Max Verstappen suffers second retirement in three races: F1 race analysis

By Malhaar Khaladkar

Charles Leclerc took his and Ferrari’s second victory of the season as Red Bull’s Sergio Perez finished P2 after his teammate Max Verstappen retired midway through the race, second such retirement in three races. Mercedes new boy George Russell achieved his first podium for the German team by finishing P3.

New Delhi, 12^th April 2022: Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen shared the front row again after the Bahrain grand prix with Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez as the rear gunner for the Dutchman. After an absence of two seasons, the Australian grand prix got underway with everyone getting away fairly cleanly.

Both Mercedes gained positions as Lewis Hamilton dove down inside of Perez to run in P3. Meanwhile, teammate George Russell went past Lando Norris’ McLaren. Sainz who had had a lowly qualifying on Saturday, starting the race in P9, chose the hard tyres whereas the majority of the grid went with medium tyres. The Spaniard suffered a slow start, dropping to P14 by lap 2. On lap 2, he tried to get past Zhou Guanyu at the fast turn 9 chicane. As a result he went off track, spun and beached his car into the gravel, marking his first retirement of the season. A safety car was called out.

As the safety car was called in on lap 7, Perez was right on the gearbox of Hamilton. By Lap 10, using the Red Bull’s superior pace he the Mexican was able to get past the 7-time world champion to run in P3. Behind, Russell was running in P5 followed by Norris and teammate Daniel Ricciardo in P6 and P7 respectively.

Both Red Bull cars struggled on the mediums with tyre graining as Verstappen fell away from Leclerc and Hamilton closed up, almost within a second of Perez. Verstappen was called into the pits for hard tyres on lap 18 with Perez doing the same on lap 20. Leclerc and Hamilton pitted on lap 22, for hard tyres as well. While Leclerc emerged in a comfortable lead, Hamilton emerged just under a second ahead of Perez on colder tyres. Perez made full use of the situation in getting past Hamilton for the second time.

The situation could not have been worse for Hamilton as a safety car was called out just after Perez went past, this time due to Sebastian Vettel spinning his Aston Martin into a barrier. This allowed Russell to pit under the safety car and emerge in P3, ahead of Perez and Hamilton.

The racing resumed on lap 27 with everyone on hard tyres, drivers like Fernando Alonso, Kevin Magnussen and Alex Albon were yet to pit, running in the top 10. Leclerc had a shaky start as Verstappen drew alongside but the Ferrari driver managed to hold on in the lead. Meanwhile, Perez attempted to get past Russell for P3 which he succeeded on lap 36. Russell tried to defend but had no answer for the Red Bull’s pace. Ahead Leclerc was leading by 5s over Verstappen with both of them trading fastest laps in the process.

Gremlins struck Verstappen as he pulled over on lap 39 with smoke billowing from his RB18. This was his second DNF in three races and his championship hopes took a deeper dent. This allowed Leclerc to cruise to victory and take home an additional point for the fastest lap.

Leclerc won his second race of the season as Perez gave achieved another podium for Red Bull while Russell bagged his first podium for Mercedes in P3. Hamilton was unfortunate with the timing of the safety car so had to settle for P4. McLaren duo of Norris and Ricciardo finished in P5 and P6 respectively. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon finished in P7 ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas in P8 and AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly in P9. Alex Albon put in a mammoth 57 lap (out of 58 laps) stint on the hard tyresto get first point of the season for Williams.

Rookie Zhou Guanyu just missed out on points ahead of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll in P12, who finished in points position but lost it due to a 5-second time penalty given to him for weaving on the straights. Both Haas cars finished out of the points, Mick Schumacher in P13 and Magnussen in P14. Yuki Tsunoda could only manage P15 for AlphaTauri, with Williams’ Nicholas Latifi finishing in P16. Alonso was the last of the finishers in P17. Verstappen, Vettel and Sainz were the three cars unable to finish the race.

Ferrari looked dominant in Australia, especially when it came to race pace. Even though they suffered more porpoising compared to the first two rounds, Red Bull could not match their pace. Had Sainz not had the problems suffered in qualifying he might have been second behind Leclerc in the world championship. Red Bull lacked pace, even to the Mercedes at certain points in the race. Majority of the blame lies with the set-up direction they chose. They opted to protect rear tyres compared to the front. As a result the front tyres suffered graining and the car lacked overall pace. Compounded with Verstappen’s DNF they have a steep mountain to climb if they want to be back in the championship battle. Mercedes struggled in qualifying but made a positive improvement in race pace. They were outqualified by McLaren and should have been by Alpine as well had Alonso not crashed in Q3. Race pace wise it was positive as once tyres phased in they had similar pace to the Red Bull cars.

McLaren had their best race weekend of the season so far, finishing best of the rest and entering Q3 with both cars. For the first time it looked McLaren had made progress with their car. Though, both drivers admitted that their car is “very track dependent” so repeat of such performances will be difficult. Alpine had a weekend of ‘what ifs’. Alonso had a great Q3 lap, almost challenging pole position before hydraulics failure resulted in a crash. According to the Spaniard Alpine were faster than Mercedes on race pace too, but safety cars ruined the strategy. They had a silver lining as Ocon managed to finish P7. Alfa Romeo showed impressive race pace once again as Bottas managed P8 while teammate Zhou just finished on the cusp of points. AlphaTauri managed to score points with Gasly but lacked the pace to match the Alpine and McLaren cars, with both cars unable to make it to Q3.

Williams did not have the qualifying or the race pace to challenge for points, but Albon managed to pull off a crazy strategy which resulted in P10. Haas struggled to covert their early season form into pace in Australia. They struggled for both qualifying and race pace. The team blamed it more on their setup issue rather than a natural pace deficit. It remains to be seen if they will recover back to form in Imola. Aston Martin had a dismal weekend with their cars crashing four times and achieving no points. Their car has balance issues which is making it difficult for them to extract the pace.

Saturday Qualifying results were:

Note – Albon penalised three grid places for causing a collision at the previous round; disqualified from qualifying for a fuel infringement – races at stewards’ discretion. Stroll penalised three grid places for causing a collision during qualifying; failed to set a time within the Q1 107% requirement – races at stewards’ discretion.