After a turbulent qualifying session, the order of the grid for the 2023 Saudi Arabian GP is quite interesting. Max Verstappen was unable to finish Q2 due to a broken drive shaft and will start today in fifteenth. Teammate Sergio Pérez starts from pole, alongside Fernando Alonso and followed by George Russell and Carlos Sainz.
At the start, Alonso immediately takes the lead from Pérez. The Mexican, however, follows closely behind him – the two of them are Aston Martin and Red Bull steadily walking away from their pursuers. Lance Stroll shows a beautiful overtaking action, around the outside of Carlos Sainz. Oscar Piastri loses some parts, but otherwise everyone is well gone. No restarts at the Saudi Arabia GP this year.
Leclerc and Verstappen steam forward
Alonso immediately gets a penalty: five seconds, because of an incorrect starting position. He will have to collect it later at a pit stop. On lap 4 we see Pérez Alonso brake out with smoking tires and overtake. Charles Leclerc, who qualified second but received a ten-place grid penalty, is also doing well. He is the only one on soft tires and makes up places as if it were nothing.
Max Verstappen is on an equally strong advance: in lap ten the Dutchman is already ninth. He runs on medium tires behind Lewis Hamilton on hards. He complains that the grip of his tires is worthless, and two laps later Verstappen overtakes the seven-time world champion with DRS. Meanwhile, Pérez has opened a gap of more than three seconds to Alonso. He has the fastest race lap in his hands and seems comfortable at the head of the field.
Exit Stroll, safety car
We’re half an hour in when Lance Stroll is instructed to stop his car immediately. The Aston Martin stalls in turn 13 and a safety car situation ensues, even though the car disappears behind the wall quite quickly and easily. Both Red Bulls dive in for their pit stops, while many others had already done so just before the safety car. Very favorable for Max Verstappen: with fresh tires he is in fourth place when the safety car leaves the track again.
Pérez is extremely well off and opens a gap of several seconds with Alonso in second place. Everyone is on hard tyres, except Hamilton, who has mediums and immediately uses the better grip to nicely overtake Sainz for fifth. Moments later Verstappen overtakes George Russell, and not much later also Alonso. With half of the race completed, the Dutchman has worked his way up from fifteenth to second. He is then more than five seconds behind his teammate and immediately takes over the fastest lap from him.
Problems for Verstappen?
Two Red Bulls, an Aston, two Mercedes, two Ferraris, two Alpines and Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri make up the top ten. Behind them, Alex Albon complains about a braking problem in his Williams, but then drives past the pit lane to roll through another lap at a slow pace. He eventually passes out. Teammate Logan Sargeant is frolicking with Nico Hülkenberg’s Haas. A little behind, in fifteenth place, Nyck de Vries drives his laps in front of the two McLarens of Norris and Piastri.
The two Red Bulls are about one second per lap ahead of the rest of the field, but the distance between the two remains almost the same for a long time. With twelve laps to go, Verstappen reports on the team radio that his drive shaft – the part that cost him qualifying – feels ‘rough’ and makes a strange noise at high speed. Red Bull says everything looks good, but Verstappen insists something is wrong.
Arguing over the team radio
Shortly afterwards, Pérez complains that his brake pedal feels a bit long. He is told there is nothing wrong, ‘just some wear and tear’. The Red Bulls are not slowing down: with Alonso 15 seconds behind, they continue to dominate the field. With eight laps to go, Nyck de Vries nicely overtakes Sargeant’s Williams for fourteenth place. The rest of the field remains in position lap after lap, although the McLarens are also at odds with Magnussen trying to take the tip of tenth from Tsunoda. He succeeds in this spectacularly.
Pérez is told to slow down a few tenths per lap, but disagrees. He continues to set the same lap times as Verstappen. When he says over the radio that she [het team] ‘can’t use this’, he gets the redeeming word: Free to push. He also holds the fastest lap. When Verstappen asks what that time is and is told that ‘it doesn’t matter for now’, he replies: ‘But it does to me.’
Verstappen retains the lead in the championship
The win of the Saudi Arabian GP is for Sergio Pérez. Verstappen follows in second place and takes back the fastest lap at the last minute, so that Pérez just misses the lead in the championship. Fernando Alonso seals third place – the two-time world champion thus achieves his hundredth podium in Formula 1. Or so it seems…
Update 19:45
After the podium ceremony, Fernando Alonso receives a ten-second time penalty for incorrectly serving his first five-second time penalty. No one from the team is allowed to touch the car during those five seconds, and apparently they did. As a result, Alonso ends up behind George Russell in fourth place.
The results of the 2023 Saudi Arabian GP
- Sergio Perez
- Max Verstappen
- George Russell
- Fernando Alonso
- Lewis Hamilton
- Carlos Sainz
- Charles Leclerc
- Esteban Ocon
- Pierre Gasley
- Kevin Magnussen
- Yuki Tsunoda
- Nico Hulkenberg
- Zhou Guanyu
- Nick de Vries
- Oscar Pistri
- Logan Sergeant
- Lando Norris
- Valttery Bottas
- Alexander Albon
- Lance Stroll
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