Verstappen in league of his own after F1 wins at Belgian, Dutch and Italian GPs

🇧🇪 Belgian Grand Prix
🇱🇺 Dutch Grand Prix
🇮🇹 Italian Grand Prix

After the summer break, the title campaigns of Max Verstappen and Red Bull really kicked on, to the extent that the driver said at Monza, “We don’t need wins any more, but we still want them.” That was just before he scored his fifth straight victory. You may recall that he won the last race before the break, in Hungary, from 10th. Well, he won at Spa from 14th, at Zandvoort from pole and at Monza from seventh. It didn’t seem to matter much where he started from, he would dominate regardless. At Spa and Monza he was taking power unit penalties, the latter a voluntary one just so that he had more engines in the pool for the remainder of the season. Around the tighter confines of Zandvoort and a home crowd to please, such penalties might have been more debilitating, but who knows? He left Monza 136 points clear of his mathematical rival Charles Leclerc with still six rounds to go.

At Spa right from the moment practice began he was in breathtaking form, a great driver at the height of his powers expressing himself on one of the world’s greatest tracks in a car which has been steadily honed to his preferences. Through the high-speed valley of the middle section, Pouhon in particular, the car’s neutral balance seemed incompatible with the speed of the corners. There was no stabilising understeer to lean upon, just straight up to the limit – jumping onto the high-wire as Mark Donohue would have described it – and not one single further input, lest it throw him off the road. He made it look child’s play. It was like this from the first lap of practice and stayed that way through the weekend. Yes, it was a super-fast car around Spa, but it required a very great driver to exploit it fully.

Given the multiple PU penalties he was taking, and the similar penalties for his closest title rival Charles Leclerc, all he set out to do in Q3 was be faster than the Ferrari, so he did only one run, and probably not even a flat-out one. That was still the fastest time in qualifying by the margin of 0.65sec over the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, who used a tow from Leclerc and huge commitment to be flat through Pouhon just to be within that margin of Verstappen’s almost casual Q3 lap. After everyone’s penalties were applied, Verstappen would start from 14th, Sainz from pole and Leclerc from 16th.

Verstappen was leading by lap 18, with two-thirds of the race still to go… He pulled far away from Sainz. Sergio Pérez in the other Red Bull would later also find a way by the Spaniard, who held onto third from the Mercedes of George Russell. Hamilton in the other Merc made a cack-handed attempt at passing Fernando Alonso’s Alpine for second on the opening lap into Les Combes and went airborne, pulling off shortly after. Alonso lost places but hung on to take sixth across the line, behind Leclerc, who had been forced to pit on the second lap to have a visor rip-off – which had almost certainly belonged to Verstappen – removed from his brake duct.

Late in the race, Ferrari had brought Leclerc in for soft tyres on which to try for the fastest lap point. It lost him a place to Alonso, which he clawed back before the end but a 5sec penalty for speeding in the pitlane put him behind the Alpine in the official results. But the significant thing was that with near-empty tanks and a set of fresh soft tyres, Leclerc’s lap fell 0.6sec short of that set by Verstappen when on medium tyres and still loaded with almost 30kg of fuel. Which implies Verstappen’s actual advantage around Spa, at around 1.5sec, was far greater than shown in qualifying… It was an astonishing performance all-round and the perfect preparation for his home race at Zandvoort.

The wildly enthusiastic Dutch fans were in for a treat from their man

Ironically, the Red Bull wasn’t at its best around the Dutch track. But that was still better than anyone else… just. He secured pole position in front of his army of fans but he might not have if Leclerc had not over-committed into the quick Turn 10 and ran out wide. But it wasn’t Leclerc who proved to be his biggest challenge in the race.

Around the high-downforce-rewarding layout of Zandvoort and at the low ride heights it makes possible, the Mercedes was suddenly quite competitive, maybe only a couple of tenths adrift of Verstappen. With Ferrari struggling with tyre temperatures on race day, it was Mercedes which emerged as Verstappen’s competition. Hamilton and Russell were put on one-stop strategies, with the other front runners opting to two-stop. Such was the Mercedes’ combination of good race pace on the medium tyre and a long opening stint, Verstappen was set to come out from his second pitstop around 5sec behind Russell and 8sec behind Hamilton – with around 20 laps to go. The wildly enthusiastic Dutch fans were about to be treated to their man, on much faster tyres, chasing down and probably passing the Mercs. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Verstappen got his stop for free because of a fortuitously timed safety car for the broken-down AlphaTauri of Yuki Tsunoda.

With Verstappen still set to be in front, the Mercs were put onto fresh medium tyres on which to chase down Verstappen on his hard tyres. Hamilton made some inroads but they weren’t enough to have got him anywhere near the Red Bull by the end. But then that gap was suddenly wiped by another safety car – this time for Valtteri Bottas’s broken-down Alfa Romeo. With his comfortable gap gone, Red Bull did not want Verstappen taking the restart on old, hard-compound tyres and pitted him immediately for new softs, even though this entailed losing him the lead to Hamilton and second to Russell. A lap later, still under the safety car, everyone was instructed to drive through the pitlane as Bottas’s car was being removed at the end of the pit straight. Hamilton remained on his seven-lap-old medium tyres but Russell was brought in for new softs, bringing Verstappen back up to second. The hope that Hamilton could hold onto the lead while he brought his old tyres back up to temperature was a forlorn one, and Verstappen pounced instantly, helped by the fact that Hamilton had inadvertently chosen the wrong PU mode for the restart.

