Yahoo Movies Max Verstappen Wins Messy Australian Grand Prix
Max Verstappen won today's Formula 1 Grand Prix of Australia, but it was an afterthought in a disastrous race defined by crashes and the sport's uneven responses to them.
Verstappen started from pole, but he fell to third on the opening lap after exceptional starts from both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. Russell sailed past Verstappen into turn 1 as Charles Leclerc spun into the gravel, while Hamilton waited patiently to strike a few corners later. Leclerc would end up stuck in the gravel, leading to a quick safety car and a restart that did not impact Russell and Hamilton's leads on Verstappen.
Then Alex Albon crashed from what would have been a strong sixth for Williams, bringing out a safety car. With the Red Bull clearly faster in an open track but both of their cars able to hold the lead over Verstappen in the opening laps, Mercedes decided to split their strategies by pitting just Russell from the lead and leaving Hamilton out with Verstappen.
A lap into the safety car procedure, F1 officials upgraded the stoppage to a red flag. That meant another standing restart and fresh tires for everyone, effectively making the pit stop during the earlier safety car nothing more than a direct positional penalty. Hamilton held the lead on the ensuing restart, but Verstappen sailed past with DRS when it activated just two laps later and never looked back.
Those top two would finish in that position, but another Hamilton vs. Verstappen race was far from the main story of a day ruled by chaos. That continued when George Russell's car caught fire from fourth on lap 18, leading to a virtual safety car. The real mess started much later, when Kevin Magnussen came to a stop on track with just 3 tires on lap 54 of 58. Once again, Formula 1 threw a safety car, let drivers go through the pit cycle, and then waited to escalate to another red flag and a third standing start.
Once again, the timing of the red flag harshly penalized pitting under the safety car. It led to a bigger issue, too: that extra lap under safety car ended up deciding most of the race, as it meant the restart procedure would begin on lap 56 rather than 55. Normally, such a thing would not matter, but it would matter if there were another red flag within a lap of the restart.
And, of course, there was. Hamilton and Verstappen got away from the start clean, but turn 1 saw multiple multi-car crashes that would eventually take out both Alpines, leave Fernando Alonso spinning after contact with Carlos Sainz Jr, and briefly give Lance Stroll third before he blew the next corner. Another red flag came out immediately. The race was mathematically over by any sense of the word, but officials waited a very long time for clean-up as they discussed how the disastrous third restart would be officiated and how the race would end.
Although unclear rules meant that many options were apparently in play, they ultimately decided to default to precedent from a previous standing start at Silverstone and score the restart as if it had never happened because cars never crossed the end of sector 1. The race was resumed under safety car to finish just one lap, as a full restart procedure would require that warm-up lap and then a second lap of actual racing and there were not enough laps left in the race. Finishing results were determined by the order on the restart, minus the cars that had crashed out on the restart that was not scored. To make matters all the more confusing, Carlos Sainz Jr. was also handed a five second time penalty for his contact with Alonso that did not count. It demoted him from fourth to twelfth. Additionally, photos taken by fans before the red flag start show that Max Verstappen was well outside of the lead grid spot before the start; that has gone unmentioned by officials and will apparently not lead to a race-altering penalty.
Verstappen, Hamilton, and Alonso made an all-world champion podium. Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez completed the top five, despite both going off track and deep into the gravel during the abandoned restart. Lando Norris, Nico Hulkenberg, Oscar Piastri, Zhou Guanyu, and Yuki Tsunoda completed the points-paying positions. With Leclerc retiring on the opening lap and Sainz penalized out of fourth, Ferrari failed to score a point on the weekend.
Formula 1 has nearly the entire month of April off before returning at Baku on April 30th.
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