Sergio Perez’s Saudi Arabia GP victory proclaimed as his best by Red Bull boss, Christian Horner. Photo / Supplied
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has described Sergio Perez’s victory in the Saudi Arabian GP as the best of his five grand prix wins to date.
It is a success underlined by the fact that reigning world champion Max Verstappen finished second, to make it a Red Bull one-two, which is relatively rare, despite the team’s dominance last year and in the first two races in the new season. Of course, when you factor in that Perez started from pole position, which somewhat surprisingly was only his second F1 pole position, whereas Verstappen lined up 15th because of a driveshaft problem in Q2, it sounds like a hollow victory, or at least puts Perez’s victory into perspective.
Verstappen’s battle towards the front of the field proved to be a highlight of the race, while the performance of Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin, who crossed the finish line in third place, again caught the eye. For Alonso, his post-race celebration of his 100th podium in F1, was short-lived, as the race stewards imposed a 10-second time penalty for incorrectly serving a five-second penalty he incurred for lining up too far left in his pit-box at the start of the race.
That meant George Russell, who had finished 5.1 seconds behind Alonso in the race, was deemed to be third. So Alonso handed his third place trophy to Russell, only to get it back again after his team called for a review of the decision, which was subsequently reversed.
As to why, more on that later, but another feature of the race was the fact that both Mercedes drivers finished ahead of the two Ferraris, suggesting the woes of the Maranello-based team may exceed those of the team from Brackley, which has filled the headlines since the season opener in Bahrain, with talk the team may ditch this year’s car and effectively go back to the drawing board.
Despite starting alongside Perez on the front row, and actually taking the lead at the start, Alonso knew he was not really racing the Red Bull because of that car’s superior pace, and correctly predicted that Verstappen would join the fight up front by at least lap 25 of the 50-lap race.
The complexion of the race changed on lap 18 when Alonso’s teammate, Lance Stroll, stopped on the track, triggering a safety car intervention. Alonso dived into the pits and served his 5-second time penalty before his crew could work on the car.
A mechanic placed the jack under his car but didn’t lift it, and Alonso rejoined in second place, still ahead of Russell. There was no suggestion from the race stewards that his stop was under investigation, a point Alonso would emphasise in his post-race interview.
The main beneficiary of the safety car situation was Verstappen, who jumped both Ferraris in the pit-stops. On the restart, he was soon past Russell and Alonso, and with no team orders imposed, was free to chase his teammate. But then Verstappen started hearing noises and suspected the driveshaft issue that stopped him in qualifying, was reoccurring.
All the cars were on a one-stop strategy, so Verstappen had to continue overtaking and look after his hard compound tyres at the same time. He overtook Alonso on lap 25 to gain second place, just as Alonso had predicted. Perez was concerned the team was allowing Verstappen to race him, which made Horner nervous.
“Max is a racer. He’s going to push,” Horner told Sky Sports in the post-race interviews.
“Coming from 15th on the grid to second at a street circuit, that’s pretty unusual. But I mean Sergio stepped up to the challenge after that safety car. Obviously, my heart was in my mouth at that point, because I was envisaging, within three laps, having two drivers going at it hammer and tongs, but it didn’t materialise.
“Checo got the gap and was able to manage it and his pace today was fantastic.”
Perez asked his race engineer about Verstappen’s lap times, wanting to slow the pace to secure the 1-2, but he was told to push.
“I don’t think he wanted that answer,” Horner admitted. " But we’ve got a great car and two great drivers. We talked about it in the briefings earlier today that they were free to race, but keep it clean. Both of them are so competitive.”
‘Today, Checo...I think that was his best Grand Prix, particularly after the restart on the hard tyes as he immediately built a five-second gap and managed and maintained that.”
Despite some anguish that they were allowed to race one another, Perez said he did enjoy the race.
