Max Verstappen wins the Qatar Grand Prix: 'Top five most difficult race'

Published on 08 October 2023 by Florence Cobben

Max Verstappen has won the Qatar Grand Prix. The newly crowned three-time world champion raced from pole to first place, in a race that saw no challenges for the Dutchman, in spite of the extremely humid and tough conditions. Max claimed his fourteenth victory of the year, a day after earning his third world title. Oscar Piastri, the sprint race winner, came in second, five seconds behind Max. Lando Norris secured a McLaren double podium by coming in third. 

After the race, a tuckered-out Max reflected: “What made our race was my first stint, after that I could just manage my pace, make sure the tyres were in the right window. But the McLarens were quick again today, I had to push for it. It was definitely a tough race out there. I think that at certain times we went too long on certain tyres, and we had to make up for that on newer tyres. In the end it didn’t matter, but these are little things we can look at, to improve on. It was a difficult race. It was too warm in the car, so I think we came here too early in the season. This is definitely top five most difficult races that I’ve driven.”

Inspite of his achievements, a great champion party will have to wait: “I’m already sweating quite a bit, so I wondered what happened last night”, Max joked. “We’ll enjoy a little bit, but there’s still a couple of races that we want to win. I want to go home and work in the simulator, to prepare for the upcoming races.”

Because there was reasonable concern the drivers could get flat tyres, they were forced to make a minimum of 3 pit stops. Still, Max hopes this will not become the norm in Formula 1: “I prefer we can just push as long as we can on a tyre and not force pitstops. We design cars to be good on tyres, so today we couldn’t optimize that fully because that’s normally our strong point. We’ll see how we can improve on that in the future.”

The whole race weekend there had been concerns about tyre life. According to tyre provider Pirelli and the FIA, there is a reasonable chance a tyre will go flat if the drivers go longer than 20 laps on a single set. It was announced before the race started that a driver can drive only driver above ninth place to start on softs. Max gets a clean getaway from pole and maintains his lead. Hamilton is faster, and attempts an overtake on teammate George Russell and Max into turn 1. The two Mercedes make contact and both spin out of the race. Hamilton is forced to DNF, and Russell is in dead last. A safety car gets called in. At this point, Max is in the lead, followed by Piastri in P2 (up from P6), and Fernando Alonso in P3. 

The race is back on in lap 5. Max has a fantastic restart and opens a ten-second gap between him and Piastri. Lap 12 is when Alonso, the first of the top three, heads into the pits to get a new set of tyres. Max only changes his tyres at the last opportunity, in lap 18. The old mediums are exchanged for a new set, and Max is back on track behind Alexander Albon, who has yet to pit. When he does pit a lap later, Max is back into the lead. He is eight seconds ahead of Piastri in P2, and maintains the distance for the coming laps. 

In lap 35 Max enters the pit lane for his second pit stop. He exchanges his mediums for hard tyres, and re-enters the race in the lead, ahead of Piastri. In the meantime Alonso made a trip through the gravel and loses sixth place to Charles Leclerc. Perez’s weekend goes from bad to worse. The Mexican already received a five-second time penalty once for exceeding track limits, and just heard he will have to serve another. 

After his third pitstop, Norris is close on Piastri’s heels. However, over the team radio he is told not to fight with his teammate. Only in lap 52 does Max switch out his hard tyres for mediums, and once again retakes to the track ahead of Piastri, keeping the lead. The ending of the race is smooth sailing for Max, who, after securing his championship yesterday, closes out the weekend by securing his fourteenth Grand Prix win of the season. Piastri, in second place, scores the best result of his Formula 1 career. Norris extends McLaren’s double podium streak, rounding out the top three. 

Russell and Leclerc come in P4 and P5. Alonso claims sixth, with Esteban Ocon just behind in P7. Both the Alfa Romeo’s of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu drove a good race and ended in P8 and P9, while Perez is knocked down to P10 due to getting yet another five-second time penalty for exceeding track limits. 

Results Grand Prix Qatar: