Sebastian Vettel (with Aston Martin this year) had a bad start to the first race of the season as he was hit with a grid penalty for not giving attention to yellow flags during the qualifying session. As a result, he was demoted to start from the last position on the grid, after Nikita Mazepin (Haas F1).
For Sergio Perez, with Red Bull Racing this year, it was even worse as his car developed a problem on the formation lap, almost resulting in another formation lap being run. But he managed to restart the car and rushed back to the pits from where he started.
As the light went green for the first race of the season, Max Verstappen had a good start but Russian driver Mazepin, who had spun during qualifying, went into a spin and ended his race. The Safety Car (and Aston Martin Vantage) was deployed right away to lead the cars around for 3 laps while the Haas racing car was cleared.
When the Safety Car exited, Verstappen made a quick start to start extending his lead. Behind hi, Pierre Gasle and Mick Schumacher had some drama on Turn 6, while Vettel managed to move up 5 places but had some contact with Yuki Tsunoda. Debris on the track activated the Virtual Safety Car, which slowed things down for one lap.
At the 10th lap, Verstappen was being pursued by Lewis Hamilton who was about 1.5 seconds behind, with Valtteri Bottas 5 seconds further back.The Red Bull driver was having problems with his car, but he held a consistent pace and Hamilton just kept him in sight… waiting. The general order of the field was roughly what it had been on the grid at that point.
Just before the 20th lap, Verstappen came into the pits for a tyre change and Hamilton surged into the lead. When Verstappen rejoined, he was quite far down and had to work hard to get back up front again.
And what of Fernando Alonso, back in F1 again with the Alpine team? He was somewhere midfield, constantly dicing with his old rival, Vettel and also Carlos Sainz. SDergio Perex and even Kimi Raikkonen.
Two laps after the halfway point, Hamilton returned to the pits for another set of tyres, allowing Verstappen to take the lead. When he rejoined, he was in third. Bottas was then asked to come in, but his stop was delayed up to 10 seconds as the tyre removal was funbled.
Alonso’s race came to an end on lap 35 as brake issues forced him back to the pits where the car stayed. A rather disappointing return for the Spaniard who was twice World Champion.
On lap 40, Verstappen rushed into the pits to have tyres changed to hards and when he got back out, Hamilton was trying his best to stretch the lead, But calculations shows that the Dutchman could close in on the British driver within 10 laps.
As lap 45 started, Vettel locked his brakes at Turn 1 and bumped into Esteban Ocon, and both cars came to a stop for a short while. But then they managed to restart and continue, so the Safety Car was not called out.
With 10 laps remaining, Hamilton had a lead of just under 3 seconds from Verstappen, while Bottas was 16 second behind the Red Bull car. Tsunoda was in 10th place and if he could maintain his pace, he would get his first F1 point in his first ever race.
As the remaining laps counted down, all eyes were on Hamilton and Verstappen closing the gap. Hamilton had older tyres but as he had shown before, he could make sure that he would make it to the end – in the lead.
4 laps from the end, Verstappen finally got past into the lead as Hamilton went wide, partly due to his rear tyres starting to lose grip. However, the Red Bull driver slowed down inexplicably and Hamilton grabbed back the lead with 3 laps to go. By the time the 56th lap ended, the separation was under a second and it was Hamilton who took the first victory of the season. A fantastic duel to the end which hopefully will be seen in coming races.
