The Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) won this Sunday Australian Grand Prixthe third of the Formula One World Cupwhich was played this Sunday at the circuit Melbourne’s Albert Parkwhere he signed, just two weeks after having undergone emergency surgery for appendicitis, an epic victory: the third of his career in the premier category.
Sainz, 29, brilliantly won a race that his teammate, the Monegasque Charles Leclerc -who set the fastest lap-, finished second; and English Lando Norris (McLaren) third. The Dutch Max Verstappen (Red Bull), which continues to lead the World Championship, abandoned, due to a brake failure, after the fifth of the 58 laps that were given this Sunday on the Australian track; in which the other Spaniard, the Asturian double world champion Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) finished sixth, one place behind the Mexican Sergio Perez (Red Bull); but he ended up losing two when he was penalized with 20 seconds for an irregular action in the Englishman’s accident George Russell (Mercedes).
“Life can be a real roller coaster, but it is wonderful,” exclaimed the talented driver from Madrid as soon as he got out of the car and before playing the Spanish anthem in Australia. Summarizing his personal situation perfectly. In a season that began – after Ferrari announced that next year it will dispense with his services – with a great third place in Bahrain, a week before suffering the hard setback of appendicitis that also occurred just before the Longest trip of the year.
With enormous resilience and brimming with mastery acquired after constant learning over the years. In this way, an outstanding Sainz solved his problems in ‘Down Under’, who, although he took advantage of Verstappen’s retirement – the first since the 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, in Imola (Italy) – had already overtaken the Dutch super-predator on track. And, with great pace in the race, he hinted that this Sunday he would have opted for victory in any of the cases.
After I did it Red Bull In the first two races – which Verstappen had won, ahead of ‘Checo’ – it was Sainz who led this time a double of Ferrari. The most successful team in the history of F1, which will surely regret having dispensed with the son of the double Spanish world rally champion – and quadruple winner of the Dakar Rally – to offer its wheel in 2024 to the seven-time crowned Englishman. Lewis Hamilton -retired this Sunday-, who will arrive in Maranello at 40 years old.
Leclerc joined the Ferrari party with the fastest lap in the race and is now second in the World Championship, four points behind the 51 with which ‘Mad Max’ leads. With one advantage over ‘Checo’ and seven over Carlos, who, with one less test, occupies fourth place in the competition.
Sainz, who debuted in F1 in 2015, aboard a Toro Rosso – later converted into Alpha Tauri and now Visa Cash App RB – obtained his third victory in the premier category. His first victory in the honorable division of motorsport had been achieved two years ago in Silverstone (England), home of the British Grand Prix: a legendary track that hosted, in 1950, the first race in the history of the race. F1.
Last season, the talented driver from Madrid was the only one to break the tyrannical dominance of Red Bull, scoring the only one of the 22 victories that the Austrian team did not score during 2023. He did it on the night of Marina Bay when he won the Singapore Grand Prix. And this Sunday, by triumphing in Melbourne, he raised his list of podium finishes in the premier category to twenty; the last of them, in the first race of the year, who had finished third in Bahrain on the first Saturday of this month.
His victory is Spain’s thirty-fifth in F1; category in which the other 32 were achieved by the incombustible Alonso, in a second youth at the age of 42.
Verstappen had signed his thirty-fifth pole position in F1 on Saturday, the third in the first three tests of the year; and he faced the race from the first place on the grid, in a front row completed by Sainz, who had already shown himself heroic in a qualifying that finished second just two weeks after having undergone emergency surgery due to the aforementioned appendicitis.
‘Checo’ had been third in the main qualifying, but the stewards decided that he had bothered the German Nico Hulkenberg (Haas) -ninth this Sunday- during Q1; and they sanctioned him with the loss of three places on the grid, so he started sixth, from the third row and next to the Australian Oscar Piastri (McLaren)who finished the race in fourth position.
