Carlos Sainz's astonishing, brilliant and perfectly executed race win, how did it come about?
The third race of the 2024 Formula 1 season produced an unexpected winner, Carlos Sainz. Since the first practice session, Red Bull and Max Verstappen looked, as usual, incredibly competitive and quite comfortably ahead of the rest of the pack; although Ferrari seemed to have brought with them an car; faster than the rest of the field, to the streets of Melbourne.
During qualifying, Verstappen secured Pole Position by around 3 tenths of a second.
credit : bhat.tech (Instagram)
Verstappen amazingly, went 28km/h faster than Sainz in turn 22, which is where Verstappen gained most of his time. Up until turn 10, Carlos was more or less matching Max Verstappen in laptime. Carlos was around 0.350 seconds when exiting turn 10.
At the start the race, the grid got away well, with Verstappen leading the pack. 4 laps later, Max Verstappen's rear right brake started smoking, causing him to have to return to the pits and retire the car; ending his 43 race-completing streak. Expectedly, the Dutchman wasn't too pleased with the incident.
For the most part; after the inchident, Carlos's didn't face much competition. The next major incident was the failure of Lewis Hamilton's engine, marking his worst ever start to the season, as he now stands 10th in the championship, with just 8 points to his name.
It definitely wasn't sunshine and rainbows for the German team, as on the last lap, while chasing Alonso for sixth place, caught out by the Spaniard's "erratic" driving, George Russell found himself into the barriers.
Credit: RacingNews365
The incident resulted in Alonso getting hit with a 20-second time penalty, causing him to drop behind Yuki Tsunoda, to 8th place.
Other than the major headlines of the weekend; Sainz winning, Sainz forgetting to sing smooth operator and Max, Lewis and George crashing, some other drivers secured a good result -
-Yuki Tsunoda managed to finish 7th, scoring him and RB 6 points for their championship campaign.
-Both Haas drivers finished 9th (Hulkenburg) and 10th (Kevin Magnussen), scoring the team 3 championship points.
Daniel Ricciardo was one of the main disappointments of the race, finishing (compared to his teammate), a lowly 12th, failing to score points in every race of the 2024 season
Credit: Formula1.com
In terms of the standings after the Australian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen leads by 4 points over Charles Leclerc.
Credit: BBC Sport
After a long few years, Max Verstappen isn't leading the pack (in terms of driver standings) by a large margin.
The 4th race of the season, Suzuka, in Japan is a happy hunting ground for Max, leading most to think that Max would dominate the race, unless of course Ferrari and either of it's drivers put up a challenge.
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