![]() The race between the Red Bulls was enhanced by wheel-to-wheel battles throughout the field in front of a 90,766 capacity crowd. Alonso and Magnussen deliver for capacity crowd Fernando Alonso secured his fourth podium finish in five races at the start of the season ![]() He rejoined 1.6secs back, was 0.7secs adrift by the end of his out lap, right on his tail by the end of the next one, and then passed into Turn One. He reduced the gap to 15.3 seconds on lap 31 but that was as close as he got, and impressively Verstappen then began to inch further away to the point that he was just over 18 seconds in front when he finally made his pit stop on lap 45. Instead, Verstappen continued to lap strongly and Perez found it hard to close in. He should have found it relatively easy to reduce the gap significantly. Perez rejoined about 18 seconds behind Verstappen on tyres that were 20 laps fresher. Perez pitted to fit hard tyres on lap 19 and Verstappen's task was now to prevent his team-mate gaining back too much ground on his fresh hard tyres. ![]() Perez, struggling with the medium tyres, failed to make enough ground while Verstappen was fighting his way through the field and was only 3.3 seconds in front when Verstappen moved into second place by passing Alonso on lap 15. Red Bull chose hard tyres for Verstappen for the start of the race, while the top seven went for the mediums for the first stint, to give him the best chance to come back and win. The Mexican appeared a favourite for victory starting at the front with Verstappen down in ninth after making a mistake on his first qualifying lap and then losing a chance to make amends when Leclerc crashed. More than that, it was his most impressive victory so far this season and was delivered in a style that will hurt for Perez. Verstappen's victory made it three wins to two in his favour against Perez in this year dominated by Red Bull and extended his championship lead to 14 points. Verstappen strikes psychological blow in title race Sergio Perez had no answer to Max Verstappen's pace on fresh tyres after his Red Bull team-mate emerged right behind him after his pit stop Verstappen's statement win underlines superiority over Perez.He fought a long battle with Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, who drove an outstanding race, before finally getting past with 20 laps to go and taking seventh place behind Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes, which was on the same off-set strategy as Verstappen and passed Leclerc in the closing stages. Team-mate Charles Leclerc had a race to forget after crashing in qualifying and starting seventh. George Russell was a strong fourth for Mercedes while Ferrari had a dispiriting afternoon.Ĭarlos Sainz challenged Alonso in the first stint but earned a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane at his pit stop and then dropped away in the second stint to finish fifth. It really compromised our pace and Max had tremendous pace on the hard and we will analyse what went wrong today because we simply didn't have the pace."įernando Alonso continued his superb season for Aston Martin to take his fourth podium finish in five races with an outstanding performance of his own. "The medium we had initially was poor, more than expected. We had graining and initial pace wasn't good. "Yesterday was of course a bit of a setback but today we kept it calm, kept it clean and for sure winning a race from P9 is very satisfying." ![]() "I stayed out really long on the hard tyres and I think that's what made the difference and then a good little battle with Checo at the end. "I just had a clean race and picked the cars off one by one," said Verstappen. It was a humiliating defeat for Perez and raised serious questions about his claims to be able to challenge Verstappen for the title this year. Verstappen ran a long first stint on hard tyres, pitting 25 laps later than Perez, rejoining a second behind and passing for the lead a lap later. ![]()
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