How gaming the system cost Verstappen in Saudi Arabian GP

Around a fast and very physically demanding Jeddah track, Oscar Piastri put himself into the lead of the world championship for the first time with his third victory from the opening five races.

His McLaren took the lead only as first stint leader Max Verstappen was obliged to take a five-second penalty at his stop, this relating to him having driven his Red Bull off the track at Turn 1 in the race’s opening seconds.

Piastri had made the better start from P2 on the grid and wasn’t about to be intimidated out of using his greater momentum to stake his claim to the corner. Verstappen chose not to tuck in behind, instead getting far enough alongside that he could be ‘pushed off’ rather than making contact. He was simply gaming the system in the circumstances of that split second, such reactions hard-wired in. As Piastri later said, if the positions had been reversed, the exact same thing would have happened. Everyone knows how the game goes.

So Verstappen and Red Bull were now faced with a choice: to surrender the place or to hope he wouldn’t be penalised. As far as he understood from prior discussions with the FIA, such incidents wouldn’t be penalised on the first lap. At least that’s what he said over the radio that he understood. So he pressed on, and the stewards noted it. They did make allowance for it being the first lap – but only to the extent of imposing the five-second penalty rather than the 10sec it would usually award for such a move.

Once that was done, there was really no way for Verstappen to win this race, for whoever had track position was going to win. The tyre damage imposed in dirty air around here was immense, far greater than usual. That was why Piastri had no answer to the Red Bull pulling away in the first stint. Verstappen was of course trying to pull out five seconds before stopping. He couldn’t quite do that, but he was significantly quicker in the latter part of the opening stint than the McLaren.

As they each rejoined on their fresh tyres, with Piastri now around 3.5sec ahead, so the Red Bull suffered in the dirty air and Piastri was able to maintain that gap to the flag.

So which was actually the faster car? “They are just as quick as us in most qualy sessions, Max was the quickest in the race today,” said Lando Norris of Red Bull. “People say we’re the fastest because we show more pace in practice. We’re the quickest on average for sure, but not by much.”

Norris carried a heavy tone of understandable regret, having been setting the track alight not only in practice but into Q1 and Q2. He was the quicker McLaren driver around Jeddah. But he crashed in Q3 without a lap on the board. Having sat out Q1 and Q2 after setting his session-heading times while everyone else made second runs, he was perhaps not as attuned to how quickly the track grip was ramping up. So on his first Q3 lap, he noted how much more grip than expected there was through Turns 1-2 and how he had wasted much of it.

Resolving to make amends, he took way more speed into Turn 4 than he’d done previously, understeered a little wide and in his over-confidence, nailed the throttle in reaction – which just sent him into the opposite kerb and from there hard into the wall. It was a terrible error of judgement and defined his starting position as 10th. From there he drove well, running a long hard-tyred first stint and was pressuring Charles Leclerc‘s Ferrari for third at the flag.

Did Piastri agree with his team-mate’s assessment of the Red Bull being quicker on the day? “No. Our car was still quicker. We were just in dirty air [in the first stint]. But Max was quicker than expected.”

Leclerc’s Ferrari was certainly quicker than he expected. Once George Russell had pitted out his way, the car was transformed. “I’ve never been so happy with the balance of this car once I was in clear air,” he said. “Clear air made such a difference today.” He subsequently passed Russell, whose Mercedes was blistering its tyres. “We looked better because we had better tyre deg,” said Leclerc. “But we are still lacking downforce.”