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Max Verstappen is on top Down Under after Australian GP win
The two-time reigning world champion breaks new ground and snaps a skid for Oracle Red Bull Racing in Melbourne, while Sergio Pérez stood out in a race that had a little of everything.
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For Oracle Red Bull Racing, this year's Australian Grand Prix was, as an Aussie local might say, high time to say 'hooroo' to a hoodoo.
For more than a decade, the picturesque Albert Park lakeside circuit and a fervent local crowd have provided a warm welcome to all in Formula One, but for Red Bull, its results have been stone-cold. Sunday's third race of the 2023 season put that wrong right, but not without a late fright and more than a smattering of controversy.
Max Verstappen came to Australia without a pole or a win on his CV and left with both, while for the team, the Dutchman's victory was the first in Australia since Sebastian Vettel in 2011 – both drought-breaking results that followed this season's script, but not in the way anyone imagined.
Verstappen recovered from a slow getaway when the lights went out that saw him end the opening lap in third place, and was cruising to victory with a margin of more than eight seconds on Lap 54 of 58 when chaos ensued, and continued.
Once Verstappen regained the lead, it was game over
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Kevin Magnussen (Haas) clobbered the wall at the outside of Turn 2 and his left-rear Pirelli tire parted company with his wheel rim, debris showering the track and necessitating a red flag.
The race then looked set to be a two-lap dash to the line from a standing start with Verstappen's healthy advantage eroded, but the resumption lasted all of one corner before another stoppage. Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) tapped Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) into a spin, with Alpine pair Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon ending up taking each other out as the field scattered to avoid Alonso's spinning car.
With Logan Sargeant (Williams) ramming Nyck de Vries (Scuderia AlphaTauri) off the road further back, another red flag was thrown… but this time the race resumed with a rolling start with no racing laps left, meaning Verstappen crossed the line at a pedestrian pace, but with 25 more world championship points in his pocket.
Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Pérez had high hopes of repeating his success in Saudi Arabia last time out in Australia, where he made his F1 debut in that same race that Vettel won; the Mexican had a miserable Saturday when he qualified last after repeated brake issues, but provided much of the entertainment 24 hours later when he stormed from a pit lane start to finish fifth to retain second place in the title chase, taking a bonus point for the fastest lap of the race and the sport's Driver of the Day award to boot.
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Alonso rounded out the podium on a weekend when Albert Park broke its 2022 record for the highest attendance in the event's 26-race history (444,631), a race-day crowd of 131,134 basking in perfect autumnal sunlight after Melbourne had experienced its stereotypical 'four seasons in one day' climate in the event's build-up.
Here's how Red Bull turned its results Down Under the right side up on Sunday.
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Max gets his Melbourne win, eventually
Verstappen has achieved a lot of firsts in his F1 tenure, but Sunday's victory was unchartered territory for both he and the sport. Never before has an F1 race featured three red flags – the two late stoppages were proceeded by a 16-minute break to clear the track after Alexander Albon (Williams) crashed heavily at Turn 6 on Lap 7 – and the mayhem elsewhere was in stark contrast to the metronomic results that has seen the team win for the 13th time in the past 14 races dating back to France last season.
The Dutchman set a circuit record with his pole lap of 1min 16.732secs on Saturday, and when the race eventually finished after more than two-and-a-half hours, he eventually – and belatedly – left Singapore as the only circuit he's yet to taste victory on of the tracks that have featured on the calendar for the entirety of his career.
Mercedes pair George Russell and Hamilton passed the two-time world champion on Lap 1, but after Russell gave up track position by pitting as soon as Albon crashed out, Verstappen only had Hamilton to pass to get back to where he started, which he did with a decisive move around the outside heading into Albert Park's super-fast Turn 9-10 chicane. From there, the closest anyone came to shadowing him was when the race stopped, started, stopped and then started again.
Sunday's podium of champions was the first in five years
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"We had a very poor start and then on lap one I was careful – I had a lot to lose, and they had a lot to win," he said after the race.