“I enjoyed it a lot, especially at the end, just pushing each other with the lap times knowing that he went a tenth faster, tenth slower, tenth slower, and it was all pretty intense. Then we were told to maintain a certain pace, then I was told again to push then to maintain the pace - so it was a bit all over the place,” Perez said.
Verstappen set the fastest time on the last lap to gain an extra point, meaning he still leads the championship, albeit by one point, from Perez, but was not happy.
“Of course, I recovered to second which is good, and in general the whole feeling in the team, everyone is happy,” he said in the post-race press conference.
“But personally I am not happy because I’m not here to be second, especially when you are working so hard back at the factory and arrive here in a good state, based on, you know, making sure everything is spot on, and then, yeah, you have to do a recovery race, which I like, I mean I don’t mind doing it but when you are fighting for a championship and it looks like it’s between two cars, we have to make sure the two cars are reliable.”
Russell was in that press conference after Alonso was demoted and shed some light on how he viewed Alonso’s penalty, even though he was at that point a beneficiary of it.
“The car was feeling good and we’ve got some more performance in the locker in some races to come,’’ he said. ”I think it was very harsh what happened to Fernando, in all honesty, I feel like some of these penalties are a little bit too extreme as we’ve seen this weekend for some drivers in qualifying, but nevertheless, as I said before, I’m happy to pick up the silverware.”
As the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association Chairman, he called for “a little bit of common sense to be shown” noting Alonso gained nothing from being half a tyre width too far left, on the grid, and that “perhaps a five-second penalty for that is too much.”
At Silverstone, Hamilton was given a 10-second time penalty for punting Verstappen off at 160mph, which required him to be admitted to the hospital for a check-up. In terms of punishment fitting the crime, a jack touching a car can’t possibly equate to colliding with another car at high speed.
So just what did happen to Alonso?
The stewards initially ruled: “It was clear that the car was touched by the rear jack. Based on the representation made to the stewards that there was an agreed position that touching the car would amount to ‘working’ on the car, the stewards decided to impose a penalty.”
In the Bahrain GP, Esteban Ocon in the Alpine was given a similar penalty, except his team actually started working on the car too soon. Alonso’s initial reaction to his penalty was to be a little nonplussed.
“It doesn’t hurt much, to be honest,” he told Sky Sports.” I was on the podium, I did the pictures, did the trophy, celebrated with the Champagne and yeah, now I apparently have three points less - I don’t have 15, I have 12. I think it is a poor show from the FIA today, more than disappointment from ourselves. You cannot apply a penalty 35 laps after the pit-stop.”
“They had enough time to really inform about the penalty because, if I knew that, maybe I could have opened 11 seconds to the car behind.”
Under the rules, stewards are supposed to notify a team of an impending penalty no later than 25 minutes after an incident.
Aston Martin sought a review of the decision on the basis they had video evidence of seven different instances where cars serving penalties were touched by a jack without being penalised. They also produced an alleged agreement between the FIA and the teams that “touching the car in any way, including with a jack” was “incorrect” and, therefore, the basis of the steward’s decision was “wrong”.
The stewards then decided there was no clear agreement that could be relied upon to determine whether all parties had agreed that a car being touched by a jack would be considered “working on the car”. Alonso was therefore re-instated to third place and took to Twitter.
“!00th Podium! What an amazing TEAM we have and a fast car! Proud of you @AstonMartinF1.
“I am happy in the end with the result tonight and our second podium,” his official team press release read. “We showed that we can be the second fastest team and we had good pace throughout the race. It was my mistake at the start with the position on the grid, but we pushed to make up that time. I’m looking forward to Australia next.”
A special FIA meeting before Australia will clarify the rule around what constitutes “working on the car” but what happened to Alonso was an embarrassing U-turn by the race stewards, given the FIA has tried to ensure there is no ambiguity in the rules since the Abu Dhabi fiasco in 2021.
Sources: Aston Martin Racing; F1.com; Sky Sports
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