Verstappen wins incident filled race at Qatar
Max Verstappen really was the only one who managed to stay out of trouble, leading the Qatar Grand Prix from start to finish. Behind him, lots of crashes happened and penalties were handed out. Charles Leclerc finished second and Oscar Piastri third.
When the lights went out it was a thriller from the start with Russell getting a strong start, just like Verstappen who, due to a penalty, had to start from second even though he set the fastest time in qualifying.
The two went side by side. Verstappen pushed Russell as wide as he could, into the racing line and into the lead. Norris came up threatening for the lead as well but had to settle for second as Verstappen had the better traction out of the first corner.
Meanwhile there was a crash in the back. Hulkenberg was on the inside, he locked up, squirreled a little wide and hit Ocon, who hit Colapinto. Colapinto just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Further ahead, Albon was tipped into a spin by Stroll.
As the safety car was brought out, Ocon and Colapinto retired from the race. Hulkenberg came into the pits to sort out the puncture.
On the lap 5 the race was on again. As the top three held position, Piastri got ahead of Leclerc and Lawson spun off.
A few laps later Hamilton was noted for a false start and later received a 5-second time penalty. The Englishman really seemed to have gone too early, then stopped again and got going again, resulting in a false start and a bad one as well, as that issue had cost him 3 places before entering Turn 1 on lap 1. "Sorry guys," was his radio message. Uh oh - this really isn't going well for the seven-time world champion.
Stroll meanwhile retired from the race after serving his 10-second time penalty for tipping Albon into a spin on the first lap.
By lap 20, Verstappen had maintained the lead but didn't really manage build a big advantage over Norris. A few laps later tyre degradation became evident and it was Mercedes who first opted to stop on lap 24. The stop wasn't responded to by anyone immediately and as the laps wore on, it was clear that the hard tyres were a bit of a worry for the Mercedes as Russell was unable to make progress out of the midfield pack he was brought out into.
Twelve laps later the yellows were out as Albon lost a mirror. After Norris had then come closer to Verstappen during that yellow flag, the McLaren driver then seemed to back off a bit, increasing the gap to 2.5 seconds.
Bottas meanwhile had run over the mirror housing to shatter it in lots of smaller pieces. Soon after that, Hamilton had a puncture! Hamilton slowly came into the pits for a 5-second stop while at the same time Sainz also suffered a puncture, leading to a 9 second pitstop for him. Piastri had a regular stop and took fresh hard tyres.
Seconds later the safety car was brought out, giving Verstappen, Norris, Leclerc, ... a free pitstop. Russell wasn't happy at all to get new hards once again while at Aston Martin they pitted Alonso twice, once to do a lap on the hard tyres and then the next lap to switch back to the faster medium compound.
In that flurry of pit stops, Norris felt he was brake tested by Hamilton. we'll see if anything happens with that one - it looks like Hamilton realised he was speeding and braked to slow down before the pit lane limiter line.
The restart was messy once again with Perez losing drive and spinning. Hulkenberg had another incident at Turn 10, leading to yet another safety car. Gasly had also out braked himself and thereby lost a position to Russell.
The third restart saw Norris once again challenge Verstappen closely for the lead, but again, Verstappen ran the McLaren wide and maintained the lead.
Following that restart, Norris was handed a 10-second stop-and-go penalty for failing to slow under yellows while Hamilton got a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane.
Norris quickly decided to serve his penalty and went onto a comeback race. Clearly he had some pace, but he ran short of laps to really recover from that blow.
Following a crazy race, Russell was finally given a 5-second for a safety car infringement.
As Verstappen stayed out of trouble, apart from some fierce defence on each restart, pretty much everybody else had a peculiar race at Qatar. It underlined why Verstappen is the Championship winner and leaves the battle for the constructors open into the last race at Abu Dhabi.
