Verstappen adds new track to his collection with dominant victory in China

Verstappen winning a race is by no means a unique matter this season. There have been a total of six racing events now (five Grands Prix and a sprint) and Verstappen has won five of those. The Red Bull driver is collecting wins like Thanos, and today he managed to add a new one to his collection. His victory in China means Verstappen has now on 26 different circuits. 

This win also means Verstappen now has a gap of 26 points to his closest challenger, teammate Perez. The season has been so utterly dominant, that this was in fact the first Grand Prix this year where there wasn’t a 1-2 finish by a team. Lando Norris managed to spoil Red Bull’s fun in that regard. In doing so, he did extend his own unenviable record: he now has 15 podiums without winning a race, the most of any driver ever.

All the action happens yet again behind Verstappen

The excitement in this race once again had to come from all the drivers behind Verstappen. Fernando Alonso decided to create some early action by overtaking Perez in the first corner and briefly launching an attack on Verstappen as well, before seeing the Dutchman vanish on the horizon. The Spanish veteran then showed us another masterclass in defensive driving. The infamous “Alonso-train” already plagued everyone behind him during the sprintrace on Saturday, and it seemed like we were getting a repeat of it again this time as well. Sadly for him, it didn’t last. Checo quickly struck back, retaking second place and locking in what looked like another Red Bull 1-2. For Alonso, it was the start of his misery as the Spaniard fell steadily through the ranks.

The other veteran champion, Lewis Hamilton, wasn’t faring much better. The Briton had an amazing result on Saturday, finishing in second during the sprint (though he had to thank Alonso for that for holding up everyone else for as long as he did). But by qualifying in 18th for the Grand Prix, he pretty much eliminated himself from any podium contention. Hamilton admittedly drove fairly decent in this race, but not spectacular. Most of the race was spent by complaining about… well, everything really. The exasperated “Yeah, copy Lewis” by the team spoke volumes in that regard. 9th place was the best result Hamilton could manage, helped largely by retirements and pitstops in front of him. It seems like Hamilton cannot wait to jump ship to Ferrari next year, although their race wasn’t all that great either. The Italian team was largely in no man’s land, and aside from a few scuffles here and there and a needlessly aggressive clash between the two drivers, there was nothing really of note for them.

Mayhem in the midfield

No, the real mayhem came from the rear of the pack. Valtteri Bottas retired with engine problems, saving him the embarrassment of having to endure another 24-hour pitstop from the Sauber crew. That was more than made up for by the track marshalls though, who treated us all to the laughable sight of eight men struggling to push a car backwards. It caused yellow flags in sector 2 and 3, which turned into a Virtual Safety Car, which turned into a full blown Safety Car as the laps ticked down and they still couldn’t get the car off the track.

Lance Stroll crashing into Daniel Ricciardo on the restart.

The race restarted on lap 26 - a full seven laps after Bottas’s retirement! - but there was immediate chaos once again. Lance Stroll decided he quite liked the idea of a different slow driver being on the track with him, and crashed into the back of Daniel Ricciardo to cause another Safety Car. Ricciardo went airborne for a moment and came down with serious floor damage, which also caused damage to the diffuser of Oscar Piastri. This just so happened to coincide with Kevin Magnussen crashing into Yuki Tsunoda and pushing the latter into the gravel, meaning that Racing Bulls was now taken out of the race completely in one fell swoop. Remarkably, both Stroll and Magnussen were able to continue, though they were rewarded for their efforts with time penalties.

Alonso charges up again, Zhou gets mark of honor

The race restarted again on lap 31, meaning that at this point a third of the race had been spent behind the Safety Car. Norris now found himself in second to the surprise of everyone, himself very much included. The Briton had apparently bet his engineer whether or not they would be faster than Ferrari, and Norris had bet against his own team. Alonso continued his slide downward, having pitted for soft tyres. They lasted longer than anticipated, but couldn’t bring him any higher up than 6th either. Given that they couldn’t make it to the end of the race, Alonso came in twelve laps before the end for a final pitstop.