

| Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free