Luke’s Weekend Review – Qatar GP 2023

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Qatar GP Round 18 Recap: Mandated Tyre Stints, Heat Challenges & A Mercedes Meltdown at Lusail Circuit

Qatar Podium

Round 18 has come and gone and what a race that was at the Lusail International Circuit for the Qatar GP, we had nonstarters, loads of overtakes, drivers suffering from heat, mandated tyre stints and loads of penalties with a Mercedes upset as well.

We start looking at the mandated stints the FIA imposed ahead of the Qatar GP, due to advise from Pirelli the FIA mandated to all the teams that they can only do a maximum of 18 laps per tyre set they use. Should any team not follow this mandate, the driver who broke this mandate would receive a black flag and get disqualified from the race. This meant that the race was a minimum of 3 pitstops for everyone. Additional to that this also meant that drivers essentially ill have 57 laps of qualifying laps as tyre management was not that much of a concern anymore. This proved to be fairly challenging for all the drivers as with the heat in Qatar plus pushing for 57 laps was too much for some and many felt like they were fainting while racing at 200mph +. That statement to me was mind blowing to hear as we could have seen a bad accident but luckily all drivers were unharmed by the end of the race, maybe slightly dehydrated.

 At Ferrari it was upset for Carlos Sainz as it was announced that he will not be racing due to a fuel system leak that Ferrari spotted quite late and didn’t have enough time to fix in ahead of the start of the race. Sergio Perez had to start from the pitlane following his crash on Saturday due to taking a new power unit taking him from 13th to 19th. With Carlos Sainz not starting, this meant that there was an empty grid spot at the start, and this confused Nico Hulkenberg as after the formation lap, he got confused and went in Sainz’s grid spot and unfortunately got a 10 second penalty for a race start infringement.

We finally take a look at the start of the race where we see Max Verstappen get away well but Lewis Hamilton from 3rd got off the line better given that he was on the soft tyre compound, on the stretch onto turn 1, Hamilton got side by side with his teammate George Russell and when it came to Turn 1 Hamilton didn’t leave enough space for Russell and clipped Russell’s front wheel with his rear wheel. Both Mercedes drivers spin out, but Hamilton’s rear wheel came off and he ended up in the gravel while Russell was able to stay on the concrete part of the runoff and get back racing, but this incident dropped him plum last. Both Mercedes drivers in the heat of the moment blamed each other for the incident and the FIA deemed it as a racing incident but later after the race Hamilton came out on social media apologising and taking full responsibility. This incident brought out the Safety car and if DNFing wasn’t enough for Hamilton, the Stewards announced that he will be investigated after the race for crossing the track under the Safety car which was deemed to be dangerous especially as we see a shot with Hamilton crossing and Russell just driving past him on track, nothing came out of this though and he got away with it.

Through all this chaos in the start of the race it was Oscar Piastri the Sprint Race Winner who benefitted the most as while the Mercedes pair were spinning out, Piastri saw a gap and managed to go from 6th to 2nd in one swoop. At the restart Verstappen caught Piastri napping and went early and by the end of the lap of the restart, Max was already over 1.3 seconds ahead breaking the risk of DRS.

Heatwaves and Overtake Waves: Russell’s Charge, Alonso’s Heat Struggles & McLaren's Record Pit Stop at the Qatar GP

After the setback that Russell suffered on lap 1, he was on an absolute charge to do his best and get a result in this race and by lap 11 he was already in the points in 9th place and by lap 15 he was running in 2nd, it’s worth nothing though that most of the cars ahead had pitted for their 1st stop but this is not going to take away from the impressive driving that Russell was driving. This race was probably the most overtakes we had in a race all season and as Crofty put it so well, definitely more overtakes than we saw in Monaco. We were seeing overtakes all over the grid and we seen some impressive overtakes as well by Russell as he did most of his moves on Turn 6. Commentators were also joking about renaming that corner for him due to all the overtakes he was doing there.

Like I mentioned earlier, heat was a bit issue this race and the drivers were really suffering during the race. On lap 26 we hear Fernando Alonso coming on the radio saying that his seat is burning up and asked his pit crew if they could throw water on him when he pits, unfortunately for Alonso the pit crew weren’t able to do this. Russell was also seen on the main straight letting go of the steering and put his hands up to get some airflow onto his face while we saw other drivers lifting the visor on some slower parts of the track and in the pits. Logan Sargeant on lap 41 had to drive into the pits to retire the car as he was already unwell, and the heat was getting to him and once he was in the pits he had to be helped out of the car. We also heard Esteban Ocon come on the radio after the race that on lap 12 he threw up but didn’t tell anyone until after the race.

The other thing that was impacting most of the drivers were track limits and this impacted a few drivers up and down the grid, we had Perez get a total of three 5 second penalties, Pierre Gasly joined Perez and also got three 5 second penalties, and then we seen Alex Albon and Lance Stroll get two, 5 second penalties for track limits. Other drivers managed to get away with it, but a few had black and white flags for track limits as well.

On lap 33 we see Alonso lose the car on Turn 15 and he took to the escape road but upon re-entering the track he came on too quick trying to preserve his spot and nearly ran into Charles Leclerc. This incident was noted by the stewards but luckily for Alonso nothing came out of it, and he managed to get away with this one.

And I can’t not talk about Mclaren, this for me is the team to look at again all race, they have 2 of the best paired drivers who are mega fast and could give Max Verstappen a run for his money should they get a good car from the off next year but they also have an amazing pit crew which really outshined every other pit crew in yesterday’s race. They had two 2.1 seconds pit stops, a 2.0 seconds pitstop and a mind boggling 1.8 seconds pit stop beating Red Bull’s previous world record of 1.82 seconds from the 2019 season and no one thought this could be beaten with the bigger wheels the cars have now and the new wheel guns the FIA had imposed, but Mclaren proved everyone wrong as this pitstop is now the new world record holder and Red Bull have some work to do in order to beat it.

Max Verstappen ends up taking the win quite comfortably followed by Oscar Piastri, Lando Norris, George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu and Sergio Perez form the top 10. Mclaren secure another double podium and Russell had an amazing recovery from his lap 1 incident but Oscar Piastri bags Driver of the Day for his amazing drive from 6th to 2nd and managed to perfection all race without putting a foot wrong.

Who do you think was the biggest winners and the biggest losers of the Qatar GP? We now head into a week break before we return to the track for the United States Texas GP.

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