Formula 1 ®
MAX’ DNF A GIFT TO FORMULA 1 WITH SAINZ LEADING LECLERC FOR A FERRARI ONE TWO FINNISH. FERNANDO ALONSO PENALIZED IN GEORGE RUSSELL INCIDENT.
Carlos Sainz jr. was a welcome change after two crushing Max Verstappen victories in the opening races that had provided little hope for a competitive season.
Sainz and his team-mate Charles Leclerc, who completed Ferrari’s first one-two since the opening race of the 2022 season, were the fastest men on track from the first day of practice at Albert Park.
And while Verstappen took pole, the feeling among rivals before the grand prix was that he was for once not going to have it all his own way. “For Max, it will be the most uncertain race for some time,” a rival team boss said on Sunday morning.
That remark was a reference to the relative pace of the Ferrari and Red Bull, and particularly to Ferrari’s apparent advantage in tyre usage. But that never got a chance to play out – Verstappen lost the lead to Sainz midway around the second lap and was out just two laps later with his right rear brake on fire.
Sainz’s victory prevented Verstappen from matching the all-time record he set last year of 10 consecutive wins – a run that started after Sainz’s triumph in Singapore last September, when he became the only non-Red Bull driver to win a race in 2023.
More impressive even than that, though, was the fact that it came just 16 days after he had abdominal surgery following an appendicitis diagnosis that forced him to miss the last race in Saudi Arabia.
And as if that wasn’t enough, this was a man who went into the season knowing that Ferrari had decided he was surplus to requirements, following their decision to sign Lewis Hamilton for 2025.
As Sainz put it: “Life sometimes is crazy, you know? It’s not only the last two weeks. It’s the whole start to the year in general, how the year started with the news of the non-renewal.
“Then you get yourself fit. You get yourself ready for the start of the season, pushing flat out. And then you get to [the first race in] Bahrain. You do a good podium. You say, ‘OK, now the season is starting well and I can keep the momentum going.’ And suddenly, boom, you’re missing a race in Jeddah and the operation.
“Long days in bed, not knowing if I was going to be back in time. Obviously, a lot of unknowns.
“Am I going to be back fit? Am I going to be back feeling still good with the car? And then suddenly you come back and win.
“So, yes, life is a rollercoaster sometimes, but it can be really nice and good to you.” A win despite feeling ‘weird’
To go from an operation to a grand prix victory in such a short time is both remarkable and entirely typical of the sort of things F1 drivers do.
Sainz said he had done everything he could to recover quickly, including “going to hyperbaric chambers twice a day for one hour, taking an Indiba machine, that is an electromagnetic thing for the wounds”, altering his diet and more.
He had talked about feeling “weird” in the car following his operation. He had no pain, he said, but “everything in the inside just feels like it’s moving more than normal and you need some confidence to brace the core and the body as you used to do before”.
That meant a race distance was an unknown, but while the feeling persisted, he said, and he felt “very stiff” towards the end, it was “nothing that was slowing me down at all – I was confident with the car and pushing”.
MAX
It’s a shame as the car felt really good in the laps to the grid, but you cannot control these issues and these things happen.
“It is unfortunate about what happened today, but we can see so far in the data that as soon as the lights went off the right rear brake just stuck on and locked. It was basically like driving with the hand brake on so, of course, the temperature just kept on increasing and then I could see smoke appear as it had caught fire. This at the time was very confusing as the car was really weird to drive in some corners. At turn three, I braked and lost the rear end of the car; it felt weird on the rear axel, then on turn six and seven it snapped on me.
The Team will investigate and we will see if there are any answers but there are some things you can’t control. It’s a shame as the car felt really good in the laps to the grid, but you cannot control these issues and these things happen.
Of course, I am disappointed we didn’t finish the race as we had a good shot at winning and the car has been improving throughout the weekend. We knew a day like could come at some point so we need to be proud that we have had a great run with nine races in a row and we can come back stronger for Suzuka.”
Formula 2
Hadjar bounces back to win in Melbourne! It was redemption day for Isack Hadjar as he claimed his second Formula 2 victory, winning the Melbourne Feature Race for Campos Racing.
After losing the Sprint Race win to a post-race penalty, the Frenchman drove a measured race to the top step, beating Hitech Pulse-Eight’s Paul Aron and Rodin Motorsport driver Zane Maloney, who finished second and third respectively.
Dennis Hauger got the perfect start to lead Andrea Kimi Antonelli into Turn 1. Contact further
back in the pack between Zak O’Sullivan and Roman Stanek left the Sprint winner spinning and
put him last in the order. The ART Grand Prix driver was handed a 10-second time penalty for the incident.
Further around the first lap, Antonelli made a dive to the inside of the polesitter to secure P1 at
Turn 11, but the MP driver responded on the following tour to retake the lead at Turn 9 with
DRS.
A wide moment for Maloney out of Turn 12 allowed Kush Maini all the momentum he needed to take third and the Invicta Racing driver was up to second on Lap 6 after taking Antonelli before Turn 9 the following lap.
There was a brief virtual Safety Car on Lap 7 to recover Joshua Duerksen’s PHM AIX Racing car
following contact with O’Sullivan at Turn 13.
Racing resumed and Maini was on the move with his medium tyres in better shape than those
on supersofts. He took the lead from Hauger on Lap 9 with DRS before the Norwegian led
Antonelli and the first of the leaders in for mandatory stops, filtering back out just outside of the top 10. The polesitter’s day was over shortly afterwards though, as he crashed at Turn 6 to bring out the Virtual Safety Car on Lap 11.
Isack Hadjar made his mandatory stop before the VSC was deployed to come back out ahead of Antonelli on the road in 8th. The full Safety Car was then needed to recover Hauger’s car.
The Safety Car was withdrawn on Lap 15 and Maini led five other drivers that were yet to pit for
a mandatory stop. Hadjar, in seventh, the effective leader having completed his switch of
compound, with Antonelli trailing the Campos driver just behind.
Hadjar cleared the yet-to-stop Taylor Barnard for sixth to put a car between himself and his
closest rival. The Frenchman was on the move on the following lap, taking fifth from Enzo
Fittipaldi at Turn 9.
The Campos driver’s charge continued at the expense of Stanek on Lap 20, easing by the Trident driver with DRS on the back straight.
Antonelli finally cleared Barnard, but the pair lost out to Paul Aron, who forced his way through
at Turn 12 to take seventh position on the road ahead of the Italian.