Max Verstappen will have doubted his supremacy several times during this race weekend. In terms of set-up, things just didn’t work out for the Red Bull driver. Only in the last part of qualifying was the reigning world champion satisfied with his setup. Now the question is: is that setting also the fastest for 58 laps?
Because there are privateers on the coast. Ferrari has been leaving a strong impression all weekend. Sainz therefore starts in second place. Leclerc mightn’t make it happen when it counted and starts from fourth place. He moved up one spot, just like Norris and Piastri, because Pérez received a penalty following qualifying for hindering another driver. Pérez therefore starts in P6.
The majority of the drivers will start the 2024 Australian GP on medium tyres. Only Hamilton, Ricciardo and Zhou gambled on an early safety car: they are on soft tires. Alonso and Hülkenberg are going for exactly the opposite strategy. The Aston Martin and Haas are the only two cars to start on the hard tires.
The start of the 2024 Australian GP
The lights go out and the field seems to emerge from the starting boxes as one man. Sainz is still looking for a gap, but the distance to Verstappen is too great to attempt an overtake in the first corner. Behind him, Russell’s Mercedes passes Pérez’s Red Bull for fifth place. In the meantime, Sainz keeps the pressure on Verstappen and gets DRS in the second round.
At that moment Verstappen was seen. On the DRS section towards turns nine-ten, Sainz blows past for first place. Verstappen notes that his car is losing grip. ‘Very strange,’ he thinks. Verstappen can join in and a nice duel seems to be in the offing, but the fight between the ex-teammates will not happen.
Verstappen drops out of the 2024 Australian GP
During the fourth lap, blue smoke comes out from under Verstappen’s Red Bull. The driver notices this himself and reports it to the team. The brake on the right rear wheel is on fire. Verstappen enters and the team puts out the fire, but the Dutch driver’s race is over. Verstappen drops out for the first time since the 2022 Australian GP. Even then the problem lay with his material.
At the beginning of the fifth lap, smoke is already coming from the right rear wheel | Photo: © Red Bull Content Pool
Alpine jokes up X that they made a double overtake on Verstappen. The atmosphere will also be good at the Sainz camp. The Spanish Ferrari driver is now in the lead with a healthy lead. Sainz then waits quietly until the drivers behind him have switched to the hard hands and comes in on lap 16.
When leaving the pits, Sainz has a three-second lead over his first attacker, his teammate Leclerc. In retrospect, Sainz must have hoped that he went in a lap later. Lewis Hamilton falls on the seventeenth lap. Just like with Verstappen, technical failure caused the failure. In Hamilton’s case, the Mercedes engine suddenly stops working.
Hamilton parks his car at a marshall post, but to put the car behind the wall, a virtual safety car must first be called. As a result, drivers who make a stop now lose less time. Alonso is such a driver. He will soon be back on track for Pérez.
Sainz does a Verstappen thing
In the first laps following the VSC, Leclerc comes closer to Sainz lap by lap. In the 21st lap the gap is only one and a half seconds. After this, Sainz seems to step up his game. He sets the fastest race lap one lap later and increases the gap by more than half a second per lap. Even without Verstappen, an F1 race can be dominated.
On lap 34, Ferrari brings in Leclerc to make his last scheduled pit stop for the race. When they return to the track, Pérez and Alonso arrive. Leclerc steers back onto the track and returns to the circuit inches ahead of Pérez. Perfectly measured by Ferrari or pure luck? Leclerc then drives the fastest race lap and opens the gap to the Pérez-Alonso duo.
After the competition has gone inside, race leader Sainz also goes to get fresh rubber. After his stop he has a lead of regarding five seconds over his teammate. Leclerc tightens up the fastest race lap lap following lap and comes closer with small steps. Leclerc can keep that up for regarding three laps. After this, Sainz consolidates the gap at more than five seconds.
Carlos Sainz wint in Melbourne
Magnussen and Albon are still playing around in the midfield, but otherwise there is little action on the track. Towards the end of the race, Russell chases Alonso. The Aston Martin gives a lesson in defending to the British driver. In the last lap Russell crashes hard off the track. In turns 6-7 he loses the rear and slides off the track at high speed. His Mercedes bounces back onto the track and hangs on its side. Russell screams for a red flag because he is in the middle of the track. Fortunately, all drivers know how to drive around his wreck.
It creates a finish behind the virtual safety car and Sainz takes the win. The Spanish driver is one appendix poorer, but one victory richer. He took a battered Verstappen in the opening phase and has not misplaced a wheel since. Give that man a seat before 2025! Oh, and Albon doesn’t get any point(s) in Sargeant’s car.
Updated 10:10 am
Fernando Alonso received a drive-through penalty following the race. Via the data from Alonso’s car, the race management saw that Alonso slowed down 100 meters more than during other laps. The stewards judge this behavior as ‘erratic driving’ and give Alonso a drive-through. Because the penalty is handed out following the race, the penalty is converted to a time penalty of twenty seconds. This causes Alonso to drop to eighth place.
Result of the 2024 Australian GP