#Red alert 1 units driver
AlphaTauri told Gasly to let the driver from their sister team by.
Within four laps Verstappen was past the pair of them. Verstappen briefly had a look at third but Fernando Alonso was in no mood to surrender than and edged the Red Bull wide while simultaneously teeing up Pierre Gasly for a fabulous pass around the outside of turn two. The imperative to clear the Bottas, also starting on medium tyres, was achieved within seconds of the lights going out as the Mercedes driver struggled to find purchase from his off-line starting position. Verstappen quickly recovered the second place he lostEven so, Verstappen made such a remarkable getaway from the fourth row of the grid he almost arrived on his rival’s tail at turn one. Just a week after Verstappen’s controversial off-track defence of his lead in Brazil, the prospect of a banzai lunge down the inside of Hamilton at Losail’s wide first corner was widely predicted until his penalty was announced just an hour and a half before the race began. While Verstappen’s penalty was inarguable, it robbed the race of another showdown between the title rivals. Here he crossed a line, and was formally warned by the stewards after FIA F1 race director Michael Masi took exception to him criticising a marshal. Horner was furious and made his feelings about the standard of stewarding clear in one of his television appearances for Sky, which have become so frequent he is in danger of being mistaken for the fourth member of their presenting team. Sainz, the only one of the three to realise after passing the flag that he needed to back off, avoided a penalty. This was a bonus of sorts for Mercedes: Now Bottas would also start in front of Verstappen. Hamilton resisted the soft-tyred starters around himThe Red Bull driver had passed double-waved yellow flags and was given a five-place penalty Bottas passed a single flag and was penalised three places. Verstappen, along with Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz Jnr, were investigated for failing to slow sufficiently for yellow flags at the end of Q3.Īdvert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free
#Red alert 1 units series
But that was because his fastest time in Q3 was deleted, in the latest in a series of controversies to rock the title fight. The record books will show Verstappen was 0.597s slower than Hamilton. In Brazil, Red Bull had been 0.438s away. Hamilton lapped 0.455 seconds faster than Verstappen as he beat his rival to pole position. Nonetheless, Red Bull insisted Mercedes’ straight line speeds had been trimmed.įor all that, there was little evidence of a diminution of Mercedes’ performance on-track. They threatened protests over Mercedes’ rear wings, then backed down after the FIA introduced a new test, albeit one which does not yet carry regulatory force, meaning no one risks exclusion for failing to comply. Gasly inherited Verstappen’s second place on the gridWhatever, Red Bull fought as hard off the track as they did on it. Was this the plan all along, and the slimmer wings were being worked on in practice for deployment at the upcoming tracks where they fear Mercedes will be harder to catch? By final practice Red Bull were still fretting over their bizarrely oscillating rear wings, which were eventually dropped in favour of their tried-and-trusted high downforce configuration. Verstappen hit by qualifying penaltyĪs the teams familiarised themselves with a layout designed for Moto GP bikes and tweaked for F1, it rapidly dawn on Red Bull that their rivals had their W12 dialled in superbly for the track. Team principal Toto Wolff went further, predicting Losail would prove their “Achilles Heel”. In a similar vein, Mercedes’ head of trackside operations Andrew Shovlin indicated the team expected better things from the following two rounds at the new, high-speed Jeddah Corniche Circuit and drastically remodelled Yas Marina. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner remarked that of the three remaining venues, all of which are either largely or completely unfamiliar, the winding Qatar venue was the one which should suit Red Bull’s chassis best. But the two shared one view in the build-up to F1’s first race at Losail International Circuit.