Lando Norris Breaks Up Red Bull Podium; Max Verstappen Still Wins Chinese GP
During the Chinese Grand Prix, which wraps up the first Sprint weekend of the 2024 Formula 1 season, on Sunday, for the first time, one constructor didn't go one-two. While, yes, Max Verstappen still won, Lando Norris was able to hold off the other Red Bull driver, Sergio Perez, for his eighth career second-place finish.
Verstappen's dominance was well displayed this weekend, with him winning the Sprint, Qualifying, and the Grand Prix. This is the third consecutive time that the Dutch driver has won the Sprint and Grand Prix in a weekend. Fernando Alonso captured the fastest lap, stopping Verstappen from having a perfect weekend in the points.
Norris was shocked to be the one to break up the Red Bulls on the podium, stating that he thought that he and his teammate Oscar Piastri would be struggling to keep up with the Ferraris.
"I made a bet to how far behind the Ferrari we would finish today, and I thought 35 seconds, and I was very wrong by that. Happy to be wrong," Norris told Nico Rosberg.
Norris finished 9.85 seconds in front of Charles Leclerc and 20.21 seconds ahead of Carlos Sainz.
Before the first incident of the race, Ferrari and Leclerc were talking about implementing Plan D, which is believed to be code for stretching the tires to a one-stop race. Two weeks ago, at the Japanese Grand Prix, Leclerc stunned with his control of tire deterioration.
The McLarens knew that this was the direction the Ferraris would likely take, and, confident in his time on the track, Norris matched the strategy.
Two Safety Car periods scrunched up the field to keep second place competitive; Verstappen and Perez were running one-two when the first was deployed for Valtteri Bottas, who went off track and could not navigate his car back to the pits. Knowing that any competitive advantage the duo was about to dissipate—in this case, the 20 seconds that Verstappen had built on Perez and the five seconds that Perez had on the rest of the field—both drivers pitted and put on hard tires to make it to the end.
While under a full-track safety car, Leclerc was the first to come in, and Norris missed the call by a corner, frustrating the British driver. The track stayed under yellow longer than anticipated, and Norris was still able to get the time advantage of having his only stop under a yellow flag.
Verstappen pulled away on the staggered restart, and the next four drivers followed suit before Alonso locked up and started an accordion effect, ending with his teammate Lance Stroll violently rear-ending the RB of Daniel Ricciardo.
this was insane pic.twitter.com/CxdSupFC4A
— mak ⁴ (@LANDOPIASTRIS) April 21, 2024
A few turns later, Ricciardo's teammate Yuki Tsunoda was spun by Haas's Kevin Magnussen. The latter of these two events caused the second safety car.
Verstappen still had the right call on when to go and pulled away from the field for the third time at the Chinese Grand Prix, cruising to an easy fourth victory in 2024.
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