Formula One: Brazilian thriller but a familiar winner

Max Verstappen got to celebrate another victory, his 17th from 20 races. Photo / Don Kennedy

As it usually does, the Brazilian Grand Prix, at the Interlagos circuit in Sau Paolo, provided another thrilling race involving crashes, lots of overtaking, surprising performances and some frustrated drivers, but the same predictable race winner, writes Don Kennedy.

Pole-sitter and world champion, Max Verstappen, won his 17th race of the season, another new record, out of 20 held so far, with two races to go. He now has 52 Grand Prix victories. One more win and he equals the total of 53 wins that the retired Sebastian Vettel sits on. Two more and only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher will sit above him on the all-time winners list.

Verstappen led almost all the way for his latest victory, only surrendering the lead to McLaren driver Lando Norris, who finished second, during pit-stops.

Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari, who qualified second for the race, should have been running up front, but he only got as far as the formation lap, his car suffering some sort of hydraulic problem that sent him into the wall and out of the race before it started.

“I lost the hydraulics,” Leclerc bleated into his team car radio.

“Starting from P2 we were hoping to bring home plenty of points to move up in the championship fight, but unfortunately, we had to retire early,” he said back at the press pen, having calmed down a little.

His last victory was in Austria last year, and he is becoming very frustrated with the problems he has with his car. His teammate, Carlos Sainz, wouldn’t have any mechanical issues, but could do no better than sixth, noting “Aston Martin, Red Bull and McLaren were faster than us and P6 was the maximum”.

A clash between the Williams of Alex Albon and the Haas of Kevin Magnussen, at the start of the race at the first corner, eliminated both from the race. For the latter, it’s the second crash in two races, neither of which were caused by driver error.

Albon had clipped the other Haas of Nico Hulkenberg and then cannoned into Magnussen’s car. A wheel came off, which then struck the AlphaTauri of Daniel Ricciardo, forcing him to pit, losing a lap in the process.

Hamilton had made a great start from fifth on the grid, to be just behind Verstappen and Norris, having overtaken the Aston Martins of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso, who started third and fourth on the grid respectively. But when the race was red-flagged, so the track could be cleared, on the restart Alonso crucially passed Hamilton for third place and would cling onto that position going into the last portion of the race.

The Aston Martins had performed terribly in the US, and Mexico in particular, leaving the team mechanics scratching their heads to try to work out why the car that allowed Alonso to achieve seven podium finishes, was suddenly almost the slowest car on the track.

That changed when they got to Brazil, almost as though the car had fixed itself on the journey south! In reality, the team had kept beavering away to find a solution and suddenly it was competitive.

The opposite was happening at Mercedes, with Hamilton eventually finishing eighth, having finished second in Mexico, while George Russell fared even worse, drifting back through the field and out of the points, before eventually retiring the car to preserve the engine.

“It’s difficult to say why we struggled so much this weekend,” Hamilton lamented. “It’s very inconsistent throughout the lap and we need to figure that out. Today we were slow on the straights but still sliding through the corners.”

Russell wasn’t so diplomatic, noting: “We obviously got something very wrong this weekend. You clearly don’t go from a podium-worthy car to one that is one second off the front, so it’s been very strange.”

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was in a black mood over the car’s performance.

“Inexcusable performance,” he said.

“There’re even no words for that. That car finished second last week and the week before and whatever we did to it, was horrible.”

“Lewis survived out there but George... I can only feel for the two drivers with such a miserable thing. This car doesn’t deserve a win. I think we need to push for the last two races and recover.”

Red Bull and Verstappen keep pushing on, even though by all accounts they stopped developing this year’s car some races ago to concentrate on 2024.

Norris, who was voted driver of the day yet again, just shook his head when asked if he had anything for Verstappen in the race. “Very good, couldn’t have gone much better, to be honest,” he said. “P2 is as good as we get nowadays and for the time being, but very happy for the rest.”

This was the sixth time Norris has finished second this year, and his 13th career podium, which sadly equals the total achieved by Nick Heidfeld, for the most podiums without a win.

Norris finished eight seconds behind Verstappen, which is quite a respectable margin, given the Red Bull dominance this year. More particularly, he was 34 seconds ahead of the third-place finisher, who was Alonso. The latter was chased for half the race by Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull, and this battle proved to be the highlight of the race.

The margin between them at the end of 71 laps was 0.053 seconds. In the last few laps, Perez was closing with the benefit of DRS, which Alonso didn’t have, and when he overtook Alonso into the first corner of lap 70, Alonso admitted he thought the podium had gone.

“For the last 30 laps, it felt like I had pressure from Sergio,” Alonso explained. “But when he passed me two laps from the end, I thought the chance of a podium finish was no longer possible. Then he braked a bit late into turn one on the final lap, and I said to myself I would go for it into turn four,” which he did, pulling off the pass.

“This is a phenomenal result for the whole team. We’d been struggling a little in recent races, especially the last two events, so this podium is for everyone at the track and everyone back at Silverstone. It shows that we will always keep fighting until the very last lap, the last corner.”

With Stroll also having a great drive, with a fifth-place finish, six seconds behind Perex, it was a great day for the Aston Martin team that for so long this season, seemed to have the second-best car. As team principal, Mike Krack noted, the “result was a great reward for a lot of hard work over the last few months and a difficult couple of races”.

Alonso and Perez got on well, and there was a lot of mutual respect for the way each went about the battle for third.

“It was nice, it was a clean battle, very aggressive but clean battle always with Checo,” Alonso said.

“I knew he was coming, I knew he was a threat and at the end it was maybe more difficult than I thought, to be honest. Five laps to the end I thought that he was under control, so I started pushing and then I looked at the mirror and Checo was there and I said, ‘Oh, no’ - I think he was saving tyres as well so he will be a strong contender for the podium.”

Perez thought it took him too long to get past the two Mercedes, but eventually was able to chip away at the lead Alonso had over him.

“I have to say well done to Fernando because it was a great fight and really fair racing. Between us, whoever got the podium, it was well deserved, and he got it.”

Verstappen, who also won the Sprint race, described it somewhat nonchalantly as a “good weekend”. Red Bull broke the record previously held by Mercedes of most laps led in a season (1055). But he won’t be resting on his laurels.

“It has been quite a long triple header so looking forward to a few days’ break before preparing for Vegas,” Verstappen said. “I am enjoying the moment and hopefully we can continue this success until the end of the year.”

Even if he doesn’t win the last two races, his winning percentage will be at least 77.2 per cent, beating the record of 75 per cent held by Alberto Ascari since 1952. So, was he delighted to break that record?

“It’s not about that,” he said. “I mean, it’s not something that when I joined Formula 1 I thought ‘I need to have a 75 per cent win record over a season. This kind of thing comes along when everything just works really well.”

Team boss Christian Horner was all smiles after this latest success, noting that “Max was fantastic” and “Checo had a brilliant drive, back to the form we know so well”.

“The form we have been willing him back to in the later stages of this season. He gave as good as he got against Alonso but unfortunately was just pipped at the post. Some great racing.”

After a two-week break, attention turns to the return of F1 to Las Vegas.

“It’s been a fantastic season for us and there are still two races to go,” Horner noted.

“So, our attention turns to Vegas in two weeks, racing down The Strip on Saturday night. It’s certainly going to be a week like no other.”