Verstappen recovered to a distant sixth, but the Red Bull was overheating its front tyres, particularly the mediums in the first stint. Its skinny-wing set up wasn’t a good match for the gusty conditions. Sergio Perez, in what was almost certainly his last race with the team, had some sort of transmission glitch which lost him drive on the run up to the chicane on the first lap – which led to a swarming of cars around him under the braking area and the inevitable collision. Perez was spun around but was retiring anyway.
The Haas cars were flying this weekend and Nico Hülkenberg’s fourth on the grid was fully representative and less than a tenth away from the front row. Their rear wing was perfect for the track’s layout in its trade-off of drag and downforce and the car was well balanced. Had Hülkenberg kept that grid position rather than been penalised three places, he’d have started two places ahead of Pierre Gasly’s Alpine rather than two behind it. Which – given that Gasly finished seventh and Hulk eighth – may have decided the outcome of Alpine, and not Haas, sealing sixth in the constructors’ championship. The penalty was for overtaking in the pitlane tunnel in Q3. Hulkenberg thought there was less time than there was to get to the line before the chequer fell and so blasted past two slow-moving cars there – which is specifically not permitted at this track because of the narrowness of the tunnel. That small error proved costly. In Kevin Magnussen’s final grand prix (at least for now), he was the victim of a misjudgement from Valtteri Bottas, also having his final race for now. KMag took the consolation of fastest lap on his soft tyres.
Hülkenberg was flying but lost places after a qualifying penalty
Haas
As Norris made his victorious in-lap and congratulated the team on its achievement, he stated, ‘next year is my year’. He elaborated on that in the press conference later, “We want to win the constructors’. We want to win the drivers’ next year. I made my mistakes this year, but I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve learned a lot from Max and my competitors around me. As much as I’m happy now, I’m excited to get next year going.”