This is a world champion response! The day after losing his pole position, Max Verstappen took his revenge on the track. The Dutchman, asked to move back one place on the grid, did not take long to get into action. A turn to be completely precise.
With a very good reaction to the lights going out, the Red Bull driver immediately went up to George Russell, whom he managed to overtake at the exit of the first corner. The four-time world champion then had to elbow his way against Lando Norris who wanted to take advantage, but he defended his position perfectly. From then on, Max Verstappen seemed to be heading towards a relatively calm Grand Prix. His RB20 having suddenly found pace, he managed to push Lando Norris back almost 2 seconds. The positions seemed fixed but a carbon element from Alex Albon's Williams turned everything upside down.
By unintentionally driving over it, Valtteri Bottas put a lot of debris on the track which caused some punctures like those of Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz. After a delay, the race direction ended up sending the Safety Car, bringing together the entire peloton on the 35th lap.
Thus, Max Verstappen had to redo all the work and almost lost everything since he slightly missed his restart on the 40th lap. Lando Norris tried to attack him but the Dutchman once again proved intractable before the safety car returned to the track immediately after the mishaps of Sergio Pérez and Nico Hülkenberg.
Forced to once again restart the pack, the Red Bill driver did not miss out and ended up taking shelter for good when Lando Norris received a 10-second Stop & Go penalty on the 44th lap for failure to respect yellow flags. Falling last, the Englishman managed to climb back into the points, finishing 10th.
In front Max Verstappen flew to his 9th victory of the season ahead of Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri.
The new big move from Gasly and Alpine
All these racing events also favored Pierre Gasly and Alpine. By taking advantage of the two Safety Cars and everyone's problems, the Norman was able to move up to 5th place. In a final sprint of around ten laps, he put up a very good defense against Carlos Sainz. Despite the performance gap between his car and the Ferrari, the Frenchman managed to resist to bring 10 precious points to his team.
Valuable because these 10 points allow Alpine to return to 6th among the Manufacturers ahead of Haas and Racing Bulls with one Grand Prix remaining.
Penalized twice (false start and speeding in the pit lane) and victim of a puncture, Lewis Hamilton somehow managed to hold on to 12th place.
Note the first points of the season for Sauber thanks to the 8th place of Guanyu Zhou, elected driver of the day by the community.
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