Max Verstappen won a chaotic Qatar Grand Prix after Lando Norris was punished with a 10s stop-go penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags.
Verstappen got a perfect launch despite starting from second place on the dirty side of the grid, pulling himself alongside polesitter George Russell into the first turn to take the lead.
Norris briefly threatened to beat both to first place by diving underneath them at the long right-hander, but the Briton thought better of trying to hang around Verstappen’s outside through Turn 2, slotting instead into second place. The Briton shadowed the Dutchman for almost the entire race but had his night undone when Alex Albon lost a mirror at the end of the front straight just before lap 30.
Race control attempted to cover the on-track debris with yellow flags, and Verstappen registered with his pit wall that Norris gained around 0.8s on the lead into the first corner, suggesting he had ignored the caution.
The issue eventually made its way to the stewards, who on lap 45 handed the McLaren driver a race-destroying 10s stop-and-go penalty that dropped him to the back of the pack.
A late dash hauled Norris back up to 10th with the bonus point for fastest lap, but it eliminated McLaren’s chance of claiming the constructors’ championship this weekend. It also slashed Norris’s hold on second in the drivers standings to just eight points ahead of Charles Leclerc.
With Norris out of the picture, Verstappen was unchallenged in winning his second race in three grands prix, leading every lap in a dominant performance for his first weekend as the newly crowned world champion.
“It was a very good race,” he said. “It’s been a while in the dry to be this competitive.
“Very proud of everyone within the team to turn it around within a day [since the sprint], so they definitely also deserve this victory.”
The result wasn’t enough to prevent Red Bull Racing from being eliminated from constructors championship contention, leaving the team fighting for second at best in the Abu Dhabi finale next weekend.
Charles Leclerc beat Oscar Piastri to second place in a battle that also swung on the tardy deployment of the safety car.
Piastri lost a place to Leclerc in the first turn, but the restart from a first-lap safety car — to collect a three-way first-corner clash between Nico Hulkenberg, Esteban Ocon and Franco Colapinto, the latter two of whom retired on the spot — got him back into what was then fourth place behind Russell.
The McLaren was quicker than the Mercedes through the Lusail International Circuit’s high-speed sweeps but not down the straight, where this year’s shortened DRS zone made overtaking difficult among the equally matched front-runners.
It frustrated the Australian, whose car snapped off track several times at the final corner in dogged pursuit of Mercedes until lap 23, when Russell was hauled into pit lane for his sole tire change. It was a disastrous stop, with a stuck rear-right wheel holding him in his box for a massive 7s. He joined the race behind midfield runners Kevin Magnussen, Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso.
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McLaren opted against responding immediately. Despite Piastri’s pressure, the Australian’s tires were still in good condition, and with clear air he was faster than the fresh-tired Russell buried in the pack, who was complaining of understeer on his hard rubber. What should have been an easy gain was undone by an unfortunately timed pit stop on lap 34, when Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz both reported front-left punctures from the debris on the main straight.
Having attempted to mask the debris with a yellow flag, race control finally called for a safety car on lap 35 to clear the circuit, allowing every driver yet to pit to change tires cheaply. It shuffled Leclerc back ahead of Piastri, and the Ferrari driver was able to hold onto the unlikely result ahead of the McLaren.
Combined with Norris’s lowly score and Carlos Sainz finishing sixth, Ferrari improbably reduced its deficit to the constructors’ championship lead to 21 points with one round remaining.
“I’m really happy,” Leclerc said. “We knew it was going to be a very difficult weekend compared to the McLaren, but in the end we managed to take some points away from them.”
Piastri lamented that McLaren, which finished one-two in the sprint, was unable to capitalize on a circuit that strongly suited its car.
“Nice to stand up on the podium, but not quite the result we were looking for,” he said. “Hopefully we can be strong [in Abu Dhabi], but it’s going to take everything we’ve got to seal the deal [for the title].”
Russell finished fourth, his race rescued from its poor first stop by the succession of safety cars after the Hamilton and Sainz punctures. He lined up seventh after the field made their mandatory stops and gained two places at the restart — one for passing Gasly and another when Sergio Perez retired with what appeared to be a technical issue shortly before the race got back underway — but could make no progress towards rescuing a podium.
Russell was lucky to hold fourth after serving a 5s safety car infringement penalty, dropping him to just 2.6s ahead of Gasly, who took home a title-changing 10 points for Alpine, boosting the team back to sixth in the standings with a five-point advantage over Haas.
Sainz would have finished on the podium even with his puncture but for a slow 9s stop after his car was dropped off its front jack before his front-right tire had been changed, leaving him sixth ahead of Fernando Alonso, who battled to seventh for Aston Martin’s first score since September’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Zhou Guanyu scored his and Sauber’s first points of the season in eighth ahead of Kevin Magnussen and the penalized Norris.
Valtteri Bottas finished 11th ahead of Hamilton in a pitiful race. The seven-time champion was off the pace from the beginning before picking up his puncture and subsequently pleaded to have his car retired after picking up a drive-through penalty for speeding through pit lane during the safety car period, but he was told to continue, finishing 12th.
RB teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson had no pace on their way to 13th and 14th. Albon finished last after unsuccessfully gambling on soft tires for the safety car restart, leaving him plummeting down the order late in the race, which had already been compromised by a collision with Lance Stroll on the first lap, for which the Canadian was penalized and later retired.
