Chaos start in Brazil
“Magic” Max Verstappen continues to make Formula 1 boring
November 5th, 2023, 8:14 p.m
The first start fails. After an accident, things don’t start again until 30 minutes later. Ferrari driver Leclerc is no longer there either. He doesn’t make it through the warm-up lap. At the front, world champion Verstappen is doing his laps. Norris ends up in second place in the McLaren. Perez gives away third place.
When victories become a given, the celebration becomes a little more subdued. “Thank you guys, that was great,” said world champion Max Verstappen after his victory in Brazil, the 17th in the 20th race of the season of the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship. Behind him, his equally stubborn and hopeless pursuer Lando Norris took second place in the McLaren the two-time world champion Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin, who won a tough millimeter duel against Sergio Perez in the last lap.
“Both starts were very good, after that the whole race was about managing the tires,” said Verstappen: “It was a very good race.” But he wasn’t bored: “You always have to be concentrated and you can’t allow yourself to be careless.” Lando Norris found both starts “difficult, but it still couldn’t have gone better.” Verstappen simply has “an answer to everything, which is kind of a shame.”
At the first start the field only made it to the first corner before the safety car was deployed. A collision between Alexander Albon in the Williams and Kevin Magnussen in the Haas, in which his teammate Nico Hülkenberg was also involved, forced the red flag. It wasn’t until half an hour later that the restart took place, which had little new to offer: Verstappen took away from the field at the front on both the first and second attempts.
The course of the race is told quickly
Charles Leclerc, second in qualifying, no longer had anything to do with what was happening. During the warm-up lap, the hydraulics on his Ferrari failed, Leclerc could no longer steer and ended up in the barriers. “Why do I always have such bad luck?” said the Monegasque with pure desperation in his voice. His teammate Carlos Sainz wasn’t really happy with his company car either. “Can we throw this clutch away when we get back home,” he asked on the pit radio.
As is often the case this season, the course of the race is told quickly. Verstappen drove in front, pursued by the doggedly fighting Lando Norris in the McLaren. As soon as Norris got too close to him, Verstappen simply set a new fastest lap – his dominance crushed the competition and a little bit the fascination of Formula 1. There was nothing to gain for Nico Hülkenberg. The Emmerich native ended up in twelfth place after a difficult race for him, and even in his 201st Grand Prix the podium remained a long way off for him.
While Verstappen dominates Formula 1, as only Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton did before him, teams and drivers in Sao Paulo were thinking about the future of the sprint format. The main criticism is that qualifying for the Grand Prix takes place on Friday and there is only one 60-minute training session on the sprint weekends.
The proposals for renewal are fundamentally not that new. The focus is on a start to the sprint race with a reverse grid, i.e. the reverse order of the qualifying results – which has potential for danger given the difference in performance between the cars. Another possibility would be an individual time trial, but a valid idea for conducting one is not yet on the table.