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Published on: Sunday, September 17, 2023 – 8:53 PM | Last updated: Sunday, September 17, 2023 – 8:53 PM
The Ferrari team ended the series of victories of the Red Bull team and its Dutch driver, Max Verstappen, in the Formula 1 World Championship, after its Spanish driver, Carlos Sainz, won the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday.
Red Bull won the last 15 races, including the 14 races held this season, thanks to the brilliance of its Dutch driver Max Verstappen, the world champion in the past two seasons, who won the last ten races.
Red Bull suffered during the Singapore race, which Verstappen started from 11th place, while his Mexican colleague Sergio Perez started from 13th place.
Verstappen finished the race in fifth place, while Perez finished eighth. Sainz put an end to the bad luck that befell Ferrari, after he was unable to win 25 consecutive races, especially since his colleague Charles Leclerc from Monaco won the Austrian Grand Prix in July 2022.
British McLaren driver Lando Norris, who also holds Belgian nationality, took second place, after beating the British Mercedes duo George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, with Hamilton in third place after Russell’s car was involved in an accident on the last lap.
Russell was the last driver, outside of the Red Bull team, to win a race to date, having won the Brazilian race ten months ago.
Sainz said after achieving the second victory in his career: “It is an amazing feeling, and an amazing weekend. I would like to thank everyone at Ferrari for making such a great effort to turn things around and achieve a win in this season after a difficult start.”
Despite the struggles this weekend, Verstappen remains on his way to winning the world title for the third time in a row, and has strengthened his lead in the drivers’ class standings, moving 151 clear of Perez, with seven races remaining until the end of the season. Sainz was able to maintain the lead at the start of the race, and Leclerc was able to pass Russell in the first turn to lead the previous Ferrari duo, while Verstappen began the task of catching up to the front, as he advanced three places to reach eighth place by the tenth lap.
Hamilton advanced to third place from fifth, before giving up his position to Russell, and after allowing Norris to advance, Hamilton fell to fifth place.
The safety car came into effect on lap 20 after American Logan Sargent, the Williams driver, collided with the wall and lost some parts of the car when he was trying to reach the pits.
All the cars entered the maintenance center except for the two Red Bull cars, which were using more durable solid tires, but they fell significantly when they entered the maintenance center a while later.
The safety car came into effect again after the car of Frenchman Esteban Ocon, the Alpine driver, stopped on the track.
The two Ferrari cars continued on the track while the Mercedes duo entered the pits one last time in an attempt to gain the lead, but this did not happen as Sainz and Norris maintained their positions, and Russell spoiled his race after he collided with the wall, and shortly after that Norris escaped the same fate.
Spaniard Fernando Alonso, an Aston Martin driver, became the first Formula 1 driver to complete 100,000 kilometers in races, but the two-time world champion finished the race in last place after receiving a five-second penalty due to some violations in entering the pits and driving errors.
His Belgian teammate of Canadian origin, Lance Stroll, did not race after he suffered a major accident in the trials. Leclerc finished the race in fourth place, while New Zealander Liam Lawson, who is participating in place of Australian Daniel Ricciardo with the AlphaTauri team, finished in ninth place.
Before the start of the race, a minute of silence was observed for the victims of the earthquake in Morocco and the floods in Libya, which claimed the lives of thousands of people.
2023-09-17 17:54:17
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