Formula 1 Winners & Losers: Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Photo from Motorsport.com

This weekend was an odd one, to say the least.

Let’s see this weeks winners & losers.

Losers

5. Valtteri Bottas

A great weekend for Valtteri, but reliability issues led to a retirement from what was likely going to be a good result.

Not an uncommon theme, today.

4. Daniel Ricciardo

Another tough race for Ricciardo, who was on for a good result and ahead of his teammate, but reliability issues made him retire early.

3. Fernando Alonso

Stop me if you heard this before, but it was going to be a good result for the double world champion and then he suffered reliability issues.

Oh, and all three of those happened on lap 37.

Whoops!

2. Lewis Hamilton

A horrible qualifying session led to a poor starting position.

But he had a really good race and quite a good strategy.

And then he got caught out by all the cars retiring on lap 37 and got screwed for his pit stop.

He still finished 10th, which isn’t bad. But it could’ve been a better weekend.

1. Sergio Perez

Man oh man.

Checo put it on pole thanks to the “lap of his life” yesterday, and he got a fantastic start and had a handle on the race.

But then, after getting baited into a pit stop by Ferrari, he pit early and then got screwed by a safety car.

What could’ve been an easy win ends up without a podium.

Really, really tough break.

Winners

5. Esteban Ocon

Ocon had a great race with lots of quality battles, all leading to a 6th place finish.

Very well done.

4. Lando Norris

After a horrible race last weekend, followed by practice showing the Mercedes engine is clearly inferior to the rest of the field (who would have thought we’d say that) it is a surprise that Lando had a terrific race to finish 7th.

With his finish plus Ricciardo’s race today, McLaren doesn’t appear dead just yet.

Except for Ricciardo’s engine. That’s dead.

3. George Russell

A quiet race from George Russell, but also a 5th place finish while clearly being faster than his teammate.

And considering Mercedes is the 3rd best car, 5th is hypothetically the best you should do barring any failures from Red Bull and Ferrari.

So he did his job well.

2. Kevin Magnussen

Another race for Kevin Magnussen, another finish in the points.

This time, at a track he’s never driven at before.

And may I remind you, he got his seat with Haas 11 days before the season began and is still working on getting into the shape it requires for Formula 1 and how hard it is to drive these cars.

What a great start to the season.

1. Max Verstappen

Max learned to be patient!

It was never one of his strong suits, which is a reason on why he’s such a great driver.

But after falling for it multiple times in Bahrain, and multiple times today as well, Max decided to wait to pass Charles Leclerc so he would have DRS and be able to pull away.

Once he did that, he took the lead and never looked back on route to his first race win of the season.

Last year, it was clear there was going to be a championship battle between Verstappen and Hamilton.

This year, it’s going to be a battle between Verstappen and Leclerc.

Let’s hope there’s less crashes this time around, as well as less driver avatars making fan cams and yelling at each other on Twitter…