Yesterday the first race of the year came to an end. The common prediction was that Max Verstappen would win the race, but there wasn't a clear idea about who was going to finish in the podium and in the points. Both Ferrari and McLaren seem very strong in Qualifying, but it was obvious that Mercedes wouldn't give up that easily those important points.
The race started with an incident in curve 1, where the cars of Lance Stroll, Nico Hulkenberg and Valtteri Bottas made contant, in the interior of the curve! This accident was caused by the canadian driver, who entered the curve too fast, and touched the car of Hulkenberg, inmediately Lance braked abruptly and Valtteri, who was behind the Aston Martin driver, couldn't avoid crushing into Lance! Both Lance and Nico entered the pits to fix the car, and change tires. While Bottas stayed on track.
There were some pretty good overtakes, like the one that George Russell did to Charles Leclerc. The British driver passed the Monegasque in a curve, driving in the exterior of it!
Ferrari had some problems with their drivers priority, because Carlos Sainz had better pace than Charles and the team never gave the order to Charles in order to let his teammate pass him through. He even gave a lot of fight to his teammate, which is very selfish. Carlos Sainz won't be driving for Ferrari next season, so he will just drive alone this season and will not follow team orders either.
Valtteri Bottas had a lot of issues during the race. Starting with the crash in lap 1. Then when he went to change tires tyres in lap 32, the gun couldn't take out the wheel! He stayed in the pit 52 seconds! Almost a minute, and the funniest thing is that his mechanics never changed the front wing, that was damaged with the incident at the beginning of the race!
The other team that had troubles with team orders were RB F1 Team, when at the end of the race, Daniel Ricciardo who was currently P14 asked Yuki Tsunoda, P13, to let him trough in order to overtake then Kevin Magnussen. They weren't fighting for the points, so it was an immaturity from the australian. At the end of the race, neither of the drivers could get passed the Haas, and Ricciardo stayed ahead of the japanese driver.
Max Vertappen finished first the race, to claim his 55th victory! He also had the fastest lap, with a 1:32:608! Sergio Perez finished in 2nd place and Carlos Sainz, with a brilliant drive finished in 3rd place!
Final Positions:
- Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing- 26 pts
- Sergio Perez - Red Bull Racing - 18 pts
- Carlos Sainz - Ferrari - 15 pts
- Charles Leclerc - Ferrari - 12 pts
- George Russell - Mercedes - 10 pts
- Lando Norris - McLaren - 8 pts
- Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes - 6 pts
- Oscar Piastri - McLaren - 4 pts
- Fernando Alonso - Aston Martin - 2 pts
- Lance Stroll - Aston Martin - 1 pt
- Guanyu Zhou - Kick F1 Team
- Kevin Magnussen - Haas
- Daniel Ricciardo - RB F1 Team
- Yuki Tsunoda - RB F1 Team
- Alex Albon - Williams
- Nico Hulkenberg - Haas
- Esteban Ocon - Alpine
- Pierre Gasly - Alpine
- Valtteri Bottas - Kick F1 Team
- Logan Sargeant - Williams
Constructors Championship Positions:
- Red Bull - 44 pts
- Ferrari - 27 pts
- Mercedes - 16 pts
- McLaren - 12 pts
- Aston Martin - 3 pts
- Kick F1 Team - 0 pts
- RB F1 Team - 0 pts
- Williams - 0 pts
- Haas - 0 pts
- Alpine - 0 pts
That's everything for this weekend. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. We will be waiting for the next weekend where the race will take place in Jeddah.
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