It was Norris who took the place on the grid initially reserved for the Mexican, starting from the second row, in which Leclerc accompanied him. Alonso started tenth, next to his teammate, the Canadian Lance Stroll -sixth at the end-, in the fifth row; behind Russell (Mercedes), who crashed right at the end; and from Japanese Yuki Tsunoda (RB), who took seventh place after the penalty from Oviedo. On a track with four DRS zones where a compromise had to be reached between high speed on the straight with the necessary grip in many of its 14 corners; and in which it was clear that the management of tire degradation – it was run with a softer range of compounds than last year, the softest of all – was going to be essential.
The American did not come out Logan Sargeantwho his team -without a third chassis in Melbourne- invited to give the Williams to the Thai on Saturday Alex Albon; that she had broken hers in free practice on Friday. and the chinese Guanyu Zhou (Kick Sauber) did it from the pit lane.
In a two-stop race that concluded with a virtual safety car, the vast majority chose to start with medium tires, except for Alonso, who chose the hard one; and Hamilton, who installed the soft one in his Mercedes. In a race that the seven-time world champion from Stevenage did not finish.
Tradition warned that some mishap was to be expected in Melbourne, even more so after the three red flags that had flown last year in Albert Park. But this time there were no accidents in the first corner and the start was clean.
Verstappen started well but did not open a gap initially and Carlos overtook him between turns 6 and 7 in the second of the 58 laps that were given to the circuit in the capital of Victoria.
Smoke was coming out of the right rear tire of ‘Mad Max’, so he stopped after the fifth lap. And he had to retire -because of a brake problem-; something that has not happened since the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, in Imola (Italy) in 2022.
That was the first ‘bombshell’ of a career that would end with Sainz’s explosion of joy.
Carlos began to push and Piastri stopped to put the pressure on, in order to try to undercut Leclerc, who did the same to avoid it. And after the fourteenth lap, Sainz was leading with almost seven seconds ahead of Norris, with ‘Checo’ in third position – 14 behind – and Alonso fourth, 17 behind.
Norris and the Mexican entered the pits on the next one, so at that moment, having completed the first third of the route, two Spaniards were leading the race; with Sainz riding 18 seconds ahead of Alonso.
The talented driver from Madrid entered the garages right after – to get tough – when Hamilton’s Mercedes stopped and a virtual safety car was declared. Which came in handy for the Asturian double world champion, who took advantage of it to install the medium.
Carlos pushed hard in 17th and, with the race rearranged, the two Ferraris were leading ahead of the McLarens, with Lando in fourth position, ahead of Alonso and ‘Checo’, who had accounted for Russell.
In the thirtieth, Sainz pushed hard and improved by six and a half seconds on his teammate and by nine on Norris; with Piastri riding fourth, ahead of Pérez, who had overtaken Fernando, ‘stuck’ like a limpet, very intelligently, to the Mexican’s DRS.
Leclerc made his second stop at 35; one before ‘Checo’ did it – who, like the Monegasque, put in the hard work again. Sainz carried out the same operation in lane 42, returning to the track with almost six seconds ahead of his teammate, announcing that only a true misfortune would prevent his victory.
Alonso did it one turn later and Russell did it with 12 laps to go: in which they played for sixth place, which fell to the Asturian’s side, after the Englishman had an accident in the sixth corner of the last lap of a race that ended with the ‘virtual safety car’. And not with the red flag that the Englishman demanded when he was still inside the cockpit, crossed in the middle of the track.
The stewards considered that Fernando carried out an irregular maneuver in the action that ended with the Englishman’s accident; He was penalized with 20 seconds and the Asturian double world champion (2005 and 2006) lost two places and finished eighth.
Despite the final wear of his tires, Sainz once again sang Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ with which he celebrates his great moments in F1. That, before receiving hugs and congratulations from his very excited father, the ‘Matador’; from his cousin and representative, ‘Caco’; and his girlfriend, Rebeca, present this weekend in Albert Park. Two hard weeks of uncertainty and long sessions with the physiotherapist and in the hyperbaric chamber were left behind.
Carlos, named ‘Pilot of the Day’, he even allowed himself to joke, recommending to the rest of the pilots “to remove their appendix”, something he equated to a guarantee of success. Before listening to the Marcha Real, the Spanish anthem, from the most important position on the final podium in Melbourne. In the very illustrious Albert Park. (I)
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