"After that, I think the pace of the car was there – we could see that straight away – but with these red flags… it was a bit of a mess but we survived everything, and I had pace in the car. We won, which is the most important."
While there seemed to be trouble at every turn elsewhere in the field, Verstappen's one moment of mild discomfort came when he ran wide at the penultimate corner on Lap 46, taking to the grass before carefully rejoining the circuit.
"I think I did the city a favor… I cut the grass so they don't need to do that any more," he laughed.
"I locked up a bit and didn't want to flat-spot the tire completely and ran a bit wide, but we had a good margin.
"It's great to win here, my first win (in Australia) as well. It's been a while for the team as well, so very happy."
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Checo's recovery mission
For Pérez to shimmer forwards in the sunshine on Sunday after a wretched Saturday was a testament to his pace and perseverance, and 11 world championship points was his reward.
Happy as he was on Sunday, the winner of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was disconsolate after qualifying 24 hours earlier, brake balance problems in practice carrying over to the fight for pole. On his first flying lap in Q1, the Mexican skated off the track at Turn 3 and got stuck in the gravel, the murkiness in the trackside mud an accurate reflection of his mood.
Condemned to a back-row start, Pérez began the race from the pit lane after the team elected to take penalties for introducing extra suspension and power unit components.
For much of what was a largely processional Grand Prix before the late safety car dramas, Pérez was box-office as he scythed through the field, the Turn 9-10 chicane complex his preferred passing place.
Pérez's charge from the pit lane to fifth was spectacular
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He set the fastest lap (1:20.235) with five laps left, avoided the carnage ahead at the second restart by careering across the Turn 1 grass, and then gained a place after the chequered flag after crossing the line sixth when Sainz was given a five-second penalty for the Alonso incident.
Tsunoda's tenth a welcome relief
AlphaTauri got its 2023 constructors' championship tally off the mark when Yuki Tsunoda benefited from Sainz's penalty to finish 10th, one world championship point preventing him from finishing an agonising 11th for the fourth straight race dating back to Abu Dhabi last year.
Tsunoda qualified a season-best 12th on Saturday, and his point lifted AlphaTauri above Williams into ninth in the teams' standings after difficult lead-in races in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.
Tsunoda got off the mark after a mid-pack battle
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On his maiden trip to Australia, let alone the tricky Albert Park circuit, Tsunoda's team-mate de Vries was unfortunate to be collected by Sargeant in the closing stages, but looked more on the pace than the opening pair of races to kick-start 2023, qualifying a season-best 15th.
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Pain for plenty, points for few
The Verstappen-Hamilton-Alonso podium – when it eventually happened – was the first time we'd had a race with three world champions on the rostrum since Hungary 2018 (Hamilton-Vettel-Kimi Raikkonen), but two of last year's podium finishers in Australia had less to cheer about 12 months on.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc – winner from pole in Melbourne last April after leading every lap from pole – was out three corners into the race, pushed into the Turn 3 gravel by Aston Martin's Lance Stroll, while early-race leader Russell couldn't back up his third place from 2022 after his engine erupted in flames after 16 laps.
Elsewhere, McLaren's Oscar Piastri – the first Melbourne-born driver to start a Formula One race in the Victorian state capital – scored his first world championship points in his third race by finishing eighth.
Rest for the run through Baku
The 11th-hour departure of the Chinese Grand Prix from the 2023 calendar created an unusually-long gap of three weekends between Australia and the next race, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix (April 30).
The Baku City Circuit has only been on the calendar since 2016, but has quickly become a modern classic with its mixture of wide-open straights along the Caspian Sea preceding a blast through the narrow city streets of the Old City, which includes the 12th-century Maiden Tower – a favorite backdrop for TV broadcasters and photographers alike.
Verstappen led Pérez home in Baku a year ago for the third of five 1-2 finishes for Red Bull in 2022, while the Mexican was the 2021 winner after Verstappen suffered a dramatic high-speed puncture when leading with just eight laps left. The team also won the first Azerbaijan Grand Prix with Daniel Ricciardo in 2017; the first race at the circuit in 2016 was dubbed the European Grand Prix.
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