Red Bull continues their Bahrain GP-winning pace with an absolutely dominating performance at the second race of the 2024 season.
Bar a couple of laps during the safety car period triggered by Stroll’s crash early on, Max Verstappen lead the vast majority of the laps in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to claim his 56th overall win. This is also his 100th podium.
The defending world champion qualified on pole, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc seperating the two Red Bulls. In the superior car, Perez managed to pass the Monégasque on the second lap.
It was clear from the get go that the Ferraris were quicker than the cars immediately around them, but the Italian team still lacked pace when compared to the Red Bulls. Leclerc drove a fairly lonely race overall, finishing P3 overall. Debutant Bearman, substituting an unwell Carlos Sainz, brought the sister car home in P7, after losing time behind Hulkenburg in the early stages of the race.
The McLarens, Aston Martins and Mercedes cars were fairly evenly matched all things considered. Each car was strong in a different sector, which made for fairly entertaining racing all race long. Stroll’s brush with the wall on lap 6 sent his AMR24 into the barrier, triggering a safety car that threw all strategy calculations out of the window for most teams.
The entire field stopped, with the exception of Norris, Hamilton, Hulkenburg and Zhou, all perhaps waiting for either another safety car, or to maximise the tyre offset at the end of the race.
And fair play to the quartet, as they all managed to keep their old mediums alive whilst fighting with cars with fresher hard compound tyres. Haas employed some tactical team play, with Magnussen tasked to hold up those behind him. This would allow Hulkenburg to build a gap to the chasing pack, and pit for new tyres without losing positions.
This ruined the race for the Williams and the RBs behind the Haas cars, as they were unable to exploit their true pace. In his fights with the drivers around him, Magnussen netted two 10 second penalties for driving standards.
Stake opted to keep Zhou out for as long as they could in hopes of a late safety car. The Chinese driver was running in P11 at that point in time. However, a botched pitstop completely ruined his race, with him coming out last of the runners, and behind his Finnish teammate Bottas.
Verstappen wins his second race of the season, and extends his championship lead up front to 15 points. Perez, despite a 5 second penalty for an unsafe release, finished P2. Leclerc claims his first podium of the season in P3. The rest of the points scorers were the usual suspects, with Hulkenburg probably the biggest gainer from the Stroll crash. He sneaks into the points in P10.
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