The championship had of course been decided a long time ago, but in the first round we still saw a razor-sharp duel between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc. Verstappen, who had started on pole, had to use his bag of tricks several times to hold off the Monegasque, but succeeded wonderfully. Lando Norris had meanwhile passed George Russell and Oscar Piastri to third place. Norris lost his place again to Russell a little later, when the McLaren pilot’s pit stop did not go as smoothly as it should have.© AFPMercedes clenched their fists after winning the position, as they battled with Ferrari for second place in the constructors’ championship. Halfway through the race, Mercedes virtually took second place, thanks to Russell’s third place and Lewis Hamilton’s ninth place. Leclerc was in second place at that time, but Sainz was only in sixteenth place, far outside the points. This contains inserted content from a social media network that wants to write or read cookies. You have not given permission for this.Click here to adjust your preferencesAfter the pit stops the weather turned in favor of Ferrari, which had virtually 1 point more than Mercedes. Moments later there was another turnaround, when Hamilton passed Sainz to ninth place. Sainz also had to come in for new rubber, which really didn’t look good for Ferrari.
The tension had disappeared before the victory. Verstappen easily kept Leclerc behind and was on his way to his nineteenth victory of the season. There was also less good news in the Red Bull team, as Sergio Pérez abruptly crashed into Norris and crashed into the Brit. To the dismay of the Mexican himself, he received a five-second time penalty, which was good news for Mercedes. Pérez had now passed Russell, but had to pull away from Russell by five seconds to take third place from the Briton, which Ferrari needed to still take second place in the constructors’ championship. Pérez even passed Leclerc, but his penalty time dropped him to fourth place. So party at Red Bull and Mercedes: it was once different in Abu Dhabi. This contains inserted content from a social media network that wants to write or read cookies. You have not given permission for this.Click here to adjust your preferences© Pool via REUTERSAfter the race, Verstappen presented the well-known donuts — © Pool via REUTERS
Rash:
- Max Verstappen
- Charles Leclerc
- George Russell
- Sergio Pérez
- Lando Norris
- Oscar Piastri
- Fernando Alonso
- Yuki Tsunoda
- Lewis Hamilton
- Lance Stroll
- Daniel Ricciardo
- Esteban Ocon
- Pierre Gasly
- Alex Albon
- Nico Hülkenberg
- Logan Sargeant
- Zhou Guanyu
- Carlos Sainz
- Valtteri Bottas
- Kevin Magnussen
Final championship standings
- Max Verstappen 575 points
- Sergio Pérez 285 points
- Lewis Hamilton 234 points
- Fernando Alonso 206 points
- Charles Leclerc 206 points
- Lando Norris 205 score
- Carlos Sainz 200 points
- George Russell 175 points
- Oscar Piastri 97 points
- Lance Stroll 74 points
- Pierre Gasly 62 points
- Esteban Ocon 58 points
- Alex Albon 27 points
- Yuki Tsunoda 17 punten
- Valtteri Bottas 10 points
- Nico Hulkenberg 9 points
- Daniel Ricciado 6 points
- Zhou Guanyu 6 punten
- Kevin Magnussen 3 points
- Liam Lawson 2 points
- Logan Sargeant 1 punt
- Nick de Vries 0 points