Max Verstappen is so excited that this Sunday he even won the title celebration rally, which he won on Saturday at the Losail circuit, in a sprint test that didn’t even have to end because Checo Pérez left the track halfway had. It would have been logical for the Dutchman to be weakened by the hangover, a trend seen with football teams singing their praises before the final day of the match. What is happening is that Verstappen is less interested in the ball than in records, and this season he has already left one or two for history. A day after crossing the finish line in second place in the short race, the Red Bull driver claimed his 14th victory on a track that will bear his name, not anyone else’s. With this number, he is just one win away from the record he set himself last year.
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While the crown was already on its way to Milton Keynes, where the headquarters of the Red Buffalo squad is located, the runner born in Hasselt (Belgium) followed exactly the protocol imposed before the start by Pirelli, the championship’s tire supplier, the one Exceeding 18 banned consecutive laps for each set of tires, with an impromptu measure being taken to prevent the compounds from falling apart.
With the World Championship already decided, Mad Max limited himself to doing his part and the superiority of his car did the rest, in a Grand Prix that threatened to become soporific but that had everything. Until a failure before the start, which unfortunately for Ferrari was that of Carlos Sainz, which was due to a defect in the fuel system that the Scuderia recognized when it was too late to repair it in time. Without the Spaniard on track, Mercedes missed a good chance to move into second place in the constructors’ statistics when Lewis Hamilton and George Russell neutralized each other in the first corner. Without the two Silver Arrows – the first was abandoned and the second came back onto the track at the end of the field – McLaren continued the trend of recent dates and confirmed its role as a second force. Oscar Piastri, winner of the sprint, ended his best weekend in Formula 1 with second place, just ahead of Lando Norris, who crossed the finish line in third place and gave the Woking structure (Great Britain) its second double podium of 2023. Fernando Alonso finished sixth, burned by the sweltering heat that took out more than one driver in Doha. The freshest of all was Verstappen, who, in addition to pole and victory, also had room for the fastest lap.
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