Hamilton was then also easy meat for Russell, who pounced for second, and Leclerc, who went past to snatch the final podium place and left Hamilton a dejected and angry fourth.

Monza was the third race in as many weekends and the perfect time to be taking any engine penalties, given that the track affords overtaking opportunities and that any penalties on five of the remaining six tracks would inevitably be far more difficult to recover from. That was the backdrop to nine of the 20 cars – including those of Verstappen, Sainz, Hamilton and Pérez – not taking up the grid positions for which they’d qualified after taking a wide range of extra PU components. Verstappen, having been shaded to fastest time by Leclerc, started seventh, Pérez (fourth-fastest in qualifying) 13th, Sainz (third-fastest) 18th and Hamilton (fifth-fastest) 19th. This put sixth-fastest Russell on the front row alongside the genuine pole-sitter Leclerc. Filling out the second row were the McLarens of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo which had qualified seventh and eighth respectively, over 1.5sec off pole.

But perhaps the most remarkable story of qualifying was that of grand prix debutant Nyck de Vries, the Formula E and former F2 champion. He was a late-notice stand-in on Saturday at Williams after Alex Albon had suffered appendicitis. He had driven for Williams in FP1 earlier in the season and at this event had done FP1 for Aston Martin, meaning he was better prepared than he might have been. Regardless, it was a mighty impressive effort to instantly out-pace team mate Nicholas Latifi and graduate the car through to Q2, where he qualified 13th fastest. After all the penalties had been taken, he was promoted to an all-Dutch fourth row alongside Verstappen.

Leclerc led Russell away but Verstappen was up to third place by the end of the opening lap – and past Russell by lap five. Leclerc pushed on but he was limited in how much he could do this, as the Ferrari’s front-left tyre was beginning to grain. This had been evident in the long-runs of practice on Friday, as Ferrari ran with a traditionally skinny Monza wing arrangement, in contrast to Red Bull, which arrived here with a much bigger rear wing flap, taking full advantage of the car’s superior aero efficiency.

In a Red Bull as fast down the straights, with lower tyre deg, and quicker through the Lesmos and Ascari, it seemed only a matter of time before Verstappen put a move on the race-leading Ferrari. But as the race came under a VSC for Sebastian Vettel’s broken-down Aston Martin on lap 12, Ferrari took the opportunity for a smaller time-loss pitstop to bring Leclerc in for his fresh tyres, with the intention being then to run to the end. Verstappen was always going to do the opposite of whatever Leclerc did – and so assumed the lead. He would stay there for another 13 laps before stopping and rejoining 10sec behind Leclerc but on much faster tyres. He looked a nailed-on certainty to be up with and past the Ferrari within the remaining 28 laps.

It took him only seven laps to be within Leclerc’s DRS range and so with nothing to lose – and a big gap over third place Russell – Ferrari brought Leclerc in for a second stop, thus avoiding the humiliation of being overtaken on track in front of the tifosi. It was also an entirely logical move. On a set of soft tyres, he would be able to close the gap on Verstappen without risking the second position he was destined to have taken anyway. He came back out 20sec behind and lapping only slightly quicker. He wasn’t going to be close by the end.

It was going to be close for third between Russell and the advancing Sainz, who had made aggressive and immediate progress from the back. He was catching fast on newer tyres and Russell was sure to be on the defensive by the end. There was a similar battle brewing for fifth place between Hamilton and Pérez. The latter had made a big lock-up in the early laps while trying to fend off Sainz and the resultant flat-spot, plus some debris in his brake ducts, meant Red Bull had to pit him as early as lap seven. On his ancient hard tyres he was being caught fast by Hamilton – whose first stint was 33 laps long – and was sure to be overtaken. So Red Bull brought him in for a second stop. On fresh soft tyres, the roles were reversed as ‘Checo’ then closed down on the older-tyred Mercedes.

That’s how it was all poised when the safety car came out. Ricciardo’s McLaren had stopped between the two Lesmos and was stuck in gear. Verstappen and Leclerc were well past the pit entry when the safety car was scrambled and so Russell was the first one in for new tyres. Which meant he was the first to reach the safety car. The priority was to compress the pack as quickly as possible so the track workers had a bigger time gap between passing cars. The safety car did not wave Russell on but rather waited until the rest of the pack caught up. This put Verstappen and Leclerc – after they had stopped for fresh soft tyres – at the back of the pack. As it became clear the McLaren couldn’t be moved manually and would require a crane, the laps were ticking down. To have got the pack in the correct order and to do the required extra lap behind the safety car would need more laps than were left.

So the race ended behind the safety car, much to the derision of the fans who were hoping to see Leclerc launch a late attack on Verstappen. So the third position of Russell over Sainz was secured, as was that of Hamilton over Pérez for fifth. Best of the rest was Norris in seventh. Alonso’s retirement with a water leak promoted Gasly to eighth and de Vries to ninth, having impressively fended off Zhou Guanyou’s Alfa. Leaving Monza with that 136-point lead, the tifosi’s booing of Verstappen at the podium ceremony probably had little effect on his state of mind.