Dutch driver Max Verstappen (Red Bull) won the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday, equaling Sebastian Vettel’s record of nine consecutive victories.
Verstappen finished this thirteenth race of the season with a time of 2:24.04.411 hours, leaving the Spanish Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) second, at 3.744 seconds, with the Frenchman Pierre Gasly (Alpha Tauri) taking advantage of a Mexican Sérgio Pérez ( Red Bull) to rank third, with 7,058.
Today’s race was marked by rain and an interruption of more than half an hour, seven laps from the end, to fix the protective barriers after the fall of the Chinese Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo), at a time when he had returned to rain heavily. .
The rain turned out to be one of the protagonists of the day, appearing on three occasions, the last being the most intense and lasting.
The test even started with a dry surface, but despite the fact that the drivers completed the first of the 72 scheduled laps, the track was already beginning to get wet.
Mexican Sérgio Pérez was the first to pit and fit intermediate tyres, earning him promotion to the lead when everyone else was also stopping.
But when the track began to dry again, Max Verstappen, who had started from pole position, took the initiative to stop before his teammate for slicks, taking the lead when Pérez also pitted.
From then on, Max Verstappen was intractable and never lost the lead, achieving his eleventh victory of the year in 13 races held, ninth in a row, equaling Sebastian Vettel’s record, achieved in 2013.
“I’m incredibly proud. I already had goosebumps at the beginning, when they played the anthem,” said the winner.
Fernando Alonso, who started from fifth position, used a better strategy and adapted to the wet track to reach second place, setting the fastest lap of the race.
“It was a tense race, with wet conditions. In these conditions you need a car you can trust and I trusted my car. I still thought about attacking on the last restart, but then I thought maybe they won’t let me go.” the circuit and left it. I stayed calm in second position”, joked the Asturian pilot.
With this result, Alonso broke a record that belonged to the German Michael Schumacher, for the longest time elapsed between the first and the last podium.
392 Grands Prix took place between the first podium for the Spaniard, in Malaysia (third place), in 2003, and today, when 347 had elapsed between Schumi’s third place in Mexico, in 1992, and third in the European GP of 2012.
For Alonso, 20 years, five months and four days have passed compared to 20 years, three months and two days for Schumacher.
The unlucky man of the day was Sérgio Pérez, who went into the pits to change tires at the time of Zhou’s accident, after having also left the track in the same place as the Chinese driver, at the end of the finish line. line.
This stop ended up earning the Mexican a five-second penalty for having exceeded the maximum speed allowed in the pits, losing third place on the track.
With these results, Max Verstappen reached 339 points, 138 more than Pérez, who is second.
Red Bull leads the Constructors’ Championship, with 540 points, compared to 255 for Mercedes, which is second.
The next appointment is the Italian GP, in a week.
*Updated at 5:47 pm
Source: TSF
