For the second time this season, we have a Grand Prix winner that isn’t Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

And it may be the first time this season that a driver has beaten the Dutchman on pure pace. With some assistance from a well-timed safety car anyways.

At the start of the race, Perez tried to make an audacious lunge into T1 on multiple cars, with Sainz having to take evasive action to avoid a collision. This cost the Spaniard a couple of positions. So audacious was the move that the Mexican almost took out Verstappen too, narrowly missing his teammate’s RB20.

McLaren’s Piastri was the benefactor of the chaos, ending up in the top three very early on in the race. His teammate Norris was stuck behind Perez throughout the bulk of the opening phase.

For the first couple of laps, the Ferraris and the McLarens actually had the race pace to challenge the Red Bulls. Verstappen established a gap to P2, though it isn’t as large as you’d typically expect.

There were decent scraps all throughout the mid-field, which was then made even more exciting via a VSC. This was triggered by Verstappen, who went off at T15 and took out a bollard. His RB20 appeared undamaged initially, though it was revealed after the race that his floor actually took a fairly sizable hit. Keep this point in mind – it’d be important for the race story later on.

Just five laps later, a full safety car was triggered when Kevin Magnussen collided with Logan Sargeant. The Haas driver tried to make a move into the first sequence of corners, eventually making contact with the Williams. This sent the latter driver into the barriers at T3.

The safety car then ended up picking up the Red Bull of Verstappen instead of the race’s true leader Lando Norris. Norris was the big winner here, having a sizable lead, cheap pitstop and fresher rubber for the closing stages of the race.

Norris continued to pull away, building what would eventually be a not-insignificant 7.6 second gap to the Red Bull. Sainz and Piastri had close battles after the restart too, with the Spaniard accusing Piastri of being overly aggressive and pushing him off at one point. Further close racing ended up with the duo making contact, with Sainz being put more at fault for the contact.

With a broken front wing, the Australian had to stop again, relegating him to the back of the pack. He recovered well through a series of calculated moves to finish 13th. Verstappen and Leclerc joined Norris on the podium. Ocon also put on a noteworthy performance, scoring Alpine’s first points of the season after a decent scrap with Alonso.

The next race will be held on the 17th to 19th of May, at Imola.

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